Hey, It's Not a Blog

Forty-six months since the previous postings; hardly a record. If you don't blink, don't blog.

As the polls opened in Michigan yesterday, I wondered whether the web already knew the outcome. WWGD?

Thanks to the mainstream media's perpetual unwillingness to cover actual issues (and unfortunate compulsion to fill airtime and consume ink) some election outcome already had been predicted every hour, every day, for the past twelve weeks. Judging from the numbing repetitiveness of television and radio interviews since the August primary elections, any adult capable of speech had already made predictions!

The beautiful aspect: [mumble]ty percent of the pundits were wrong! (The encouraging aspect: Karl Rove was wrong :-)

Back to the relative sanity of the web. Now, there's a phrase you never expected...

PLEASE do not write to tell me that GoogleFight (or some other GoogleBlah) already exists. I created Googlewhack ferchrissakes! You think I don't already get e-mail about every Googlewhatever that exists? Thanks...

UnBlinking scans the wealth of information on the internet, gathering background on people and events. Using public search engines, UnBlinking collates what may be known (and what may have been forgotten). Please use QuickTopic to share your comments. [Usability note: All links open into the same target window.]

What Would Google Decide?

This is merely an experiment. Please do try to keep your wits about you.

The experiment is statistically flawed in all the many ways you feel compelled to tell me about; I already know them.

The experiment didn't exhaust all the queries you feel compelled to tell me about; you'd be wiser to post at Quicktopic.

As is our wont, we support queries that are Crude But Effective(tm). Most of these results seemed on point.

"vote yes on proposal 1" 2006 michigan
"vote no on proposal 1" 2006 michigan

This is the array of near-insanity brought together by the referendum process. In their supreme laziness, our Legislature permitted all these initiatives to reach the ballot without bothering to negotiate any alternative language, as our state Constitution suggests the Legislature should do.

Proposal 1, Recreation Funds
Proposal 2, Affirmative Action
Proposal 3, Dove Hunting
Proposal 4, Eminent Domain
Proposal 5, Education Funds

Data in the first column below were gathered 2006-11-07 07:00 EDT, as Michigan's polls opened.

Data in the second column below were gathered twenty-four hours later, reflecting the unofficial Michigan county tallies linked from the Michigan Secretary of State's office, then timestamped "7:00:36 am."

Thus, I'll conclude only that Google predicted the outcome as well as the millions of dollars worth of anchorpersons and consultants who've been beating us up intellectually since August.

Let's hope nobody in any major party realizes this might work! They'd reprogram those robocallers to stop dialing and start posting, instead. You thought blog comment spam was bad already?

I appreciate the quote by Dick Armey just now, when Diane Rehm asked him, "What happened last night?" Sez Armey: "It was what in Texas we'd call a good old-fashioned butt kicking."