What Caught My Eye Today

2008 Presidential Race - Here are two fascinating perspectives on who the stronger Democratic candidate would be between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

If you look at the election in terms of the Electoral College, Hillary Clinton would come out on top. The general election will hinge on the winner-take-all system of electoral votes (Remember how the 2000 election turned out?) If the Democratic primaries were conducted the same way, Clinton's victories in the bigger states woiuld give her 1,743 pledged delegates to Obama's 1,257.

And now for the Obama supporters...

Imposing a winner-take-all system on the Democratic primaries would make them less democratic, not more. The current system--allocating delegates based on the proportion of votes the candidates receive--provides the purest measure of support and Obama is winning the popular vote. In addition, of the 17 swing states that "will likely determine the Democrats' fate" in November, Obama has so far won 9 in the primaries to Clinton's 5.

Well I'm glad the clears everything up.

Zimbabwe - This just goes to show that despite the ills of the U.S. economy, things can always be worse, and in this case, are. Zimbabwe's currency is melting down so quickly that the government has introduced a 10 million dollar bill. As of last week, 10 million Zimbabwe dollars could buy two rolls of toilet paper. I don't want to make light of a clearly dire situation, but I'm going to anyway. You know we sometimes use the expression 'a zillion dollars' to describe something that is expensive. This term may actually start to apply in Zimbabwe if the situation deteriorates much further.

Education - Two of the four finalists in this year's NCAA college basketball tournament had graduation rates among the nations lowest for male students with basketball scholarships. The University of Memphis (which lost to Kansas in the championship game and single-handedly destroyed my brackets) has a 30% graduation rate, what at UCLA (which I had winning the tournament) has a 29% graduation rate. Let's be objective about this shall we? Those scholarships aren't really intended for education, but rather as stipends until these guys can secure NBA contracts. I mean honestly, why else would you bother with college when playing ball is what you were meant to do?

Blogging - Here's a cautionary tale... A prominent technology blogger filing posts from home around the clock, knowing that the size of his audience and his livelihood depended on a steady stream of news and opinions about new products, recently realized that he was exhausted and took a day off. He then dropped dead of a massive heart attack. Well now, that sucks. In the past few months, three bloggers have suffered coronaries, two fatal. The news has caused a wave of self-examination in the community of thousands of professional bloggers, some of whom work up to 20 hours a day, providing "content" for their websites. Fueled by protein supplements and endless cups of coffee, they pride themselves on thriving under the stress of their cutting-edge jobs. And this, my friends, is why I strive to be the least that I can be. If success means working 20 hours a day only to be rewarded with a heart attack or death, dude, chalk me up as a failure.

Golf - Yes, I know, the Masters started 2 days ago and I haven't mentioned it once. And hey, correct me if I'm wrong, but no one has ever won the Masters before Sunday. As we go to print today some dude I've never heard of, Brandt Snedeker, is atop the leaderboard mid way through the third round at 8-under par. Phil Mickelson is in fifth place at 5-under par, and our boy, Tiger Woods is one stroke back of Mickelson at 4-under (and 3-under through 14 holes today). Rumor has it conditions tomorrow are going to be wicked bad as a storm front passes through and the winds kick up. I say its anyone's tournament to win at this point, though I still won't bet against Woods.