Uncategorized
gregladen | November 5, 2008Rumors are quickly circulating and even congealed in the Wikipeda bio for Emanuel ... He is likely to be Obama's chief of staff, or at least, is being offered.
mspringer | November 5, 2008The following is reprinted verbatim from my old Livejournal. The entry was written January 26, 2007.
In 2000, the news media called the presidential vote in the state of Florida for Gore before the voting had ended. This caused enormous controversy, because both sides claimed that this discouraged remaining Bush/Gore supporters who would have voted late to stay home believing the election was over.
In 2004, the news media was extremely cautious, and refrained from calling the election until the outcome was a certainty. It was thoroughly obvious that Bush won hours before the media in general…
gregladen | November 5, 2008Obama's full speech:
This is the scene in front of the White House:
Yes, we did:
A little music/cartoon parody:
McCain Concession Speech: Note the behavior of the crowd.
For fun:
cortex | November 5, 2008The Boston Globe Ideas section recently published a short interview I did with Kelly Bulkeley, author of the quite interesting "Dreaming in the World's Religions". It's an attempt to extract some common psychological themes from the descriptions of dreaming and dream-states in various religious texts. In a sense, Bulkeley is employing a similar strategy to the one I pursue in Proust Was A Neuroscientist. While I looked at art to learn about the brain - what can a Cezanne watercolor teach us about the visual cortex? - Bulkeley wants to use the case reports of dreams in the Bible, Koran,…
cortex | November 5, 2008Rolling Stone recently published a truly excellent article by David Lipsky on the struggles, triumphs and suicide of David Foster Wallace. It's a heart-breaking read, a chronicle of a genius done in by a mental illness. (It reminded me, in parts, of Woolf's diaries: the acute self-consciousness, the Sisyphean struggle against this internal shadow, the inevitability of a tragic ending.) I didn't know, for instance, that Foster-Wallace's final bout of depression began after he was taken off Nardil, an old-school monoamine oxidase inhibitor.
In June of 2007, Wallace and Green were at an Indian…
cortex | November 5, 2008Indulge me, for I can't stop thinking about this poem. It's an excerpt from The Cure at Troy, by Seamus Heaney:
Human beings suffer,
they torture one another,
they get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
can fully right a wrong
inflicted or endured.
The innocent in gaols
beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker's father
stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
faints at the funeral home.
History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great…
gregladen | November 5, 2008No one is happier about the election of Barack Obama than the people of one small town in Japan!
...the citizens of Obama, Japan, were ecstatic. Dozens of supporters swarmed the stage and joined hands, jumping up and down as they chanted "Obama! Obama! Obama!"
A delegation has been dispatched to Obama, Japan to explain that they are not the President of the United States.
thescian | November 5, 2008Rebecca Traister writes at Spiegel
How could Jesse Jackson not cry, standing in that crowd, realizing that whatever hurt time and generational difference might have inflicted on his project and his legacy, he was witnessing the dawn of a world that his work made possible, but which he had not been able to make possible himself.
And then he began to wave a small American flag on a wooden stick, like a kid at a Fourth of July parade. Elsewhere in the crowd, Oprah Winfrey, that most almighty American who, like Jackson, helped launch Obama's dream, but who on the night it was made manifest was…
gregladen | November 4, 2008Quiz: Who are the only Democrats that will "lose" their seats in the Senate?? What? Nobody wants to guess????
These are the races I'm watching. And live blogging (by the way, Biden won his seat in the Senate in Delaware)
Oregon: Dem is ahead, not called yet but he could win.
North Carolina: Hagan is in , DOLE IS OUT.
New Hampshire: Democrats take this seat. As sort of expected.
Minnesota: I don't think this one is going to happen.
Georgia ... No Democratic gain here.
Mississippi: No Democratic gain here
Kentucky Republicans hold this seat ...
Texas Not even close.
Conclusion: We…
mspringer | November 4, 2008This election day post is going to be continuously updated until the winner becomes more-or-less official. Tomorrow we'll have one more politics post as something of a benediction, and then mercifully back to the physics. Updates will appear at the top of the post, so feel free to refresh throughout the night. I'm writing in the central time zone, so timestamps on this post will reflect such.
11:39 Well, the Minnesota mess is still a mess though Coleman has pulled ahead by a hair. Looks like the result will be Obama without a filibuster-proof majority. As such, I'm going to bed. Good…
cmonforton | November 4, 2008by Liz Borkowski
Tomorrow we’ll know who this country’s next president will be and what the next Congress will look like. Economic stimulus will be at the top of their priority list, so I hope they’ll all take a look at a handy chart from the Economic Policy Institute, which tallies the economic benefit of each dollar spent on various forms of stimulus. Food stamps tops the list, with each dollar generating $1.73 in economic activity – because people who get the food stamps will spend them in grocery stores, and not simply use them to rebuild savings or pay off credit card debt.
That’s the…
grrlscientist | November 4, 2008Here's the latest carnivalia for you to enjoy;
Europe Travel Carnival, 3 November 2008 issue.
The Carnival of the Conservatives, 3 November 2008 edition. Hrm, I'll bet you can guess what this one is all about.
Carnival of Aloha! is all about .. Hawai'i! And the host seemed to be rather excited about my contribution, too, so that makes me happy, of course.
drorzel | November 3, 2008
Fafblog! the whole world's only source for Fafblog.
""All we really need is some kind of simple technological solution," says Giblets, "like a garbage-powered weather machine or a synthetic source of God.""
(tags: fafblog science environment silly blogs)
McCain Refusing To Tell Voters What's In Box Unless Elected | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
Don't fall for it-- it's just Joe the Plumber
(tags: politics us silly onion)
slacktivist: Shine a light
"If we were to draw this relationship as a Venn diagram, bigotry would be a smaller circle entirely inside the larger circle of…
gregladen | November 3, 2008I don't want to give you too many carnivals today, because you will be too busy VOTING and doing GOTV stuff all day!!!!
The Last Edition of the Carnival to Replace Michele Bachmann. Ever. is at Tangled Up in Blue Guy
Berry Go Round #10 is at 10,000 birds.
Mendel's Garden #25 is at Evolgen
gregladen | November 3, 2008 Barack Obama's ailing grandmother died Monday in Hawaii, a day before Obama was to stand election for the presidency, his campaign announced.
Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86.
The Democratic presidential candidate announced the news in a joint statement with his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng. The statement said Dunham died peacefully after a battle with cancer.
source
zooillogix | November 3, 2008One of Zooillogix's readers, Tweet Gainsborough-Waring (awesome name btw), recently sent me these photos of ring tailed possums (the red ones) and brush possums (the grey ones), which she snapped on her way out to pizza in Brisbane, Australia. She pointed out that these furry little guys are fairly common in her neck of the woods, but to me they are exotic, so I'm sharing them.
So what's common in your neighborhood that clueless tourists might find fascinating? Growing up in New England, it was these adorable little guys:
In Japan, so I understand, the following fauna are quite common:…
gregladen | November 3, 2008Hmmm.... some's at the front door. I wonder who it is. This time of the year, it is likely to be someone canvassing for a candidate. Well, in that case, I'll answer the door and let them know right away who we'all are voting for so they can move on to the next house quickly and get their GOTV job done. Unless, of course, they are Republicans... then I'll engage them in conversation for as long as posible so that CAN'T get their job done...
... Hmm, can't quite see through this dumb peep-hole thing ... I think it is a lone female figure in a suit but can't quite make it out. Maybe a…