This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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August 2008
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After All That, Michigan

Obama wins Michigan too, and he wasn’t even on the ballot.

125 delegates for Obama. 27 delegates for Clinton. (And 5 missing delegates.)

And we are more than half way to the magic number.

After All That, Florida

Obama wins Florida, 136 delegates to 51. (With 1 abstention.)

Bleh.

(Wait, that doesn’t add up to 211, they are still doing odd things. Oh well, won’t matter in the end…)

Lots of Flippers

A lot of Hillary delegates are indeed voting for Obama. As opposed to a count that is somewhat close, as of Delaware, we’re at 275 Obama, 71 Clinton.

I wish they would have all stuck to their guns. It would have been more interesting.

Absentions Going On

Starting with Alabama, which had 60 votes. 48 went to Obama, 5 to Clinton… which leaves 7 delegates missing.

Interesting.

But of course, in the end, without meaning or significance.

Unless of course they are just holding some back intentionally in the effort to make New York be the state (with Hillary Clinton speaking) to push Obama over the edge.

Abbreviated Roll Call

They will do part of the roll call, then move to declare Obama the nominee by acclimation rather than finish it and get an actual final count.

I think that sucks.

Speeches

By the way, when I make comments about these speeches, for the most part I am not in any way talking about the actual content of the speeches, if it is stuff I agree with, or for that matter if it is even stuff that makes sense. I am judging them as speeches… as devices to get the true believers excited, and perhaps to convince people on the fence to choose a side… the actual substance is of course a completely different animal… one I have no comment on at this time. :-)

Hillary’s Speech

Wow. I think that is the best speech I have ever heard her give. Certainly better than any I heard during the primaries. She was FIERCE. And threw out all the red meat this crowd was looking for. And she did EVERYTHING Obama could possibly be looking for in a Hillary speech at this convention with as fervent support of Obama as you could possibly imagine. I didn’t notice even a HINT of snark or any backhanded references to how she would have been a better choice. If she was trying to make Obama wonder if he should have picked her for VP after all, she probably managed that too. She was very very good.

And I say this as someone who is about as anti-Hillary as anybody could be.

Gov Schweitzer

Never heard this guy before. He is good. He is really revving up the crowd. I think he’ll be showing up some more over the next few years. So far of all the speeches I’ve watched, he is right up there with Kennedy and Michelle Obama from yesterday. None of the others so far have been memorable at all.

On those Kennedy was very moving. Just the fact that he was up there, but even not allowing for his health, he was rousing and energizing and put a lot into it. Michelle’s speech was good, although not something you will remember for long, but it did what it was supposed to.

I was not impressed by Casey earlier tonight.

Schweitzer was really good though. Maybe *he* should have been VP.

Anyway… Now here comes Hillary.

(By the way, I know I haven’t posted much… anything really… on the convention so far… but I am watching and listening to tons and tons of it, although I haven’t quite managed actually watching gavel to gavel on C-Span or anything. I’ve just been doing other things too, and haven’t been inspired to post much yet. Maybe there will be more before the two conventions are done.)

Life with a Northern Cow

This is awesome.

Cows have magnetic sense, Google Earth images indicate
(Thomas Maugh, LA Times, 26 Aug 2008)

German scientists using satellite images posted online by the Google Earth software program have observed something that has escaped the notice of farmers, herders and hunters for thousands of years: Cattle grazing or at rest tend to orient their bodies in a north-south direction just like a compass needle.

Studying photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds from around the world, zoologists Sabine Begall and Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen and their colleagues found that two out of every three animals in the pictures were oriented in a direction roughly pointing to magnetic north.

The resolution of the images was not sufficient to tell which ends of the cows were pointing north, however.

(via Slog)

A Little on Dial Cousins

A post from a distant cousin’s blog:

The Amazing Internet
(Victor Dial, Minter Dialogue Blog, 5 Aug 2008)

I know it’s a cliché, but isn’t it amazing what you can find on the internet? Two recent occasions come to mind:

The first was when, some days ago, I happened on a web site concerning the family of my paternal grandmother, whose maiden name was Josephine Minter. We called Josephine “Jou-Jou” (probably Josephine was too difficult for young children to pronounce, or remember). Jou-Jou’s mother’s maiden name was Fannie Dodson Ramseur. Fannie came from a prominent North Carolinian family, and she married Joseph Minter, also from North Carolina. The Minter family web site (wiki.abulsme.com) laconically indicates that Joseph had originally intended to marry another lady, but that the bride-to-be had died on her wedding day. This must have been a terrible tragedy for Joseph, but was fortunate for me, because by marrying Fannie, he begot me, as well as many other distinguished descendants. Fannie had six children (one of whom was Jou-Jou, of course) and, while pregnant with a seventh, died tragically while trying to save her youngest daughter whose dress had accidentally caught fire. The daughter died that day, 14 March 1881, and the mother ten days later, aged 36.