I do enjoy my Netflix account. It allows me to see films that I was unwilling or hesitant to view in the theaters and MI: Ghost Protocol is a perfect example of this effect.
I really enjoyed the first MI film, skipped the second, and found the third one entertaining, 
but not solid enough to entice me to buy it or see it’s sequel when it was released.
Ghost Protocol is a difficult film to discuss because it seems to exit in its own unique genre space. Continue reading
Tonight, just two weeks from the election, we’ll be treated to the third and final presidential debate. The subject, in theory, is foreign policy, but it wouldn’t surprise me if things wander a bit.
I shan’t be watching this one in real time as I have a meeting of the Mysterious galaxy Writers Support Group and I try to never miss a meeting. This support group has been a real factor in my improvement as a writer. Two years ago when the group started I had just finished my novel “Cawdor,” and looking back at the manuscript I can see such improvement in style that it surprises me.
So where do we stand in the Presidential election race?
As of 10/22
RCP: Romney +0.3
TPM: Obama +1.5
Pollster: Romney +0.1
INtrade: Obama + $2.23
Last Tuesday the numbers were:
RCP: Romney +.04
TPM: Obama +1.1
Pollster: Romney +.03
INtrade: Obama +$2.37
This is a far cry from the numbers of 9/29
RCP: Obama +4.3
TPM: Obama +3.9
Pollster: Obama +4.4
Intrade: +$5.71
It looks to me that the race has settled down into a very close heat, and the fluctuations over the last two weeks have primarily been noise in the system. Romney’s advance after the first debate has pretty much held. Right now I’d give the popular vote edge to Romney, but that may not translate into being election due toAmerica’s unusual system of presidential elections knows as the Electoral College.
Just as in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college we could have a misfire or even a tie. Of course a tie in this election would mean a Romney win as there are more red states than blue and each state would get 1 vote for determining the presidency. To make this an even more messed up situation the House only determines the presidency, the Senate votes for the vice-president. That means if the Democrats controlled the Senate we could have President Romney and Vice-President Biden.
This is the electoral map we really really do not want to see the day after the election.
For me, writing a novel is a lot like driving towards mountains. My outline points me in the correct direction and through the haze the distant peaks are dimly visible. I start out on the journey and those damn peaks don’t seem to move at all. Scenery passes by on either side, sometimes its tough driving and sometime it is lovely scenery, but my goal seem as distant and as elusive as when I started.
Then somewhere around the middle of the project, the mountains seem to close with a rapidity that is startling. At this point I afraid that I don’t have enough story and that before you know it I’ll be across the mountain range and my journey will be over far too soon. At this point I have to trust my outline, and not slow the writing with pointless meandering scenes.
The final stage is finding myself suddenly in the mountains, with loads more road to cover and no fearing that I have too much plot to cover in the remaining page count. Here I have to fight the urge to cut everything short, and work studiously at keeping all the elements I had planned on in the story.
Command and Control is now about 150 manuscript pages long, about 37000 words out of a target of about 100,000, and those mountains are suddenly closing in.
So instead of waiting a full week to see if the polls have moved after the vice-presidential debate, I’m taking a look at them today as to remove any effect of the second presidential debate.
The numbers as they stood six days ago on 10 Oct 2012
RCP: Romney +1
TPM Polltracker: Romney +2.4
Pollster: Romney +1
Intrade: Obama + $2.57
The same measurement today:
RCP: Romney +0.4
TPM Polltracker: Romney +1.1
Pollster: +0.3
INtrade: Obama $2.37
So three of the indicators moves in Obama/Biden’s direction, while the fourth moved in Romnny’s. What movement there was in Obama’s direction was weak and hardly indicative of a major change in the electorate, which seems to be the case in the movement towards Romney after the 1st debate.
Unless something breaks, this looks to be a tight race. There are only three weeks left before election day and for team Obama the stumble in Denver is proving to be one that is dogging their heels. With a weak recovery following a financial crisis they had little room for error, and yet still went into the debate wholly unprepared.
I had read that the debate stand for Romney was John Kerry. Really? That’s a poor choice in my opinion, one I think that might have been a factor. (But certainly not the sole and or prime factor.)
This is post number 1000, and being human I thought I’d celebrate this pointless achievement.
I’ve had this blog for just over 1200 days, starting it way back in May of 2007 2009. So I am averaging a post every 1.24 days or so. The posts have generated 1040 comments, so I am averaging just north of a comment per post. Nearly all from three core commenters, and then a smattering from others.
129 posts have been marked with the ‘politics’ tags, so I don’t appear the be a one trick pony, though politics will always be an interest if mine.
Movies in general are tagged 197 and 95 tags for Sunday Night Movies.
There has been a whopping 91,926 attempts to post spam as comments. Given that this blog is really a low traffic sight, primarily read by family and friends, I found the amount of spam truly staggering. Luckily the plug0in Askimet handles the filtering duties with real effectiveness and power.
When I started this blog I had hopes of breaking into novel publishing, and while that did not occur as quickly as I would have wished, it remains a steadfast goal that I will achieve with the love of support of my sweetie-wife and close friends.
Here’s hope that the next three years will continue to see growth and publication.
I think that this was the first time I have watched, front to back, an entire vice-presidential debate. This has proved to be a volatile election and in this environment the side-show has the possibility of effecting the center ring action.
My quick impression is that Biden won the debate, he kept Ryan on the defensive most of the night, though this was by no means a blow-out like the first presidential debate. It was also close enough that partisan from either side will claim victory.
One – of many- exchanges that caught my attention was Ryan on abortion. I am pro-choice, I do not agree with the concept that conception is the point at which we should be legally bound to recognize full human rights. Ryan’s answer though went beyond simply the mine field of abortion and into the nature of religious thought and its place in government. It goes too far into mixing the two.
RYAN: I don’t see how a person can separate their public life from their private life or from their faith. Our faith informs us in everything we do. My faith informs me about how to take care of the vulnerable, of how to make sure that people have a chance in life.
Well it has been one week since the first presidential debate between Obama and Romney and boy did that shake up the race. In my post about the debate I suggested that a Romney gaining more than three points would be ahistorical and very bad news for President Obama.
So let’s take a look at some numbers. When I suggest that Obama had the wind at his back here are the number I used to support that contention.
9/29
RCP poll of Polls Obama +4.3
TPM polltracker Obama +3.9
Pollster Obama +4.4
INtrade Obama+ $5.71 (7.85 vs 2.14)
Things looked good for the president, but in the debates Obama fumbled his diplomacy roll (Yea, I know skills rolls don’t have fumbles, but he still managed to do it.) Romney pivoted to the center and pulled off a very good debate performance.
Here are those same metrics as of today.
10/10
RCP Romney +1
TPM Polltracker Romney +2.4
Pollster Romney +.1
Intrade Obama +$ 2.57 (6.34 vs 3.77)
That’s a 5.3 loss in the RCP averages, 6.3 in the TPM polltracker, 5.4 in Pollsters aggregate poll. This is frigging huge. The race is not over, but there is less than a month until the election and this is a very bad time to throw away your lead. Liberal partisan have been wailing, Andrew Sullivan going into full President Palin Panic, while the conservatives have been as giddy as a fanboy on a date with Natalie Portman
What I find curious is that the state by state still favors Obama, but not by much. Frank.ly I think this increases he chance of another misfire, where the popular vote and the electoral vote go north and south.
My November 6 party may run late after all.
So the past weekend was Conjecture, the autumn SF convention here is sunnySan Diego. As my earlier post had indicated, this time I was participating on a number of panels, 1 on Friday, 3 on Saturday, and 2 on Sunday making this the heaviest lifting I had ever done as a panelist. What was my feeling on this after such a busy time?
I loved it.
No doubt in great part because I shared my panels with a dazzlingly bright array of fans and pro, who had smart, intelligent, and polite points of views to share. My gods, even the panel on ideology in fiction did not break down into squabbling over political events. We had a good spirited, but always courteous discussion on ideology in fiction. I did not spend the evening hours at the convention, being that we live just a couple of miles from the hotel, my wife and I retired back to our home for board and card games each night. I can honestly say though this was the most fun I have ever had at a small convention.
The only down side was that there were presentations I was forced to miss and I really wanted to see those, including new presentations from my friend Bridget at JPL about the Mars and asteroid missions.
However, I did get to see some things and what I saw I enjoyed, including a 15 minute fan film from 1940s that was a travelogue through the dead cities of Mars. It looked surprisingly good, both in terms what they two brothers achieved and the state of the film after so many years.
I look forward to doing more of this at local conventions.
After a weekend at a science-fiction convention it seemed quite right to watch a classic SF movie, and given thatVillageofThe Damnedis a short SF film that made it double-plus good.
VillageofThe Damnedis a film adaptation of John Wyndham’s novel The 
Midwich Cockoos. John Wyndham wrote a number of interesting and thought provoking SF novels including The Day of the Triffids. The Midwich Cockoos is equally jammed packed with ideas and concepts, many of which were ditched from the film simply because a film cannot be an extended discussion of evolution, not if you want to entertain the audience. Continue reading