We interrupt the Warren Tsouris to bring two pieces of good news

[BurtWorm]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/18/frankens-senate-victory-c_n_152241.html

Democratic challenger Al Franken finds himself on the cusp of winning a seat in the United States Senate after Minnesota's canvassing board awarded him a host of challenged votes during deliberations on Thursday.

As of 8PM ET, the Minneapolis Star Tribune projected that Franken would finish the recount process with a lead of 89 votes, positioning him to become the 59th senator caucusing with Democrats in the upcoming Congress.

According to local paper tallies, Franken currently trails Sen. Norm Coleman by a mere five votes, down from the 358-vote margin that the Republican held just last night. The Associated Press has the count even closer, with Coleman ahead by two votes. An aide to Franken told the Huffington Post that, according to the campaign's internal count, Franken has already taken a small lead.

The gains came as the canvassing board sifted through hundreds of ballots that Coleman had contested during the recount process. On Friday, the canvassing board will consider another 400 or so Coleman challenges. If the pattern remains consistent, Franken should vault past his opponent to a projected lead of approximately 89 votes, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

The process by which the Senate race has come to this stage is often confusing. Coleman held an approximately 200-vote lead after the state went through a hand recount of all ballots. However, there remained approximately 1,500 ballots that one or the other campaign contested (and temporarily removed from the overall vote tally). Coleman challenged about 1,000 of these, Franken the rest....


http://www.boston.com/news/health/blog/2008/12/report_harvards.html

Harvard University
Harvard's Holdren to be Obama's science adviser, Globe learns
Email|Link|Comments (1) Posted by Gideon Gil December 18, 2008 04:51 PM

Harvard physicist John P. Holdren..., a leading authority on global warming and a past president of the nation's largest organization of scientists, will be President-elect Barack Obama's science adviser, the Boston Globe has learned.

A representative from one of the institutions with which Holdren is affiliated told the Globe this afternoon that Obama is expected to announce the appointment Saturday during his weekly radio address.

Holdren, who was an adviser to the Obama campaign, is a professor of environmental policy and director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and also is director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Falmouth, and a past-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Holdren's work has focused on climate change, energy technology and policy, and nuclear proliferation.

"I think if he is appointed he will send a signal to the scientific community, which has been disenchanted in the current administration, that science is very important and will be listened to," said Sheila Jasanoff, a Kennedy School colleague of Holdren's who has written extensively about the role of scientific advice in a democracy.

"To say John is a workaholic doesn’t capture it," she added. "He’s not happy unless he’s doing the work of three people at once."

Earlier this afternoon, Science magazine had reported on its website that there were strong indications of Holdren's appointment. He was supposed to attend a staff meeting this morning at the Kennedy School but instead flew to a meeting in Chicago with the Obama transition team, Science reported.

In August, Holdren published an opinion piece in the Globe chastising skeptics of global warming. "The extent of unfounded skepticism about the disruption of global climate by human-produced greenhouse gases is not just regrettable, it is dangerous," he wrote. "It has delayed -- and continues to delay -- the development of the political consensus that will be needed if society is to embrace remedies commensurate with the challenge."

Let the tsouris now resume.