Prediction: Tennessee is going to be challenged. It’s kind of hard to run a good election when a tornado runs through your state, which has quite possibly screwed with results. I’m not sure if there’s any precedent for this, so there’s a potential for this to get interesting.
Not a lot of results are in, but based on exit polls, people are predicting:
86% of Delaware (home to… lots of corporations) is reporting, with Obama ahead 51% to 44%
9:22: Kansas and Tennessee are both right around 15% reporting, but Clinton has an overwhelming lead in both (74:26% and 59:30%, respectively.)
9:26: Alabama has only 18% in, but Obama has 67% right now. MSNBC just called it.
9:28: 58% for Hillary, to 38% for Obama, in Massachusetts per MSNBC. I’m not sure if they called it, but I would.
On the Red side, Arkansas has been called by CNN for Huckabee (59% to McCain’s 23%), even though only 4% of precincts are reporting.
9:30: West Virginia’s quick… 100% in. Huckabee won with 52%, to Romney’s 47%. Massachusetts has also been called by CNN for Romney, 52% to McCain’s 40%.
9:33: MSNBC has called New York, New Jersey, and Illinois for McCain. Alabama is 40$ McCain, 38% Huckabee, but MSNBC is calling it for Huckabee. He’s got 59% in Arkansas.
In Georgia, MSNBC is calling it a three-way tie right now for the Republicans.
9:36: Idaho has only 9% in, but is showing Obama leading overwhelmingly (73% to 23%). He has a more narrow lead in North Dakota, 54% to 43%, with 26% reporting.
9:40: Connecticut is close, but Obama leads 50% to 48% right now, with 43% of the results in. No one’s daring to call it one way or the other right now.
9:41: A compatriot reports that Boylston, MA went for Ron Paul.
9:43: Howard Dean, interviewed live on MSNBC, has just called Romney “The candidate of change. He’s changed his mind on almost every single issue.”
9:47: Tennessee, reported on MSNBC and CNN, has closed down some polling locations as a tornado blew through Kentucky and Tennessee.
10:05: MSNBC suggests that Obama’s leading in Utah. I haven’t seen results yet, though.
10:10: Huckabee is speaking live now, and is talking about how he’ll be in office in under a year, and how much he looks forward to putting his “Out of Business” sign on the IRS.
10:19: Well Kansas has sure changed. 64% are in; Obama’s winning 72% to 28% now, and MSNBC has projected it for him.
10:24: MSNBC is saying Barack and Hillary have 6 states each right now.
10:25: CNN’s exit poll data for Massachusetts suggests an overwhelming female turnout, 58 to 42%, in the Democrat primary. It was almost the exact opposite in the Republican primary, 57% male to 43% female.
10:27: 72% in, but MSNBC has called for Obama in Connecticut, 50% to 47%.
10:32: Minnesota is Obama’s, 64% to to 34% right now.
10:43: Huckabee’s taken Georgia, per MSNBC.
10:44: Very few results are in from Colorado yet, but Obama has a sizable lead there right now, 65% to Hillary’s 34%.
11:02: North Dakota, per MSNBC, is Romney’s. Minnesota is going to Romney so far, but Ron Paul surprised me by getting 16%. More interestingly, 21% in North Dakota went for Ron Paul, too.
11:11: California’s been closed for 11 minutes. Results haven’t really come in yet in numbers. MSNBC shows Obama as having taken 11 states thus far, whereas Clinton has only taken 6.
11:17: Arizona went to Clinton. California’s being led by Clinton right now, but there are so few results that it’s still showing 0%.
11:20: California’s at 2%, but early results are that Clinton has a strong lead (57% Obama, 32% Obama, Edwards has a surprising 9% of the vote… Good for someone not even in the race.) On the other side, McCain has a very strong lead over Romney.
11:25: Now Obama has 10 states, Hillary 7. Not sure where the error lies. Of course it’s too early.
12:05: Alaska’s coming in, and Obama’s winning by a landslide! Missouri’s incredibly close.
We’re hosting an Super Tuesday Party on campus. I’ve got three TVs on, and I’m going to experiment with the “liveblogging” fad here, at least until I lose interest in posting here and get caught up in cheering (or booing) here. Rumor has it that exit polls are showing a lot of races even closer than predicted. Tonight might be very interesting, and “tonight” might become tomorrow.
Engadget (but strangely, no mainstream news sites?) is reporting that a fourth underseas fiber cable has been pierced in the Middle East.
People are now starting to draw the conclusion I draw the second time: something fishy is going on. (Err, no pun intended there…) Underseas cables don’t get cut that often, but for four of them to get cut in a week, and all to a war-torn region?
Someone is pretty clearly trying to cut off the Internet to that part of the world, and they’re doing a pretty good job. Fortunately, the Internet has always been designed to route around failures like this, but it seems like they’ve taken out a huge chunk of the backbone to some parts of the world. There was an earthquake to that region, too, though. But still, I’m suspicious.
Of course, some are saying that the fourth line wasn’t actually cut, but apparently just suffered technical issues not related to the underseas line itself. But still, I’m calling shenanigans. I’m just not sure which motive is at play: are they resisting Western influence? Trying to prevent technology? Obsessed with censorship? There are multiple motives, just as there are many, many possible culprits.
Although I have to hand it to them: those underseas cables look incredibly resilient, and I can’t imagine that too many people know where every single one is located.
As much as I love open source software, I tend to shy away from the die-hard “OpenSource or bust” people. I use closed-source (“restricted”) drivers when need be, and they usually work better, since the vendors can optimize them.
I’m quite frustrated, though, with ATI… The closed-source fglrx drivers give good performance, but have some major problems. Namely, they just don’t work with Xen. I’ve been looking to set up some virtual machines, but I have the choice of using VMs or having video drivers…
And hibernate / software suspend has never worked. It turns out that this is also a known bug caused by using the closed-source fglrx drivers.
It turns out that the Ubuntu kernel team is aware of both of these, and trying to find ways to fix it. But the problem lies in a closed-source module, so their hands are tied.
Argh!
Tonight I went to an Obama rally in Boston. Or, more accurately, I tried to go to an Obama rally in Boston.
We took the T in, and noticed a couple people carrying big Obama signs. A group of people got on at the next stop, and chatted with the sign-holders. Pretty soon I realized that almost everyone on the T was going to see Obama. As we got closer, this become clearer and clearer, until truly everyone on the Silver Line with us was going to the Obama event.
Per the advice of the people carrying the signs (who we all assumed to be leaders of some sort, but, in actuality, were not–an interesting psychological exploration for another day), we got off two stations early. And were greeted by the longest line I’ve ever seen. We must have walked by literally thousands of people before we got to our line. It was essentially folded on itself three times, and each one must have stretched for close to half a mile.
What’s more, I’m only counting the people I could see. Where the people “ended” was around the bend from the T stop. It turns out that we weren’t even halfway there; where Obama was speaking was several blocks down the road.
We got there before 7:30, initially confident that getting there that early would guarantee us a spot when the doors opened at 8. 8 o’clock came and went, and we had hardly moved. 8:45 and we’d moved up to the second line. Around 9:30, we were even with the T station, freezing cold, and only newly aware of the fact that we still had a long way to go. Rumors were circulating that the building was near its capacity, so we decided that it was pretty unlikely that we’d make it in, so we decided to cut our losses and leave.
Inside the T station, we found a steady stream of people making the same decision. The train we got on (actually a long bus that drives around in a tunnel… I don’t get it either) was jam-packed, and I ended up standing right next to the driver. “Why did you leave so early?” she asked. Early? It was 90 minutes after the doors opened. “The Transit Police said that he wasn’t going to take the stage until 11.”
Eleven? Sure enough, on our way back we stopped in a restaurant to eat. The news cut to a live feed shortly after 10:30, when John Kerry was on stage talking about Obama. I’m sad I didn’t get to see him, and yet thrilled at the turnout. I’ll try to get some pictures up tomorrow, but pictures really don’t do the crowd justice. It was enormous.
Super-duper Tuesday tomorrow. Obama’s been moving up in the polls, but it remains to be seen if he’s gotten far enough. What makes things more interesting is that the Dems don’t use a winner-takes-all approach, so it’s possible for a candidate to “lose” most states and still come out in a tie. (In New Hampshire, Obama lost and yet got one more delegate than Hillary.)
There’s a rally in Boston tonight that I think I’ll attend.
Song of the night: “Snow (Hey Oh)” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Incredibly awesome musically, the music video is pretty neat too: I’m not really sure who we’re seeing, but, among the cliche video of them singing on stage, you get ‘video portraits’ of probably hundreds of seemingly-random people. Simple, and yet strangely novel.
Unlike some of their other songs, this one didn’t find its way into Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I think that the first people in charge of making the decision of what songs made the cut got distracted and are still in an office somewhere, playing the video over and over again, singing along quietly. Unable to break them from their trances, the others decided the song was simply too awesome to be fit for general consumption.
I’m on my fourth time in a row. And when it’s done, I’m probably going to go for #5. Roommates, I apologize in advance if I advertently wake you up tonight while I mumble about snow and the cover of another public wonder in my sleep. You might play this song to drown me out.