NBC and AP have (finally!) called North Carolina for Obama, bringing Obama’s EV total to 364, making L. Acus, who got it right on the dot, our EV count winner.
Our two winners will receive, at some point in the not-too-distant future, some (non-political) Cafe Press swag…
…and we still don’t know what the final electoral vote count is going to be. Thanks, North Carolina.
In other news, all the major networks called the election for Obama at the stroke of 11 p.m., making Rabow the winner of the guess-when-the-election-will-be-called portion of the competition.
Maybe they’ll have a winner in NC by the time I get back from lunch…
I was on the phone with my brother, talking about the presidential election this afternoon, and we were wondering when the networks were going to call the election. It occurred to me that this might be the perfect thing for a betting pool to test the wisdom of crowds.
So here’s a little contest for you, gentle reader: what’s your best guess for:
Just post a comment with your best guesses, and the person with the closest guess for each number will win some Cafe Press schwag (probably a bag and a t-shirt or something similar).
After the entries close, I will update this post with the average guesses.
A few notes on rules:
UPDATE: OK, the average EV count guess is 347.7, and the average time that the race will be called is 11:06. For comparison’s sake, fivethirtyeight.com was predicting Obama 349, McCain 189 and electoral-vote.com was projecting Obama 353, McCain 174 with Missouri exactly tied.
It has occurred to me that since we’re now in November, we’re no longer unpeeling our winter coats—rather, we’re re-cocooning.
Which means, of course, that you, gentle reader, get to suggest new title lines for this here blog…. leave ‘em in the comments!
One: What intrepid Belgian boy reporter, accompanied by his sea-faring best friend and yappy little dog, perpetually finds himself in the middle of international intrigue (sometimes of his own instigation)?
That would be international man of mystery Tintin.
Two: What theme do Heart of Darkness and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have in common?
They’re both about trips up a river, with various metaphorical meanings being attached to both the river and the trip itself.
Three: What county, located roughly halfway between Sacramento and Yosemite, is celebrated for leaping amphibians?
Calaveras County, which is the setting for “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” by one M. Twain. That’s two Twain questions in a row.
Four: The student Raskolnikov murders a greedy pawnbroker but is eventually driven to confess by guilt in what philosophical novel?
OK, so this probably should have been the first question. That’d be Crime and Punishment. Incidentally, check out this unique adaptation.
Five: What brave hero named his horse Rocinante? That was Don Quixote, who was to become the subject of a tone poem by Richard Strauss and a failed movie by Terry Gilliam.
Six: Oliver Mellors is the title character of what controversial English novel?.
Mr. Mellors is better known as Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Seven: What road novel, which drew heavily from pre-existing Taoist and Buddhist myth and legend, features as its protagonists the Monkey King and a Buddhist monk on a mission to India? One of the great classic novels of China, Journey To The West has also been a popular subject for adaptation on television, despite the f/x needed. Perhaps the most memorable adaptation I can remember I saw in Hanoi in the early 1990s; it was a no-budget version that was probably filmed for mainland Chinese television during the 1980s and had been re-dubbed in Vietnamese by the simple expedient of having someone in the control room turn down the volume of the original recording and having live actors read over that.
Eight: Which warrior-king of antiquity traveled with his wild-man best friend to Lebanon in search of cedar trees to bring back to Uruk? Gilgamesh, and his best pal was Enkidu. Incidentally, Gilgamesh was supposed to be 2/3 god and 1/3 human; I’m no geneticist, but I’m not sure how the math works out on that one….
Nine: What anti-hero has been immortalized by artists as diverse as Mozart, Lord Byron, and Richard Strauss? Don Juan, in Don Giovanni, Don Juan, and Don Juan, respectively.
Ten: What song by the band The Cure was inspired by an seminal work of existential literature? That would be “Killing an Arab”, which was inspired by Camus’ The Stranger.
What song by the band The Cure was inspired by an seminal work of existential literature?
What anti-hero has been immortalized by artists as diverse as Mozart, Lord Byron, and Richard Strauss?
Which warrior-king of antiquity traveled with his wild-man best friend to Lebanon in search of cedar trees to bring back to Uruk?
What road novel, which drew heavily from pre-existing Taoist and Buddhist myth and legend, features as its protagonists the Monkey King and a Buddhist monk on a mission to India?
Oliver Mellors is the title character of what controversial English novel?