Not sure what to call this

I just realized I have no memory of having combed my hair before
leaving the house this morning. Looking in the mirror does not provide
any evidence.

I'm not sure if not knowing says more about what kind of day I'm
having or my sense of style.

Sent from my iPhone

I tawt I taw a puddy-tat

I really didn't need to sit at my desk tonight, grrllzz. Don't mind me.

Feline Concentration

You would never know by looking at this shot that Meanwhile Manor has
approximately 1100-square feet in which one can stretch out (or curl
up) and relax.

Oh, really

My daily digital routine includes updating my numerous podcasts
(welcome to the herd, Ms Maddow), checking the bulletin boards for
files worth the download bandwidth, cycling through watched or
listened to files on the iPhone and replacing them with fresh, new
files, and looking for new and/or updated iPhone applications. It is
this last which caused me to double-take this morning.

iTunes makes updating easy to the point of annoying. Essentially,
updates are shoved your way and you either acquiesce and perform the
upgrade or subject yourself to endless nattering and nagging.

Anyway, one of the apps I have on my iPhone is a copy of the
Constitution. Perhaps you've heard if this document. Imagine my
surprise when it required an update this morning. As The T said,
"you'd think we'd have heard more about that."

Sent from my iPhone

I knew it!

Here's the last image sent from the Mars rover Phoenix. Looks suspicious, if you ask me.


Actually, the photo was slightly, uh, retouched as part of a contest over at Gizmodo.

Just let me finish this page

This is how I feel in the bookstore and at the library and while browsing Powell's Books.com and well, all the time really. I wish I had a touch of insomnia, just a touch. Maybe then I'd have a chance to read all the books I am accumulating.


Link

iYiyi

What is the fascination with bacon? Bacon wallets. Bacon band-aids. And now iBacon for your iPhone. I am verklempt.


from Gizmodo

How do I recharge this thing?

Ingenious! A Japanese farmer put stickers on apples and then just sat back and waited. Brilliant and probably a trademark infringement lawsuit waiting to happen. Regardless, next year I am slapping stickers on every veggie I plant.


via Gizmodo

What Would Rorschach See?

As a follow-up to Gollum's particular perspective of a store display combined with my self-inundation in the national election, I bring you an interesting view of voting results. Way more info can be found at the author's site, not too far from the longitudinal midline of the contiguous 48.

The national election in 2004 spawned the Jesusland map, a (humorous?) response to the wave of red psychosis that swept the land:

Here's what it looks like in the more traditional colors of red and blue:

And now let's look at just the lower-48:


Now this is where things get really neat. If the map is tweaked based on population density and we look at the cartogram, the red and blue swatches look like:

For a fuller explanation of what's going on, check out where the maps came from.

Here are the results for the 2008 election:















I would love to see this map superimposed on on similar renditions of maps showing locations of cities. I wonder just how distorted location is. That claw on the west coast: is that San Francisco Bay? Where exactly is that pocket of red in the lower left corner, Arizona? The author offers up his software for free. I'm off to play.

At the end of the rainbow

Way back in The When, at the beginning of the presidential primary season when it seemed like every politician who had a pulse decided the run for the office, the question arose, "Who is this Obama fellow?" My favorite answer to the question—and this is real, I swear—was that he was a nice Irish fellow cut from the same liberal cloth as a previous generation's nice Irish fellow.

Irish. As in O'Bama. For a brief moment, I wondered if I was spelling his name wrong and that the apostrophe was actually some sort of glottal stop like in the word Hawai'i. Thankfully, the moment passed. 

I can only think that these poor mistaken folks, deep in their conservative closet, were so shocked that a man of mix-raced lineage would dare enter the campaign that they clung to their error for comfort. Did they also misconstrue the rest of his name? Did they hear it as Patrick Seamus O'Bama? Oy.