Microexpressions

I've long been facinated by microexpressions, little subconcious facial and body movements which convey our actual thoughts about things, sometimes at odds with what we want to show.

With that, and no other comment, allow me to present two images from SNL where Gov. Palin takes over the stage from Tina Fey as Tina exits.

Scare Fail

Old Person Snark

From an 82-year-old blogger:

Who can turn the world on with her smile?Who can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?

Well it’s NOT you girl…

Look. I am going to say what everyone at CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC is thinking but is afraid to say. Governor Palin is a stupid, conniving bitch. And it’s not because she is a strong woman - I like strong women… worship them… It’s actually the opposite. She is a weak, pathetic woman who thinks big hair, winking, baby talk and self deprecation is somehow becoming of a woman who wants to lead the free world. My god, where is Margaret Thatcher when you need her!

Lest You Get too Cocky

Remember, they called it for Carter in 1980 until the final few weeks, then it bacame too close to call.

At the heart of the controversy is the fact that no published survey detected the Reagan landslide before it actually happened. Three weeks before the election, for example, TIME'S polling firm, Yankelovich, Skelly and White, produced a survey of 1,632 registered voters showing the race almost dead even, as did a private survey by Caddell. Two weeks later, a survey by CBS News and the New York Times showed about the same situation.
Some pollsters at that time, however, were getting results that showed a slight Reagan lead. ABC News-Harris surveys, for example, consistently gave Reagan a lead of a few points until the climactic last week of October.

Debate Summary

Major Fail

See Also:

http://failblog.org/2008/10/03/trolley-fail/

http://failblog.org/2008/10/04/hiding-place-fail/

http://failblog.org/2008/10/06/name-fail/

http://failblog.org/2008/10/05/science-fail/

Crisis Poetry

From work today:

Stevan’s latest haiku:

Bond is debt,
And debt is not money,
Jump you fuckers.

No Good News for McCain

William Kristol, a week after advising the McCain campaign to go negative on Bill Ayers/Jeremiah Wright, is now telling him to fire his staff and "reboot" his campaign.

This seems to be the McCain Theme of the Week (tm), probably propelled by the video of McCin being disgusted with the woman calling Obama an arab. To his credit, I did think better of McCain for doing that and also, to his credit, I think he genuinely doesn't like what we wrought there and tried to do some damage control. It as an honest moment from him that gave him a shred of dignity in my book. It won't make me vote for him, but it does improve his damaged reputation a bit.

What's been interesting is reading the comments on the Kristol column. All the ones I read, the first 4 or 5 pages, reflect the same sentiment from Democrats and Republicans alike; it's too little, too late.

The modern presidential campaign uses columns like this to test trial balloons, i.e. a staff hack writes them (in this case New York Times Opinion columnist William Kristol who is famous for being ... well I don't know), then the campaign tries to sift out whether or not the idea has merit. Will the idea resonate with swing voters, will it piss off the base, will it make the opponents react badly etc. What surprised me in these comments was the over all consistency of the reaction, that it would be yet another gimmick and a campaign that should have been talking substance weeks ago. That, and the universal acknowledgement that any reboot starts with dumping Palin (which they absolutely cannot d0).

With 3 weeks to go, anythign can still happen. 538 points out today that Reagan was behind Carter by more than this at this point in the election cycle, and his October Surprise with the Iranian hostages spun it around at the last moment. Could Bush pull OBL out of his cave at the last moment? Maybe. I'm not certain it would help, since it might just have the reaction of removing any remain support for the war (whew! We got him! Okay, that's over), but it could conceiveably boost the Republicans. And who knows what else the next three weeks could bring. No one should be counting chickens or making nominations for Secretary of State yet.

I'm not sure how the McCain folks will react to Kristol's advice, but it should be interesting to watch.

Some New Art

I put together a couple of Art Deco lamps this weekend, one of the better ones is on display here. I'm trying to work on a couple of Stll Life pieces, and although I am very, very happy with the Fairy Lamp, the rest of the piece isn't coming together.

The other piece, Lightbringer, should be available later this week or this next weekend.

I'm in Love!!!!

with 538. I've been curious about how they are managing to agree with Intrade on their Electoral College map, and spent some time readthing through their methodology. It's very impressive and about as good as you can get with objective math. There are a lot of factors in figuring out things like the average error rate of pollsters (by state) and it seemed liek that would be a pretty subjective number. Nope.

My process is to look at the average miss for each pollster across each contest they polled, and compare it to the average miss of other pollsters in those same contest, after going through a more-complicated-than-it-needs-to-be iterative process.The results are below, split into groups for 'regional' and 'national' pollsters. (This distinction is arbitrary -- some pollsters like Insider Advantage and Quinnipiac straddle the line between being regional and national -- but helpful for presentation). 'Error' represents the average error for the particular pollster, as compared to the 'IAE', which is the iterated average error for other pollsters in those same contests.

It's pretty good. I'd like to say that it's what I'd do if I had the time and motivation, but that would be a lie. It's much better than what I could have done. While sites like Intrade and 538 aren't actually predictive (they give you a very clear picture of what the chances are at a particular moment, but that's very different than telling you what's actually going to happen), I really like the way 538 has tried to use objective math everywhere.

Well done!

Something Is Wrong with the Universe

I find myself agreeing with George Will. George Will for Christ's sake!

I have voted for too many losing candidates over the years to think this is over (Dukakis anyone?), but when George Will is agreeable, something is not right.

Cats and dogs living together!

George is my runner up for Most Wrong Pundit (WMDs will justify the Iraq War), with the clear winner being William Kristol. Kristol is always, deeply wrong about almost everything, not because he isn't smart (he is), but he's a complete partisan and uses his intellect in the cheap and tawdry exercise of rationalizing whatever the talking points of the day. The irony is, he knows that's what he's doing, is a little ashamed of it, but the checks cash.

A Third

The amount of my retirement fund that has been lost in the last 2 weeks.

Just Wanting it More

I was in London during the post-election/recount period in 2000, having flown over the day after the election to do some fundraising for CertCo. I got to watch the entire disaster unfold from overseas, which made for some interesting coverage and gave me a view I might not otherwise have had. One difference between the Gore and Bush camps became very clear to me, seeing them from such a distance: The Bush camp simply wanted it more. It had never occur ed to the Bushies that they had lost, they immediately (and irritatingly) started getting their post-election appointments in line and were bugging the White House for the keys within a day or two, long before the Supreme Court gave it to him. Go back and look at the news then, or read some of the biographies of the Clintonistas an you'll get the impression the Bushies where there. Gore, in contrast, fretted and worried, didn't move for fear of looking too bold and was, in a word, too damn polite about the whole thing.

When I read this article today from 538, I got exactly the same impression, i.e. the Obama camp simply wants it more. The McCain camp seems to think they "deserve" it, or have "earned" it or, in some cases are "entitled" to it, but the Obama camp is working it. Hard.

You could take every McCain volunteer we’ve seen doing actual work in the entire trip, over six states, and it would add up to the same as Obama’s single Thornton, CO office. Or his single Durango, CO office. These ground campaigns bear no relationship to each other.

Regrets come when you fail and realize, "I could have done a lot more". If the Obama camp loses, I doubt that's what they'll be saying.

Flipping this over, I'm actually quite frightened by the idea that Camp McCain is doing as well as they are doing simply by flogging McCain's service record and by not being Barak Obama.

China's Men in Space

China Launches First Willing Manned Mission Into Space

Consistancy

It's interesting that 538 and Intrade show, to within a fairly small variance, similar numbers for the presidential race, at least in terms of electoral college. I used to be told that Intrade was a "predictor" of elections and was "never wrong", but that's easily dismissable. I think it is, however, a pretty good measure of the market at any particular moment, like an instant poll.


BTW, the light blogging has been a result of a big, big push at work this week.

A Part of History!

When I fail, I fail big!

Washington Mutual, the giant lender that came to symbolize the excesses of the mortgage boom, was seized by federal regulators on Thursday night, in what is by far the largest bank failure in American history.

I suspect my grandchildren will tell cautionary tales to their kids about "Grandpa Mark and the Crazy Bank" as a dire warning not to invest in financial services.

The AP gets a bit fiesty

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Less than a week after balking at the Alaska Legislature's investigation into her alleged abuse of power, Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday indicated she will cooperate with a separate probe run by people she can fire.


here

Sunspot Cycle 24

After a bit of a drought, it looks like the Sun is coming alive again.

A new sunspot is emerging in the sun's northern hemisphere. After several months of almost-relentlessly blank suns, "this is like a breath of fresh plasma," says photographer Pete Lawrence who sends this picture from Selsey, UK. The magnetic polarity of the emerging spot identifies it as a member of new Sunspot Cycle 24.

The Rain In Spain Is Falling Mainly on McCain

McCain insults the Prime Minister of a key NATO ally by not knowing who he is. Not Luxumborg or Estonia or some pacifist hanger-oner. He doesn't know who'se running Spain.

Spain.


I listened to the interview. The characterization is correct. I originally gave McCain the benefit of the doubt, thinking that he was just snubbing Zapatero (something that would be welcomed by the Spanish right). When I was there, there was a lot of agitation among Spanish conservatives because Zapatero was ignoring the country's relations with the U.S. and making overtures to more leftist countries in the Latin America--Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia (all the countries mentioned in this interview before Spain). There was even a controversy because Zapatero sat down when the U.S. flag was passing by in a parade. I believe his excuse was "his legs were tired." So I figured McCain was giving the Zapatero the cold shoulder in the same manner as the Bush administration has done.

After listening to the interview, however, I agree with the characterization that McCain was unaware of our relations with Spain, or even the country's geographical and political position. When asked about meeting with Zapatero and the country's relationship with the U.S., McCain ignored the question and went into some boilerplate about America's friends and enemies and analyzing relations (think Palin and the Bush Doctrine). Then, he tried to transition his answer into more friendly territory, discussing President Calderon's government in Mexico. He never really addressed Spain, but pushed right into commenting about Mexico. The interviewer actually tried to redirect him several times (again, think Charlie Gibson and Palin), until she actually stated that she wasn't talking about Latin America anymore, but rather Europe. For whatever reason, McCain responded to this question by repeating what he said before about analyzing America's relationships with our friends and enemies.
Seriously, this was pretty bad.

I stand by my "we need adults" comment.

Wipeout

The Cunning Realist, as usual, makes a lot of sense.

We need some adults in charge and, I'm sorry but believing the Earth is 6000 years old doesn't qualify you to play in that league. Neither does allowing someone who thinks like that to be a 72-year-old heartbeat away from being in charge. Like it or not, the Dems are the only chance we have of salvaging the economy before it *really* goes downhill.