I’ve been going over Electoral Vote scenarios for a side project (about to be released soon), gaming out the different plausible scenarios. Something surprising happened, I found that Obama can lose Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. All he needs to do is win Virginia and North Carolina (where he has been consistently up) and take either Nevada, Missouri, or Indiana. If he loses North Carolina he needs to win all three. Or he can just win Pennsylvania where he has enjoyed double-digit leads.
As I was writing this, Nate Silver of 538 posted Pennsylvanua Sanity Check making the same case, but with math:

Suppose that Barack Obama were to concede Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. Literally, concede them. Throw ’em back, like a Chase Utley home run at a Cubs game. How often would he still win the election?
…89.0% of the time, according to our most recent run of simulations, along with another 2.4% of outcomes that ended in ties. This is because in the vast majority of our simulations, Obama either:
a) was winning at least 291 electoral votes, meaning that he could drop Pennsylvania’s 21 and still be over 270, and/or
b) was winning at least 270 electoral votes, while already being projected to lose Pennsylvania in the first place.
(a) was much, much more common than (b), obviously.

Developing…

"Ingersoll-Rand logo.", originally uploaded by Draplin

Draplin posted some amazing ephemera from the Modern Plastics Encyclopedia.

• On the Baltimore SUPERTRAIN
• Portraits made from type
• Spend the night at the Guggenheim in NYC
• Private Highways – I agree: private highways are merely ways to privatize profit and socialize loss
• Missed by a minute, missed by a mile
• What Sarah Palin Is Saying – please, please go away, to a cold, cold place
• Video of the Day: Manufacturing in NYC

It is a given that Toronto is cold. But surprisingly it is sprawly as Los Angeles, with 14-lane highways, gridlock traffic, and seas of cars; but cleaner; and without palm trees; and cold, mind numbingly cold.

At what point should the Federal government step in and nationalize a banking institution in order to begin making loans to Americans instead of recapitalizing banks so they can gobble up smaller, more distressed, banks (PNC eats National City, Chase eats WaMu, etc)?
Or at what point will Treasury and the Fed directly administer loans to American Citizens (they already are buying commercial paper)?
Should Freddie & Fannie be given expanded powers and capital to achieve this?

Nerds Unboxing 3/3, originally uploaded by bryanboyer

One silo of your typical box of nerds contains 326 individual pieces, depicted here (minus one which was eaten).

Food + OCD + Graph Paper = Art