11/1/00 - Apparently, Dubya isn't yet convinced on evolution. I'll wonder if it'll be up to Cheney to break to him the bad news about the whole Santa Claus thing, too.

Mike Myers as Inspector Clouseau? Ok, it might work, but does The Pink Panther really need to be remade?

Surprise! According to a new study, both Bush and Gore's Medicare Reform proposals pander to wealthy (voting) elderly folks rather than help those truly in need.

Expecting a photo finish where the electoral and popular vote tallys may fall to different camps, Teams Bush and Gore ready the last bullet in the chamber, a rally against the electoral system itself.

The NYT interviews Nader, and plays up his lack of panic over a Bush victory. "I don't like the word `liberal,'" he began. "I prefer `progressive.'" Speaking my language, big guy.

Yesterday Humankind entered a new phase in space exploration, but you wouldn't know it from the press it received. "As a NASA spokesman pointed out, Monday may have been the last day when humans weren't orbiting in an outpost in space...[More importantly,] this is humankind's station ? it represents the first time in the four- decade history of space exploration that it's not Russia or America or the Japanese in space. It's a real-life step toward a Star Trek universe, the first foray into The Federation.

Uh-oh. Knicks get blown out by 29 in their opening season game against Philly, a second-tier squad at best. It was the worst loss ever in a Knickerbocker opener, and it got so bad the Garden crowd was chanting "Pat-rick Ew-ing" by the end of the third quarter.

Although I didn't buy it (since I have the individual albums anyway), there looks to be a great new Dylan compilation out there, The Essential Bob Dylan. Released today, this two-disc set covers everything from 1963's "Blowin' In the Wind" to 1999's "Things Have Changed," and looks to be an excellent sampling of his best stuff over the years (IMHO, "Desolation Row," "Idiot Wind," and "One More Cup of Coffee" stand out as notable omissions, though.) Hopefully, some enterprising high school English/History teachers will assign this CD in lieu of Silas Marner or something.

Jack Kerouac gets into the e-book business from beyond the grave. His unreleased work, Orpheus Emerging, hits the web next month.

Mike Kinsley offers possibly one of the first of many Gore post-mortems.

Happy Halloween. In lieu of an expensive costume - and since I don't know of anything much going on - I'm dressing up as Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt) in 12 Monkeys. Mainly because I own this exact shirt he's wearing to the right. I'll also be affixing a 12 Monkeys insignia to my lapel just so I don't get too many "um...who are you supposed to be?" comments. Can't be any worse than two years ago, when Elaine and I dressed up as Mulder and Sculley. Everyone was like, "Hey, it's Sculley!!...um, and you must be Mulder." Evidently I don't exude the Duchovny vibe.

Screw the constituents - when you touch Congressional salaries, they really get pissed.

Lots of choice info at Dark Horizons today, including word of a possible Riverworld TV show (from the books by Phillip Jose Farmer) and a rumored Charlton Heston cameo in Burton's Planet of the Apes remake (I wonder if he'll be packing heat...)

Take that, Colin Powell: Al Gore hints at a possible appointment of his own...Bob Dylan as poet laureate.

As you might expect, Gore-backing liberals grow increasingly more strident in their calls for Nader to quit the race. So where were y'all the past six months?

Also joining the ranks of the Fear-Nader-for-Gore's-Sake punditry today are the Globe's Ellen Goodman and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.

Turns out Mars might be dry after all. Now there is a surefire way to figure this out for sure, but it would involve being able to consistently convert from standard to metric. Sigh.

The King is traded, long live the King. Tonight, the Sprewell era begins.

Looks like Jim Moran, our Democratic incumbent congressman in Alexandria, VA, may have been bribed in his hour of need. Can't the Democrats offer up any candidates I'd actually be happy to vote for? I'm definitely going to have to read up on what went on here before voting next week.

10/30/00 - A mathematical defense of the Electoral College (Via Kestrel's Nest.) In related news, the Post delves into this year's all-important stealth election: winning the state legislatures that will control redistricting.

NBA 2001 is upon us, but who's gonna stop Shaq?

Team Green gets a few more ringers, including Caught in Between, Cluttered, and Law School Dropout. Great to be green with y'all, gang.

If one more reprogrammed member of the old New Left tells me I'm destroying the Progressive movement by not voting for Mediscare Al, I think I'm going to be sick. Gitlin is so off in this piece...let me count the ways:

1. As an historian, Gitlin should know better than to say that third parties "have never -- never -- delivered." To the contrary, almost every time a third party has mounted a challenge to the reigning two-party system, they have succeeded in getting their mobilizing issue addressed. Ex: Republicans and abolitionism in 1856-1860, Populists and the gold standard in 1896-1900, Perotistas and a balanced budget in 1992-96. Nader's issue is the overwhelming influence of money in the political process - and it's such a crucial topic that it by itself justifies going Green.
2. Gitlin ridicules the Nader movement as a failure because it's "non-minority, non-environmentalist, non-working people etc." etc." You couldn't have asked for a clearer example of the difference between liberals and progressives (as I noted in my 10/12 post.) In attacking Nader's civic republicanism on these grounds, Gitlin betrays his New Left bias. Could somebody please explain to him that, so long as Bush and Gore are forced to beg for money like it's going out of style, minorities, environmentalists, and working people aren't going to get diddly from the Gore Left?
3. Gitlin insinuates that Nader voters are hopelessly naive about the realities and compromises of politics, and then spends the lion's share of his piece dispensing hopelessly naive statements about the horrors of a Dubya administration. The Texas record shows that Dubya is more moderate than conservative. And this presidential campaign has illustrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bush is less an ideologue than he is an idiot (or, to borrow from Al Hunt, "a strikingly incurious fellow.") In sum, Dubya will be a goofy, bumbling one-termer...he will not augur the demise of the progressive movement, particularly if he is faced with a Democratic Congress (a goal, I might add, which Nader is only helping.)
4. Would somebody please put this Supreme Court abortion canard to bed? It is not borne out by the facts. Once again, Republican appointees O'Connor and Souter are reliably pro-choice, and Republican appointees as a rule have been better defenders of constitutional rights (search and seizure, etc.) than Democrats. Meanwhile, Gore voted for Antonin Scalia's confirmation and Lieberman said only yesterday he would have voted for Bork. C'mon, people.

I could go on and on. I'm sorry, but I just can't abide these Nader-dissing ex-radicals -- who long ago traded in their tye-dyes and VW mini-buses for power ties and Ford Explorers -- telling America's youth today that they might as well not bother trying to change the system because it didn't work out for them. What Gitlin's doing in this piece isn't quite David Horowitz, but it's the same freakin' ballpark. Grrr...

Following Eden unearths an mp3 of Eddie Vedder's Dylan cover from the Nader MSG rally. Speaking of which, Nader's in DC Sunday and the Knicks are here Friday. Gotta love it when a weekend plans itself like that.

Oregonian Democrats desperately try to wake up from the Nader nightmare, even going so far as to smash the two-headed Bush-Gore puppet in front of Nader headquarters.

Eight days before Election day, the House is still in flux.

A look at the strange and sordid history of the Y Chromosome.

Godspeed.

Randy "Macho Man" Savage will indeed be in Spiderman, but it's not as bad as you think. In fact, given Spidey's origin, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Some game on Saturday. Too bad for Clemson to fall out of national championship contention like that (even Georgia Tech grad Elaine was rooting for 'em in the end), but hopefully they'll rally to beat down Florida State next weekend. We'll see.

Also finally finished A Man in Full this weekend. Can't say I enjoyed it enough to justify all the hype, but then again it wasn't really the book I was expecting. I went in imagining a satire-heavy travelogue of Atlanta and ended up with a long-winded disquisition on masculinity and rebirth. The book picked up steam in the second third, but, in the end, I think it added up to a few too many notes.

Sports philosophers grapple with the (unfortunately) empirically-supported Patrick Ewing theory.

Quentin Tarantino returns with an Uma Thurman vehicle entitled Kill Bill.

Bill Safire looks at the flip side of Nader's appeal: libertarian conservatives.

10/27/00 - The day the Playstation 2 hits stores, my Playstation stops booting. Coincidence, or sinister Sony plot?

Scientists find four more moons orbiting Saturn. But given NASA's decision to play it safe from now herein, it looks like it'll be some time before we get a closer look.

Just in time to save Al Gore, the Pope declares the original man for all seasons, Sir Thomas More, the patron saint of politicians.

Yankees just won. Ho-hum. Must be a lousy night to be a Mets fan in the City. Now, bring on the hoops.

In the Old Dominion, the quintessential Republican stronghold, the wasted vote is for Gore. Meanwhile, the veep decides to go after Nader himself. Look, this cannot be stressed enough: If (or when) Al Gore loses, it'll be no one's fault but his own. The Dems can't go blaming Nader when they had every advanced warning in the primary that Gore was a compromised candidate and a lousy messenger for the progressive cause. End of story.

10/26/00 - Elaine, Berkeley, and I are off to Clemson, SC to visit her folks and take in the Clemson-Georgia Tech game, so Ghost will more than likely be off until Monday. Have fun in my absence.

Jacob Weisberg explores the implications of the Texas RAND report for Dubya's education agenda.

American Ballet Theater, my sister's troupe, begin their fall run at City Center.

The sleeper has awakened: The new Dune Sci-Fi mini-series trailer is now available.

Have you been wondering for years what song was #1 the day you were born? Fret no more. (For me, it was Helen Reddy's "Angie Baby" in the US and Mud's "Lonely this Christmas" in the UK...both anthems of a generation, no doubt.)

The Times editorial board are way off on the Nader tip this morning, but I do heartily concur with their take on California's Proposition 36, which would funnel nonviolent drug offenders into treatment rather than prison. Definitely a step in the right direction.

The Force.Net offers a heavy spoiler-laden and speculative recap of the Episode 2 plot. Spoilers, Spoilers, Spoilers.

Enjoy your beer! Harvard institution Cheng-san Chen, the Ph.D.-toting proprietor of Louie's (next to Dunster House), gets a write-up in CNN.

In the face of another scathing anti-Nader editorial in the Times, Barbara Ehrenreich once again makes the case for going Green. I get the feeling I'm at some risk of repeating myself in every post until Election Day, so I'll just refer to earlier entries (such as 10/24) to argue against this ubiquitous "Vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" tripe.

I'm not sure what the Dems expect with this new onslaught of anti-Nader horror stories. As Xeney pointed out the other day, Nader voters must have some kind of independent streak by bucking the two-party system in the first place, and this streak won't take well to all the hectoring and badgering that's emanating from the Democratic camp these days. If anything, it will just make voters more resolute for Ralph.

Besides, as Nader ably noted yesterday, "Already the progressive wing of the Democratic Party suddenly is getting its calls returned by the right-wing Democratic Party operatives who are running that party into the ground as they morph it into a Republican Party impostor." Moreover, "Only Al Gore can beat Al Gore...And he's been doing a pretty good job of that. Up against one of the most bumbling, corporate-indentured, horrible- record Republican candidates, George W. Bush, and he's still in a neck-and-neck race."

Junior makes good.

Nader supporter Roger Gathman lambasts Gore for throwing the election to Bush. He writes:

Ha! Touche. Update: Shiny Green Grasshopper passes along this petition to the same effect.