Whither goest thou, Gustav?

Bill Clinton hasn’t lost the knack. Carville had it spot on when he predicted Clinton would deliver a terrific speech that would put an end to the endless dissection of the Clinton’s intent with respect to the upcoming election. Maybe deep down he and his wife can’t stand Barack Obama, or maybe they’re just sore about being beaten, but you’d never know any of that from the speech he delivered last night. John Kerry did a pretty good job, too.

But why is CNN there at the convention center if they’re going to ignore 95% of what’s going on? I know you can go to their web site and watch the speeches streaming live, but what fraction of people are going to do that? I would rather have heard Madeleine Albright, or Even Bayh or Bill Richardson than Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer repeating the same things over and over again, interviewing each other instead of presenting the news as it happened. They could have stayed in Atlanta and done the same thing.

Gustav did the time warp last night, with a jump to the left, and now his course is less certain than it was yesterday. Texas is now more likely than before, though the major model still has Louisiana as the bull’s eye and Mississippi and Florida as possible targets. In the nineteen years I’ve lived here, Rita was the closest we’ve had to a hurricane strike, and we barely even got rain out of that one. I watch the model updates with the same interest that I watch the election news, to be informed, but I’ve come to believe that we just aren’t in a location that is favorable for hurricane strikes. That doesn’t mean it will never happen, but if I had to place a bet, I’d bet against Houston every time. It’s like predicting rain: forecasters would be more accurate if they always said it’s not going to rain on a particular day more than three days out than try to guess whether it will rain!

Eureka was good this week. A great punny title, too: “Show Me the Mummy.” I like the way they handled the events of last week’s episode. They didn’t belabor it, but they didn’t ignore it, either. And the writers are usually pretty darned clever about having something innocuous from the early part of the episode prove crucial at the end, like Carter’s sister’s music. Sure, the science is beyond wonky, but it’s still fun.