November 2000 Archives

Oh, please no. The one remaining hope I have for this election is that one of these dunderheads will vanish into the mists of obscurity. Unfortunately, some people are already hoping for a rematch in 2004. I guess this book title says it all.

Like the idea of massively multiplayer online roleplaying, but don't care for standard hack-and-slash fantasy? Perhaps Star Wars Galaxies would be more your cup of tea. It's still in early development, but the site has preliminary info, message boards, etc. When the software is ready for beta testing, this is where you'll be able to apply. [via IGN PC]

What if the American media wrote about the current U. S. election using the same language they use to describe foreign elections?

George W. Bush comes from a powerful, ruling elite family. His father was a ruthless leader, former head of the "brutal and feared" (We like that phrase for people like Milosevic) CIA. As President of the US and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, he "mercilessly" bombed Iraq back to the stone age and kicked into process the ethnic cleansing of more than a million Iraqi's. He was voted out of office and can't really run for president again, so he has sonny sit in. But the "clever maneuverer" (We like that phrase for people like Milosevic) he is, Bush Sr. places all of his old war buddies around sonny. W's new "cronies"--his "inner circle" are like a reunion of the war crimes tribunal that never was. Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, James Baker. It seemed the Bushes were heading back to the White House to pick up where they left off. They would "regain their grip on power." (We like that phrase for people like Milosevic).

Yes, this is a distorted, over-the-top depiction of our own situation. Still, it makes you wonder how distorted our view of worldwide events has become.

I can not believe that anyone could get this desparate for a new angle on the election story.

The poor man's James Bond?

By cranking the aerial, four high-tension springs are pulled back into the base of the phone and then each one can be released separately by pressing buttons five through eight. The spring then strikes the base of the bullet, held in the top half of the phone, and fires it out the top of the phone.

Someone is producing hold-out guns disguised as cell phones.

Playing around with movie quotes:

Listen! And understand! That candidate is out there. He can't be bargained with! He can't be reasoned with! He doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until he is president!

Yes, the antics of the AG2K are really starting to bore me.

I think I've seen these personal lie detectors for sale. At Wal-Mart. In the Toy department. That is wrong on more levels than I can bear to think about.

"Microsoft doesn't want you to use the Internet."

Also from Ghost: Why the DJ inside your head puts some songs in heavy rotation.

While I'll freely admit to a certain morbid fascination with the mechanics of the Election Which Will Not End, I am long since past caring which son of privilege gets to sell my country to the highest bidder for the next four years. Still, most of the funniest hatchet-jobs in the press seem to be targeted at the Shrub:

He struggles to exude authority. He furrows his brow, trying to look more sagacious, but he ends up looking as if he has indigestion. Appearing confused at his own speech, he seems like a first-grade actor in a production of "James and the Giant Peach." Are his blinks Morse code for "Oh, man, don't let that teleprompter break"?

This is strictly an aestheic (not political) judgement on my part; I can't claim to like ALGORE2000 (who I'm still convinced is a replicant programmed with a hodge-podge of human memories) any better. [via Ghost] Update: Here's a picture apparently inspired by this essay. [via Salon]

I'm sure there's are a number of things more pathetic than a bully who can't even face his or her victim face-to-face, but I can't think of anything st the moment.

I've been tryin to resist posting this article, since Everyboy Else Is Blogging It, but gosh darn it, Hunter S. Thompson's prose is just too good not to rip off.

Where did Gore think he was -- in some friendly Civics class? Hell no, he was in Florida, arguably the most Vicious & Corrupt state in the Union. ... Not only that, but he was brazenly invading Florida, trying to steal it from right under the noses of the whole Bush family. It was a bold move & brilliantly done, in some ways -- but then so was Lee's decision to invade the North & attack Gettysburg.

The real gem, though, is the description of Daddy Bush's reaction to the Florida vote:

The old man was the real tip-off. The leer on his face was almost frightening. It was like looking into the eyes of a tall hyena with a living sheep in its mouth. The sheep's fate was sealed, and so was Al Gore's. Everything since then has been political flotsam & Gibberish.

Oh, goody. Bad drivers are being given even further incentive to buy land barges.

According to Hunter, the planned discount for large cars like SUVs is not good for the people in smaller cars that are likely to get hurt in accidents involving SUVs. He also criticized the move as inequitable for poorer drivers who can’t afford the bigger cars that bring discounted rates. In addition, Hunter suggested that creating incentives to buy the typically less fuel-efficient large vehicles was environmentally unsound.

I drive a Chevrolet Cavalier (for which State Farm plans to reduce its discount), partially on the principle that I prefer a lighter, more agile car that gives me a better chance to avoid accidents; maybe it's time to change insurance companies. Another proposed turnaround: Are vehicles which are more likely to injure other drivers in an accident charged higher premiums on their liability insurance?

May I see your internal passport, comrade? Perhaps people who live in gated communities should get approval from the outside world before they leave their little fiefdoms; I wouldn't mind some protection from the kind of people who hold this sort of siege mentality. [via Lake Effect]

Tetrachromacy is an unusual genetic structure possessed by some women, which gives them a phenomenal ability to distinguish between different shades of color. Essentially, it gives them four sets of photoreceptors within the eye which react to different wavelengths of light, rather than the three that most people have. I may actually know someone like this, who can not only distinguish between very similar shades, but can remember exact shades of color well enough to match them. [via MeFi]

The first non-hysterical post-mortem I've seen of Ralph Nader's presidential campaign looks at a number of lessons that Nader, the Green Party, and any other grassroots political movement should take to heart.

Blogger Wireless Edition? Preinstalled? Is this actually a working product? I hear occasional rumors about all kinds of new products and services that the Blogger folks plan to offer, but I keep waiting for them to become available (even if only for paying customers). For example, I keep hearing about some kind of "post via e-mail" functionality, which I'd really love to have, especially if Santa is kind to me this year. As things stand, though, I keep thinking I'm going to have to roll my own code for a project I'd like to create.

It's not uncommon for me to eat lunch in my car, while listening to the local NPR station on my radio. Every now and then, the topic on Fresh Air or Talk of the Nation can be a bit unsettling for dining purposes. Today, Terry Gross was talking to Angela Landsbury, and played a musical selection from Sweeney Todd about cannibalism. All the while, I was munching on a Taco Bell taco full of seasoned ground beef.

At least, I hope it was beef.

Some people make a big deal over three-letter domain names. Does it really matter how short your domain name is if it has no clear relation to anything on your site? I was trying to check out Greg's latest, mistyped the URL, and spent a few minutes trying to figure out just what "WOD" could possibly mean in relation to this community information page.

Chi-Chian is some truly odd Flash animation from scifi.com. The only way I can think to describe it is "The Guyver as animated by Terry Gilliam".

I'm glad I didn't download the first few chapters of Stephen King's online serial, but I'm still sad that it flopped.

The Register discusses the various versions of Microsoft's "Naked PC" documents, which seem to have vanished from the company's site:

From the look of the one we've got now, it's an even earlier version than the 'old' version - the language is significantly more brutal and less subtle, and there are fewer embellishments. There would, for example, seem to be absolutely no chance that a user might buy a machine without Windows on it for the entirely legitimate purpose of installing a different operating system: "Trouble is, if you act on your customers' willingness to buy Naked PCs - knowing full well they are at risk of acquiring pirated operating systems elsewhere... And even if your customer manages to illegally acquire and install operating systems elsewhere..."

One more reason why I've come to prefer building my own systems from components.

Conan the Republican?

Arnold Schwarzenegger's been flashing his political aspirations again. The Republican muscle man is now saying he'd like nothing more than to be governor of California. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but you know, sometime.

Remember that line about President Schwarzenegger in Demolition Man? *shudder* I figure the campaign platform will go something like this:

• We will crush our enemies.
• We will see them driven before us.
• We will hear the lamentations of their women.

Sounds pretty Republican to me.

Could the lackluster response to Microsoft's Office Online signal that there isn't a demand for their .Net initiative? Assuming, of course, that anyone has a clear idea of just what .Net is.

I'm not sure how new this is, but this is the best article on this technology I've seen in a while. A couple of scientists from Cambridge are putting together a company to print electronic circuits onto a variety of materials. The process is similar to inkjet printing, and it appears that a single printer could easily adapt to producing a variety of designs, as opposed to expensive fabrication setups for silicon circuitry. While these plastic circuits wouldn't be as compact as silicon chips (and thus, no competition for dense circuitry, such as that in computer processors), for simpler systems, the production cost could be held to a fraction that of silicon.

Recipe: Bread Pudding

• 4 eggs
• 2 c. milk
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1/2 t. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 t. vanilla extract
• 1/4 t. salt
• 2 1/2 c. dry bread cubes (about 3 1/2 slices)
• 1/3 c. raisins

Beat together eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt. Place bread cubes in 8-inch (1 1/2 qt.) round baking dish. Sprinkle raisins over bread. Pour egg mixture over all. Bake in a 325° oven for 40 to 45 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool slightly.

Yield: 6 servings

Again, my mother and I have tinkered with the original recipe slightly; these days, we use dried cherries instead of raisins, and I'm sure the dried fruit of your preference would work just as well. Also, when I talked to Mom after I made this, she said that letting the dish chill overnight (as I did with the casserole) might be a good idea, to let the bread really soak up the egg mixture.

Recipe: French Onion Casserole

• 3 medium-sized sweet onions
• 2 T. butter or margarine
• 1 (8 oz.) package fresh mushrooms (sliced)
• 2 c. shredded Swiss cheese (divided)
• 1 (10 3/4 oz.) can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 small (5 oz.) can evaporated milk
• 2 t. soy sauce
• 6 (1/2 inch) slices French bread
• 1/4 c. finely chopped fresh parsley

Cut onions crosswise into 1/4 inch slices, cut each in half. Melt butter in large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook onion & mushrooms, stirring constantly, until tender. Spoon mixture into lightly greased 2-quart baking dish. Sprinkle with 1 cup cheese. Combine soup, milk, & soy sauce. Pour over cheese. Top with bread slices; sprinkle with remaining 1 cup cheese & parsley. Cover & chill 4 to 8 hours. Remove from refrigerator and let stand at room temperature 30 minutes. Cover & bake at 375° for 30 minutes. Uncover & bake 15 to 20 additional minutes or until thoroughly heated. Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

Yield: 6 servings

I'll admit that I took a couple of minor liberties with this recipe: I probably used larger onions than I should have, but cooked them down further, partially caramelizing. I also added a small amount (probably 1/4 cup or less) of Chardonnay to the mushrooms & onions a few minutes before I took them out of the skillet.

Is Blogger on the fritz again today? Well, anyway, I had a good Thanksgiving over at Sue's, even if my parents couldn't make the trip. My dishes went over quite well, and I'll try to post the recipes sometime today.

Today is the first Thanksgiving I can remember that I haven't spent with my parents.

In college, I was always close enough for a weekend drive back home when I wanted to, and the few massive extended-family Thanksgivings I attended at my Grandmother's were even closer. Even after I moved to St. Louis, either I managed a trip down to Mississippi, or my parents (both retired) could easily drive up to see me. This year, Mom & Dad were planning to drive up for a few days. However, a few weeks ago, my father injured his leg, and currently needs to keep his leg up as much as he can. Even if she drove, my mother was unwilling to keep Dad in a car for the 10-12 hour trip, and there really wasn't time for me to schedule a trip down to Mississippi.

It's not that I don't have anywhere to go this Thanksgiving; my cousin has invited me along to a friend of hers who's hosting a Thanksgiving gathering, and I'll be cooking a couple dishes of my own to contribute. (Recipes forthcoming if they work out well.) My parents will be going out for a good Thanksgiving dinner, and my Dad is recovering nicely from his injury. However, Thanksgiving has always been a time for my parents and I to get together, and I'll miss that this year. At least I should be able to drive down for Christmas.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving to everyone out there, especially my parents, who will be in my thoughts today.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the voting booth:

The best spin of the week, by far, was an email distributed by Pat Buchanan supporters and other black–helicopter rightwingers. It claimed that the "Big TV Networks" had purposefully botched the election–night projection in order to encourage widespread support for a computer voting system "that can be manipulated from a central location by satellite."

I honestly thought this election couldn't get any more surreal, but then Buchanan's crew throw their tinfoil hats into the ring.

The Game Report Online, companion to a quarterly dead-trees magazine (archived on the site, eventually), appears to be a board and card game weblog with an extensive library of reviews. I've seen a lot of these neat-looking games in one local game shop, but many of them seem a bit pricey to pick up knowing little about them. Now I've a good source for information on these types of games. This site is also giving me further ideas about the new RPG blog I'm considering to supplant BoH.

I was up at 5:30 this morning futzing around with hard drive ribbon cables in an attempt to get my CD-RW and CD-ROM drives to play nice together. I'm all for a new internal cabling standard. In the meantime, I have to find another ribbon cable that allows more than 5 inches between drives.

The new Star Wars Roleplaying Game is supposed to come out tomorrow; I'm looking forward to it, especially haing read this review. [links via ooine] As this new game comes from the publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, and uses the same "D20 system" core rules, I was tempted to post this over at my D&D weblog, the Blog of Holding. However, I've been neglecting that site lately; seeking out good special-topic links is a bit different from collecting the links that I stumble upon into this site. However, I am happy with the reviews I've written for BoH. So, I'm considering revamping and repurposing that site, either into a game-review log, or a general role-playing log. Any comments or suggestions?

These aren't the droids you're looking for.

I'm sure you could keep out burglars by bricking over your doors and windows too.

I still want to know if George Harrison's would-be killer was carrying a copy of Catcher in the Rye.

More sequel news: The next Star Trek movie has a writer; since this one (number ten) is an even number, it should Fail to Suck.

I still like my idea for the next Austin Powers movie better: Austin and Dr. Evil team up against some common foe (Scott, perhaps?). [link via Salon]

Going into Computer Renaissance (a chain used-computer shop) last night was a mistake. They had a huge stack of old Pentium/75 systems selling for under $80. If I hadn't just bought some new hardware to upgrade Madhatter, I'd be all over this; a P75 should be more than sufficient for the experimental Linux/Apache system I've been wanting to throw together. The guy from the shop said they're trying to move a couple hundred of these boxes; maybe some will survive until my next payday.

Wasn't there another incident, about a year ago, in which an entire (I want to say South American) soccer team was killed by lightning?

Few movie sequels are worth watching, but computer game sequels are often a different story. Thus my excitement over the upcoming Master of Orion III, sequel to a pair of space-based empire-building games that I loved. One innovation looks both to simplify gameplay and complicate strategy (which I mean in the best possible way):

One of the main obstacles to the sense of momentum and time pressure in these games is that you’ve been able to take as long as you like managing every single aspect of your empire. Since the games are turn-based and reward meticulous micromanagement of every aspect of your empire, players have often taken an hour or two just to get through a handful of turns. Master of Orion III introduces the concept of Imperial Focus. This is really just a system of action points that you’ll need to spend to make adjustments to your administration. Now you’re going to have to decide what policies have the highest priority and spend your Imperial Focus on those. And the amount of Focus you get is dependent on your technology level as well as your race and culture type. I like it.

Space combat seems to have moved away from micromanagement (and into real time) as well, by splitting your fleets into task forces which may be assigned particular objectives, but not controlled directly. Unfortunately, it looks like I'll have a whole year to lust after this title.

By the way, I got to blow up a sun this weekend.

My gaming group has started a Star Trek roleplaying game campaign this past weekend, and I took command of the Federation Starship Indefatigable as Captain Warren Darius Kincade. The whole sun thing was only an accident. Really. The full explanation involves a Borg command cruiser, a region of gravitational distortion, and a Romulan warp core singularity, and is far too complicated to explain here. Let's just say that the cow orker I tried to explain it to looked at me even funnier then usual.

Oh yeah. Blogger claims to be back in service again. Our long national nightmare is over. Well, one of our long national nightmares, anyway.

Now that USA Networks have lost the rights to air WWF wrestling, they're going to have to find their original violent entertainment (Not That There's Anything Wrong With That) somewhere else. It looks like they're turning to producer Mark "Survivor" Burnett for a new "reality series" called "Combat Missions", which pits military personnel against each other in (hopefully) simulated combat situations. Still, I have to wonder about Burnett's definition of reality:

In addition to a planned third installment of "Survivor," Burnett is working with NBC on a space-themed reality show dubbed "Destination Mir," which has a contestant winning a trip to space. However, recent problems with the Russian space station Mir, which was the destination of the journey, may derail the project though Burnett remains committed to the project.

He'd better hurry, as the Russians plan to crash Mir into the ocean in February.

Taking a leak: The Register explains how to pass on sensitive data without getting fingered for it.

This is why (even though I'm not that much of a sports fan) I worry about all the fuss over a new stadium for the Cardinals, on either side of the river: Lots of these publicly-funded stadium boondoggles get passed eventually.

With Thanksgiving only a few days away, I have a confession to make: I don't like turkey. Usually, when my parents and I get together, we have something more along the lines of a baked ham or a standing rib roast. However, I've finally seen a turkey roasting recipe that left my mouth watering. I watched the Good Eats "Romancing the Bird" special earlier this week (you gotta love a cooking show that rips off the red pill / blue bill scene from The Matrix), and host Alton Brown's recipe, soaking the bird in a brine, filling the turkey with aromatics instead of stuffing, and ensuring that both white and dark meat are perfectly done, looked line a winner. I might be able to talk my mother into trying this one out at Christmas.

The FBI's "Carnivore" net-surveillance system may be even hungrier than I thought.

In the lab report, FBI officials said Carnivore "could reliably capture and archive all unfiltered traffic to the internal hard drive" and could save the information on removable high-capacity disks as well.

The more I hear about these "black box" snoopers, the more omnivorous they sound.

Because local politicos couldn't find enough stupid people to support an effort earlier this year to publically fund a new stadium for the St. Louis Cardinals, an Illinois legislator is trying to lure the Cards to a proposed stadium across the river.

I use Excite as my start page, and some odd links turn up from time to time.

If any of you other Iron Chef fans don't have any plans for New Year's Eve, you can always watch the Food Network's 24-hour Iron Chef Marathon. Which episodes will they be showing? Now, that's up to you. Vote early, vote often, and make damn sure you don't leave any hanging chad.

Sunnydale has been saved from its greatest threat to date; Britney will not be appearing on Buffy after all.

I haven't been paying that much attention to Sony's Memory Stick technology, but I may have to give it a closer look now. I've heard bits and pieces about the MS as a proprietary standard for memory devices that can be shared by Sony computers, video and still cameras, music players, PDA's, etc. Now, however, Sony is working on positioning MS as a more general peripheral interface. At Comdex, the company showed off samples of GPS, digital camera, and thumbprint scanner modules that plug into an MS slot, and they claim to have other devices in the pipeline. This makes Sony's new Clié PDA even more attractive, as Memory Stick peripherals could be as varied as Handspring's Springboard modules for its line of Visor PDA's, with the addition of interoperability with other Sony devices.

There is no A-List.

It seems that the people of the United States are handling the unfinished election much better than the media.

I picked up Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon on CD for the road trip back from Chicago, and giggled when a plot point hinged on eavesdropping on the Iridium satellite phone system. Didn't those guys lose their shirts and shut down the system? Now it looks like Iridium may get the last laugh after all.

I'd like to propose an alternative to pure electronic voting, which still has its weaknesses: stand-alone electronic confirmation that catches any discrepancies on a ballot before final submission. Voters would still punch or mark their ballots as normal, but before placing the completed ballot in a box, they run it through a scanner that checks that individual ballot, but doesn't tally it or connect to anything else. In the privacy of this confirmation booth, the voter sees a listing of his or her selected votes, with any missing or multiple punches clearly marked. One of my cow orkers suggests placing an indicator light outside as well, so a volunteer can approach the voter and ask if they need any assistance; however, if the voter still wants to submit the ballot, he can.

Dammit, Jesse Ventura, you already have a job.

"The governor has got to understand that he was elected to do a 24-hour-a-day job," state Senate Majority Leader Roger Moe said. "That's what being governor of the state is. You don't know when the tornadoes are going to sweep through. They don't stay away from Saturday nights."

The Minnesota governor (who took time out for a one-shot WWF show last year) is planning on monlighting as an announcer for the WWF's upcoming football league, the XFL, on a regular basis.

I haven't been following the Rajkumar story here, but I know a number of webloggers have. For anyone who doesn't know, Rajkumar is a phenomenally popular Indian actor who was kidnapped by Veerappan, India's most notrous bandit, back in July. Veerappan seems to be sort of a more vicious Robin Hood type: an alleged champion of India's poor, with an impenetrable forest hideout and a loyal network of associates and informants. According to the latest news, Rajkumar has been released unharmed, even though the government has never met Veerappan's demands (Update: At least not all of them), which centered around the release of a number of prisoners.

No matter what happens down in Florida, we will have a new president on Inauguration day, one way or another. The system will work, even if it doesn't work the way people who couldn't be bothered to understand the Constitution assumed it would.

TiVo is running another essay contest to give away more of their digital video recorders. In case you missed it a couple months ago, a lot of webloggers, myself included, won free TiVo's for writing some really lame essays. Turned out they were giving away far more than the ten per day the contest rules claimed; I think there was one day when a good 30-40 people out of the MetaFilter community won. I'm not going to get into a long review, but I have enjoyed my recorder.

Maybe this whole "democracy" thing just isn't working out. In fact, perhaps a different George should be running the show.

For some reason, there seems to be a lot of interest in usability issues over the past week. Can't imagine why. Anyway, I saw a new book on GUI Bloopers at a bookstore this week. The site is little more than an ad for the book, but does include a few examples that didn't make the book, as well as a couple of sample chapters. The User Interface Hall of Shame is better, but hasn't been updated in a few months. (Too bad; I'd love to see an analysis of everything that's wrong with the latest version of Lotus Notes.)

Don't I wish.

Some collectible card games describe themselves as "customizable card games", but DragonElves may actually deserve that description. Apparently, instead of purchasing packs of randomly-selected cards with predefined abilities, you buy blocks of points which you use to design your own cards, print them out, and play. I haven't looked at this site in the detail I'd like (I just drove back from Chicago), but it's a fascinating concept.

I'm off to Chicago for a couple of days; don't expect much in the way of updates before Wednesday.

Britannica's article on The Physics of Pro Wrestling explains how wrestlers use the principles of physics to limit real damage to themselves while making their moves look more dangerous.

When Mankind strikes the wooden table it breaks, really brakes, his fall. The table itself takes additional time to collapse and therefore increases the overall time of Foley's impact, thereby decreasing the force he feels. This is the same principle that allows air bags to help prevent serious injuries in car accidents. One way or another, the passenger is going to stop moving—this is Newton's first law. But the air bag extends the duration of impact—even a fraction of a second will greatly reduce the force experienced by the passenger.

I'm enough of a wrestling geek that I often try to look close enough to determine just how the wrestlers limit their chance of serious injury. I've come to the conclusion that most of the more spectacular, dangerous-looking moves are those that give the "attacker" more control over both wrestlers' movements, and therefore more room to avoid real damage. Also in the Britannica: The history of the cinematic geek, and Britney's navel.

The difference between the U.S. and an emerging democracy is that we have a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. And enough weaponry to turn the entire planet into a lifeless cinder, but I'm sure that's beside the point. [via MeFi]

I was really hoping that ICANN was eventually going to do something useful to improve the domain name situation. Instead, they seem to be rejecting the most popular and useful proposals, which nearly everyone wants: .xxx and .kids. Admittedly, neither one would be a cure-all for issues of child protection, parental control, etc. But I think enough sites would voluntarily move to these domains to make it much easier to find child-friendly sites and avoid the bulk of porn sites.

More tech lust: A number of vendors are offering tiny multi-megabyte portable storage devices that plug into USB ports. I particularly like the looks of the DiskOnKey, which claims to be available to the system in seconds, with no need to install a driver.

Epinionated folks seem to be pretty happy with the two-way pager I've been looking at. This may end up on my list for Santa.

Despite British claims of authority over the manmade island, the Principality of Sealand still claims sovereignty, and plans to open its offshore data haven sometime this month.

Another explanation of the Electoral College for children.

I love living in the world's largest banana republic.

All the wailing and moaning and gnashing of theeth over the Electoral College has convinced me that very few Americans have the first clue how our government works. I used to believe that most people's understanding of Civics came from "Schoolhouse Rock" at best, but I'm beginning to wonder if they were evn paying that much attention; after all, the electoral system is hardly so complicated that a cartoon can't explain it. [links via MeFi]

I just received my latest ThinkGeek order, including a white Photon Micro-Light II. Damn but that little sucker's bright.

The complete Ratherisms.

O'Really and Associates now offer a line of T-Shirts for the discerning system administrator. (No, that isn't a typo.)

In Alabama, interracial marriage is finally constitutional.

A Christian conservative politician finally notices that filtering software doesn't work when his own site is blocked.

John Ashcroft has decided not to challenge the election of the late Mel Carnahan to the U.S. Senate.

"The looney detector van, you mean."

Today's gadget lust: a cloth keyboard for PDA's, which you can roll up and stick in your pocket. It looks to present some of the same problems with using it without a convenient flat surface as the Palm folding keyboard. However, it looks easy to carry, and may be cheaper than existing PDA keyboards.

This Electoral Map (PDF format) of the U.S. shows the states sized by their number of electoral votes. The electoral projections and results I've seen on geographically accurate maps of the U.S. seem to amplify the appearance of Bush's popularity in sparsely-populated western states. The results shown are only an amateur projection from before the election. [via Lake Effect]

As far as I'm concerned, the most important result of this election is not who won or lost, but who got involved. I'm still looking for certain types of statistics on voter turnout, but it looks like this election has seen the highest rate of participation in my lifetime. If the American people can continue to see the importance of their power, The era of voter apathy is over. Citizens are still capable of believing that their votes matter. Please, stick with this. Keep voting, even in smaller elections, which may be more important to the way ordinary people live their lives. As I voted yesterday, I began to see that the smaller, more local issues on the ballot were the ones most likely to effect my life. And yet, I spent less time and effort looking trying to understand those issues. I'm sad to see that the tax increase for the local school district (Parkway, one of the better public systems in the area) failed, even though I don't have kids; I grew up in a good public school system, and strongly support the availability of good public education.

The voting is over, even if the counting isn't. There's still a chance that a recount in Florida could hand that state's critical electoral votes to Gore, but I figure the recount is more of a formality, and that Bush will be our next president.

Of course, the hand-wringing has begun.

Democrats are blaming Nader, writing off the next four years as Hell on Earth, threatening to leave the country, etc. In doing so, they seem to be confirming everything conservatives say about the liberal view of an all-powerful, all-controlling government. Many progressives, without control of the government, sounds ready to throw up their hands and surrender. I honestly think these people are forgetting how much freedom they have in this country, how much power they hold as private citizens, how much they can accomplish when they work for their principles.

If you're not satisfied with the results of this election, don't give up. Roll up your sleeves and start working on a local level. Volunteer. Protest. Help people who need it. Support local elected officials who do share your views. If you can't count on the government to support your beliefs for the time being, then you'll have to back them up for yourselves.

Here in Missouri, we have elected a dead man to the United States Senate; Mel Carnahan's widow, Jean, will be appointed to fill her late husband's post. I'd like to point out that this is not without precedent. In October of 1972, Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana died in a plane crash shortly before the election; when he won, his widow, Lindy Boggs, won a special election to fill his seat. She served admirably for eighteen years, winning eight reelections on her own merits, and now serves as the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

Voter turnout in St. Louis has been heavy enough to trigger a legal fight in an attempt to keep the polls open until a later hour.

The close presidential race seems to be driving the highest voter turnout in my lifetime. This level of interest seems more significant than the final outcome.

The funniest political commercial I've seen this year almost makes me wish I lived in Minnesota, so I could vote for this guy.

Here's a review of the little two-way pager I've been ogling. Best Buy has these with a massive rebate (requiring a service agreement, no doubt), so the temptation is growing.

In the words of William Gibson, "The street finds its own uses for things." The LEGO company has been wise enough to understand this; as a result, open source hacker tools have helped to drive sales of LEGO Mindstorms robotics toys.

I never new that Terry Jones of Monty Python wrote fairy tales.

When the Playstation 2 debuts in Europe, it may include a version of the BASIC programming language in order to avoid a tariff which applies to games, but not to computers.

I'm sorry to say that I had completely forgotten the existence of The Buffy Log! during the long summer hiatus.

If you bear a Y Chromosome, I highly recommend that you check out apemen.com, the "home of the renaissance neanderthals". It's an online "men's magazine", but doesn't seem to be as exploitative as the T&A mags you see on the newsstand. There are, of course, a few pictures of lovely models, but I honestly read this site primarily for the articles on subjects like hard cider, web design books, and missile defense. I started reading it because Peter Milan mentioned he wrote for it; I didn't realize that Matt Rossi was writing here as well, until I read a couple of articles that seemed to reflect his distinctive style. Anyway, while someone needs to check a few of the front-page links, and archives would be nice. this is good stuff.

I voted this morning. Have you?

My polling place was the office of my apartment complex. I wasn't expecting it to take very long, so I decided to stop in on my way to work. I knew it wasn't going to be quite as convenient as I had hoped when it took me five minutes to get far enough into the (small) parking lot to find a space. I ignored the people outside the office handing out election literature, and joined the line that snaked through the TV room. It took me half an hour to reach the volunteer election officials, and a few more minutes to clear up some confusion about who was supposed to hand me which piece of paper. Once I actually had my ballot in hand, half of the dozen voting booths were open; I walked to the best-lit booth and started punching holes.

How I voted is a private matter. The only specific vote I'll admit to was in favor of a local school bond issue; public school funding is important to me, probably even more so than any elected official, up to and including the Prez.

For the sake of linking something, I'll briefly note that the ballot card had an instruction to remove all the loose chad that hadn't come all the way off the card before putting it in the box.

Students at the University of Maryland are rising up against an effective Microsoft Tax. The company's new university licensing agreement involves a $20 per head charge for every student on campus, whether or not they use said MS products, or have already paid to use them out of their own pockets. Billy G may be doing some honest good in some areas, but that's doing nothing to slow his company's rapacious greed.

Looks like Amazon is playing games with prices again. This time, a "special offer" sent to regular UK customers is actually higher than their regular price for Pterry's new Discworld novel on the website.

The Shark MX is essentially a PDA add-on for the Game Boy handheld game system, which includes the ability to send and receive e-mail. Cool. I've just started seeing these things in stores, and they're cheap enough that I'm tempted to get one so that I can have easy e-mail access when I travel. The biggest obstacle is that apparently you have to subscribe to their service, and I can't seem to find out how much said service costs.

Today's LEGO coolness is a car factory, built out of LEGO, that cranks out little LEGO cars. Somewhere, von Neumann is smiling. [via LarkFarm, who got it from Danelope]

Is MeFi getting Slashdotted today or something?

Good article comparing Ralph Nader's presidential bid (and the mainstream reaction to it) to that of Robert La Follette earlier this century.

On Nov. 7, wise and decent Americans will cast their ballots for Al Gore, George W. Bush and Ralph Nader. No vote will be wasted. Some votes may be cast out of fear; yet even the frightened are forgiven by Robert M. La Follette -- when young Phil complai