Abby’s birthday present

My younger sister is having one of those Big Birthdays today. She said the only thing she wants is for Barack Obama to win the presidential election. As much as I’d like to be a good brother and get her exactly what she wants, I’m not quite up to giving Abby the election result she wants.

However, the BBC Web site is now predicting that Obama will probably win the electoral college vote, based on their review of five different expert projections, including Congressional Quarterly magazine, “Real Clear Politics” Web site, “Pollster.com,” New York Times, and Professor Larry Sabato. Full story here.

If you want to help Abby get her birthday present, you can go vote for Obama et al. on Tuesday.

(Happy birthday, Abs!)

Goodbye to a great documentarian

He was called an oral historian, but I think of Studs Terkel as a documentarian — someone who devoted his career to documenting the lives of ordinary human experience. I thought his book on the Great Depression was his best work, and the human stories in it moved me profoundly.

Now he’s dead, at age 96. Obit at the Monitor. If there is an afterlife, I have no doubt that Studs Terkel is even now planning how to document the experiences of ordinary dead people.

Oh, irony of ironies…

That alleged liberal stronghold, PBS, has an online poll which asks whether Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as vice-president. I just voted (you have to vote in order to see the results of the poll, and as of a few minutes ago, Palin was receiving a 51% positive vote. So the liberal PBS is going to report that a majority of their Web site visitors think favorably of the conservative Palin. That’s the first irony.

My cousin, Abbie F., let me know about this poll, and suggested that perhaps the Republican base has mobilized their constituency in order to vote in favor of Palin. No doubt she’s right, so they have sent perhaps thousands of their conservative constituents to the PBS Web site. This will cause the number of unique visitors to the PBS site to spike. I would imagine an increase in unique visitors will help PBS demonstrate to grant-making foundations that they deserve additional funding. It will also allow them to charge more for the banner ads that appear in places on their site. That’s the second irony –these conservative folks (who probably hate PBS) are helping to support it.

If you want to vote, too, here’s the link to the poll.

Autumn watch

Thursday was the last day of our neighborhood farmers market. It was sunny, windy, and cold. The farmers from Mattapoisett weren’t there; “They said they had nothing to sell,” said Mary, the farmer from Dartmouth. Mary told me about the cafe she’s going to open in Fall River, where she’ll sell her baked goods. “Will you sell produce and eggs?” I asked. “Well, maybe some eggs,” she said. Carol and I bought apples, turnips, squash, and eggs from her. We said goodbye to Mary until July, and then we walked home in the bright sun, talking sadly about how we will miss the farmers market.

Although the farmers market has gone for the year, some of the winter residents have finally begun to return to New Bedford harbor. As I was walking to Fairhaven today along Route 6, I noticed there were some four dozen Brant along with the usual flock of gulls and Mallards that feed where a big culvert drains into the harbor. I stood there in the sun for a while, ignoring the four lanes of traffic rushing along behind me, watching those four dozen small geese who had finally arrived at their winter residence from wherever they spent the breeding season.

For the love of numbers

The latest New York Times/ CBS poll has some interesting things buried down deep in the full report. On page 29, we see that only 22% of those polled consider themselves politically liberal; 38% call themselves moderate; 33% conservative; and 7% didn’t give an answer. On page 27, we discover that 38% of those polled claim they attend religious services every week or almost every week, while 23% never attend. According to page 9 George W. Bush gets a lowly 22% approval rating, while page 17 reveals that Congress gets a dismal 15% approval rating.

One thing I love about the Web is that you don’t have to rely on the dumbed-down “stories” in which journalists “interpret” polls for us — you can look at the actual questions and responses — geek heaven! Link to the report.

Paper no longer

Dan Kennedy reports that the Christian Science Monitor will move to a Web-based publication in a few months. They’ll still produce a weekly paper version for them that wants to pay for it, but the main publication will be online only. Why the switch? If you don’t have to sell ads, Web publishing is cheaper.

Over here in Unitarian Universalist land, I fully expect that UU World magazine will be primarily Web-based within a few years. Given the state of the economy, and the probably drop in income from this year’s Annual Fund, the person we elect as president of the Unitarian Universalist Association in June, 2009, might choose to make that switch sooner rather than later.

Minor presidential candidate news

If you’re still interested in voting for a third-party candidate, the following news factoids might be of interest to you…

Paris Hilton, who is apparently running a write-in campaign for president, has come out in favor of ratifying Kyoto. She also states that the official presidential vehicle (should she get elected) will be a pink hybrid SUV. She also says that “if you’re going to put lipstick on a pig, make sure it matches her skin tone.” I have to say that Paris is conducting her campaign at a higher level than some Main Stream Candidates. Alas, according to Wikipedia, Paris was born in 1981, and so is nearly twenty years too young to meet the constitutional age requirements for president. Let’s hope she runs again in 2028. [Thanks, Jean, for the link to the video.]

In other minor candidate news, the Elder God Party has announced a comprehensive plan for preventing the kind of financial crisis that is now engulfing the world. In a recent press release, C’thulhu and Shoggoth state that they will personally devour presidents and other executives of banks that have failed since the crisis began. According to their press release, Shoggoth has stated, “Richard Fuld doesn’t expect us to feel sorry for him, so we will eat him.” Fuld is the former president of the failed Lehman Borthers bank, who testified before Congress this fall that he didn’t expect anyone to feel sorry for him.