I've gotten to do this twice!

It's been thrill both times.

Don't forget to vote tomorrow!

I haven't said much about politics this election season, but here's a quick reminder of why it's important to go to the polls tomorrow and choose well:

I voted this morning!

And as a Tennessean, I was mocked by Stephen Colbert. But as a Tennessean, I kinda deserved it.

January Links

We got a bit of snow here in Chattanooga, so just about everything shut down this weekend. Which gave me a chance to finally get caught up on some blog reading for the month. My trip to Florida (and the relatively limited internet access that I had there) had put me way behind. So, here's a quick rundown of interesting links I found while buzzing from one side of the internet to the other. It's been a while since I've done this, so bear with me -- there're going to be some old links...

• The iPad is out, but I think I'm still more excited about the GooglePhone.

• I really want one of these (does that make me a dork?)!

• Are you a New York State voter? Watch out for this guy.

• Howard Zinn: How I want to be remembered.

• Some Jon Stewart... On the Massachusetts Senate race -- it's old, so you might want to scroll through the beginning and get to where Jon channels Lewis Black and comes close to expressing how frustrating it is to watch the Democrats (and especially the Blue Dogs!) these days... The First 364 Days 23 Hours... Supreme Corp... Oh, South Carolina... changing the game in banking.

• I've been learning a lot about nutrition lately. Between last year's adventure when G-Dog and I decided to give up processed food, to this year's experiments cooking for someone who is supposed to avoiding sodium, potassium and vitamin k, mostly what I've learned is that I'm easily confused. But Marion Nestle often comes to my rescue, and this time, it's with instructions for navigating the USDA's nutrition info.

• If you're like me and will always miss being a student, you're going to love these free lectures!

• Cool features like this one are what make me love google's rss reader (and many other google apps)!

• Overheard in New York still cracks me up.

• A fascinating collection of photos! Also, check out Tom's Hawaii slideshow!

• From Joe. My. God.: "Remember folks, the Christianist right is not about hatred and bigotry. It's about the gentle redemptive love of Jesus, forced upon you at the barrel of a gun in prison as they beat the gay out of you."

• And finally, the Devil wrote a letter to Pat Robertson.

I never run out of links!

This post comes to you from the fourth happiest state in the US!

• Famous photos recreated with legos.

• Time's Year in Photos. The Boston.com version comes in three parts! And then there's the decade!

• ooop -- one more photo bullet: Photos that changed the world!

• The odds of a white Christmas.

• 10 New Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know About.

• Incredible snowflake photography!

• Fat Nation.

• Oh, this is so cool. You know how frustrating it is not to know how to pronounce unfamiliar words? At Forvo.com, you can hear those words uttered by native speakers of whatever language is challenging you at the moment! (You can also help out by adding spoken words to the site.)

• The Known Universe.

• Check the weather, Star Wars style!

update: • Main Street, not C Street.

VOTE, Chattanooga!

It's election day in Chattanooga tomorrow -- municipal elections. Vote Healy, vote Murphy and vote often, folks!!!!

More Election Results Fun

Howdy, kids! I'm back to posting live again, having finished up my GOTV efforts! Here's a list, taken directly from Listropolis, of cool Election Results sites:

Yahoo News Political Dashboard, Twitter Vote Report, Myspace Decision ‘08, memeorandum, CNN Election Center 2008, NY Times - Campaign 2008, Presidential Election 2008 Dashboard, MSNBC Widgets, Google 2008 Elections Gallery, US Politics Friendfeed Room
You could also check this list from CNET...

Results

This is it, folks! Results should start coming in for Indiana and Kentucky soon! And that's it for my scheduled posts for the day! It's been fun! Have a great time watching the returns!

The latest...

Tonight's schedule

Also, here is Newsweek's hour-by-hour lineup, a guide to the coverage, Slate's guide, Paths to 270, a real time election returns map, and best places to spend election night online! Oh, and President Elect is liveblogging the whole day.

And so it begins...

The polls just opened in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire!
UPDATE: ... and it was a HUGE upset! Obama 15 - McCain 6 (these are not, historically, Democratic voters -- the last Democratic win there was in 1968)!

The Final Push

This is it. Finally. Today is the last day of the campaign. After tomorrow, you won't have to listen to any more speeches! Yippee! I'll be working to Get Out the Vote here in Chattanooga for 12 hours on election day, and I may not get to post have some scheduled posts in the queue set to publish while we're waiting for returns start coming in tomorrow night. And here's a post chock full of all sorts of last minute information to keep you busy, enfranchised and entertained through Election Day...

To my friends up in New York's 26th Congressional District: your race is a toss-up! Get thee to the polls, and don't let any long lines scare you away!

Election Survival Guides: from newscoma, Tennessee Ticket and Pam's House Blend!

All sorts of people are using all manner of approaches to convince you to get to the polls and stick it out, no matter what you encounter there. If the lines are long, stay in line for as long as it takes. If someone tells you you can't vote, get a fail-safe ballot. Know your rights!

Don't let anyone or any thing take this opportunity away from you. It's too important. Or to put it in any number of different ways:

Whew!

Whew! This is a good thing, since I already voted!

You Should Be Allowed to Vote

You got 15/15 questions correct. Generally speaking, you're very well informed. If you vote this election, you'll know exactly who (and what) you'll be voting for. You're likely to have strong opinions, and you have the facts to back them up.

Should You Be Allowed to Vote?

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Early Day...

I'm not a morning person. But I got up before the sun today and went to the Hamilton County Election Commission for the start of early voting. When I first got there at around 7am, it was still mostly dark out (the almost-full moon was still bright in the sky), and Camp Obama was set up right next to the building, illuminated by the portable lights from a local news station:

But as the sun rose, the camp was moved to respect the 100-foot campaign-free zone that must be kept around each polling place in Tennessee. There were a lot of cameras and microphones there to cover the event. We held signs and rallied right up until voting began at eight o'clock. And then I was one of the first people in the county to cast a ballot for Barack Obama! And so it begins...

UPDATE: here's a bit of coverage.

Are you sick of the election?

Yeah, me too, and I'm not even in a swing state, so my TV isn't spewing campaign commercials throughout every single break (though I am happy to report that I have seen a few!). I'm looking forward to having a more well-rounded life in November -- watching something besides the news, having the news be about something besides presidential politics (remember when they used to obsess over the weather, cute animals and missing white women?), and so on.

It is almost over, though. Election Day is three weeks from today and here in Tennessee, at least, early voting starts tomorrow. The kids will be camping out over at the election commission tonight. Why? Because this is big. Really big. So big that camping is required -- big concert? big video game release? big movie premiere? Campout, campout, campout! It's not a big event if you don't have to camp out, and this one? Well, it's huge. Electing Barack Obama is going to be historic in so many ways, especially if the young people turn out in the numbers they've been promising us all year.

There will also be an early voting rally in the morning -- even those who didn't camp out will be gathering at 7:30, to go en masse, into the election commission to cast those first ballots for Obama when voting starts at 8am. I hope to see you there!

The Election

Yesterday was primary day here in Tennessee. It wasn't a great day for Hamilton County (we now have a (-nother) kinda sketchy sheriff, since this guy won. But it was a good day in Tennessee, which was struggling through a (-nother) pretty embarrassing primary over on the western side of the state -- even attracting national attention -- because happily, one of the worst candidates ever suffered a humiliating (in every sense possible) defeat. And we get to keep Steve Cohen, who is a great representative. Ha. The good people won.

Quote of the Day & Links!

I read this a couple of days ago at Joe. My. God., and it's been running through my head ever since. It's from E. B. White.

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born threre, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size, its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something....Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness, natives give it solidity and continuity, but the settlers give it passion.

Speaking of the City, an Ikea store just opened in Red Hook (amid some controversy), and to ease concerns about traffic congestion in the area, Ikea is offering free public transportation to and from the store. Eager consumers are already planning Ikea Hacks to take advantage of the company's ground-breaking strategy.

But enough of the city and on to other random matters:

• The Eagles went and sold their souls to their corporate masters and Chris the wandering geneticist totally busts them for it. Nicely done.
• After jumping all over Michelle Obama's patriotism will the right wing give John McCain a free pass? -- or will they at least finally lay off the stupid non-story of what Michelle said?
• So, Charlie "Manhunt" Crist, caved in to the wishes of the Wonder Twins, McCain and Bush, and now thinks that we should drill for oil off the coast of Florida. But has he thought of the damage this could do to Florida's tourist industry? For new leases that won't start producing meaningful oil for 20-30 years? Maybe we should be truly innovative and think beyond politics: Here's a funny thing. While the Republicans are arguing that drilling every square inch of America will cut fuel costs, study after study has shown that the effect will be both minimal and several years down the road. On the other hand, just dropping from 65 to 55 will net most cars a 10% savings in fuel costs. That's far more than we'll get by turning Florida into the Tar Sands State.
  Plus, Joe Biden rocks. UDPATE: or for instant savings, close the Enron loophole!
• Al Franken wants "to invest in America again."
• I saw a lot of MSNBC's hagiography (update: see Hitchens) after Tim Russert died, and while I understand that they were only trying to do right by the man after losing one of their own, it also made me a bit uncomfortable to listen to them go on and on about the greatness of Russert in what continues to be a field of failure -- and as great a man as he was, it was a failure that Russert shared.
• I remember when my father would not pay more than 19¢ a pound for bananas. Those days are clearly over, never to return, and what's more, the banana as we now know it may soon go extinct.
• Joe Lance is chasing down a story about voting and privacy that was prompted by a card he received in the mail.
• And finally, there's lots more from the Tennessee blogosphere: Carole Borges wonders who we can trust in the medical field anymore, Tiny Cat finds something that's just plain weird, and much, much more!

Thursday Links

If you're getting tired of politics, scroll down. Today I've got some non-politics links after the <hr>!

George W. Bush: he's "confident [the GOP will] hold the White House in 2008" and understands "the mentality of the American people." OTOH, he doesn't even know how much Americans are paying for gas. And has been lying to us about about the cost of his war.

John McCain (just like Bush, and the most anti-child!): keeps digging deeper when it comes to his attempts to game the campaign finance system (efforts which appear to be falling flat). In other news, is he even eligible to run?

Tennessee: One one hand, we're finally beating back the shameless partisans who would cynically use disingenuous attempts to amend our constitution to GOTV. On the other hand, our GOP is really making us look stupid -- just ask the RNC, John McCain, Lamar Alexander and Karl Rove, who are embarrassed by the TN GOP's bigotry. Fortunately, they were spanked quickly and soundly! Sorry, world. Please don't hold this against us. The latest news is here. UPDATE: and here.

Texas: early turnout is huge (why wait for results?).

Alabama: Don't even get me started.

Europe: were you planning a European vacation this summer? Maybe not so much?

Ratings: people are paying attention these days.

---

Autism and vaccinations: the US Government concedes there's a link (here's the doc). Will this news give fuel to the anti-vaccination community? And speaking of autism, the autistic community has been doing some networking online. Perhaps their efforts will help to counter the ignorance of so many people when it comes to autism.

Bees: they're still disappearing (or perhaps they're all headed to one particular attic in Florida).

Pools: when I was a kid, I was kinda scared of the deep ends of pools -- and maybe I still am because the picture on the right here made me feel a little dizzy-ish. It is a cool collection of images, though.

Billboards: AT&T + NSA!

Counting cash: How do you do it (video)?

Help at the pumps: do you ever have trouble remembering which side of the car has the gas tank (this can be especially tough with rental cars!)? Sometimes there's a clue in your dash.

Video: A History of Evil

And finally, if you just want to skip to the results of the 2008 Presidential Eleciton, here's your chance!

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Prairie View A&M followup

I mentioned a story about right-wing attempts to suppress the vote in a Texas town a few days ago. Here's an update on the story, including a video of the march to the polls. It's good stuff.