eclecticism

Sometime between November 3rd and November 4th, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• The New Yorker: Mr. Ayers’s Neighborhood: “It’s all guilt by association,” Ayers said. “They made me into a cartoon character—they threw me up onstage just to pummel me. I felt from the beginning that the Obama campaign had to run the Obama campaign and I have to run my life.” Ayers said that once his name became part of the campaign maelstrom he never had any contact with the Obama circle. “That’s not my world,” he said.
• Is Obama President yet?: Single-serving website. Check back tomorrow…hopefully it will have changed.
• Suspect in Craigslist innertube robbery arrested: Police have been looking for a suspect since Sept. 30, when a robber wearing construction-type attire used pepper spray on a Brinks armored car driver and stole a bag of cash during a delivery at a Bank of America branch. He fled, possibly on an inner tube down a nearby creek. The suspect wore a blue, long-sleeved shirt with a yellow safety vest, safety glasses and a mask. What initially confused police was a group of people at the scene also dressed in the same attire. The others had responded to an online classified ad posted three days before the robbery that offered paid landscaping work and specified exactly how the workers should dress.
• 1.7M in state have already voted; 83 percent statewide turnout expected: More than half of the state's expected voters had returned their ballots to elections officials by Monday, a day before Election Day. A county-by-county assessment by The Associated Press found that more than 1.7 million ballots had been returned. Secretary of State Sam Reed predicts 83 percent turnout statewide — about 3 million people — so about 56 percent of the expected voters have sent back their ballots.
• MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits: Finally back online: MGK's hilarious photoshopped and retitled fantasy and sci-fi novels. Don't miss part two and part three as well.

This is it — voting day!

Hopefully, you’re one of the many people who’ve taken advantage of the option to vote early in one form or another. If not, then please take the time out of your day today to go by your local polling place and cast your vote.

Don’t let the news scare you away, either. If the race follows the polls — and keep in mind, that’s still a big “if” — then the big networks could be calling the election long before many people on the West coast have a chance to vote. Don’t let that stop you! Anyone who remembers the last two presidential races (especially 2000) knows how eager the networks are to declare a winner, long before most votes are cast, and with plenty of time for things to change. Besides, there’s a lot more than just the presidential race at stake here, there are tons of Senate, House, and local seats and measures that you can have input on.

Know your voting rights! Hopefully this won’t be an issue for you, but better to be prepared. Don’t let goons from the other side (whichever side that may be) keep you from voting. If you do have problems, know what to do:

If you see something weird or discomfiting or arguably illegal going on at your polling place tomorrow. don’t post about it here. Or, at least, don’t post first.

You’ve got two choices tomorrow as to where to phone in your information, and I’m going to advocate doing both. First off, there’s Obama Voter Protection:

Call 1-877-US-4-OBAMA (1-877-874-6226) and let them know what problems you’re seeing. If you can’t get through, use this online form and/or call your local campaign HQ.

Alternately, or in addition, I strongly encourage you to call Election Protection, a nonpartisan organization:

• For immediate assistance, call the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline.
• To report problems to Election Protection’s state teams through Twitter, use these guidelines.
• Track incident reports received through the hotline at OurVoteLive.org
• Keep an eye on voting issues as they are reported at the OurVoteLive Blog
• Follow breaking voting news and issues at the 866OurVote Twitter account

We all love being able to break news here about what we’re seeing, but what matters most tomorrow is giving that information to people who can do something about it . And then … wait, what are you doing at a computer in the first place on Election Day? Get out there. Do More Than Vote.

Lawyers like me will be at polling places all over the country tomorrow to protect every citizen’s right to vote in an atmosphere free of intimidation, coercion and deception. But we can’t do anything if we don’t know what the problem is. So don’t post it here — call it in.

It’s time for a change, people. Make this one count.

Sometime between November 2nd and November 3rd, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Amazon Frustration-Free Packaging: The Frustration-Free Package is recyclable and comes without excess packaging materials such as hard plastic clamshell casings, plastic bindings, and wire ties. It's designed to be opened without the use of a box cutter or knife and will protect your product just as well as traditional packaging. Products with Frustration-Free Packaging can frequently be shipped in their own boxes, without an additional shipping box.
• In Landslide, John McCain Is The President Of AOL: (Just in case there weren't enough reasons to avoid "A-O-Hell"….) AOL.com's homepage political poll results are in, and the site's calling a landslide for Republican John McCain. Not only does he carry swing states Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, in the poll, but McCain also scores upset wins in California and Massachusetts. Or maybe the poll says more about AOL users than it does US voters. The reader who pointed us to the results writes: "Proof Republicans only use dialup."
• Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004: Thinking about launching your own blog? Here's some friendly advice: Don't. And if you've already got one, pull the plug. (Gotta be honest, I've been wondering about this myself. I just don't have the time to devote to the blog that I used to, and most of what shows up here is mirrored from Twitter. Not throwing in the towel yet, but…considering options.)
• Why Pushing Daisies Is The Best TV Show You’re Not Watching: I wish that headline wasn't true, but the ratings back me up; not enough people are watching ABC's Pushing Daisies. Bryan Fuller's secretly twisted yet romantic detective show may bring the dead back to life on a regular basis, but it also goes out of its way to prove Isaac Newton and Stan Lee right every week as well. Hilarious, more cynical than you might expect and with the best ensemble cast on television right now, we're giving you four reasons why it's time to put your preconceptions aside and get onboard the Pie Wagon before it's too late.
• Ask a Wizard: War of the Worlds 2.0 - The Post Mortem: A bunch of twitterers did a realtime modern reenactment of The War of the Worlds a few days ago. Pity I didn't know about it beforehand, it looks like it was a lot of fun.

It’s Prairie’s birthday today!

(via John Moltz via FakeJohnMcCain)

A silly, simple one-day-only design change to celebrate Halloween. Have fun today, and watch out for ghoulies, ghosties, and things that go bump in the night!

Sometime between 06:15 and 16:48, I thought this stuff was interesting. You might think so too!

• Man Burns Himself Alive In Red Square: Authorities haven't figured out why he did it, though they found a lab coat and a pair of goggles on the ground by him and it has been determined that he soaked himself in gasoline beforehand. (One more reason I'm going to hell: as freaky and sad as this is, when I read the bit about the "lab coat and a pair of goggles," my first thought was, "Has anyone checked in with Dr. Horrible lately?")
• Roy The Forklift Driver: Joe the Plumber? Tito the Builder? Just Johnny-come-latelys. Meet the original "everyday" darling of the conservative set: Roy the Forklift Driver. The parallels are freaky. From The Onion, May 29, 1993.
• Pre-emptive ejection: Audience members removed at McCain rally in Cedar Falls: “When I started talking to them, it kind of became clear that they were kind of just telling people to leave that they thought maybe would be disruptive, but based on what? Based on how they looked,” Elborno said. “It was pretty much all young people, the college demographic.” Elborno said even McCain supporters were among those being asked to leave. “I saw a couple that had been escorted out and they were confused as well, and the girl was crying, so I said ‘Why are you crying? and she said ‘I already voted for McCain, I’m a Republican, and they said we had to leave because we didn’t look right,’” Elborno said. “They were handpicking these people and they had nothing to go off of, besides the way the people looked.”
• NASA - NASA Twittering: A list of NASA's missions and projects with Twitter accounts. Pretty cool, I had no idea there were so many!
• Thanks for the memories: Do you know Seattle's official song, "Seattle, the Peerless City?" Rapture flows freely in lines such as, "her bosom's gemm'd with pearly lakes," and "greater far than ancient Rome." How was it chosen? Not after lengthy deliberation. Seattle city archivist Scott Cline said the songwriter asked the City Council to adopt his ditty. It was 1909, and the council said sure — if Councilmember Frederick Sawyer would sing it right there in front of everyone. A notation on the back of the sheet music in Seattle's archives reads: "As sang by the peerless soloist Sawyer." (Aww, c'mon…no MP3? I want to hear this!)
• Chart Porn: War and Social Upheaval Cause Spikes in Zombie Movie Production: Is there really a connection between zombie movies and social unrest? We decided to do some research and find out. The result? We've got a line graph showing the number of zombie movies coming out in the West each year since 1910 — and there are definite spikes during certain years, which always seem to happen eerily close to historical events involving war or social upheaval.