Eclecticism

Sometime between 06:40 and 16:05, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Cartoon-off: The New Yorker vs. XKCD: The Rules—each contender is to draw: The Internet, as envisioned by the elderly; String Theory; 1999; Your favorite animal eating your favorite food.
• Voter Fraud Fraud: The idea that Democrats try to win elections by arranging for hordes of nonexistent people with improbable names to vote for them has long been a favorite theme of Rove-era Republicans. Now it’s become a desperate obsession.
• Lexical Analysis of 2008 US Presidential and Vice-Presidiential Debates – Who’s the Windbag?: 1 minute summary Speech structural parameters of candidates fall within very narrow tolerances, suggesting high degree of wordsmithing and rehearsal. For example, noun/verb/adjective/adverb ratio is nearly identical, as is unique word count and noun phrase profile. Speech of Presidential candidates is more complex and less repetitive than that of their Vice-Presidential counterparts. Biden is the most repetitive speaker. The Obama/McCain debates began with balanced performance from both candidates but end with Obama verbally overpowering McCain with overwhelming superiority in concepts delivered.
• ‘Joe the Plumber’ says he has no plumbing license: Wurzelbacher said he was surprised that his name was mentioned so many other times. "That bothered me. I wished that they had talked more about issues that are important to Americans," he told reporters gathered outside his home.
• The Stranger Election Control Board Endorsements: Poorly formatted (a number of missing headers, so there's no indication of when they stop talking about one issue and start with another), vulgar, occasionally offensive, and with mildly NSFW ads…but that's The Stranger for you. Here's their recommendations for this year's election. Also available: a quick and simple cheat sheet .pdf.

Sometime between 06:39 and 15:51, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Star Trek Images: Enterprise Crew!: The first shot of the bridge crew from the new Star Trek film: Chekov, Kirk, Scotty, McCoy, Sulu, and Uhura. On the same page, other pics: Spock and Kirk in a tussle, Nero (the villain), Kirk climbing an ice wall, Kirk and McCoy on a bridge (unclear whether it's the Enterprise's bridge). Also released to the 'net today: an FX shot of the USS Kelvin getting thrashed, and the cover of next week's Entertainment Weekly featuring Spock and Kirk.
• The Muppet Newsflash: Henson to Produce Adult Puppet Noir: …the original feature film will take place in a world where humans and puppets co-exist – although in this society puppets are viewed as a second-class citizens. When the puppet cast of "The Happytime Gang", a popular '80s children's TV show, begin to dropping like flies, a disgraced puppet LAPD detective turned private eye takes on the case. (This text is from the version of the post in my RSS reader, the version of the post being linked has slightly less detail.)
• Sacramento GOP Web site encouraged people to ‘waterboard Obama’: Taking credit for the site and its content was county party chairman Craig MacGlashan — husband of Sacramento County Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan. "I'm aware of the content,"he said. "Some people find it offensive, others do not. I cannot comment on how people interpret things." By Tuesday night, much of the questionable material — which ranged from depicting Obama in a turban to attacking Michelle Obama — had been removed, replaced with political cartoons attacking Obama.
• Commentary: Time for Palin to answer tough questions: While I agree with everything here, there's nothing terribly new. Mostly worthy for this soundbite: "Tina Fey has actually done more interviews about playing Sarah Palin than Sarah Palin has done about being Sarah Palin!"
• YouTube to McCain: No special treatement for DMCA takedowns: As Levine puts it, "We try to be careful not to favor one category of content on our site over others, and to treat all of our users fairly, regardless of whether they are an individual, a large corporation, or a candidate for public office."
• John Cleese on The Funniest Palin: The former Monty Python star shares his unsparing thoughts and views about vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

Sometime between October 13th and October 14th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Obama/Biden Tax Calculator: According to this, Prairie and I will save about $1000/yr under Obama's tax plan…and $0 under McCain's. Sure, it's partisian, but if the math is right, I sure won't be complaining.
• Anatomy of a LEGO minifig: Jason Freeny, a talented artist and designer, rendered the anatomy of a minifig in stunning detail. Wait, I never knew our minifigs had so much guts, and pretty much everything else is included as well, down to the family jewels.
• Palin vindicated?: Sarah Palin's reaction to the Legislature's Troopergate report is an embarrassment to Alaskans and the nation. She claims the report "vindicates" her. She said that the investigation found "no unlawful or unethical activity on my part." Her response is either astoundingly ignorant or downright Orwellian.
• Acorn pushes back, hugs McCain: Bertha Lewis, Acorn's chief organizer, said in a statement that came with the photo, “It has deeply saddened us to see Senator McCain abandon his historic support for ACORN and our efforts to support the goals of low-income Americans. We are sure that the extremists he is trying to get into a froth will be even more excited to learn that John McCain stood shoulder to shoulder with ACORN, at an ACORN co-sponsored event, to promote immigration reform. (via AxsDeny)
• 15 Uses for Micro Black Holes:

Sometime between October 11th and October 13th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Johnston speaks about Bristol Palin, Obama, baby: Sarah Palin's soon-to-be son-in-law and father of her teenage daughter's child is a high school dropout who didn't even bother to register to vote. Family values, abstinence-only sex ed, and political consciousness for the WIN!
• What the Troopergate Report Really Says: …the Branchflower report still makes for good reading, if only because it convincingly answers a question nobody had even thought to ask: Is the Palin administration shockingly amateurish? Yes, it is. Disturbingly so. The 263 pages of the report show a co-ordinated application of pressure on Monegan so transparent and ham-handed that it was almost certain to end in public embarrassment for the governor. The only surprise is that Troopergate is national news, not just a sorry piece of political gristle to be chewed on by Alaska politicos over steaks at Anchorage's Club Paris.
• The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama: An examination of legal documents and election filings, along with interviews with his acquaintances, revealed Mr. Martin, 62, to be a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims. He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years. He is a law school graduate, but his admission to the Illinois bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.” (via curt_m)
• Alien lizards set to invade ABC in ‘V’: …the new "V" will center on Erica Evans, a Homeland Security agent with an aimless son who’s got problems. When the aliens arrive, her son gloms on to them — causing tension within the family. As in the original "V," several storylines will unfold simultaneously. But even without the same storyline, the original "V’s" bones will remain: As in the ’80s version, the show will open with an enormous army of spaceships hovering over the world’s major cities. The visitors say they’ve come to help Earth, but their motives are nefarious (in the original, they wanted to steal the world’s water supply).
• Orbicule | Undercover: According to a recent FBI report, 97% of all stolen computers are never recovered. Many people we know have had their Macs stolen, often in 'safe' situations. That's why we developed Undercover: a unique theft-recovery application designed from the ground up for Mac OS X.

Sometime between 10:52 and 17:27, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Star Trek Trailer Coming in November: A source tells TrekMovie the theatrical trailer coming in November “is not a teaser, but a real trailer with footage from the film.” Edits are still being made, but it is expected to show the Enterprise exterior and the Enterprise bridge as well as dialog from movie. Which weekend in November the trailer will be released is still up in the air.
• Red Right Hand: THOUGHTS ON THE FIREFLY 7th SEASON PREMIERE: The end is nigh. The last season of Firefly started last night and if the season premiere is any indication, it comes a season too late.
• McCain Defends His Rabid Crowds: The McCain campaign is defending crowd members at its recent rallies who have called Obama a terrorist, accused him of treason and even screamed "kill him" when his association with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers has been broached. (I was already bothered by McCain and Palin's habit of simply standing by and allowing the invectives to fly. The fact that their campaign is actually sending out press releases defending such outbursts, and trying to twist criticism of their silence into an attack on Obama, is truly, truly disturbing.)
• NY county sends ballots with Barack ‘Osama’: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's last name is spelled "Osama" on hundreds of absentee ballots mailed out this week to voters in Rensselaer County in upstate New York. The misspelling, which elections officials on both sides of the aisle insist was simply a typo, is causing embarrassment for the county.
• McCain campaign clears Palin in Troopergate ethics probe: "Trying to head off a potentially embarrassing state ethics report on Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, campaign officials released their own report Thursday that cleared her of wrongdoing." Well, that's nice of them. In that same vein, I'm about to release a report clearing myself of any wrongdoing as well. How convenient!

Sometime between October 8th and October 10th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Adeona: A Free, Open Source System for Helping Track and Recover Lost and Stolen Laptops: Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service. This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there's no need to rely on a single third party. What's more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving. This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner's choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop. (via MeFi)
• Kiss Penguins Goodbye if the Planet Warms 2 Degrees Celsius: According to a report from WWF if global warming increases temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius more than half of Antarctica's colonies of Emperor penguins could be wiped out.
• Under the Needle: A vote for beer over politics: What followed over the next 16 years not only made Rainier Washington's most popular beer once again, but also became a template for an entire industry. The wild Rainiers; the Jacques Cousteau parody; the Rainier croaking frogs — poorly aped in later years by Budweiser; and maybe the all-time most popular: motorcycle on a lonely country road Dopplering "RAAAAINIEEEER BEEEEEEEEEEER" as it shifts and speeds into the distance with the namesake mountain in the background. (I've long held that that motorcycle commercial was the best I've ever seen. Years later, and I still remember it clearly.)
• Bathtub III: Stop motion tilt-shift video. Making the real world look like miniatures.
• Take On Me: The Literal Version: Now it finally makes sense.

Sometime between 06:39 and 13:58, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Nebraska law lets parents abandon teens: Frustrated parents are dumping their teenagers at Nebraska hospitals — even crossing state lines to do it — and the state Legislature has scheduled a special hearing to try to stem the tide. Nebraska's "safe haven" law, intended to allow parents to anonymously hand over an infant to a hospital without being prosecuted, isn't working out as planned. Of the 17 children relinquished since the law took effect in July, only four are younger than 10 — and…on Tuesday, a 14-year-old girl from Council Bluffs, Iowa, was abandoned…. (I'm going to hell, but I find this horrifying and amusing — due to the badly written law — at the same time.) (via macanima)
• NY Times Editorial – Politics of Attack: It is a sorry fact of American political life that campaigns get ugly, often in their final weeks. But Senator John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin have been running one of the most appalling campaigns we can remember. They have gone far beyond the usual fare of quotes taken out of context and distortions of an opponent’s record — into the dark territory of race-baiting and xenophobia. Senator Barack Obama has taken some cheap shots at Mr. McCain, but there is no comparison.
• Stitch yourself a thinner depth-of-field: The picture above should be completely impossible to take with a 35mm-sized camera. It has the frame-of-view of about a 45mm lens, but the depth-of-field of shooting that lens at an impossibly fast f/0.8 (ish). But I shot it on a plain ol' DSLR with a plain ol' lens. How? Read on.
• Erecting The Needle Pt. 1: The Space Needle started construction in April of 1961. As digging began, the 120-foot by 12-foot (depth 30 feet) hole slowly filled with 5850 tons of concrete and steel. Anchoring the massive Space Needle, there would be more weight underground than in the tower itself.
• Palin’s future, according to Garrison Keillor: It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged.
• How to use Photoshop’s Lens Blur tool for tilt-shift fakery (Part 1 of 2): We all know Photoshop is a powerful tool. In two tutorials, I'll take you through how to use Photoshop CS3's Lens Blur filter to do two things: today, we'll make images look like they were shot with a tilt-shift lens. Tomorrow, we'll create clipping masks for objects that aren't entirely in focus.
• Why McCain can’t stop saying “my friends.”: This is the discomfort of "my friends": Although it hopes to evoke amici's wave of the arm over the agora, on the stump it remains a phrase that demands fealty when, in fact, that relationship has not yet been granted to the candidate. It feels faintly bullying—an unpleasant echo of the singular menace of my friend.