Dwahzon's Village: Items of Interest

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Items of Interest

-- Thucydides Junior co-owns a used and rare bookshop and notes this.

On occasion, current events spark interest in certain books, some of which are out of print. Sometimes, it makes signed or first editions collectible, even if the book is in print....Regular 1st editions sell for between $25 and $100 or so (and by sell I mean the prices that actually move the books out the door, not what folks ask for).

But Obama's own books (and other books signed by him) are different.

Signed Obama books are selling for between $150 and $350 on average (up to $500 on the high end) and rising since early March.

So Madame Defarge, how much do you want for your autographed copy of The Audacity to Hope?

-- Good story here about watching Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech with a group of strangers at a car dealership while the author waited for his car to be repaired.

-- Here's a diary which is a compilation of newspaper editorials, op-eds and blog posts about the speech. It's pretty impressive if you care about what editorials say.

-- Someone mentioned Obama's interview on Nightline last night and linked to the full transcript. The whole interview adds insight to Barack's thinking. Though, I have to say the concluding exchange provides a bit of a wake-up call for white Americans. Check it out.

-- Another defeat for democracy with a small d: Sequoia Voting Systems SUCCESSFULLY threatens Princeton researchers, a dkos diary by RiderOnTheStorm.

-- Speaking of voting, Glenn Hurowitz just posted a note about a study that he and Gregory P. Nini have just completed:

Wharton Study: FL/MI Results Highly Distorted

Among the proposed alternatives for seating the delegates from Florida and Michigan is to use the results of the primaries that already happened, based on the argument that doing so would avoid disenfranchising the 1.7 million Floridians and 600,000 Michiganders who already voted. However, doing so would disenfranchise many people from FL and MI who did not vote in the earlier primaries because they did not expect their delegates would be seated at the convention. Based on a statistical comparison with turnout in other states' primaries, it appears that roughly two million more people would have voted in FL and MI had they expected their delegates would be seated.

PDF of full study

-- Mark Kleiman nails it in this one: If Ann Coulter had liveblogged the Gettysburg Address. I'm still chuckling.

-- And then there's this from Mike Luckovich and this from the cartoonists' guild: