According to Colwell

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain/

CNN’s web site has an electoral college map widget that lets you set states red or blue. Starting with the 2004 results, I changed New Mexico, Colorado, and Iowa to the Obama column (all leaning that way based on polls), and changed New Hampshire to the McCain column (a tossup). This amazingly plausible electoral result produces a 269-269 tie.

In the result of a tie outcome like this, the electors themselves do not necessarily adhere to their pledged candidates. However, if they do, the race is decided by the House of Representatives, but not by individual votes from each representative: each state gets one vote. California with its 53 representatives gets the same say as Wyoming with its 1. Because Republicans control the more numerous small states and Democrats the less numerous, heavily-populated, states, this would result in a McCain presidency. More recent and complete analyses here and here make it seem that a tie would more likely end with Obama (or Biden!) in the White House.

This is the sign posted this week in front of the College Republicans’ booth on the UCF campus:
“Love God? Love Guns? Bitter About It? Join College Republicans”

This is my review of Vicky Christina Barcelona, the new Woody Allen movie that I didn’t see because the showtimes on line were wrong. Instead we saw House Bunny. This is an entirely formulaic movie that is, like a good sitcom, still fun to watch. (A key difference is that a good sitcom is free.) Anna Faris does a great job playing the ditzy bimbo (who is, of course, much deeper than she seems at first, but never loses her innocent charm), Shelley. Shelley lands a gig as the house mother of a misfit sorority with seven members who are on the brink of losing their sorority house. It’s not clear why this particular group of young women want to be in a sorority, but to keep it they need to enlist 30 new members. Shelley does the standard makeover on them, exchanging their gray and black loose-fitting duds with sexy attire designed to draw the attention of college males (who are generally the recipients of good-natured scorn in the movie). Bring the guys, and the girls will follow. There is the sniping evil sorority across the street to wreak havoc with Shelley’s plans. But the predictable story is just a clothesline on which to hang a number of gags and set pieces: Shelley’s comical deep voice she uses to remember names; her attempt at being seductive by being slutty; her attempt at being seductive by being intellectual; and her attempts to dumb down and priss up her den of sorority sisters.

On Monday Cassini had its closest encounter to date with the intriguing moon Enceladus, which spews water vapor from a number of points along the infamous “tiger stripe” fissures over its south pole. The closest approach to the Moon was up near the equator, and the trajectory of the spacecraft took skimming along the perimeter of the boundaries of Enceladus’s geysers. Turning back to look at the south pole as it flew away, Cassini had to maneuver quickly to capture clean pictures. The imaging team has now been able to piece together and “navigate” the images, meaning they have figured out where on Enceladus each image is. Tying this together with earlier work by Joe Spitale, Carolyn Porco, and others on the imaging team that identified various jets from the tiger stripes, they have now given us the first close-up views of two source regions.

The Damascus Sulcus region of Enceladus, with the location of two geysers indicated.

Image Credit: JPL/NASA/SSI

The Baghdad Sulcus source region in one of Enceladus’s tiger stripes.

Image Credit: JPL/NASA/SSI

Heath Ledger totally disappears into the role of the Joker, helped by creepy makeup and greasy hair, but mainly through a transformative performance. This makes it easier to watch The Dark Knight, without thinking of Ledger’s untimely death. Which is not to say that it is an easy movie to watch. Dark from start to finish, punctuated by psychopathic killings at the hands of the Joker and the mechanical rasping of Batman’s voice. The movie is intense and gripping, and as a bonus creates the villain Two-Face from picture-perfect D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart).

Christian Bale, as Batman, benefits from twice the sage advice as most superheroes: he has both Michael Caine (as butler Alfred) and Morgan Freeman (as Lucius, Batman’s version of 007’s gadget-maker Q) to offer guidance on ethics, bad guys, women and life. Watching the movie I couldn’t help thinking how nice it would be to have a couple of senior wise friends ready to whip up a nice breakfast or a space-age gizmo at a moment’s notice, especially if they were played by Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman and were being paid handsome salaries from my billion dollar empire. But I digress.

This is definitely the creepiest Joker the Batman franchise has produced. His stated goal is not money but mayhem. He derides schemers and planners, but this rings a bit hollow when his various plans for mayhem obviously required a tremendous amount of advance planning and scheming. Somehow, for example, he single-handedly wired a hospital for a textbook example of how to completely demolish a building with no one noticing him or the bombs. Ultimately, Batman must make a noble sacrifice for the greater good which is in turn affirmed in an admittedly surprising (or I guess I’m more cynical than even Batman) ethical collective act. The screenplay by Jonathan and Christopher Nolan (who directed) has to ignore a critical point in order for this to work, but it’s a minor flaw in an otherwise compelling action flick.

I’ve been off-line for a bit due to a combination of European travel, interrupted internet access, and illness. We’re just finishing up the Symposium “Saturn After Cassini-Huygens” at Imperial College in London. The symposium is linked to a book of the same name that will be published in mid-2009. I’m the lead author on the chapter on the structure of Saturn’s rings. Others have the more difficult task of explaining that structure. Of course, Cassini is now into its “Equinox Mission” which runs through mid-2010, so the “After” in the title of the book is a bit misleading.

The big news from Cassini this week is the confirmation that there is liquid on the surface of Titan. The lake was identified by the spectral signature of liquid ethane which is in solution with methane and other compounds in the lake in Titan’s south polar region. Suspected to be a lake based on its appearance, this confirms it is in fact liquid, making Titan only the second object after Earth to have stable liquid on the surface. Many other suspected lakes exist in the north polar region where it is currently late winter. Those were identified by radar measurements, while the new identification comes from the Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS). Future observations as Cassini continues its mission should identify more lakes.

The more distant future may see more dramatic observations as both NASA and ESA are considering major missions dedicated to Titan exploration.

I was prepared for the incredible silliness of this movie. I was also prepared to have slick Abba pop tunes rattling incessantly around my head for days after. What caught me off guard was the paucity of punchy pop melodies. Aside from the title song and “Dancing Queen”, none of the songs lingered in my head for one moment past the final beat. And I’m a sucker for catchy show tunes: I once listened to the song “Downtown” by Petula Clark 53 times in a row. I never listened to Abba when they were first raging across the pop music landscape, but what I knew (or thought I knew) of them was that theirs were addictive, catchy and slick songs. Now I know I’m not an Abba kind of guy. And judging from the demographics of the audience at the showing I went to, not many guys are Abba kind of guys. Males were outnumbered roughly 20 to 1 (I estimated 80 women for the four men I saw, counting me).

There’s no faulting the performers in this movie. They throw themselves into the syrupy concoction with an almost manic abandon. Smiles and laughter are obligatory. While the story revolves around the upcoming wedding of a young woman (whose name, like the Abba tunes, I’ve forgotten) and her search for her father among three possibilities (Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, Colin Firth), the movie is really about getting those three actors together with Meryl Streep, Christine Baranski, and Julie Walters and letting them have a great time hamming it up with these songs. For the most part their gleeful abandon carries things along. The movie bogs down when it shifts to the younger generation, and also at one particularly weak musical number that Streep delivers with every ounce of her considerable energy and talent but whose choreography and lyrics make things grind to a puzzling halt. (That song is “The Winner Takes it All” in which it seems that Streep’s character is desparately trying to communicate something of great importance to Brosnan’s, but as she is obliged to sing this song, the message is hopelessly lost.) Nevertheless, there is a certain charm in seeing these six talented and mature actors hamming it up in a corny musical on a Greek island. Mamma Mia!

The Onion presciently called it back when Bush was appointed: “Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity is Over”. Now, their video channel has a fitting retrospective.

Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency