Willamette Week, Portland’s alt-weekly that elevates the genre from your usual rag to something a bit more respectful made their endorsement.  It was a real schiavo for the hometown paper to endorse Obama/Biden, but they did it with such elan.  The article itself wasn’t all that illuminating, except for the cover poster created by Barry Stock, a 1000 word picture if there ever has been one.

It says it all.  (Even more so than the ignorant supporters turning up at Palin’s rallies.)  Perfect, succinct, clear, simple and expressive.  Nope. No thanks, come again at some other time.  We don’t want you, we don’t need you, we think you’re pretty useless.  Maybe nope will become the new FAIL, which has already worn its course.

You’ve done the city proud Willamette Week and for that we salute you.

Pretty much all anyone could talk about last night during the debate was Joe the Plumber.  McCain mentioned him like 50 billion times.  Seriously, Joe, after last night with the business you’re going to get you better be able to buy your business.

Here’s the original exchange between Senator Obama and Joe the Plumber, which prompted many of the exchanges last night.  Also, Obama is a Miles Davis cucumber.  Cool as cool can be.  Never once got rattled and deftly handled the Bill Ayers/ACORN landmines.

In just under seven months the Baseball Prospectus rockstar (he invented PECOTA!!!) has gone from a beloved baseball stats geek to the buzzed about political projectionist.  Having followed him from his days as “Poblano” on his Daily Kos diaries it’s been great to see his site Fivethirtyeight.com grow into what it has and a bit strange to see him make nightly appearances on news shows and especially the Colbert Report.  But the accolades are well deserved.

New York Magazine did a profile of Silver, and the most interesting aspect of the article, besides the little details about his life (online poker player making six-figures! loves burritos! seems a bit restless!) is the nuts and bolts of his sabermetric analysis applied to political polls.

Meanwhile, even as his primary model attracted attention, Silver was cooking up another idea. He figured there must be a better way to use the daily tracking polls to predict a candidate’s future, just as he’d once found a better way to use baseball stats to predict how many home runs a player might hit. His simple goal, as he explained on Daily Kos in late February, was to “assess state-by-state general-election polls in a probabilistic manner.” In other words, he wanted to find a way to use all those occasionally erratic, occasionally unreliable, occasionally misleading polls to tell him who would win the election in November, which at that point was over 250 days away.

It’s a tough business, being an oracle. Everyone cheers when you hit a bull’s-eye, but no one’s arrows fly true all the time. “Sometimes being more accurate means you’re getting things right 52 percent of the time instead of 50,” says Silver. “PECOTA is the most accurate projection system in baseball, but it’s the most accurate by half a percent.” That half-percent, though, makes all the difference. Silver’s work, in both baseball and politics, is about finding that slim advantage. “I hate the first 90 percent [of a solution],” he says. “What I want is that last 10 percent.”

Silver and his site (along with Sean Quinn) has become a life raft in a sea of partisan talking heads.  Over the past year, Silver has grown from a stats hound into an astute political commentator who remains above the fray despite being an unabashed Democrat.  His is the only political site that has felt necessary this election season.

Also, currently Silver has Obama at 94.9% chance to win the election currently racking up an astounding 359.8 electoral votes.  Though we’ll have to wait until November 4 to find out if he’s been right all along.

As far as PR stunts go, having the Republican VP candidate and Alaska Gov., Sarah Palin, drop a ceremonial hockey puck at an NHL game was a good move.  After all she is a self-professed “hockey mom.” It could have been a well orchestrated maneuver.  But where the stunt may have gone wrong is when her handlers inexplicably decided to have her drop a puck at Saturday’s Philadelphia Flyers opening night.

“I am surprised that the candidate would go on the ice in Philly — Philly fans threw snowballs at Santa Claus and booed Beyonce(*) because she was wearing a Michael Jordan dress,” said Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Capitals, a conference rival of the Flyers. “This is dangerous territory.”

Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a former Philly mayor and big fan of the town’s sports teams, also said before the game he didn’t think the puck-drop was a good idea.

“Sports and politics, I believe, never mix,” the governor said.  This is the same city that threw batteries at baseball player J.D. Drew and pelted Santa Claus with snow balls, as mentioned above; a citywide fanbase whose reputation is one of the most passionate and often vitriolic in the country.  Did they think that Flyer-fans would do anything other than shower Palin with a chorus of boos?

Though I often wonder about the sanity of the city due to the pent up aggression of not having won a major sports championship since 1983, I can honestly say that I’m proud of Philadelphia.  Big ups for all involved in showing how they really feel about Sarah Palin.

She is a national joke, her fake SAT scores notwithstanding, nothing but a giant albatross around an already sinking ship.

Yes we are.� It’s been a long few weeks.� The short end of it is that I woke on September 24 and couldn’t log into the website.� I requested help from my hosting company to help figure out what was going on, since a few days prior they were having company wide server issues.� And that’s when I realized that the Midphase support team was about as useless as Andre Miginot’s military advice (And yes, Andre Miginot’s Military Advice would be the name of my non-existent punk rock band).

I sent them two emails right off the bat and each time they promptly replied that it was fixed.� It wasn’t.� So then I called and they said it’s a priority but it wasn’t because I had to call a few more times.� Finally, a week had gone by and they told me by end of day Friday, which came and went to my chagrin.� Then they told oh we have a technician on it, definitely by Sunday night everything will be fine.� Oh okay great.

By Monday morning (yesterday a full week and a half after the incident happened) when the problem was still not fixed I decided that I would fix it myself.� So on the one hand I’m glad I fixed it, which took about 20 minutes of solid googling at work and then another 45 minutes of execution last night.� Am I awesome?� You doggone betcha I am!� *wink*

I’m glad I fixed the problem, but the solution was so easy I wish I had went ahead and did this two weeks ago.� In that sense I am like the Maginot Line?� That metaphor probably doesn’t hold up too well, but you get the point.� I feel as though the French must have when Germany marched beneath the Arc de Triumphe on the eve of establishing Vichy.

Seems like over the past two weeks, give or take, so much awesomeness has occurred with Phish getting back together, the VP debate and subsequent SNL sketch, we had planned in the works huge reviews of two movies events we were invited to attend: the first is a documentary about local food production called Tableland from director Craig Noble (interview forthcoming) and the second was for a screening of Red Heroine, which is the oldest surviving martial arts print in existence.� The film dates back to 1929.� It was awesome and strange and a bit funny at the same time. What’s not depressing is that No Depression, once a favorite physical music magazine that went belly up, has returned in an online format.� That’s exciting.� Show them some love.

Odd, that those are the only things I can think that happened over the last two weeks.� So maybe not so much actually happened, though I did catch up on some television (Sons of Anarchy is definitely worth catching and� perhaps the one new show this television season I find myself gravitating towards.� Fringe is okay, but I have my qualms with it preventing me from loving it.� Anyone have suggestions for stuff worth catching?) and watched the Sox take it to the Anaheim Angels once again.� It’s becoming a yearly ritual.

Jon Lester is the new Lance Armstrong. Or Mario Lemiuex, or I guess he’s just a good pitcher that has become a better pitcher after beating Cancer.� Which makes him a Dude, in the true Lebowski sense of the word.� And yes, if someone were to call Manny Ramirez a clubhouse Lester, I would laugh and say kudos.� That’s brilliant.� I can’t remember where I heard that saying, so speak up if it was one of you.� God, that’s going to drive me crazy all day until I figure out where I heard that.

One thing about the site is that we have changed the commenting system.� We have installed Disqus, to make things slightly nicer.� You’ll be able to leave comments just the same or you can login, create a profile, blah blah blah.� Test it out, give it a run and let us know what you think, you know if it’s worth keeping around.� We might have one more change that we had been planning on, but we might save that for our next big site overhaul design.� Which is coming in the not too distant future.

So that’s us.� Happy to be back.� Frustrated it took so long.� Angry and bitter with our hosting company.� Kicking ourselves for not fixing the problem ourself two weeks ago.� Hopeful you’ll all come back now and welcome us with open arms.� Leaving ya’ll wasn’t by choice.

Probably going to do one more test post today as I collectively get my shit together, like my homey DOC, before jumping back in tomorrow.

Mark Sumner, who is better known as the Daily Kos editor Devilstower, has written an excellent history lesson explaining how we arrived at this most recent economic point in this country.� As a history student, it’s always nice to read something that is well researched and well written.� Boiling it down to a nutshell, Sumner argues that the current financial crisis began with the Savings and Loan deregulation in 1982, a bill written largely by Fred Thompson, and continued through a series of economic deregulations that have wreaked havoc on this nation.� [The Nation]

Because we don’t do nearly enough stories on the Sly aimed solely at our creepy older male audience, I thought we should add this one. A 22-year-old who recently graduated from Sacramento State University is auctioning off her virginity to the highest bidder on the Bunny Ranch website; eBay reportedly turned her down. She says she’s not just looking for the highest bidder, but also someone genuine. Proving that not all college graduates are smart…or sexually promiscuous.

Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the point of an auction that whoever bids the highest wins? Besides no matter who it is, whether it’s the highest or the fifth highest bidder, anyone who participates in bidding on someone�s virginity is genuinely creepy.

Alright, let me step down off my high horse and admit that I was at a strip club once, accidentally sitting next to Dennis Hof, the owner of the Bunny Ranch. I had four wrinkled dollar bills, the remnants of a night of drinking, and he had built a pyramid of nice, crisp ones for the ladies. Needless to say I got ignored and to think I could have bought another drink with that money.

Literary icon David Foster Wallace was found dead in his home over the weekend. The author was 46. He was best known for his sprawling novel “Infinite Jest” but will always be near and dear to me for “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men” and “Consider the Lobster.”� Jesus, I shouldn’t be as sad about this as I am.� Some links: Jay McInerney reviews Infinite Jest (1996), DFW on Charlie Rose (1997), NYT Mag profile (1996), DFW profiles David Lynch in Premiere (1996), DFW on John Updike in the New York Observer (1997), first chapter of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again (1997), interviewed by Gus Van Sant in Dazed & Confused (1998), “Girlfriend Stops Reading David Foster Wallace Breakup Letter At Page 20″ in The Onion (2003), “Consider the Lobster” in Gourmet (2004), Where to go after Infinite Jest? in n+1 (2005), Kenyon Commencement Address (2005), profile of John Ziegler in The Atlantic (2005), Profile of Roger Federer in Play (2006), interview with John Krasinksi about Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2008), Michiko Kakutani remembers (2008).� Links rounded up by Rex.

Yeah okay, pretty standard Hollywood stuff here.� Actor Matt Damon speaking out against Republican Vice President nominee Sarah Palin.� He’s saying all the stuff liberals are thinking and basically asking the media to do their f*cking jobs and stop with the he said/she said and start calling Palin on her lies about the Bridge to Nowhere.� You know, the kind of job that shouldn’t be left up to bloggers.� I digress.� The part I loved though is towards the end when he just becomes flummoxed and resorts to “I wanna know if she thinks dinosaurs were on the Earth 4,000 years ago.”� You can almost see the blood vessels getting ready to pop, but he does a good job maintaining composure.

One of the things I wanted to do after the conventions is creat word clouds of the major speeches to see what words or phrases were used prominently during the Democratic and Republican concentions. �Now that both parties conventions have concluded, I got caught up in MusicFest Northwest and Wired Magazine beat me to the punch. �Still, it’s interesting to see what Wordle can do with any given amount of text. �

Just looking through their gallery you notice that both Barack Obama and John McCain’s names were mentioned quite a bit; Republicans loved to mention country and America, though POW was notably absent. �As for Democrats they seemed like like future, hope, and promise; surprisingly change was not prominent. �Again, neith of these facts are that surprising, given the campaigns they’ve built. �But it’s interesting nonetheless. �

Barack Obama

John McCain

Wordle is an online application created by IBM’s senior software engineer�Jonathan Feinberg. Using text entered by its users, it creates visually appealing “word clouds” that show you the frequency at which words occur within that text. The more often a word occurs, the bigger it appears in the cloud.

Wired has word clouds for all the major speeches including Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, and others.

Fortunate enough to study American history in college, some of the best classes I took (outside of WWII stuff) had to do with pre-colonial American history. �What Native American culture and societies were like before being wiped out. �It always amazed me how sophisticated and different they were. �There was nothing savage about them. �

The Haudenosaunee, or People of the Long House, those who now comprise the Six Nations (collectively the Iroquois Confederacy) in upstate New York (Mohawk, Onendoga, Cayuga, Seneca, Oneida and Tuscarora) had a vast empire stretching all the way to Southern American. �It was a matriarchal society in which no one owned a thing and shared everything. �In essence their culture was the exact opposite of American society, and I’m inclined to think it may have been a better one. �

It’s no surprise that Europeans often thought of the native inhabitants of North and South America as low intellectual savages. �Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. �A good book on this is 1491 by Charles Mann, in which he argues that American society before Europeans was just as technological; societies would remake the land as they saw fit, especially in the Amazon region. �A new article in the New Scientist touches upon these remarkable discoveries. �

The findings raise big questions, says�Susanna Hecht�of the University of California in Los Angeles.

For starters, it forces a rethink of the long-held assumption that these parts of the Amazon were virtually empty before colonisation. What’s more, it shows that the large populations that did inhabit the region transformed the landscape.

“What we find is that what we think of as the primitive Amazon forest is not so primitive after all,” Heckenberger told�New Scientist. “European colonialism wasted huge numbers of native peoples and cleared them off the land, so that the forest returned.”

What, then, did the primitive Amazon look like? That is a mystery, says Heckenberger. It is clear, though, that these large urban clusters reordered the entire landscape.

Research published in January revealed that was has long been thought of as the “original” New England landscape was in fact�created by British settlers in the 17th century.

There was plenty going on in North and South America before Columbus, the Conquistadors and other new world plunderers arrived. �I’ve often argued that high school history is inadequate and that students would actually be interested in what was really going on at the time. �Maybe that’s my idealism. �[via]

I love strawberry jam, either on toast and vanilla ice cream or listening to Animal Collective.� Still, there is nothing that bests the taste of fresh strawberry jam.� I’ve got a freezer full of it right now to last me through the winter.� Spending $30 to pick strawberries this summer and then turn it into jam is an excellent investment.

According to Science Daily, strawberry jam is more heavily regulated