Chill of Winter

It's November 21st, and it's snowing here in Maryland. Considering the last few years this seems like a rare occurrence, to see flurries before Christmas is typical but before December from what I remember is pretty rare.

There's a certain primal joy that comes to most people's faces when they realize it's snowing. One of the little things in life that I enjoy observing in others.

All Along the Western Front

I'm very into the band MGMT right now, haven't listened to much of the alternative "psychadelic" music in a while. Becky says that it will most likely get on her nerves by the end of the week, but I tend to do that to her when it comes to electronic music that I like.

On a good note I am sketching a bit more these days, managing to get a few little things down either in off times at work or when I get home / on the weekends. Not quite every day, but I am missing two entire months (not consecutive) out of my sketchbook so far in 2008 and I view that as a bad thing. Will hopefully get to posting drawings on here sooner or later. Also I'm reading through The Dragon Reborn pretty well right now, ~450 pages through. Most people have told me to stop reading the Wheel of Time series somewhere around this book or book 4, but I've been alternating between WoT and a few other series so we'll see how far I get. Definitely picking up a bunch of Phillip K Dick after this book though. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is sitting on my desk right now, I made the mistake of reading the first few pages and so now I can't wait to get to it. There's a lot behind what inspired Blade Runner that I am really anxious to read.

Fighting a Swarm

This short quiz is funny if not only for the premise and some interesting questions, find out hypothetically how many five year olds you'd be able to fight at once:


26

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site

Finally Over

Already I'm noticing the lack of political vitriol that has been eating away at my cognizance for the last YEAR. A year, probably much more than a year really, and I already feel better. I didn't even really care that much which candidate won, so long as it was OVER. However, I do have to say that McCain's conceding speech and particularly Obama's acceptance speech really helped me feel better about the whole process.

Google, always impressing me at pretty much every turn (even with Google Ads lately), has election coverage added into their maps feature, I highly recommend it as you can look at the entire US split by votes, or at each individual state split by COUNTY. Very interesting to look at:

http://maps.google.com/help/maps/elections/index.html#2008_election

Why is it that cities are ALWAYS dominated by democrat votes? If you did voting by square miles of land owned, then it looks like Republicans would win 100% of the time. Is there something about the density of population, the proximity to other people? Does it boil down to the simple factors, like acceptance of varied cultures and how that relates to the democratic party core values? I'm not quite willing to accept that as the only influence, but it's the only big one I can think of right now...

Anyway, it's over, I'm happy with the result even though I may have been MORE happy if McCain had won simply because I believe that would have lead to lower taxes, and I feel lower taxes lead to a boon in the economy which is what I think most people would like the most right now. Somehow Obama's campaign values became associated with low gas prices, global warming, separation of church & state, pro-abortion legislation, and a better economy. I'm pretty sure most of those will not be directly affected by his decisions / presidency.