There are those who mistakenly think the Prius is a car -- a tool to get you from one place to another.  Others think of it as a tool to improve energy conservation.  Whatever.  I am here to tell you that in the hands of a true connoisseur, it is so much more than either of those two things:  it is a game, on which you can get a really, really high score.

Like half the blog entries of 2008, this story starts with Barack Obama.  I recently got the Fall 2008 issue of the Harvard Law Bulletin, an alumni publication, with the smiling face of Barack Obama ('91) on the cover, whose promise of leadership and excellence was realized so fully and wonderfully in the years after he graduated law school.  Toward the back of the Bulletin is a small-type list of obits.  I read these.  Especially the ones of younger graduates.  And that's how I learned the remarkable and disturbing story of the murder of Melissa Batten, of the class of 1997, shot dead by her husband eight days after she obtained an order of protection.

As we sit in the doldrums of December finals, waiting for Alex Legion to emerge from a phone booth with an S on his chest, waiting for another exciting Missouri showdown, waiting for the Big 10 season to start and the Fighting Illini to return to the tournament (all good things), my thoughts turn to last year's disappointments.  To demons of seasons past, even as we hope they are soon exorcised by Coach Weber and all the excellent new recruits.  So I offer in this basketball-less week of contemplation my top ten villains of Illinois basketball past.  From probations, to rivals, to hideous officiating, to recruiting wars, we've certainly known a few of these.  One honorable mention:  Northwestern fans (for c [Read more]

I saw a homeless man named Howard kill himself in July of 1994.  I was crossing the Chicago River by foot on the Clark Street bridge with my then-wife when he jumped ten feet into the river.  He thrashed around without really swimming.  She figured it out faster than me.  We argued for a second.  Then we agreed.  She ran to the nearest pedestrians, a ways off, to try to find a phone to call 911. [Read more]

I was in the dagblog.com office today, leaning on the bookshelf like I always do, when my friend Orlando came in, with her head jammed into a big ankh or whatever that thing is she works in. "Don't you ever take that big ankh off your head?" I asked.

"You wouldn't understand," she said. "But the avatar is really causing me some neck pain, I have to admit."

"You should just lean on books. Works great for me," I said.

"Whatev." Orlando continued. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure." I was feeling generous.

I am from Chicago. I grew up in the all-Caucasian cultural wasteland of its western suburbs during the Carter and Reagan years, and always knew I was a Democrat. During the Reagan years, I worried like hell about nuclear war, (listening to Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Two Tribes, check out the ending), noticed Reagan never mentioned AIDS, campaigned against (fictional) black welfare queens, and attacked Carter's deficits but ran up far worse ones of his own. People said he meant well. My high school was segregated by virtue of where it was. No blacks, essentially no Jews or Latinos. Among 3000 people.

As regular dagnabbers are aware, yours truly has written that this year's election is defined not by the Bradley Effect, but by the Obama Effect, defined as Obama's margin of performance above and beyond the Democratic improvement from 2004 to 2008.  For example, with Obama and a host of other factors moving the pile from Kerry's 2.5 point loss to this year's likely 7.5 point win, the margin of the Obama Effect (OE) is the improvement above a 10 percent improvement.  Thus, even though Obama will flip Missouri, based on current trends, it does not have a positive OE:  Kerry lost it by 5, so Obama should win it this year by 5 or so.  Neither does Pennsylvania. Kerry won it by 2.5, so Obama should win it by 12 or so, as some polls indicate. [Read more]

In a Manhattan conference room this afternoon, Senator John McCain (R.-Ariz.) conducted and lost a hastily arranged rematch of last night's Presidential debate, this time to a cardboard cutout of the Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Barack Obama (D.-Ill.).  According to CNN snap polls following this impromptu affair, McCain turned in more respectable numbers, losing by a narrow 50-45 margin to the cardboard image of the actual man who had trounced him in a debate just the night before, 58-31.  The cardboard Obama was a life-size image of the junior Senator from Illinois purchased by McCain handlers for $40 at Nick's, a Fifth Avenue souvenir shop.  Cardboard Obama depicts Barack Obama smiling and holding his glasses at his waist, and was placed behind the table at which McCain  [Read more]