Now that I'm living in DC, I would really like to go to the Capitol for Inauguration Day. I looked into how it works, and apparently they give out tickets (250,000), and if you don't get a ticket, you can go, but you'll be behind about 250k people.

I came across an article telling me that I should contact my representative to get tickets. DC has one non-voting representative (Taxation without Representation!), so I went to her website to see what the deal is.

"Special Alert: Inauguration Tickets Not Available, Please do not call or email." That's discomforting... She wrote a post saying that the representatives only gets a few tickets each, and she already took down about a thousand names on a waiting list, and isn't going to take any more. Oh well, I'll still try and go anyway.

If you haven't heard, Change.gov is a new website for the president-elect. I'm glad to see the government is starting to take a turn for the technological. How so? I saw that the White House finally has RSS feeds, and Obama is going to be giving a weekly address (FDR-style) via YouTube. He gave his first one this morning, and you can see it below:

On the downside, I noticed that Obama hasn't updated his Twitter since November 5th.

Photo: Flickr

Glad he's embracing
The YouTube generation
Inauguration...

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics, technology]

Saw: November: Hahaha; kinda scary. Here's a related, and less scary image.

Election Maps: These start out really basic, by state. Then the states are skewed by population. Next is to break the states down into counties, then do another population skew (that's the one you see below). It's taken another step and going beyond red/blue, since some counties are more mixed than others. Good stuff.

Sarah Palin Porn: I first saw this here on Design You Trust, then discovered it was from the movie. I haven't seen it (...yet?) but it looks entertaining. Along the same lines...

Obama Grabs Headlines: More than 700 newspaper front pages on November 5th, once the election was called. Crazy stuff.

C-C-C-Combo Breaker: The pictures are actually really well done. If you don't get the reference, here's Urban Dictionary.

The Onion: Nation's Worst Job: I do love the Onion so. "African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America." Read the whole article, it's short and entertaining.

Sinfest: I was torn between showing the comic pictured, or this one, but the first one's smaller. Sinfest had some pretty entertaining political comics this election season.

Measuring an Internet Election: The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece on measuring the presidential candidates online presence (official website, YouTube views, Facebook friend, blog mentions) as well as poll results. Shows a real difference between McCain/Obama's base.

Election season
Has come and gone. I'll miss it,
but I'm glad it's done

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0] [Tags: links jumble, politics]

I'll write more later, but congratulations to President Barack Obama. I predicted it would be closer, and get called a little bit later, but bravo sir, bravo.

Photo: NYTimes

Barack Obama
The 44th President
Congratulations

Godspeed.

[Comments: 2] [Tags: politics]

Want to keep up with the election results, but don't have and/or want to watch them on TV? Here are streaming links for CNN and MSNBC.

From BarackObama.com, both Vermont and New Hampshire have been called for Obama. From what the news is looking like, it's not going to be as close as I thought.

Here's a current electoral map from CNN:



There are oodles of places you can be checking to keep up with all of this; I'll be sticking mostly to Twitter, MSNBC, and CNN for now.

Election streaming
No need to pay for cable
Yay for Internet

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics]

The fact that we have peaceful free elections is great, and it's sad when people don't exercise this right.

Voter turnout's expected to be really high this year. I've been doing some reading, and here are some great articles: Yahoo, NYTimes, and the Boston Globe.



And here's a link to the prequel to this video.

If you did go out and vote today (or earlier), make sure you get your free Starbucks and Ben & Jerry's; you've earned it. If you didn't, don't try and trick them; they'll know!

High voter turnout?
Don't misinterpret "Don't Vote"
See past sarcasm

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics]

Expect more updates today than usual. I voted a while ago, since I'm still registered in Oregon, and they do mail-in ballots. The plan has been to switch after this election, since Oregon is more swing than DC.

Polls start to close at 7pm EST, and keep closing until 1am. I think it's going to be a late night until we know the winner, but I'll be awake and immersing myself in the media until then.

I'm looking forward to seeing this website change. If I wasn't so lazy, I would have put change into gotham. The typeface matters you know. That site also reminds me of a couple LHC sites. I really like that all three of these sites have RSS feeds.

Image: CNN

Election '08
Get out there and vote today
Let's go democrats

Godspeed.

[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics]

I'm looking forward to seeing a transcript of tonight's debate, primarily just so I can see in writing how many times the phrase "Joe the Plumber" came up. He already has his own Twitter...



I missed the first presidential debate, but I have heard this one was much better. The candidates actually spoke to one another on occasion, and there was eye contact. This seems to be an improvement from last time.

I watched on Hulu, but kept Hack the Debate on in the background, while I did some Twittering during the course of the debate to rant and rave.

A few brief thoughts on the debate:

1. The only possible explanation for McCain's blinking is that he was trying to talk in morse code; it was out of control.
2. Attack ads got more debate time than alternative energy... disgusting.
3. School vouchers? Not the solution!
4. "Nobody likes taxes, let's not raise anybody's taxes." Good point, let's just raise the national debt.

Here's some link love for some other people who quickly posted about Joe the Plumber:
Reuters
VTOL
KTBB
Wassup
blair mitchelmore

Edit: Joe and Plumber are two of the 10 most popular words on Twitter right now.

Photo: Flickr

Joe the Plumber this,
Joe the freakin' Plumber that,
Joe the Plumber... stop!!!

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics, twitter]

Tonight's debate should be interesting. Palin let me in on a little secret for tonight:


(In case you don't get it.)

I was a little worried, but then CXI let me know that it's okay as long as you do it through a hole in the sheet. Whew, I was worried; I forgot about that rule.

Nonetheless, assuming everyone keeps it in their pants, I'm pretty sure the debate will go something like this:



Time to go eat some sushi before the debate starts.

I sure do hope that
The presidential debates
are this amusing

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics, twitter]

Earlier today, I was on Amazon.com, and I saw the following image:



Amazon was keeping track of which mask sold more, this one or this one, as part of their meter program. I think the masks exaggerate Obama's goofiness, and McCain's creepiness, but I can envision them being used in bank robberies, replacing the standard Nixon and Bush Sr. masks.



But where did the meter go? From Amazon's FAQ: Who chooses the Meters and how are the Meters chosen? Amazon editors choose relevant groups of items for comparison based on current events, controversies, or just for fun.

Did Amazon decide this was getting too political for them and some higher-ups nixed the decision of an editor? Is this not a 'fair election'? Maybe they should be selling Nader and Barr masks too?

I was going to write about this before it got pulled, but when I refreshed to see the newest data, I got that error message above. Luckily GearDiary.com had written about it first, and had taken a screenshot, so I thank them.

Here are some of the presidential'ish masks I found:

Hilary Clinton
Bill Clinton
Al Gore

George W. Bush
Dick Cheney
Condoleeza Rice
Laura Bush
George Bush, Sr.

Richard Nixon
Abraham Lincoln
John F. Kennedy
George Washington

Edit: As of 9/21/08, it is back, link is here.

Keep track of the masks
Each robbery is a vote
That's the election

Godspeed.
[Comments: 1] [Tags: politics]

I mentioned earlier that Obama was going to text me when he announced the VP. Lies. I received no text, and found out via email, hours after the fact. A quote from this New York Times article: "Mr. Obama announced his choice of Mr. Biden in text and e-mail messages that began streaming out of his Chicago headquarters at 3 a.m., hours after news of his decision began leaking out."

I'm disappointed, and I'm not the only one, but oh well, there's not much to do about it. It's nice that Obama's embracing technology as he is, but let's work on not dropping the ball. Embedded below is Biden's speech in Chicago.



Literally speaking, that was literally Biden's literal speech, speaking in a literal sense. I went through and listened to it a second time, and he only said literally eight times, but it felt like a lot more. It was a good speech, minus that over usage. Two days 'til the DNC convention starts.

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics]

I first mentioned ScienceDebate 2008 during my Super Tuesday wrapup. It's a campaign to encourage the presidential candidates to debate science, and to be more clear on their positions on it. They were pushing to have a debate focused solely on science, but they couldn't get the candidates to agree to it.

Everyday Science and Nanoscale Views both discussed the recent piece on NPR about presidential science. Obama would put more money into it, but that's not too shocking, since democrats like spending more government money. It sounds like McCain would be more open to scientific funding than Bush was, but I'm still voting for Obama.



Katie Couric will be asking the candidates questions during the conventions, and has asked Digg users to submit questions. Firstly, you should Digg that in general, but you should also Digg the question posed by ScienceDebate 2008:

"85% of the country wants to see the candidates debate on matters of science and technology policy. Why have both candidates consistently refused or ignored a political debate centered on science and technology? Asia is producing ten scientists and engineers to our one, and by 2010, 90% of scientists and engineers will have come from an Asian nation. How can America hope to compete if our candidates aren't even willing to talk about the problems we're facing?"



Photo: Pichaus

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics, science, technology]

My eyes swelled up with tears as I read this article. Pandora has been running off advertising and venture capital, and was projecting to finally be in the black in 2009, but the Copyright Royalty Board finalized its decision to double the royalties internet radio must pay.

6 months ago my music listening could be broken down to:
10% Pandora
5% Last.fm*
85% iTunes

But now, I'd say that the rankings have changed to:
80% Pandora
2% Last.fm*
18% iTunes

Given that this affects all internet radio, will any of it last? Last.fm seems to have a better business model, since they have paid subscriptions, and the listening isn't all mainstream, there are a lot of artists who upload their music for free - these factors would reduce their cost per play. But, hopefully they won't go under, they'll figure something out...



I wanted to make reference to Pandora's box, but I couldn't decide if this would be analagous to the box being opened, closed, or smashed to bits. Because the box contains chaos, yet the service is being shut down... it's too much for me. Any thoughts on that? Anyhow, thanks to merrickmtg for the news (from Twitter).

Photo: Flickr

*Even though I'm not listening to Last.fm directly, all my tracks are still being scrobbled there.

Godspeed.
[Comments: 1] [Tags: music, politics, money]

The military is always looking for way to kill massive amounts of people with little chance of hurting their own soldiers, physically or mentally. Drone pilots, as a result, are very useful.

A drone pilot controls an aircraft or any vehicle remotely from a safe location. The picture below shows a military officer manning one of those stations. Strangely enough, it looks like an arcade/video game setup. It seems as though the effects of violent "video games" has been taken to a whole different level.



The article in which I found this story asks this question: Do drone pilots feel combat stress? The answer is yes, of course, for some obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. For one, the pilot knows that he or she is killing people when they fire a missile. Even though it isn’t up close and personal, the knowledge is still there.

The less obvious reason why these soldiers feel PTSD is that because they have cameras that have multiple views, they are almost guaranteed to see the destruction that they committed, which could be very gruesome. A video game often has similar animations for deaths and the user knows that the characters are part of a fantasy world, which could lead to the desensitizing of violence in the real world, possibly, if played long enough.

Drone pilots also have another odd problem to deal with when piloting these aircrafts. During the day they may be killing people in countries around the world and at the end of the day, they may see their loving family, which is a very dramatic shift for the mind to take. The human mind is adapatable but this stark change in environment may lead to a sense of two separate realities.

On a much lesser level, we can feel that same effect in video games. Sure, we may not feel combat stress or PTSD (or whatever they call it nowadays) but we do feel fatigue when playing a video game for a long time. Try playing Tetris constantly for two or more hours. The mind will tire. However, the situation gets more complicated when you are able to create another version of yourself when dealing with games like Second Life.

In Second Life, a player can make an avatar and just visit random areas made up by developers and players. You can dance, buy goods (with real money if you so wish) or even try and sell real estate. Heck, the world even has it’s own currency and economy. While I think the game is boring, I could see how people could feel as though they are "living" in two separate worlds. People playing Second Life aren't killing people but, the same dual-existence experience appears in both Second Life players and drone pilots.

There always has been a lot of talk about how violent video games could make children more violent. Personally, I highly doubt that is the case for the general population. There have even been studies that suggest the interactivity of the game separates the user further from the violence than a live-action movie. There is no doubt though, that drone pilots do feel stressful effects from their job and their combat stress should be taken as seriously as any other soldier.



I still find it frightening though, that the army had technology that looks and most likely feels like a video game. That technology is simply too tempting for kids and may draw some people that will get in way over their heads. Kotaku mentioned something even more horrifying in their cover of this story, which was that there is a British commercial that shows soldiers piloting aircrafts using an Xbox360 controller.

Using your video games skills to kill people? The military frightens me sometimes.
[Comments: 1] [Tags: politics, technology, video games]

If you haven't been keeping up with the South Ossetian war, as always I refer you to Wikipedia. For a slightly shorter read, just read the timeline. This article shows us a Georgian reporter who gets shot during a live broadcast; thankfully she wasn't killed. Being a journalist in a warzone: takes major guts. Getting shot during a broadcast, then continuing to finish off the segment: insanely hardcore.



The video pretty much speaks for itself, but she has my applause. I personally think that all reporters covering warzones should be wearing bulletproof vests all the time, though that wouldn't have helped her arm in this case.

Edit: After looking into this some more, it's not one-sided, Georgian troops are also firing at journalist. At least he was wearing a vest, but damn.

Godspeed.
[Comments: 3] [Tags: politics]

Instead of the default live, televised speech, Barack Obama will be announcing the Vice Presidential candidate electronically. If you submit your email into a form on BarackObama.com, or text VP to 62262, you will find out who the candidate will be.



Make sure you do, cause otherwise you're going to have to wait about 20 seconds longer than everyone else to find out! I figure it will take about 20 seconds for news to be posted on the internet, and broadcasters to go live with it on TV news. I'm a little surprised that he isn't announcing it via Twitter as well, but as you can see from the tweet below, just text and email.



Way to embrace technology, Obama!

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics, technology]

Governor David Patterson of New York has signed a video game bill that will create a state-run system for regulating the content and retailing of video games. More specifically, the bill (now signed into law for New York) will change three things for video games in the state that all tread water over the First Amendment.


Comic courtesy of Penny Acrade

1. The law now states that a retailer cannot sell a video game “unless its rating is prominently displayed on the game’s cover” (nyclu.org). Most game publishers submit their Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB); I personally haven’t seen one in America that hasn’t; so this does not seem like a big deal at first. The state has the right to impose such decency laws, such as not selling porn to minors, and not trip over the First Amendment right of free speech.

However, DigitalMediaWire writes, “attempts to regulate the sale of video games in several other states -- usually by banning the sales of M-rated games to minors -- have been routinely tossed out as unconstitutional by the courts.” This law does, in fact, regulate the sale of video games so this could cause it to be unconstitutional.

2. The law mandates that the state creates an “advisory council” that would review the ESRB’s decisions to determine if they are effective in finding and reporting violence in video games. The articles I’ve read don’t report what the advisory council would do if they disagreed with the ESRB, but under this law the state would have a right to change the rating of the games as they see fit.

Hm, this sounds vaguely familiar. Ah, I remember now. There was a similar bill that tried to impose the same thing. Oh wait, it was kind of the exact same thing. The Family Entertainment Protection Act of 2005 tried to impose the same sanctions on a federal level and failed to go through because of the controversy around it in regards to the First Amendment. Similar bills tried to go through on a state level but were also found unconstitutional.

3. The law says that by 2010, all video game consoles sold in New York will be required to have technology that allows parents to block games that they don’t feel that are fit for their children. As of now, all of the next-gen consoles have parental controls of some sort, but they may not be up to New York’s standards. Under this law, the state could prohibit the sale of these consoles. Oddly enough, among the handheld systems, the Nintendo DS has no parental controls that I’ve seen. Luckily for the DS however, the law does not pertain to handheld systems.

I don’t have a problem with parents telling kids what they can and cannot play. The option for parental controls is always positive and parents should take advantage of that software. However, I believe that the best parental control is the parent themselves. Don’t buy your kid an M-rated game if you don’t want them playing it. We don’t need the state to tell us what a proper game to buy is.

I was immensely surprised that this bill went through when so many other ones were seen as unconstitutional on both the federal and state level. The New York Civil Liberties Union is supposedly taking action on the signing of this bill and hopefully this law will be amended.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics, ranting, video games]

China's internet censorship isn't news, but in accepting the Olympic bid, they promised uncensored internet access for journalists. They don't seem to be following through. It's obviously too late to move the games somewhere else in response to their disobedience so far, but shame on them.



The article linked earlier had a link to a website where you can test the accessibility of a site in Seattle, compared to that in China. It will show you the time required to render the site, along with DNS propagation info, etc. I discovered some shocking information. See the image below? 18 less bytes of Will and Beyond were seen in China; they're censoring 18 bytes of Will and Beyond!!! Which important aspect are they blocking? All of the breaking news posted here? The intense debates on civil rights? My face?



Also mentioned in this post title were lepers; the UN Human Rights Council is forcing the Chinese to accept lepers to avoid discrimination

Photo: Flickr (Runner-up)

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: olympics, politics]

My love for Jones Soda is nothing new. They make excellent Christmas sodas, and it's been decided that Jones Soda is very manly. It was to my delight that I found the following Google ad appear in my Gmail:



The first part had me intrigued, then when they mentioned Jones, I was sold. This is brilliant. Each candidate (this was apparently around before Clinton dropped out) has their own soda, and they're keeping track of how many are bought. If this is any gauge of the election, it's looking good for democrats.



The whole site is really great though. Look at the logo below. Very well done; very detailed. Look closely at the bottles in the eagle's talons - awesome. It's very official looking. Their marketing and graphic design teams both deserve awards. The second image below is the headline for the site. Now that's a great catchline. It's expanded in the text of the page, "There's no limit to how many times you can vote, here at Jones you can buy your candidate's way to victory! "





I tip my hat to you, Jones. Check out Campaign Cola 2008 for yourself.

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: food, politics]

About three hours ago, I posted about how it was Clinton's last night as a primary candidate, and it happened. Barack Obama is in St. Paul giving a speech, as he has now clinched the nomination.



I've waited long for this to happen, and finally it has. McCain, you're going down.

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics]

I've been following the Obama campaign fairly closely. I haven't written about it since Super Tuesday, but I've been following it through the news, and through the feed on BarackObama.com.



As of this post, Obama only needs 10 more delegates on his side to have the majority of the delegates. This doesn't necessarily mean he gets the endorsement right away, because superdelegates are free to change their vote up until the convention (or so is my understanding). However, the chairman of the Clinton campaign said that if Obama reaches the majority, that she will call and congratulate him, and give him the nomination by dropping out of the race. Tonight is the primaries in Montana and South Dakota, which represent a total of 31 delegates. This could push Obama over the edge; I'm crossing my fingers.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics]

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would like to get rid of the penny. I think it's a great idea; they don't do much for the economy in my opinion, and they lost a lot to make. Especially when more and more people are spending money on credit cards. I know that I deal with physical cash a whole lot less than I used to. I'm more annoyed than anything when I receive pennies as change. If you're walking somewhere and you drop a penny, would you really bend down to pick it up? If you even had to think for a second about that, it should tell you something. It's money! Why wouldn't you pick it up? Because it's worthless! We already know what what I think of the phrase "Worth Every Penny".



In the article where I was reading this, Paulson also said that he keeps dollar bills with him for when people ask for an autograph. Really? It would be kind of cool to have one, but when you see him (assuming you're the type who could recognize him), would you really think to ask him for an autograph? Let alone for him to give you money to autograph?

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics, money]

Do you know what would really offend me? Let's say that I, a German civilian, were to meet someone named Dr. Baldwin. Then, during the course of conversation with him, I shockingly discovered he wasn't a real doctor, he had just received a PhD from some shoddy institution like Cornell or Stanford. They should make that illegal. Oh wait, it is!



According to an article in Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN), seven scientists working in Germany have broken this law. Which law? Well if you didn't receive your degree somewhere in the European Union, you're not allowed to call yourself a doctor without express written permission from the state. Apparently, the Max Planck Society, the research institute they are working for, is trying to have the law changed. Well, it's a good thing that I don't yet have a PhD, nor do I speak German.

Speaking of Max Planck, check out this article from Cracked.com.

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 1] [Tags: politics, science]

Having a woman president or a black president aren't new enough options, let's have a president who's not in one of the two major parties. Yeah, that can happen! And it will be Ralph Nader!



I'm going to go ahead and say this will have no impact whatsoever. I mean, I'm sure he'll get on the ticket in some places, and I'm sure he'll get a few hundred votes from some crackpots here and there, but I don't think this will "swing the election". Sigh... stop wasting our time please?

Photo: Flickr

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics]

Well it's been about 24 hours since Super Tuesday began, so I'll do a little summarizing. To look at the results state by state, including a breakdown of the percentages of the vote received, you can look here at the New York Times. Not too much has changed since yesterday's post. California went to Clinton, but just by 10%. New Mexico is still too close to call; Obama has 48% and Clinton has 49%.

In the end Obama won 13 states, and Clinton won 8 states. This leaves them just about even. No delegates from the Super Tuesday primaries have yet been assigned officially yet. I read a couple interesting articles from the Associated Press today. One talks about doing caucusses for Florida and Michigan since their delegates were stripped by the DNC since they scheduled their primaries earlier than they were allowed to. The other gives a brief summary of what happened yesterday, and talks about the future plans for the candidates, and also discusses how Obama's fundraising has been more successful, leading Clinton to loan her campaign $5 million from her personal funds.



Lastly I wanted to mention Science Debate 2008. You should click on the image above to read more about it, but briefly, it just talks about trying to get a presidential debate setup that would be focussed on Science and Technology. I think this would be a very interesting debate given different views on issues such as nuclear power and stem-cell research. I found out about Science Debate 2008 from Nobel Intent, a science blog which can also be found over on my links page.

Godspeed.
[Comments: 0] [Tags: politics]

First off, it's Super Tuesday, so I have the New York Times automatically refreshing every minute, hoping to see some news. It won't get exciting 'til around 7pm or so, but I'll keep it open in the background for now anyway.

Edit:
Well, this will be updated throughout the night.


Final Note for the Night:
I'm signing out of politics for the night, I'll do a summary post sometime tomorrow. Good luck Obama.

11:45pm:
As I've mentioned quite a few times, this is about delegates, not the number of states. For instance, Obama did better in New York than Clinton did in Illinois. Chuck Todd at NBC is saying that at the moment it looks like Obama and Clinton might end up splitting today's delegates right down the middle. In this case, Clinton would just have her 70 delegate lead from yesterday, which really isn't too big of a deal.

11:16pm:
Clinton is leading Arizona, California (though this is only 1% reporting), and Utah. No more states for Obama yet. This isn't going how I wanted it to, but there's still time...

10:27pm:
Air America says that Clinton is up 299-219 in terms of delegates. This 80 delegate lead is up 10 from her 70 delegate lead that she had before today. California will be big, and they don't close for another half an hour. We'll see...

10:10pm:
More polls have closed. Current democrat status:
Obama: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota.
Clinton: Arkansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee.
Obama has eight states, while Clinton has only seven. However, some of Clinton's states are big, such as New York, so we'll see how this turns out. Again, these are just who's taking first place in the results from these states. The important thing is the number of delegates, and we don't know that quite yet.

9:25pm:
No changes for the democrats yet, so let's have a quick Republican count.
McCain: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennesee.
Romney: Massachusetts.
Huckabee: Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri, West Virginia.
Paul: (Tumbleweeds roll by...)
Again, this is coming from Air America and the New York Times.

9:01pm:
13 out of 22 democratic polls are closed.
New York went for Clinton, as to be expected. Her being the senator helps a lot. Massachusetts went for Clinton despite the governor, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry all endorsing Obama there... Shows you that endorsements really matter.

8:46pm:
So far:
Obama: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois.
Clinton: Arkansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Tennessee.
I'm thinking (and hoping) it will be a good night for Obama - we shall see.

8:31pm:
Only 3 states have been called so far: Georgia and Illinois for Obama and Arkansas for Clinton. Results are still pouring in...
Looks like Georgia is going for Huckabee - 15% reporint and he's at 36% followed by McCain at 32%.

8:04pm:
Georgia: 53% Obama / 41% Clinton.
Alabama: 24% Obama / 58% Clinton / 18% Edwards.
These number will be changing a lot, especially this early since we're dealing with pretty low percentage reporting, but that's what keeps this exciting.

7:55pm:
Georgia: 56% Obama / 38% Clinton.
Alabama: 3% Obama / 63% Clinton / 34% Edwards.
Edwards, really? Are people forgetting that he dropped out of the race? I guess they're waiting for him to endorse someone? C'mon!

7:37pm:
Georgia: 64% Obama / 30% Clinton.
Republicans are leaning towards McCain, but with the three candiates in the race still, their numbers are lower, at 36% McCain / 29% Romney /31% Huckabee.

7:25pm:
Georgia: 65% Obama / 29% Clinton.

7:11pm:
CNN, MSNBC, and the NYTimes have called Georgia for Obama.




And for something completely different...
Public toilets, that you have to text message to enter? This is genius. First off, the idea of text messaging a bathroom lets me know that the future is here. The idea is to prevent vandalism, since you can't get in without giving them your phone number, and if you do vandalize - they have you on record. I approve, and I want it here in America. I want it in my house. Granted, it would serve no purpose, and would quite a nuisance when I wake up in the middle of the night, but I still want it.

Godspeed.
[Comments: 1] [Tags: politics, technology]

The two certain things in life are death and taxes. I wouldn't be able to write an article on taxes without using that cliche phrase, so I'm getting it out of the way now and not mentioning it again. You may be rightly wondering why I, a chemist, would be writing about taxes.



Among my many RSS feeds are a few video game blogs, including Joystiq. Where's the connection? The article which prompted this was entitled, "New Mexico legislators consider video game tax for outdoor programs". This sort of tax seems that it would be unlikely to pass, so I wouldn't think twice about it. The only reason it caught my eye is because it looked very familiar. I looked back, and sure enough, earlier this month there was another similar article entitled: "Wisconsin politician proposes 1% tax on video games". These articles were written within three weeks of each other. Looking back even farther, I found: "Let's tax games, proposes Texas senator".



The push in New Mexico is being proposed by the Sierra Club, who tried for this tax last year unsuccessfully. The taxes in Wisconsin and Texas were proposed by democratic senators. Tiered taxes exist already, for instance here in Washington, DC, sales tax is 5.75%, however in restaurants it is 10%. Most states have added excise taxes (I spent some time on Wikipedia) for cigarettes, gasoline and alcohol. These can also be called Pigovian, or more commonly sin taxes.



Should video games receive a "sin tax"? Obviously I'm going to take the side against it, since I play them and would rather not pay more. What are the arguments for such a tax? The Sierra Club's tax in New Mexico would have the proceeds go towards programs that "would counteract the negative effects of video games -- lower academic scores, obesity, and increased attention-deficit disorder." In Texas, the argument employed is that "if school-aged kids are spending a lot of money on video games" or parents are spending a lot of money on games for their school-aged kids" these consumers can spend a little bit more in order to improve their school systems".



I support better schools and outdoor programs to improve public health, but why should video gamers pay more than other people to support these efforts?
[Comments: 0] [Tags: video games, money, politics]