Archive for 2008

PENNSYLVANIA POLLS have been closed for 20 minutes, but no numbers or projections. Plenty of TV blather, though!

UPDATE: Clinton 67, Obama 33 — with a big, big, less than one percent of the vote in. Expect this to change. . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Liveblogging of the results from TalkLeft, and, from Stephen Green, drunkblogging. Green’s still sober enough to make this excellent point about the Democrats’ nominating rules: “If the Democrats ran a winner-take-all system like the Republicans and the Electoral College do, she’d have this thing clinched — and Obama would look like a regional candidate who can’t win much outside the South and his home state of Illinois.”

MORE: Fox is projecting a Clinton win, but no margin yet.

STILL MORE: CNN calls it for Clinton, too.

MORE STILL: Mighty Casey has struck out.

IS THIS MCCAIN’S PEAK?

UPDATE: Or not.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Atlantic’s photo editors show their feelings – the McCain Photo above the story has this name: http://thecurrent.theatlantic.com/McCain%20loser.jpg.

HMM: Despite Climate Worry, Europe Turns to Coal:

Over the next five years, Italy will increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent.

And Italy is not alone in its return to coal. Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are slated to build about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades.

In the United States, fewer new coal plants are slated to go on line, in part because it is becoming hard to get regulatory permits and in part because nuclear power remains an alternative.

Coal is better than oil from dictators who hate us. Nuclear is better than coal. Nano-solar is better than either, of course, once it’s feasible.

FIGHTING GLOBAL WARMING, one clothespin at a time: “Ontario will outlaw clothesline bans by this summer to encourage citizens to use the environmentally friendly option when doing laundry. . . . Homeowners would no longer be subject to municipal bylaws or homebuilder agreements that ban the lines.”

Makes sense. But if I were in Ontario, I might feel more favorable toward global warming . . . .

ED MORRISSEY: Strike Two!

JAMES LILEKS ON THE BILL AYERS SCANDAL: “There’s a touching naïvete about the description of Ayers as a college professor, as if that means he has entered a realm of pipe-smoking rumination about Truth and Beauty. Doesn’t that make him an Authority? Aren’t we supposed to question Authority? Note to Dick Cheney: get yourself to the Department of Political Science at the U of Wyoming, and watch those calls for war-crime prosecutions melt away. . . . It was a difficult time. What a wonderful absolution. Oh, we all went a little mad. Some of us listened to Steppenwolf, some of us bombed government buildings and plotted robberies that killed people, some of us were rotting in Vietnamese prisons having our teeth bashed out by torture experts. Those days are behind us now, best forgotten. (Unlike the McCarthy era, which will be the subject of 163 movies about the blacklist next year, bringing the total to 45,203.)”

POLARIZED POLITICS: “When the University of Pennsylvania’s student newspaper did the unthinkable and — gasp! — endorsed Clinton to its readership, most of which, like that at many elite colleges, overwhelmingly backs Obama.”

3G IPHONES, and how to make an iPhone out of an iPod Touch, all in the latest roundup of Apple news.

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uncleeasycrop2.jpgUNCLE EASY IS KIND OF LIKE UNCLE SAM, except that he wears green instead of red, white and blue, and plays a saxophone while standing atop giant bags of cash.

Is it just me, or is this an image with disturbing political overtones? Probably just me.

Anyway, I think this is the place where (when it was under a different name) my brother got a hot-rodded Fender Super Reverb for 30 bucks. Needed a little work, but it’s the single best-sounding amp I’ve ever heard.

Keen observers will note that this place is next door to the El Quetzal Taqueria featured yesterday.

SHOCKINGLY, THIS IS ACTUALLY A GOOD IDEA: P.E.T.A. offers a $1 million prize for fake meat: That is, “real” meat grown In vitro instead of from animals.

A READER EMAILS: “I noticed the NY Post review of Mike Yon’s book is currently their ‘most emailed’ review. It occurred to me that folks who wanted to spread Mike’s message were a simple click away from doing so – it’s a matter of hitting the ’email to a friend’ link on the page” Good idea. I should note that newspapers notice these things, as a rule.

BILL CLINTON: “I think that they played the race card on me. We now know, from memos from the campaign that they planned to do it along.”

HERE’S A PENNSYLVANIA PRIMARY COVERAGE ROUNDUP. And here’s more continuously-updated coverage from Bill Bradley.

EVERYBODY’S TALKING ABOUT 2008, but in Tennessee people are already working on 2010.

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Cass Sunstein is the Karl Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago, and the coauthor, with Chicago colleague Richard Thaler, of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Sunstein and Thaler espouse a theory of “Libertarian Paternalism,” in which people have more choice than they do now, but in which ignorance and sloth are exploited to encourage them to make good choices even when they’re lazy. We talk about libertarian paternalism, the virtues and vices of technocracy, and which Presidential candidates favor Sunstein and Thaler’s approach.

You can listen directly — no downloads needed — by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can download the file and listen at your leisure by clicking right here. And you can get a lo-fi version, suitable for dialup, etc., by going here and selecting “lo-fi.” You can also get a free subscription via iTunes — never miss another episode!

Music is “Time’s Right” by 46 Long. Show archives are at GlennandHelenShow.com.