Coming Attraction

After the election, I'm planning an exceptions to biological rules series. For instance, warm blooded fish and asexual reproduction in unlikely animals. It'll be good.

I'm watching the Obama 1/2 hour ad now. Also good.

This feels like...

To put this election into words I can understand, this feels like 2004 after we beat the Yankees and took the first game against the Cardinals. I have the sense that victory should be ours, but it is likely that what should happen may not, and in its place something I don't want to think about.

Ice sculpture meltdown

Some kids made an ice sculpture in lower Manhattan that, given the temperature of around 40 degrees, is expected to melt in about a day. Good one guys.

Politifact

This site, though not particularly well named, is good for election fact checking. It's also fairly objective. Turns out the 'Palin makes women pay for rape kits' story is not really black and white.

Of course, it also turns out McCain/Palin get the pants on fire rating all the time, and even more so recently.

Debate III

Just watched debate 3. Ohh ya!

Where am I from digitally?

I often find myself startled, nay terrified, by my phone vibrating on a table in an otherwise quiet room. Does that make me a digital immigrant? I'm probably not a digital native (born 1978), but I've always liked to think of myself as a digital Dutchman. Could I at least be from digital El Paso?

"God Bless America"

There is no point fighting it. Like skidding on black ice, reacting too strongly only makes it worse. I've taken to singing along whenever possible, and at least for my favorite part, the climatic, crescendo of schmultz, the "oceans white with FOAM!"

Google, how dare you

Despite rumblings over corporations and their computer's supposedly impending omniscience, I marvel at Google's failure to directly advertise to me. Google clearly needs a Steve Goodman lecture on the problems of applying modern statistics in general and population based means in particular to individuals. A recent ad was just insulting. It was for a cricket website -- reasonable enough -- but the link read, "Real Men Play Cricket: Baseball Is for Boys." During the playoffs no less...

Okkervil River

This is one wicked good band. http://www.okkervilriver.com/

Contest

There have been several palindromic dates recently (like 10/02/2001), but there were none in our grandparents generation. The first person to post the most recent palindromic date that occurred before our lifetimes to the comments section will receive a bag of my favorite all around candy, Mike & Ikes Berry Blast (figure 1)--it's like real fruit but better. I will send the candy to you on my dime via United States Post. Note: over my dead body will Mike & Ikes be mailed to anyone who tries to post a date in day/month/year. Only good only American month/day/year dates will be considered.

Figure 1:

The Bunk

When I was in my twenties, young, brash sapling that I was, I secretly snubbed cat owners. Girls I knew would go on and on about cats rejecting their medicine, and how their cat was the craziest cat in the world. Deep down I worried that it was an admission of the reality of the 'biological clock'. Moreover, how could all their cats be the world's craziest? (Being a largely female contingent they lacked the imperative to find who really was number 1.)

Now that I am a cat owner and a ripened 30 years of age, I've come realize, hypocritically, that I have the craziest cat (Fig 1) in the world. If not the craziest, he is at least the greatest slob of the feline species. May I suggest this litany provides some evidence of my claim:

1. He sleeps on his back hind legs splayed; it's obscene (Fig 2).
2. He ate a controlling interest in a plastic bag.
3. He eats pasta.
4. He drinks from the toilet.
5. He once drank part of an espresso.
6. He pushed over a pint glass.
7. He pushed over a pile of magazines.
8. He pushed over a couch.
9. To get into my bedroom to sleep on my pillow, he broke down a French door.

Figure 1: The Bunk Sitting

Figure 2: The Bunk Sleeping

Mainetoberfest link

I declare this the official link of Mainetoberfest.

Sarah Palin: Folk Hero

I can't take it! Democrats are letting this, Palin, become a folk hero. Everyone knows she lies, everyone knows that she supported the Bridge to Nowhere, everyone knows she overstated the progress on her pipeline. But when the Democrats rely on the media to fact check these insane claims the story appears on the back pages. Look at this story on and ad claiming Obama "supporting sex ed for kindergartners" (as it turns out Obama supported education on teaching children to avoid sexual predators and other age appropriate education). If democrates come out and say "Palin is a liar", then that's a huge story, reported everywhere, and Palin must address it directly. But the actually candidates need to speak the words, not the media, to make it an issue. It's just 4 words. Someone please, say it: Palin is a liar.

Your Obama Tax Cut

Some kid genius in my Hopkins Students for Obama group made this. It calculates your tax savings under Obama's tax plan compared to McCain's. I might not trust it to do my taxes but I like it nonetheless.

Super Buds for Super Bugs

Weed kills MRSA! Some coolass Italians got onto this one. Well done boys.

Cat BMI follow up

I've combed the Internet and spoken to several vets and evidently there is no universally accepted way to calculate cat BMI. The closest is a method involving back leg circumference and back leg length. It's totally stupid because cats store fat around their stomach. It's also surprisingly hard to figure out where a cat's leg starts. The hind appendages merge quite smoothly with the cat butt. The feeding direction on cans of cat food suggest 1 oz of food per pound of cat. My cat weighs 20 lbs and a can of cat food only holds 5.5 oz so my cat would need to eat 3 1/2 cans of food a day. Clearly that's too much cat food for me and I think too much for my cat. Humm...

Jüctencriedden

A friend of mine, the Monstrous Falafel, used a great German word the other day: jüctencriedden. How could a man who speaks no German use a word that was understood by a group of people who also speak no German, you ask? How did we even know it was a German word? Allow me to define the word and its authenticity will be self-eveident.

jüctencriedden \YUK-tin-CRI-den\, gender neuter, noun:
1. The scenario whereby one is hanging out with his wife and one of his wife's female friends who has brought along her new boyfriend. One feels pressure to hang out with the new boyfriend due to ones shared gender. The new boyfriend turns out to be a bit of a douche bag, and this goes unrecognized by your wife because of the convenience of putting the dudes together while she socializes with her friend. Inevitably, the douche bag new boyfriend does not like sports and becomes aggressive at any mention of professional baseball.

Sea Urchin

Since the early 1980s lobstermen in Maine have supplemented their income by diving for sea urchin which they sell to Japanese restaurants. Locally, sea urchin are known as "whore's eggs." Last week on a visit to Maine, I asked lobstermen M.H. why they gave that nickname to the seemingly already derisively named sea urchin. M.H. replied, "because that's what they look like."

McCain's foreign policy

In this very short article written in May, Fareed Zakaria outlines how foreign policies under Obama and McCain might differ using actual policy statements made by the candidates. The article foreshadows the strong words McCain used against Russia this week, and explains how the logical extensions of those words might play out. For instance, McCain supports thowing Russia out of the G8 and isolating China. FZ explains real differences so simply. If you think engaging your enemies diplomatically can prevent war, vote for Obama. If you'd like to undo presidents Nixon and Reagan's greatest foreign policy achievments, and live in a more polarized, paranoid world, then you should vote for McCain.

Strange Maps

May I divert your attention to a far superior blog.