Lords of the BCS, rejoice! Unranked North Carolina (3-4) is on the verge of stunning #3 Miami (6-0), which would substantially reduce the chances of three or more major-conference teams finishing the regular season undefeated. It’s 28-21 Tar Heels with 8:05 left in the fourth quarter.

But if North Carolina does hold on and win, will the voters of South Florida hold it against John Edwards? :)

Meanwhile, USC continues to roll.

UPDATE: Now it’s 28-28. North Carolina ball; 2:15 left.

ANOTHER UPDATE: North Carolina has a 41-yard field-goal attempt to win it with four seconds left. The kicker is a true freshman…

IT’S GOOD! NORTH CAROLINA STUNS MIAMI!!! They’re rushing the field! WOOHOO!

P.S. This is yet more good news for potential BCS party-crasher Utah. But the Utes need to beat the rest of their opponents, starting with 2-5 San Diego State tonight. They’re struggling but leading, 27-21, at the moment.

In other news, USC crushed the Cougars, 42-12, final. Fight on!

Now, Cal is playing Arizona State in a battle for second place in the Pac-10; the winner could well go to the Rose Bowl, if USC goes to the Orange Bowl. The Bears are leading, 10-0, late in the first quarter.

The Washington Post has discovered, to its horror, that despite all the election “reforms” since 2000, there is a good chance “the unthinkable” will happen again in 2004: “Americans may not know who won the presidential race on Tuesday night. Again.”

There are several problems with this analysis. First of all, the recent election reforms have nothing whatsoever to do with assuring a speedy result — only an accurate one. And in this context, speed and accuracy are often competing factors rather than complementary ones; take, for example, provisional ballots, mandated by the Help America Vote Act, which (hypothetically) increase accuracy but (most assuredly) decrease speed. So the mention of the HAVA reforms in the opening paragraph is a total non-sequitur.

Secondly, “not know[ing] who won the presidential race on Tuesday night” is by no means unthinkable. In fact, it’s not even horrifying. Not knowing who won the presidential race on Jan. 20 — now that would be horrifying. But even that scenario isn’t “unthinkable” (as evidenced by the fact that I just thought of it). The prospect of not knowing the winner Tuesday night is, at most, mildly disconcerting.

My third objection to the Post article is along a somewhat different line. I don’t think the “we won’t know the winner for a long time” scenario is actually as probable as many pundits seem to think.

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Before going to bed tonight, don’t forget to set your clocks back one hour. Daylight Savings Time ends at 2:00 AM tomorrow — except here in Indiana and out west in Arizona, where Daylight Savings Time is not observed at all. So, unlike the rest of you, we don’t have to worry about “falling back”… nyah, nyah, nyah nyah nyah. :)

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The Newington High School football team recovered from last week’s heartbreaking loss to Platt with a 34-6 win over Maloney yesterday. The Indians improve to 6-1 — clinching their first winning season since 1993!!!

#1 USC leads Washington State early, 14-0.

#2 Oklahoma survived Oklahoma State, 38-35. #3 Miami is trailing North Carolina, 7-0, but it’s early. Oops! The ‘Canes just tied it, 7-7.

Maryland just wrapped up a stunning upset of #5 Florida State, 20-17. That’s very good news for Utah, among others. And Northwestern stunned Purdue, 13-10. So much for Kyle Orton’s Heisman hopes. A good day for Josh and Adrienne! (UPDATE: And Chris!)

Notre Dame is idle this week.

Last night at The Backer:

The kid right next to me, John, celebrated his birthday on the 29th. And Brian, in the background, had his birthday on the 28th. (My roommate Chris, at right, wasn’t drinking to celebrate his birthday. He was just drinking. :)

Earlier, at Rocco’s, “blowing out” the leaf on my birthday cupcake:

Heh. More birthday pics here.

Also, I just updated my fall foliage gallery. And, on an unrelated note, here’s a picture of someone paying rapt attention in Gunn’s Torts class on Thursday:

Heh.

Photographs can make Paris Hilton look busty and Hilary Clinton look, uh, less like Satan. But ever since a herd of overactive imaginations began fabricating alien abduction stories and supplying photographs of flying saucers, a group of eggheads got together to analyze this so-called authentic evidence.

Well, one of these nerds apparently has quite a beef with everyone’s favorite Texan.

I know I don’t have a lot of time to respond to comments on this board, what with the time constraints of a first-year teacher and the new co-advisor for the Drama Club. I know I still haven’t explained why I prefer the free market to corporate statism, and I probably won’t, at this point. This venue really doesn’t lend itself to expanding your thoughts, I’m afraid. In fact, I probably won’t have any time to respond to comments to this post either. But let it not be said I didn’t respond to the preposterous idea that any self-respecting libertarian who truly believed in individual liberty in all its forms would ever vote Bush. I leave it to Arthur Silber. (You should make sure you have plenty of time to read before you click.)

I’ll be sure to link to his endorsement for Kerry, too, when it comes out. In fact, if you want a good idea of libertarian thought - the kind of libertarian that distrusts centralized government education, that understands why all those liberals were up in arms about the very idea of internment camps for Muslims, that does see the problem with torture and arrest without trial, and that realizes that we can’t remake the world in our image by gunpoint if the people we threaten don’t want to change, among other things - just read as many of his posts as you can. You can also check out reactions to Bush from the Libertarian Party. You’ll note that nobody there likes him.

Don’t trust Glenn Reynolds, Eugene Volokh, Jane Galt, or any of the other “authoritarian libertarians,” as one liberal blogger so aptly put it. They’re the kind who like guns and don’t like taxes, and think that’s all they need to call themselves defenders of freedom. They’re also the kind who still live in the fantasy world where George W. Bush bravely leapt into action the very instant he heard the words “America is under attack” and pursued Osama bin Laden relentlessly, without any let-up whatsoever, right unto his secret lair in Baghdad, where Saddam kept his treasure, his nuclear stockpile, and his djinn’s lamp.

@messaging.sprintpcs.comHappy Birthday to me! :)

This seriously made my morning. This is even better than Dole’s post-’96 ads, where he always spoke in 3rd person in TV ads.

Update: Also very amusing, and completely unrelated, is this neat little 2D animation music video. There’s no truth to the rumor that the song itself is based on Brendan’s teenage years. ;-)

Bush’s last-minute vists to New Hampshire (4 EVs) and New Mexico (5 EVs) suggest to me that Rove & co. think there’s a good chance they’re going to lose Ohio (20), and they don’t want to count on winning both Iowa (7) and Wisconsin (10).

If Bush wins New Hampshire, New Mexico, and either Iowa or Wisconsin, he wins the election without Ohio.* If he wins both Iowa and Wisconsin, he doesn’t need New Hampshire or New Mexico. But I think the Bushies want some insurance.

I gotta admit, I’m pleasantly surprised that the election is this close. I thought Bush would be solidly ahead in the polls by now, which is why I predicted last month that he would win Minnesota and Maine’s second congressional district, among others. If I were making my predicting fresh now, I would probably give Kerry those victories, and Ohio too, thus resulting in a much narrower Bush win (271-267 instead of 302-236). But I generally don’t believe in changing predictions once I’ve made them — and especially once I’ve made them public — because I’m always afraid Murphy’s Law would result in my original prediction happening precisely because I retracted it. :) I usually follow this rule in my NCAA pools, and I’m following it here too; the original prediction stands. But the point is, I’m pleasantly surprised that Kerry is still in the race. The debates kept him alive. Now we get to find out if he really is a “good closer,” like everyone says.

*Note: if Bush wins New Hampshire, New Mexico and Iowa, but loses Wisconsin and Ohio, and everything else goes according to 2000 results, the EV tally would be 270-268, a bare majority for Bush. That leaves Bush vulnerable to being Robbed.

P.S. I’m not sure how they know this, but according to the National Review’s Kerry Spot, “Among early and absentee votes cast already, Bush has huge lead in FL… the campaign expects Bush to end up with an estimated 100,000 vote advantage among early and absentee voters.” Also:

Finally, a big point of enthusiasm for the GOP is their deep bench of Bush surrogates who can garner big crowds and lots of media attention. The President is in New Hampshire and Ohio today, vith Ah-nuld. Cheney is going to Hawaii. Tommy Franks is in Florida, as is John McCain and former President Bush. Rudy Giuliani is in Iowa, Mitt Romney is in Michigan, and former President Bush will also be in Pennsylvania later.

The Cheney Hawaii rally is set for Sunday. That’d be a nice insurance state for Bush… you could take New Hampshire out of the equations above and replace it with Hawaii. Or just tack Hawaii on, and the math gets even friendlier, obviously. (Polls here.) Al Gore and Alexandra Kerry are heading out to the Aloha State, too.

Imagine if Richie Robb really is the 270th Bush elector, and he really does defect, throwing the election into the House. Imagine further that some weird shenanigans result somehow in a victory for Kerry, or even President Edwards. Republicans will then be able to scream in unison:

We Wuz Robbed!

Get it? Robb… Robbed… hee hee.

“Fraud!” cried the maddened Hoosiers, and the Domers answered, “Fraud!” :)

P.S. The article states that Congressman Chris Chocola is calling for an investigation. Chris (my roommate) says this means Chocola is probably behind it. I have dubbed this the “you smelt it, you dealt it” principle of political shenanigans. :)

Bah.

Kerry will jump on it (probably has already) as a reminder that Yer Man remains Uncaught; but this new bin Laden videotape is going to swing some still-wavering votes to Bush.

First Off, the very image of the haughtily-sepulchral gaunt Saudi-looking Mug of His Evilness on the Tube — reminds us of the War we are In. Everybody knows he’s still In the Breeze. But this forcefully recalls to our minds that he’s still Out for our Blood, as well. / Irrational-but-automatic Advantage: the Commander in Chief. (The man who conquered Iraq to Get Back at him.)

Secondly of All :) — just listen to the smug hypocrisy of the rebarbative mule-plucking mass murderer:

God knows that it had not occurred to our mind to attack the towers, but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance toward our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind,” he said.

Bin Laden suggested Bush was slow to react to the Sept. 11 attacks, giving the hijackers more time than they expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to schoolchildren in Florida reading a book.

“It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone,” he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.

“It appeared to him (Bush) that a little girl’s talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God,” he said.

I’ll butt yer goat-mounting Butt, you mutant maggot of the camel-dung fly. BUSH left them to face your Horrors, did he now! YOU FLEA-RIDDEN WHELP OF A RIYADH ALLEY-BITCH!!! / Next time let’s just Nuke Tora Bora & be done with it.

(See what I mean? / Bah.)