UNDERDOG of PERFECTION

Yes, according to the Huffington Post, the vote totals between Norm Coleman and Al Franken are now separated by only 236 (although for some reason the StarTribune says 238), out of 2,860,224 votes cast. That’s a difference of 0.0083%. It’s not razor-thin, it’s atom-thin. I was going to draw a graph representing that slice of the pie, but if the “slice” were only one pixel wide, the chart would have a diameter of 53 inches. You’d need one of the largest commercially available plasma TVs just to look at it (and the top and bottom would still be cut off), and the “slice” would still be only about the thickness of your fingernail.

State law would require a recount even if the difference were as large as 14,301 votes, yet Coleman is still declaring himself the victor and calling on Franken to concede.

No way! I absolutely do not want a protracted 2000-style legal battle, but this is simply too close and it’s not even up to Franken whether or not the recount happens. Cool it, Norm!

It’s not as if, in this age, anyone was left by Wednesday morning not knowing who had won the election, so it was really just a pissing contest between the country’s newspapers to see who could use the largest point size. I think the Minneapolis StarTribune won.

The leaves in my neighborhood have been surprisingly tenacious this year, some not even turning until last week, much less falling off the trees, but the combination of wind and rain over the last 24 hours has finally begun to win the battle. The backyard is a big wet mess of nasty right now. Maybe it’ll snow before it dries up and I can just pretend the leaves don’t exist, instead of having to rake them. (Oh, who am I kidding… I just need to find a way to ensure that I’m not the one doing the raking.)

Update, the next morning: It’s snowing.

I talked on election night about how the electoral college is skewed* towards the less populous states, and I’ve also been talking about how the red state/blue state map doesn’t accurately reflect the will of the people, both because of the winner-takes-all nature of the state-by-state distribution of the electoral votes, and also because most of the population of the country lives in concentrated areas.

Well there’s a great site that takes this a step further and actually proves it with some fancy-pants technology that can distort the map so that area corresponds to population. Here, then, is the site’s ultimate modified red-and-blue map, giving a better sense of just how “blue” or “red” or “purple” the country really is, overall…

*You may notice discrepancies between my numbers and the New York Times. I certainly defer to the “newspaper of record” on this. They are using the number of eligible voters in each state; I was using the total state population. Different numbers, and not in a trivial way, but the point, and the relative state-to-state variations, remain the same.

I don’t know how widespread this is, whether it has anything to do with the election or is just a continuation of the downward trend we’ve seen over the past couple of weeks, or whether it’s only just not getting much attention because of the election, but uh…

I saw gas for $1.99⁹ today.

It was at the Moto Mart on Hiawatha in Minneapolis, for what it’s worth. I tried to take a picture of it with my iPhone but… well… it was dark… and raining… and I was driving. Needless to say it didn’t turn out the greatest. But since I went to the trouble of taking the picture, I’ll post it anyway.

I’m pretty sure the smudge in the upper left is the Moto Mart price sign.