Nashville airport wi-fi: This is my first time to use the newly installed wi-fi at the Nashville International Airport. It’s about $7 a day…but seems rather robust and ubiquitous (I’m sitting in the B corridor, which if one knows my typical flying patterns, knows I’m and “C corridor guy.”) The guy next to me is using it also.

Bruce says “goodbye”: Nashville Scene editor (and friend of this blogger) Bruce Dobie writes “a goodbye editorial” to announce that he’ll be leaving the paper in December. You da man, Bruce.

Who bothched it? From too many sources to attribute, I’m getting news stories (here’s one) about “how bloggers bothced it” yesterday. What? No, bloggers didn’t botch it. Slate.com’s Jack Shafer, Matt Drudge and Ana Marie Cox botched it. And from there, the bloggers I read either echoed them or refutted them. And the reporters who started reporting on what Jack Shafer, Matt Drudge and Ana Marie Cox were releasing botched it. The Zogby jokesters who then used those reports to make a call at 5 p.m. botched it. I’m a blogger. I didn’t botch it. But then, only seven people read this weblog.

Update: Instapundit says Poynter’s Steve Outing, in calling “bloggers loose cannons should note that many bloggers were pooh-poohing and refusing to pass on the obviously flawed exit polling info.

I do agree with Outing, however. That “little birdie told me” crap from Wonkette was, to me, one of the low-points in blogging history. Her snark jumped the shark yesterday.

Joi just doesn’t get it: Taking a 180-degree turn from the spirit of Jeff’s post election pledge, one of my favorite bloggers, Joi Ito, blogging from Japan, is saying, “Americans have failed” the world today.

Quote:

It was close, but the Americans have chosen Bush. It’s a sad day, but in a democracy, you get the politicians you deserve/vote for. This was your chance to change your leader and you have failed. For awhile, many of us thought that you had been conned into voting for Bush. That you didn’t know he wanted to be a War President. Many people didn’t equate the US policies with the people of America. Now US = US Citizens. You have my sympathies, but it’s still your fault.

Rather than lose my status as someone who disagrees agreeable, I’ll not blog what I think about Joi’s sentiments…nor some of the elegant irony I see in his reaction to how Americans fail when they vote rather than participate in, I don’t know, an IRC session. (Oh, wait, that sounded disagreeable.)

My theory: The majority of Americans I know who live within 100 miles of the Atlantic or Pacific or Lake Michigan (and Joi), don’t understand Wal-Mart (Joi may, I’ve never seen him comment on the topic) or what motivates the sensibilities of the rest of us. Americans have not failed you, Joi. Come to Nashville (perhaps the next time our mutual friend Jun makes one of his regular visits) and we can discuss it on-the-ground.

I still think you’re a great blogger.

Blog lite day: Travelling much of the day (and through the end of the week). Will blog when wi-fi allows.

Connect the dots: Last week, I blogged a story about the Medill School of Journalism considering dropping its statistics course requirement. In the story, the following quote appeared:

A common problem among many Medill students is that because they often don’t understand how statistics relates to their field of choice, they put off taking the course. Michelle Edgar, a fifth-year Medill and School of Music double major, left her statistics requirement until her second-to-last quarter at NU and calls her Introduction to Statistics class a “complete waste of time.” “I don’t see how any of the information is relevant to journalism or how it could be applied to writing a story,” she said.

I hope that the way in which bloggers and reporters almost celebrated their statistical ignorance (ignoring methodology, usage or context of research, for example) yesterday will help Medill and all other j-schools to stop dumbing-down the requirements for the Michelle Edgars (and Jack Shafers and Matt Drudges and the almost Dr. Ana Marie Coxes) of the world.

Okay. One last thing: David Gergen keeps going on and on about how awful it is that those who supported Kerry will feel so alienated. I am sorry about that, but look at the map: It is so very difficult for those who live 100 miles from the Atlantic or Pacific to understand those who don’t. But that’s been the case since colonial days (a longer explanation for another day).

I am glad that all Americans — including those who would have been happy if Kerry were elected — will be spared the street celebrations of our enemies that we’d be seeing on CNN if this had ended with Kerry winning. I do not believe in any way that vote for Kerry was a vote for our enemies, indeed I don’t believe Kerry’s approach to the war (despite his rhetoric) would have been that different from Bush’s. However, that nuanced view would not have been understood by our enemies who be cheering for the TV cameras and taking credit for Bush’s defeat.

I am now finished with saying anything even remotely controversial.

The ironic whys: One of the most ironic results of the election will be that by “outsourcing” their get out the vote effort, the Kerry campaign came up short against the in-house get out the vote effort of the Bush campaign. I guess Kerry should not have depended on those war lords at moveon.org. Okay, that’s the last of my snide remarks. I’m officiall signing off. Thank god it’s over.