November 2010 archive

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

November 7 is the 311th day of the year (312th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 54 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this dayin 1940, Only four months after its completion, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State suffers a spectacular collapse.

When it opened in 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was the third-longest suspension bridge in the world. Built to replace the ferry system that took commuters from Tacoma across the Tacoma Narrows to the Gig Harbor Peninsula, the bridge spanned 2,800 feet and took three years to build. To save cost, the principle engineer, Leon Moisseiff, designed the bridge with an unusually slender frame that measured 39 feet and accommodated just two vehicular lanes.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened with great fanfare on July 1, 1940. Human traffic across the waters of the Tacoma Narrows increased dramatically, but many drivers were drawn to the toll bridge not by convenience but by an unusual characteristic of the structure. When moderate to high winds blew, as they invariably do in the Tacoma Narrows, the bridge roadway would sway from side to side and sometimes suffer excessive vertical undulations. Some drivers reported that vehicles ahead of them would disappear and reappear several times as they crossed the bridge. On a windy day, tourists treated the bridge toll as the fee paid to ride a roller-coaster ride, and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge earned the nickname “Galloping Gertie.

Surprise, surprise, surprise, Nico Hulkenberg gets Williams it’s first pole in over 5 years.  His team mate Rubens Barrichello qualifies a  modestly surprising 6th too.  The drivers they displaced from the usual suspects were Button and Rosberg.  Sutil and Buemi are staring with 5 place grid penalties, both for Turn 3 collisions at Yeongam.  Buemi piled into Glock on Lap 31, Sutil collected Kobayashi on Lap 47.  These are reflected in the pretty tables below.

The Telegraph article I cited does a pretty good job of summarizing the horse race, my McLaren boys need some timely DNFs, but, as I mentioned yesterday, Interlagos is a track that can provide them.  Alonso is running a used engine (of course there’s Webber and Vettel too).

Tactically it’s important to remember that while it rained yesterday it’s expected to be dry today.  This means a couple of things, first of all it means the track won’t be ‘rubbered in’ so it won’t particularly sticky at the start of the race.

The second thing is tire strategy.  Since it dried out at the end of Qualifying all (or mostly all) of the top 10 Qualifiers were running on Softs and they’ll have to start the race on them.  The fly in the ointment is that we saw in Friday practice that the Softs are only lasting a Lap or two, especially under heavy fuel and an abrasive track which are exactly the conditions we will have at the start of the race.

So, I would expect early pit stops from them.

But wait, it gets better!  Qualifiers 11 – 24 are always allowed to choose the tires they start on and particularly in this case because they parked them with Intermediate wets which you’re allowed to change for race conditions (they don’t even last as long as the Softs when it’s dry and were noticably deteriorating at the end of Q2).

It seems to me that the situation developing is this- all the backbenchers will come out on Primes and when the top Qualifiers are forced to pit without having had enough track time to build up time gaps, we’re going to see a lot of position changes.  It could be the case where if you want to win or even finish well you’ll have to do a lot of passing.  This might be a more interesting race than some.

Anyway, pretty tables (and they are pretty) and race updates below.

• Interlagos Qualifying
• F1 Official Site
• Speed Racecast

If you miss the race there will be a repeat on Speed at noon on Tuesday.

Obama is not Hitler but Bush is a war criminal, Jon.

266 Stories served.  38 per day.

This is actually the hardest diary to execute, and yet perhaps the most valuable because it lets you track story trends over time.  It should be a Sunday morning feature.

• Sunday 10/ 31
• Monday 11/1
• Tuesday 11/2
• Wednesday 11/3
• Thursday 11/4
• Friday 11/5
• Saturday 11/6

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: The Tea Party favorite and newly-elected Republican Senator from Kentucky, Rand Paul sits down with Ms. Amanpour for an exclusive interview. House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence and Former Reagan budget director David Stockman debate extending the Bush tax cuts.

Outgoing Democratic Senator Evan Bayh joins the Roundtable discussion with George Will, former Bush political strategist Matthew Dowd, John Podesta of the Center for American Progress and ABC News Political Director Amy Walter.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-SC) join Mr. Schieffer.

The Chris Matthews Show: Mr. Matthew’s guests will be Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Bob Woodward, The Washington Post Associate Editor, Joe Klein, TIME Columnist and Katty Kay, BBC Washington Correspondent to dscuss these topics:  Will President Obama Change?

and George W. Bush’s New Memoir.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: Mr. Gregory will speak exclusively with the Tea Party’s most vocal backer in the Senate, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and then New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R).

His guests for the Round Table discussion will be Former Obama White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, Former Adviser to Pres. George W. Bush Karen Hughes, President of the National Urban League, Marc Morial and Republican Strategist Mike Murphy.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley will be joined by re-elected Gov. Tim Pawlenty (MI) and Gov. Rick Perry (TX) to discuss what  Tuesday’s midterm elections say about the last two years in politics and  what they mean for the next two.

Then, after suffering a historic defeat in the House of Representatives, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), the congressman responsible for electing Democrats to the House, will join us. What’s the way forward for Democrats in Congress after the election?

And Pennsylvania Sen.-elect Pat Toomey (R) joins us to explain how he defeated his Democratic opponent in a state with more than one million more registered Democrats than Republicans. What will he achieve in Washington?

Finally, we’ll be joined by Michael Duffy of Time magazine, and Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post to break down a midterm election with wide-ranging implications.

Fareed Zakaris: GPS. See why Fareed says that if this “Republican Revolution” doesn’t manage to cut the deficit, the American people will be saying “Fool me three times, shame on me”.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman thinks the outlook for the next two years — with a power split in Washington — is “terrible”. In an exclusive interview, Krugman goes head-to-head with the former chief economist of the IMF, the right-leaning Raghuram Rajan on what can be done to fix the U.S. economy…and whether it will ever GET done given the likely of gridlock in the nation’s capital.

Remember when we told you it’s only been a few weeks since the end of WWI? Well, it looks like we might have to wait a little bit longer for WWII to end. Japan never signed a peace treaty with the Soviets or Russia. And President Medvedev’s four-hour tour of an obscure island this week has heated up the cold war between the two nations. What in the world?

After that, we answer the question that has been asked over and over since last week’s thwarted cargo bombings: Is Yemen the next Afghanistan? Fareed speaks with the New York Times’ man in Yemen, Robert Worth.

Then, a look at a moderate Muslim country that’s fighting and winning their war on terror and extremism. An interview with the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak.

And finally, how one country could really put the “savings” in “daylight savings”.

It will be Republicans all the time now

Barack Obama’s India trip set to seal £6bn worth of deals for US

Barack Obama’s India trip all about business for US with 20 deals worth £6bn ready to be finalised

Jason Burke in Delhi

The Observer, Sunday 7 November 2010

President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, arrived yesterday in the Indian commercial capital of Mumbai on the first leg of a 10-day four-nation tour of Asia to drum up business for American companies and to consolidate relations with key allies in the region.

The couple will also hope to find some relief from the domestic political fallout of the Democratic party’s resounding defeat in midterm elections last week.

The president made his first statement of the trip, the longest he has taken in office, at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Hotel, one of the targets attacked by Islamic militants in the city just under two years ago.

Tonight Eastern Standard Time will begin.  Again.  And that, around here, is the dreaded beginning of horrible Winter.  This, after all, is Upstate New York.  I’m nestled against the Massachusetts border.  And the beginning of Eastern Standard Time fills me with utter dread.

What stands between me and actual, below zero winter?  First, deer hunting season.  A very few hunters, fewer by far than a decade ago, will stagger drunkenly into the woods before dawn and send the grotesquely overpopulated deer into an unparalleled panic and frenzy.  They’re already crazy because they’re in rut.  The deer will then run into the roads and into cars.  Why don’t they avoid the cars?  Two reasons: first, they think the roads are made of ice, so they’re afraid of running on them.  And second, there really is a  reason for the phrase “a deer in the headlights.”  This doesn’t begin explain why deer run into the sides of passing cars.  And it doesn’t explain why the shoulders of all of the roads are filled with deer eyes reflecting headlights and waiting for an unfortunate moment to run into the road.

College Throwball, Arizona @ Stanford or Missouri @ Texas Tech.  Some premiers.

Now don’t mistake me. I’m not advising cruelty or brutality with no purpose. My point is that cruelty with purpose is not cruelty – it’s efficiency. Then a man will never disobey once he’s watched his mate’s backbone laid bare. He’ll see the flesh jump, hear the whistle of the whip for the rest of his life.

• ABC Family– Back to the Future Part II, Back to the Future Part III
• AMC– Jeepers Creepers, Jeepers Creepers 2 x 2
• Bravo– The 40-Year-Old Virgin x 2
• Comedy– Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay
• E!– Little Miss Sunshine
• ESPN– College Throwball, Arkansas @ South Carolina
• ESPN2– More College Throwball, Texas @ Kansas State
• Food– Triple D marathon
• FX– Kung Fu Panda
• History– Weed night
• Lifetime– The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Never Been Kissed
• Oxygen– The Wedding Planner x 2
• Sci Fi– The Reaping, Messengers 2: The Scarecrow
• Speed– World of Outlaws x 2 (Instapeat)
• Style– The Dish (premier)
• TBS– Dumb & Dumber x 2
• Turner Classic– Mutiny on the Bounty (South Pacific night)
• TNT– Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2
• Toon– Flubber
• USA– Bad Boys II, Street Kings
• Vs.– College Throwball, Oregon State at UCLA

Later-

• ABC Family– Dirty Dancing
• Comedy– Strange Wilderness, Richard Pryor: Live in Concert
• Oxygen– Shall We Dance?
• Sci Fi– Hallowed Ground, The Blair Witch Project
• TBS– Mars Attacks! (thought it was funny the first time)
• Turner Classic– Pagan Love Song, The Tuttles of Tahiti
• TLC– Strange Sex marathon
• USA– House marathon
• Vs.– Semi-Pro Throwball, Mountain Lions @ Locomotives

SNL- 10/9.  Big O x 2 (penultimate and Series Finale).  GitS: SAC– Barrage, Stand Alone Complex (penultimate and Series Finale Episodes)

I’ve lived my life as a newspaper reporter. I uncover the truth and write my articles. But then I learned, all too well, that a mere reporter like myself can’t ever get to the truth in this city… it’s nearly impossible. And it’s unsure! No one here is even interested in learning the truth – a truth that must be known. But I want to know! I want to learn what must be known!

…

Even without the events of 40 years ago, I think man would still be a creature that fears the dark. He doesn’t face that fear, he averts his eyes from it and acts as if he doesn’t have any memories of his past. But, 40 years is both a short time and yet, a long time. Man’s fear has withered. And even time itself tries to wither the desire to know the truth. Is it a crime to try and learn the truth? Is it a sin to search for those things which you fear? My purpose in this world is knowledge, and the dissemination of it. And it is I who is to restore the fruits of my labor to the entire world. Fear… It is something vital to us puny creatures. The instant man stop fearing is the instant the species reaches a dead end, only to sink to pitable lows, only to sit and wait apathetically for extinction. Humans who lose the ability to think become creatures whose existance has no value. Wake up! Don’t be afraid of knowledge! Think, you humans who are split into two worlds, unless you want the gulf between humans to expand into oblivian, you must think!

You know, you get bonus points for identifying the quotes.

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 NATO probes report rogue Afghan soldier shot foreign troops

by Lynne O’Donnell, AFP

1 hr 42 mins ago