November 5, 2004

Amid all the excitement, of course, serious illness seized someone else’s president. Yasser Arafat collapsed in his Ramallah bunker and was, after some parley, transported to France for treatment. Something of the division this is likely to unleash was well pointed up by the political squabble that broke out over the question of whether or…

Back in 2000, I was astonished to hear of the odd, Heath Robinsonesque voting machines of chad infamy. Being British, I was used to a voting system based on three P’s – paper, pencil, public counting. I’ve never been very keen on e-voting for the simple reason that I don’t see a benefit that outweighs…

The Daily Kos reports a case of what you might call fuzzy electoral maths in Franklin County, Ohio. Franklin County, OH: Gahanna 1-B Precinct 638 TOTAL BALLOTS CAST US Senator: Fingerhut (D) – 167 votes Voinovich (R) – 300 votes US President: Kerry (D) – 260 votes Bush (R) – 4,258 votes Well, some people…

When Kevin MacDonald’s film version of the tale of Joe Simpson, the British climber who barely survived an accident on the summit of Siula Grande, appeared I clearly went to see it at once. Unfortunately, Blogger fell down in a pool of its own credibility when I posted a monster review of the flick, and…