Barack’s to lose

Who am I? Why am I here? I don’t even remember anymore. Anyway, I watched the debate tonight with 150 or so people from Washington’s 43rd Legislative District, and thought that it was essentially a draw. Bear in mind: this is not an ideal outcome, given that foreign policy is supposed to be McCain’s strongest suit. Going into tonight, it seemed like this was McCain’s best and last chance to even the score with Obama. Snap polls indicate that Obama won, but as Josh Marshall rightly points out, this perspective may change over the next few days. Nate Silver also has interesting thoughts on this (as he always does).

That said, it doesn’t matter. McCain had to pull away in this one. He didn’t. It was Obama’s game yesterday and this morning, and it sure as shit is now, too.

By the way, Election ‘08 is still absolutely non-partisan. In fact, given the way most pollsters seem to be under-representing the prospective youth and African-American vote, you could even argue that its numbers are right-leaning. This won’t change the minds of the 50 or so people who’ve given me negative ratings for a perceived liberal bias, but it’s the simple truth. I’d rather be a pessimist all the way up to next January than not.

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September 27, 2008

Carly knows all about the lack of qualifications

 

From Andy Barr at The Hill:

“Do you think [Palin] has the experience to run a major company, like Hewlett Packard?” Fiorina was asked on a St. Louis radio show.

“No, I don’t,” Fiorina said without further explanation.

And, as we all know, Carly Fiorina is uniquely qualified to know exactly what type of executive experience a person would need to run HP successfully. Ahem. By the way, way to demonstrate your cool nerve and solid grasp of the fundamentals of running a tech company again, Carly:

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September 16, 2008

Walt Mossberg on Election ‘08

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal wrote about Election ‘08 today:

Now there’s a cool new way to follow the 2008 Presidential election anywhere you go…If you care about politics, and understand that polls aren’t perfect, Election ‘08 can put a snapshot of the political horse race in your pocket.

Wow! Appearing on TechCrunch is one thing, but getting written up by Mossberg just made my week!

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September 13, 2008

Nothing Quite Like Running Naked in a Hurricane

I’ve been watching coverage of Hurricane Ike’s landfall in Texas all evening, and was just watching another clip on the Weather Channel’s website. I noticed something in the last second of this video that’s worth watching: some guy runs naked across the background just before the clip ends. Not my ideal way to gain notoriety, but to each their own.

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September 13, 2008

Weird Headline Day

 

NYT: Court clears way for Zuma Presidency

NYT: Court clears way for Zuma Presidency

Zuma Frog

Zuma Frog

 ??????

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September 12, 2008

David Plouffe to 38% of America: STFU

Haha, I love Plouffe:

“We’re sensitive to the fluid dynamics of the campaign, but we have a game plan and a strategy,” said Mr. Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe. “We’re familiar with this. And I’m sure between now and Nov. 4 there will be another period of hand-wringing and bed-wetting. It comes with the territory.”

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September 11, 2008

Election ‘08 Updated

I just received word from Apple that Election ‘08 has been updated to version 1.1. This brings with it a raft of improvements, including:

  • Battleground states: See which races are the closest at the touch of a button.
  • Polling sources: See the sources of every state poll displayed.
  • Historical polling data: See every poll conducted in 2008.
  • National tracking polls: See who’s winning the nation-wide horse race with numbers updated every day.
  • Poll smoothing algorithm improvements: State poll leads are calculated using a smoothing algorithm that take all of the latest polls into account.

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September 11, 2008

Death Cab for Cutie and TV on the Radio

I’m just finishing up lunch, and was spending some time reflecting over the past couple weeks when I realized I never mentioned my day at Bumbershoot on Labor Day. I caught Death Cab for Cutie headlining that night, and was as thoroughly impressed by them as I always am, Ben’s twitchy rocking notwithstanding. 

I’m never a fan of arena shows, and Death Cab is popular enough, now, at least in Seattle, to only be accessible through this medium. Even so, they still manage to put together a compelling performance, from their opening with Bixby Canyon Bridge to the closer of Transatlanticism (which is far better live than it is on the album).

Do catch Death Cab live if and when you get the chance. 

Last Saturday, I caught TV on the Radio at the Showbox SoDo, and was blown away by them live. I picked up their last album, Return to Cookie Mountain, on a whim earlier this year, and have been waiting with bated breath for them to return to Seattle. Tunde Adebimpe was electrifying, the entire band was great. Wow. I can’t wait for Dear Science, their next album, to come out at the end of the month.

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September 10, 2008

iTunes 8: 60 Second Review

Immediate reactions after first firing up iTunes 8, and configuring the Genius feature:

  • Wow, I didn’t think Apple could make iTunes look more inconsistent with the rest of the OS and itself than they already had. Guess they topped my expectations.
  • Genius is cool, but why can’t I resize it?
  • Genius shows me some stuff I already have.
  • Why doesn’t Genius let me say “yes, I like this album,” or “no, I hate this album?”
  • I can’t get rid of the little arrow links to the iTunes Store in the tabular view anymore. Very unfortunate.
  • iTunes still uses song artist instead of album artist for sorting tracks. You’d think that no one at Apple ever listens to any rap or hip-hop (or any music where the album contains more than one artist). It shouldn’t take me several clicks to listen to all of Stankonia or Thievery Corporation’s The Cosmic Game.
Overall rating: eh, it’s fine.

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September 10, 2008

The latest on Election ‘08

Here’s what’s been happening over the past couple days with Election ‘08:

  • A server hiccup made the app unusable for a few hours – I have an update in the queue with Apple to address this sort of thing in the future; I will be hosting all of the data that the app consumes on Amazon S3, which should offer rock-solid stability, and will also have the added benefit of letting me update the polls whenever new data comes in.
  • Data is stale – See above. This will be addressed by the update, too.
  • New features forthcoming soon – The update in the queue with Apple is version 1.1, and several new features, listed below.

New Features in version 1.1:

  • Battleground states: See which races are the closest at the touch of a button. 
  • Polling sources: See the sources of every state poll displayed.
  • Historical polling data: See every poll conducted in 2008.
  • National tracking polls: See who’s winning the nation-wide horse race with numbers updated every day.
  • Poll smoothing algorithm improvements: State poll leads are calculated using a smoothing algorithm that take all of the latest polls into account.
Thanks again for all of your feedback on Election ‘08, positive and negative alike! I’m looking over every feature-related comment, and will try to get every one of them into the app as soon as possible.

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September 9, 2008