Month: November 2004

Yesterday’s Astronomy Photo Of The Day was a very cool time-lapse photo of the recent lunar eclipse by Forrest J. Egan. Click the photo for a larger version…

The map below takes the two-party “blue state” vs. “red state” paradigm a step further, showing how slim most of the margins in each state were by coloring each state via a graded legend that ranges from blue to red. The result is a “purple haze,” to quote Boing Boing.

The second map below is pretty cynical but complements my surly/depressed mood perfectly. Not A Dollarshort rethinks the Canada-U.S. border, coming up with Canada 2.0 (a similar map is somewhat more extreme, but I’ll link to it anyway). I really like the inspiration for this:

From the moment I woke up this morning, I’ve been hearing Ving Rhame’s Marsellus Wallace character from Pulp Fiction in my head:

“Hey, Red America you’ve just lost your Canada 2.0 privileges.”

Too funny.

The 2004 Presidential Election is over. With Ohio appearing to be beyond his reach, Senator Kerry called W to concede about an hour ago; here are the latest results. Although I’m obviously extremely disappointed with this outcome, I’m glad that Kerry decided not to overly draw out the process, wisely realizing that such an action would “further divide this country.”

I had really hoped that more people would realize the dire state W has put our country in. I am genuinely afraid of what will happen to this nation with four more years of W…

DVDAnswers.com concludes its reviews of the original Star Wars trilogy DVD releases with Part Three, which features Star Wars VI: Return Of The Jedi. As in Parts One and Two, the article compares the original, Special Edition, and DVD releases of the first Star Wars trilogy, highlighting the changes between them with screen shots.

TiVo is offering a cool new service, the ability to link to programs so that you can remotely program them upon someone’s blog recommendation. For example, if I were to recommend tomorrow’s showing of American Splendor, then if you had activated your TiVo Central Online account (a free service now, I believe) then you could click on that link and remotely program the movie to be recorded by your TiVo. I haven’t seen too many sites catch on to this yet, but I may try it out if I see something worthwhile. By the way, out of curiosity, do any of my readers have TiVo?

I hope everyone exercised their right to vote today; I just returned from the polls.

For those of you that are still undecided, may I point you to a slightly more unconventional candidate: Cobra Commander (links to page with Shockwave video). “I once was a man, and I approve this message.” 🙂

The somewhat rare Douglas Adams book The Meaning of Liff is available for online viewing. Although very similar to “sniglets,” these are much funnier and are based on odd (mostly) British names rather than made-up words.

I think Independent gadfly Ralph Nader has finally lost it, although I think that’s a relative measure for this misguided megalomaniac. After being excluded from the presidential debates, Nader is now offering his own version for sale, in which he debates action figures of Kerry and W. If only I were kidding…

Marc Rantz is taking Michael Moore’s suggestion and is offering download links for the movie Fahrenheit 9/11. I haven’t seen it yet, but I planned on renting it or catching it on cable eventually. When I get home, I’ll see how long it takes to download some of the larger versions…

In other, slightly less important news ;-), author Nick Robinson is celebrating the launch of his new book Adult Origami by creating the world’s biggest origami penis, at 10 foot 7 inches. I would say the the image on the page is NSFW, but it’s hard to keep a straight face while doing so.