Civilian Deaths, US Troop Deaths, Daily Crude Oil Production, Electricity Generated, Number of Phone Subscribers, and Iraqi Detainees in US Custody over the last 5 years. Note the “prewar level” and “stated goal” markers, too.
If those numbers are accurate, then we’re seeing the lowest number of civilian and troop deaths since the war began. Regardless of what you think about the war, that’s a good thing.
New primary system for Washington State -
“Under a surprise 7-2 ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, the state is allowed to begin using a primary that would put all candidates on the same ballot and advance the top two finishers to the general election, regardless of party…
Analysts said the system should favor centrists with crossover appeal over hard-edged partisans. The new method also offers the intriguing possibility of November elections between two candidates from the same party.” (emphasis is mine)
Senator Clinton's "Million Little Pieces" moment -
“Senator Clinton’s campaign has launched one of the oddest bits of political propaganda in the history of modern politics. Called DelegateHub.com, it is a web site that does nothing less than lay out, in glorious policy-wonk detail, their rationale for stealing the Democratic nomination…
Gore’s Electoral College loss in 2000 was a calamity, and the idea that that sort of end-run might be perpetrated on us again by a member of our own party strikes us as a betrayal of trust…
Even worse, not only are Clinton’s rationales for increasing the delegate count anti-democratic, they are mutually contradictory. DelegateHub explains her goal to seat Florida and Michigan as a question of fundamental fairness, but in explaining superdelegates, they call the popular vote an arbitrary metric. So which is it: fair, or arbitrary? The campaign never says, because of course, there’s no actual principle here. Things that increase her delegate count are good, period.”
[video]
UPDATED (4/11/2008): The problems described in this post have been fixed. I also decided to leave the reblog comments instead of requiring you to hover over some text to see them.
UPDATE: Like with most version 1.0 solutions, I got feedback and made changes. On permalink posts, there’s a link in the sidebar for posts with reblog notes, and the notes will slide down. On index pages, if there are notes, a “show reblog notes” link will show up and exhibit the same sliding behavior. There are still issues with one of the services I use to enable this which results in some posts with notes not actually appearing to have notes. Other times, the notes will be missing information like usernames or user icons. I feel like that’s pretty much out of my hands, unfortunately.
During my conversation with joelaz about accessing Tumblr notes and what you could do with them, he mentioned that it would be neat to display the notes alongside a post . I really liked that idea, so I added that information to my sidebar. You can see it on “post” pages that have reblogging activity (give it a second to load). It’s designed to not show anything if there haven’t been any reblogs relating to the post. If there are reblogs, then you’ll see the rebloggers’ icons and usernames, as well as who they each reblogged it from. I’ve set it up so that the icon will always link to that user’s main page, and the username will link to that user’s reblog post if they added anything to it; otherwise, it will also link to that user’s main page. That’s a limitation of the data available in the notes page. If you hover over the reblogger’s username, you’ll see some of the text that they added, if they added anything.
Unfortunately, my experience with one of the web services I used (Dapper) to make this has been quite frustrating, and I’ve wasted hours trying to get it to work on both posts with many reblogs and posts with only a few reblogs. It doesn’t seem to want to do both, so I left it working for posts with (what appear to be) more than three reblogs. I wouldn’t even need Dapper if Yahoo Pipes did something I think it should, and I’ve given feedback to the Pipes team about it. Anyway, here are some posts where you can see the rebloggers list in action:
http://coacervo.tumblr.com/post/25255357
http://coacervo.tumblr.com/post/24798348
http://coacervo.tumblr.com/post/27649141
http://coacervo.tumblr.com/post/23845269
http://coacervo.tumblr.com/post/23859873 (4 reblogs and it works)
Here are some posts where there are reblogs (click the “Show/Hide Notes” link above the footer to see them if you’re using Firefox) but no rebloggers listed in the sidebar:
http://coacervo.tumblr.com/post/23377331 (3 reblogs and it doesn’t work)
http://coacervo.tumblr.com/post/25077239 (3 reblogs, again)
http://coacervo.tumblr.com/post/26267925 (2 reblogs)
I left some debugging stuff around (some javascript functions and that Show/Hide Notes link I mentioned above) in case I decide to dig into it some more. Please excuse the mess =) If anyone has any suggestions or comments, let me know!
Velcro being pulled apart. See also: Velcro under a microscope
This map is right on. The term I use depends on where I am. Home = pop. Visiting friends = coke. Currently = soda. But NEVER soda pop combined.
Interesting. I grew up saying pop, but I eventually migrated to soda after hearing over and over that the word pop was just a Northwest thing. Oh, how I was misled! The damage has already been done, however, as the word pop as a synonym for soft drink sounds weird to me.
Basically, what brand (company, product, person, any entity that holds a brand identity) do you think gained awareness the fastest. Reblog your answer, if you’re so inclined. TBC Monday (taking a snowboard trip to Stowe this weekend).
Osama Bin Laden / Al Qaeda after 9/11.
Update: Winner!
LOLObama
The Race to Save the Cougar Ace -
A well-written, somewhat lengthy story about the rescue of the boat that started the “FAILBOAT” meme.
Imagine you’re Pirate A in the following scenario. How would you propose to distribute the coins? Keep in mind the second factor in decision making (below); proposing that each pirate take 20 gold coins would surely let you live, but it would not be maximizing your own gold. Click the link for the answer. I found the answer to be counter-intuitive.
—
There are five rational pirates, A, B, C, D and E. They find 100 gold coins. They must decide how to distribute them.
The Pirates have a strict order of seniority: A is superior to B, who is superior to C, who is superior to D, who is superior to E.
The Pirate world’s rules of distribution are thus: that the most senior pirate should propose a distribution of coins. The pirates should then vote on whether to accept this distribution; the proposer is able to vote, and has the casting vote in the event of a tie. If the proposed allocation is approved by vote, it happens. If not, the proposer is thrown overboard from the pirate ship and dies, and the next most senior pirate makes a new proposal to begin the system again.
Pirates base their decisions on three factors. First of all, each pirate wants to survive. Secondly, each pirate wants to maximize the amount of gold coins they receive. Thirdly, each pirate would prefer to throw another overboard, if all other results would otherwise be equal.
The Audacity of Hopelessness -
“As for countering what she sees as the empty Obama brand of hope, she offers only a chilly void: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This must be the first presidential candidate in history to devote so much energy to preaching against optimism, against inspiring language and — talk about bizarre — against democracy itself.”
[video]
“Be mindful of the link between present action and desired future outcome. Ask yourself: if I repeat today’s actions 365 times, will I be where I want to be in a year?” — Roz Savage (via)
[video]
