Here's the first bi-weekly edition of the unfutz survey of Electoral College tracking / prediction / projection / forecast / scoreboard / map sites, where we'll see what difference a few days make:
ELECTORAL COLLEGE TRACKING SITES
Larry Allen (10/20 - updated & corrected): Kerry 247 - Bush 274 - ?? 17 (IA, WI) (was: 243-268-27)
AP (10/18): Kerry 217 - Bush 222 - ?? 99 (no change)
(Note: Votemaster, the proprietor of Electoral-vote.com, removed his previous projection map 10 days ago. This is a new one, using a different methodology.)
Federal Review (10/19): Kerry 243 - Bush 295 (was: 247-291)
JOINT MODE: Kerry 264 - Bush 274 [n=4] (was: 247-291)
Sites without unassigned states MEAN: Kerry 272 - Bush 266 (was: 269-269)
MEDIAN: Kerry 269.5 - Bush 268.5 (was: 267-271)
(For what "mean", "median" and "mode" are, see "Notes" below.)
RANGE Kerry max: 316 (327) Kerry min: 153 (164)
Bush max: 308 (303) Bush min: 168 (157)
SUMMARY
There's no great art that goes into summarizing the situation covered by this edition of the survey, and no mystery about what's going on:
Kerry's got 251-255 electoral votes and Bush has 253-256;
Going by sites without unassigned states, Kerry's got 270-272 and Bush has 266-269;
Bush has an advantage with sites that list him as winning (24 to 21), sites that list him as ahead (17 to 4) and sites that list him as winning or ahead (41 to 25);
Kerry, however, has an advantage on sites he gained votes on (24 to 20) and sites that the other candidate lost votes on (22 to 20 -- remember that because of the unassigned states, Kerry and Bush aren't necessarily in a zero-sum situation on all sites);
There really isn't a single category in which one or the other has an indisputable advantage.
I believe in politics, they call this a tie, which means that as we enter into the home stretch, according to the collective wisdom of the Electoral College trackers, this race is a dead heat
UPDATES & CORRECTIONS
For a few days after I publish the survey, I'll update figures, make corrections, and add new sites that come to my attention. I'll note these changes here, and mark the entry for each altered site when appropriate.
Expected update publishing schedule: Sunday 24 October, Wednesday 27 October, Saturday 30 October (in the a.m.), and possibly Monday 1 November (from London).
As usual, a number of sites updated after I had initially finished and published the survey (including my own, because of a bad piece of data that skewed my numbers), so I've included them, updated the stats and summary, and labelled the entries. (I've also corrected the mistake where in attempting to update one site's numbers, I put them into the entry for another site.)
It's amazing to be that with all my webprowling and searching, even at this late date I'm still coming across sites that are new to me. The latest is Strategisphere, a simulation-based site, whose numbers I've added into the totals. Take a look at the graph right under the map on this site, and compare it to my first graph above. If they were scaled the same they'd be virtually identical.
From each website I've taken the most comprehensive set of numbers offered, if possible without a "toss-up" category or other caveats, just Kerry versus Bush. Many of them differentiate between "solid" or "strong", "slightly" or "weak", and "leaning" or "barely" states, but I've combined them all together in order to present numbers which are as comparable as possible.
I encourage everyone to use the links and check each site for the specifics of that site's methodology and presentation.
My convention is that Kerry is listed first and Bush second, bold type indicates a winning candidate (i.e. 270 electoral votes or more), and italics or underlining indicates a leading candidate.
Sites which haven't updated in a while will be temporarily removed from the list until they're freshened. Two weeks has been the allowance for keeping a "stagnant" site in the survey, but that changed to 10 days begining with this iteration. This will tighten to one week and then, just before the election, I may choose to make it even more restrictive.
One-time Electoral College analysis articles from the news media (as opposed to ongoing features) will be included, but only for a single iteration of the survey (or one week, if I ever start doing it more often than once a week), unless replaced by a new article.
As always, if anyone has links for any other sites that regularly track Electoral College status, please feel free to send them my way and I'll be glad to add them to the list. I'm also more than happy to hear from the proprietors of any of the sites surveyed here, should they have any complaints, comments, or suggestions for improvements.
Averages
"Mean" is what is colloquially called "average." All items are added up and divided by the number of items.
"Median" is the center point, the middle value in a list. There are as many values larger than the median as there are values that are smaller.
"Mode" is the number in a list which appears the most times. The "n=" number indicates how many times the number listed appears.
"Joint Mode" is the combination of Kerry and Bush counts which appears most frequently in the survey. The "n=" number indicates how many times it appears.
A note on my own numbers
I want to make it clear, just in case it isn't already, that the numbers I publish here under my own name (Ed Fitzgerald) are the result of my own methodology, and are not in any way connected with the results of this survey, except that they constitute a single pair of data points in it. That is, neither my current estimation of the system's status, nor my prediction about its final state on Election Day, are meant to illustrate the collective wisdom of the Electoral College trackers, which can be found in the "Summary" section above and the graphs connected to it.
This very interesting chart from Survey USA uses the internals of their state-by-state polling to determine how Kerry is doing among independents. The answer: very well indeed. Kerry's numbers are higher among independents in 21 out of 30 states, for an average of 5 points overall.
In Kansas, for instance, which is going to Bush by 19 points, Kerry is winning independents by 6 points, for a total Democratic differential of 25 points. Taking a look at some of the battleground states, we see:
Arizona +22
Florida +17
Colorado +16
Nevada +14
North Carolina +12
Iowa +9
Virginia +8
Ohio +1
This is just more evidence (as if we needed any) that Rove's strategy of running a red-meat-for-the-base campaign (the kind that many urged Kerry to run) may play well to those already committed to Bush, but they it doesn't garner any support from others. That goes against the conventional wisdom of American presidential politics, and, in this case at least, I think the CW is right, and Bush can't win with that strategy.
(Of course, given the Bush administration's record of non-accomplishment, perhaps Rove felt he had no choice.)
I was just looking at Dave Leip's Election Night Timeline, trying to figure out when we're going to get our first indication of how the election is going. Here are some initial thoughts:
At 7:00 New Hampshire and Virginia close, and some parts of Florida. If New Hampshire doesn't go for Kerry, that could be a bellweather of problems. Alternately, if Kerry does better than expected in Virginia, or even wins, it could be a harbringer of a much bigger Kerry victory than most people expect.
At 7:30 comes North Carolina, where Bush's support is remarkably thin. Here, again, as with Virginia, if Kerry does well, it's a good omen, and if he wins, it's all over. But the big prize at 7:30 is Ohio, a must win for Kerry -- there are few reasonable scenarios under which Kerry can win without taking Ohio or Florida, and Ohio seems the more likely at this moment. Also, look at West Virginia, which we now expect to be Bush's. If it isn't, if it reverts to its previous Democratic identity, we're doing really well.
At 8:00, the rest of Florida closes -- most of the networks will probably wait for this before predicting the state. Florida, of course, is one of the most important swing states. If it goes for Kerry, the election is over. If it goes for Bush, it's bad, but we move on to see what happens in Ohio. Pennsylvania closes at 8pm as well, but I firmly expect it to go to Kerry, so if it doesn't and falls to Bush, I think we're done for.
9:00 brings a bunch of states, but most importantly Wisconsin. If Bush takes it, we're going to have a hard time coming up with enough votes to win. If Kerry wins it, we're probably well on the way.
There's probably more, and the importance of these things may change as polling varies over the next week and a half (so I'll take another look at it when we get closer to the election), but by 8:00 we should have a really good idea of how we're doing.
As a confirmed Yankee fan, I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Boston Red Sox, and their fans, on their victory over the Yanks in the ALCS. Coming back from 3-0, something that's never been done before, and beating the Yankees in four straight games is a pretty amazing feat, as is taking another step towards lifting the Curse of the Bambino. I was impressed by the fortitude and perseverence of the Sox, by David Ortiz' timely hitting and, especially, by Curt Schilling's gutsy performance in game 6, pitching very, very well while blood was seeping into his sock.
Unlike a lot of baseball fans, when my team gets beat in the play-offs I like to go on to support the team that beat them as the post season continues, and that goes even more strongly in this case, with the psychological health of an entire region of the country apparently at stake -- so I'll be following the World Series (albeit with much less enthusiasm, of course) and rooting for the Red Sox to take the whole thing.
Maybe now I can get a good night's sleep.
Update On Election Projection, Scott Elliot speculates that a BoSox victory could cause NY area Kerry supporters to not vote for Kerry, who's a big Red Sox fan. I think that pretty unlikely. Baseball is important as part of the fabric of our culture, but when push comes to shove it's just a damn game played by highly paid men. There's civic and regional pride involved in having your team win, and the thrill of the endorphin rush when you're actively rooting for your team and they come through, but compared to the fate of our country and the world, the damage done to it by Bush, and the potential for even more and egregious misfeasance should Bush be elected, baseball is not really very important at all. Only an idiot would refuse to vote for Kerry because of a disagreement about which baseball team to support, and I don't expect anything like that to happen.
Kerry is going to win MI, MN, NH, NJ, OR, PA and WA. There really isn't anything that can stop that now. That gives Kerry 238. Unless Gallup is right (hahahahahahahahahahaha) Kerry also has New Mexico sealed up as well. There isn't much polling out of Maine right now, but that doesn't matter. Even without Maine, as long Kerry wins New Mexico and either IA or WI (where he looks pretty good), Ohio will be enough.
I agree with this analysis. Maine will go for Kerry (except perhaps the second congressional district's vote, which is a toss-up at this point), and, as I've said below, New Mexico looks very good. Wisconsin is also, in my current estimation, strong for Kerry, so there's 10 more votes there, bringing his total to 256. Iowa is iffy right now, even though I do think that eventually Kerry will take it, so let's not count it -- which means that Kerry is going to have to take either Florida or Ohio.
(Because Pennsylvania now seems to be safely Kerry's, this is effectively the playing out of the conventional wisdom -- posted by me some months ago, if I can blow my own horn -- that Kerry will have to take 2 out of Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida to win.)
Because Florida is strongly in the hands of the Bush Machine, and therefore subject to the same hanky-panky as we saw in 2000, I think that means that everything comes down to Ohio, with Iowa an additional margin of victory (but not enough to win), and Colorado an outlying possibility for more Kerry votes (either by taking the state or by passage of the Electoral College reform there). There aren't any other good probabilities for a pick up, since Bush has AZ, AR, LA, MO, NC, TN, VA and WV farily well locked up, and has the edge in Nevada.
So... Ohio is the new Florida, and once again we're dependent on a state where the state governmental apparatus is controlled entirely by Republicans, who have shown themselves to be capable of actions that seem entirely partisan in nature, designed to suppress Democratic turnout. The good news is that the governor isn't the brother of the guy on the top of the Republican ticket, so there's probably a significant difference in the degree of misfeasance we're likely to see, and it's also better that Ohio officials have actually backed off from their partisan rulings when called on it.
Things in Ohio look encouraging, but only just that:
Of the six most recent polls, three (ABC, U. of Cincinatti and Survey USA) have Kerry ahead by 2 or 3 points, one (Rasmussen) is tied, and two (Fox News and Zogby Interactive) have Bush ahead by 2 or 3 points. Everything's well inside the various margins of error, so things are essentially dead even right now. The bright side of this is that only the Zogby Interactive has Bush above 50%, and then by only fractions of a point. The Fox poll has him at 47%, right on the knife's edge for an incumbent, which is not where Bush needs to be. In order to overcome the incumbent rule, he needs a 4 point advantage going in, and he doesn't have that -- add in what appears to be a strong GOTV registration effort in Ohio, and that could well be Kerry's margin of victory there.
So, I think that Ohio is the state that I'll be most closely looking at in the next two weeks, as it could well determine if Kerry wins or not.
Update: Take a look at The Mystery Pollster on Ohio -- Bush's support is consistent at 47%, which means he's in real trouble.
In this week's survey, the states most listed as being unassigned (or toss-ups, or tied or whatever) were Iowa, Ohio, Florida, New Mexico and Wisconsin. New Mexico surprised me by its incluson, since in my own analysis it's never not been in Kerry's column. I guess it's the latest Gallup poll which led so many sites to list it as unassigned, but that really doesn't square with its polling history (nor does it take into account Gallup's skewed likely voter model):
I really think there's not much doubt that New Mexico will go Democratic on November 2nd.
The days grow short as the election approaches, and I'm going to try my very best to start presenting this survey of Electoral College tracking / prediction / projection / forecast / scoreboard / map sites on a biweekly basis from now on. At the same time, I'll also be tightening up my criteria for how long I'll keep in the survey a site which hasn't been updated. Two weeks is the current allowance, but that will change to 10 days for the next iteration, and then for the next one, one week. Just before the election, I may choose to make it even more restrictive.
It's also worth mentioning that I'll be flying to London for business late in the evening on October 30th. That's where I'll be for Election Day, and whether I'll be able to do a survey while I'm there depends on my work schedule and the availability of internet access. I'll certainly do everything I can to put something together, but there's always the possibility that October 30th will be the last survey I publish.
I believe all this means that if everything works out just perfectly, I'll be putting out surveys on Thursday 21 October, Sunday 24 October, Wednesday 27 October, Saturday 30 October (in the a.m.), and possibly on Monday 1 November from London.
Be that as it may, here's this week's edition:
ELECTORAL COLLEGE TRACKING SITES
Larry Allen (10/15 - updated) Kerry 243 - Bush 268 - ?? 27 (IA, ME, MO, NV) (was: 247-278-13)
AP (10/16 - restored): Kerry 217 - Bush 222 - ?? 99 (was: 211-237-90 on 9/14)
Bloomberg (10/17): Kerry 164 - Bush 178 - ?? 196 (no change)
Chris Bowers (10/17): Kerry 291 - Bush 247 (was: 296-242)
Business Week (10/13): Kerry 239 - Bush 237 - ?? 62 (FL, OH, MN, NM) (was: 247-237-54)
Brian Calhoun (10/18): Kerry 247 - Bush 291 (no change)
CBS (10/17): Kerry 217 - Bush 222 - ?? 99 (was: 207-242-89)
Alcon San Croix (10/18 - updated): Kerry 241 - Bush 255 - ?? 42 (IA, NM, OH, WI) (was: 241-292-5)
SF Chronicle (10/15 - news report): Kerry 179 - Bush 202 - ?? 157 (new to survey)
(Note: One of the numbers given in the Chronicle article is not correct. The toss-up states they list represent 157 electoral votes, not 153.)
Benjamin Schak (10/17): Kerry 264 - Bush 274 (was: 244-294)
(Note: I believe there is a arithmetical error in Schak's numbers, because his votes add up to more than 538. I've taken his list of states and added up their electoral votes to come up with the numbers here.)
Search The Links (10/15): Kerry 238 - Bush 261 - ?? 39 (NH, NM, OH, WI) (was: 254-266-18)
Robert Silvey (10/14): Kerry 247 - Bush 291 (was: 243-295)
MODE: Kerry 247 [n=6] - Bush 291 [n=4] (was: 247-264-27)
JOINT MODE: Kerry 247 - Bush 291 [n=4] (was: 247-291)
"Mean" is what is colloquially called "average." All items are added up and divided by the number of items.
"Median" is the center point, the middle value in a list. There are as many values larger than the median as there are values that are smaller.
"Mode" is the number in a list which appears the most times. The "n=" number indicates how many times the number listed appears.
"Joint Mode" is the combination of Kerry and Bush counts which appears most frequently in the survey. The "n=" number indicates how many times it appears.
RANGE Kerry max: 327 (325) Kerry min: 164 (153)
Bush max: 303 (311) Bush min: 157 (167)
SUMMARY
The gap between Bush and Kerry continued to close this week, but at a slower rate than last week, and primarily due to losses by Bush and not gains by Kerry. Kerry stayed essentially where he was, with 247 to 250 electoral votes, but Bush lost around 8 to 11 votes and ended up at 253 to 255. The net result is that Bush's roughly 50 vote lead of two weeks ago (which had been reduced down to about 15 votes last week) shrank once again, and Bush now leads Kerry by only 5 or 6 votes. However, neither candidate has enough votes to be the clear winner at this point.
Bush and Kerry are basically tied in the number of sites that list each as winning (20 for Bush, versus 19 for Kerry), but Bush has an edge in the number of sites listing him as ahead (15, versus 8). The 27 sites that showed Kerry ahead or winning was an improvement over last week for him (when he had 16 sites), while Bush's 35 sites was a slight drop from last week (38).
(Please see the note in "Updates" below concerning the original text of this summary.)
UPDATES & CORRECTIONS
For a few days after I publish the survey, I'll update figures, make corrections, and add new sites that come to my attention. I'll note these changes here, and mark the entry for each altered site when appropriate.
As I wrote in the introduction, my hope is to go biweekly, so the next iteration of the survey is planned to be on Thursday 21 October.
(10/18) A number of sites updated after I originally posted earlier this evening, so as I've come across them I've marked them as updated, changed their numbers, refigured the averages and re-written the summary to match.
(10/18) If I may interject an editorial comment, one wonders what, exactly, has to happen for Larry Sabato to make a change in his projection.
(10/18) I made an egregious error in the original text of my summary (and then Blogger compounded it by somehow swallowing the correction I wrote) -- I wrote that approximately equal numbers of sites showed Bush and Kerry ahead or winning. This was not true at the time I wrote it (before the various sites were updated), nor is it true now. Bush at the time of the original posting had 24 sites showing him winning and 12 showing him ahead, for a total of 36. Kerry, on the other hand, had 17 showing him winning and 10 showing him ahead, a total of 27. Somehow I took 17 and 10 and added them in my head to come up with 37, which just ain't right. I've now rewritten the summary to correct the error (for the second time), and I apologize for the mistake.
(10/19) Sam Wang has started to include the effect of the split of undecideds into his meta-analysis, and apparently I inadvertantly took the wrong set of numbers (without undecideds) off his site. Since this is in the nature of a correction, I've updated his entry and revised the averages and summary.
(10/19) The new Zogby interactives came out today, and their analysis puts things at Kerry 264 - Bush 274. This will be included in the next iteration of the survey, just a few days from today.
(10/20) Here's something interesting: back when I first started providing averages, I posted two sets, one for all sites, and one for sites without unassigned states (i.e. no ties or toss-ups). Later I dropped the second set, but I'm toying with the idea of bringing it back, in order to give more of a sense of where we stand once "leaners" have been accounted for. Looking at this particular survey, the "sites without ??" mean is Kerry 269 - Bush 269, and the median is Kerry 267 - Bush 271, which, I think, underlines what we already knew, that the race at this point is all but tied, with Bush very slightly ahead.
From each website I've taken the most comprehensive set of numbers offered, if possible without a "toss-up" category or other caveats, just Kerry versus Bush. Many of them differentiate between "solid" or "strong", "slightly" or "weak", and "leaning" or "barely" states, but I've combined them all together in order to present numbers which are as comparable as possible.
I encourage everyone to use the links and check each site for the specifics of that site's methodology and presentation.
My convention is that Kerry is listed first and Bush second, bold type indicates a winning candidate (i.e. 270 electoral votes or more), and italics or underlining indicates a leading candidate.
Sites which haven't updated in a while will be temporarily removed from the list until they're freshened. For the first half of October I'll keep a "stagnant" site in the survey about 2 weeks. From the middle of October until the election, that will tighten up to a week at most, and perhaps less.
One-time Electoral College analysis articles from the news media (as opposed to ongoing features) will be included, but only for a single iteration of the survey (or one week, if I ever start doing it more often than once a week), unless replaced by a new article.
As always, if anyone has links for any other sites that regularly track Electoral College status, please feel free to send them my way and I'll be glad to add them to the list. I'm also more than happy to hear from the proprietors of any of the sites surveyed here, should they have any complaints, comments, or suggestions for improvements.
NOT INCLUDED
The following sites from the last survey have been removed for the reasons indicated:
ABC (The Note) (10/11 - news report): Kerry 231 - Bush 213 - ?? 94 (one-time news report)
The Gadflyer (average of 18 predictions; 9/30 - news report): Kerry 284 - Bush 254 (one-time news report)
My referral log just brought up one of the first bizarre entries I've seen, from a search engine with the search:
amateur whores in fl.
Unfortunately, I really have no experience of non-professional prostitutes in the Sunshine State, so I'm sure this person went away dissatisfied (in perhaps more than one way).
I am interested in the question of to what degree selection of polls influences the various predictions that are the core of my Electoral College trackers survey, so I did a little dabbling.
In the past, for various projects, I've utilized the polling data provided by 2.400k.com, David Wissing (The Hedgehog Report), Race 2400, and Real Clear Politics (RCP), so I went to these sites, and two others -- Dales' and Electoral-vote.com (E-vote) -- all of which use slightly different criteria for which polls to include in their databases, and graphed their Florida polling data with a polynomial trendline, to see if there were any differences obvious to the naked eye.
The results were somewhat suprising:
They are, it's apparent, differences in the shape of the trendline curves, but not so much about the points where they cross, and who is leading at any particular time. It seems, then, that the choice of which polls to include and which to exclude does not have an extremely significant effect, presumably as long as there are enough polls to create and support the trendline.
Incidentally, my sincere thanks to the folks behind these websites for accumulating and providing their data free of charge. That's a real public service that people of all ideological stripes can appreciate and be thankful for.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
All the fine sites I've
guest-blogged for:
Be sure to visit them all!!
recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
