gregladen | December 18, 2008Right now, the best estimate for the difference between Franken and Coleman in the Minnesota Senate Race Recount is between about two and five votes (Coleman leading). The challenges that are currently underway and that will be finished tomorrow come hell or high water will shift that mainly towards Franken. It is quite likely that Franken will be ahead at the end of the day based on challenged ballots.
However, another important part of this recount is the consideration of absentee ballots that seem to have been improperly rejected. Team Franken wants them looked at because Al Franken is…
gregladen | December 18, 2008Donors to Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman's reelection campaign may be surprised to learn that [he] is planning to use their contributions to pay blue-chip criminal defense lawyers to defend him against a reported FBI probe into his dealings with a wealthy businessman.
... Coleman and his wife, Laurie, have retained lawyers ... to deal with allegations that his friend and political patron Nasser Kazeminy funneled $80,000 to the senator's wife through a Kazeminy-controlled Texas oil services company. The Colemans have denied the charges -- and accused rival Al Franken of stoking the controversy.
"…
gregladen | December 17, 2008Think back to Florida eight years ago. There is a reasonable argument that Al Gore was duly voted, even via the electoral college, to be President of the United States, but George W. Bush was placed in that office for one and only one reason: The recount process in Florida was transformed into a circus, and the mainstream press in the United States whipped large parts of the populous and many involved in the process into a panic. The delay in determining the winner was going to damage democracy. The free world could not survive any more waiting. It did not matter that the guy running…
gregladen | December 17, 2008Juliana, as many could testify, was the progenitor of this seminal idea, in which she finds (around here somewhere) a modicum of humanity. In fact, to Juliana, being a full time transvestite, it was obvoius that she had to work hard to get Pat around the idea of a new plan, to convince Pat as to the shrewdness of the plan. Eventually, though, Juliana took off her dress, donned a tee shirt and shorts, so the two of them went down to the pitch to play a round of rugby.
vs.
I felt that if she should even move, She Wolf would would surely die, if Hunter Bob, where ever he was, should do that…
gregladen | December 17, 2008Moments ago, the Minnesota State Canvassing Board has completed the review of several hundred challenges produced during the process of recounting the November 5th ballots in the US Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. The next stage will be to review the Coleman challenges, of which there are approximately double the number as Franken challenges. While it is possible that the Canvassing board will begin looking at Coleman challenges today, word has it that they are going to knock off a half hour early after a brief discussion of some other issues. The original plan to finish…
gregladen | December 17, 2008My hardcore atheist checklist is below the fold. I award myself forty one points, including extra points for doing things to missionaries and such.
1. Participated in the Blasphemy Challenge.
2. Met at least one of the "Four Horsemen" (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris) in person. Dawkins and I spoke at the same event and since we had a lot of mutual friends we all walked around on the campus for a while together. Not much, but enough to bold this one, I think.
3. Created an atheist blog.
4. Used the Flying Spaghetti Monster in a religious debate with…
gregladen | December 17, 2008Predatory rodents are eating the chicks of the Critically Endangered Tristan Albatross Diomedea dabbenena to the extent that they have had the worst breeding season recorded so far.
The mice are also affecting Gough Island's other Critically Endangered endemic species, Gough Bunting Rowettia goughensis. A recent survey of the bunting's population revealed that the population has halved within the last two decades. Now there are only an estimated 400-500 pairs left.
"We've known for a long time that the mice were killing albatross chicks in huge numbers. However, we now know that the…
gregladen | December 17, 2008"There must have been some magic in clean coal technology; for when they looked for pollutants there was nearly none to see"
Huh?
Do you know "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me!"? If not, discover it. NPR, weekends. But go to the gym and work out your core body first because otherwise you might hurt yourself laughing.
Anyway, one of the routines they do is to describe three (or four?) unbelievable stories ... items in the news ... all but one of which is in fact not true. The contestant (oh, did I mention that this is a sort of game show?) has to determine which of the unbelievable store is is…
gregladen | December 17, 2008Science Pundit sent me this cool movie:
Thank you some crazy Iraqui guy for giving us a way to remember George W. Bush that is as enduring as Fala the Dog and the New Deal for FDR, the "I am not a Crook" speech and Opening Up China for Richard Nixon, Winning the American Revolution even though you really started the whole damn half century of war at Monongahela (or was that Tanacharison) for George Washington, and The Emancipation Proclamation and his wife's strangely modern out of control shopping habits for Abraham Lincoln.
Except less balanced. Indeed, perhaps unbalanced.
May the…
gregladen | December 16, 2008 The Time Traveler's Wife This is an easy decision, and not only because I read about five pieces of fiction this year and most of them were pulp. Well, OK, that is a factor. But this book is good enough for me to blog about it and you know I only blog about important things that you need to know about.
The book is The Time Traveler's Wife and it is by Audrey Niffenegger. Have you heard of it?
Apparently they are making this into a movie, which I suppose is a good thing. But it is the detail and complexity that makes this an exceptional story, and this will not come through in the…
gregladen | December 16, 2008It is too bad that we let Industry poison the part of our food supply that we really need to eat more of...
FDA reconsiders consumer advice on fish from PhysOrg.com
(AP) -- For years, the federal government has recommended that pregnant women and young children limit their consumption of fish to avoid exposure to potentially harmful amounts of mercury.
[...]
gregladen | December 16, 2008If your iPod Touch does not work on your Windows XP, you can ...
A. Uninstall and reinstall everything (Hint: Don't actually try ANY of this, it doesn't work!):
Okay well I spent about an hour on the phone with Apple trying to fix this problem. The guy I talked to seemed to have delt with this problem before. He tould me that Apple was getting numerous calls about the iPod touch not connecting with iTunes. So here is the solution that worked for me.
The first thing you must do it uninstall iTunes and Quicktime using the controll pannel, add/remove hardware, on your windows computer. Once…
gregladen | December 16, 2008It is very interesting to watch the Canvasing board ... the Minnesota Secretary of State, a Supreme Court Justice or two, and so on, going over every single one of the challenged ballots.
The way they seem to be doing this is this: They are going through all of the Franken Challenges first. The Coleman challenges have to wait because Coleman's people fucked up their removal of some of the challenged ballots so their ballots will not be ready until tomorrow. So, they go to each ballot, and it seems that Ritchie makes a move to reject the challenge each and every time, and then the other…
gregladen | December 16, 2008)Updated) According to several different sources of information, it appears that when the challenged ballots are figured into the current Minnesota Senate Seat Recount, Candidate Al Franken will move ahead of incumbent Senator Norm Coleman by somewhere between eight and twelve votes. This is significantly different than I had expected. I had predicted that Franken would move ahead by one vote because, well, that would be really funny.
Both sides of the race have withdrawn the vast majority of challenged ballots. Secretary of state Ritchie delayed the start of the canvassing board's meeting…