A Surprising Note on All Things Political and Gay...

Here is a graph showing the shift, either more Republican or more Democrat, among self identified groups of voters.

What is most interesting, to my mind, is that there was a marked shift away, by percentage, from the Democrats, to the Republicans...among the gays. Not really surprising to me, that. We had the most gay-friendly Republican ticket in history. But also of note is the fact that Obama did several things to hurt himself among the gay community.

CBK

Tastes like Chicken.

In other news, Poland is not coming to any state dinners anytime soon:

"Have you heard that Obama may have a Polish connection? His grandfather ate a Polish missionary," said Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski.

Apparently he was only giving an example of a racist joke. Thanks for the education, I had no idea what racism was.

Yar, Pirates!

Pirates of the Indian Ocean hijacked a huge tanker and are trying to take it back to Somalia. They swashbuckled their way into what is easily the biggest heist on the high seas ever. Yar.

Actually, that's 100 million dollars worth of oil, you should seriously give that back.

Seriously.

The Bat Hunter

Crikey!

$21 million to repair doomsday

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1859684,00.html?cnn=yes

"Fixing the world's largest atom smasher will cost at least 25 million francs ($21 million) and may take until early summer, its operator said Monday.

The atom smasher operates at temperatures colder than outer space to get maximum efficiency and experts needed to gradually warm the damaged section to better assess it, he said.

That will show on a tiny scale what happened one-trillionth of a second after the so-called Big Bang, which many scientists theorize was the massive explosion that formed the universe. The theory holds that the universe was rapidly cooling at that stage and matter was changing rapidly."

Making the picture cloudy

Tony Romo returns (broken pinky and all) to lead the Cowboys to a win that puts 'America's Team' right back into the playoff hunt

The Economist weighs in on the financial crisis

Is that what I think it is?

Yup - it totally is...




President George W. Bush is flashing the "shocker" with the 2008 NCAA sports champions.





Wow.

Another addition to the list of speculation on autism...

Over the past decades, diagnosis and awareness of the spectrum of Autism disorders has skyrocketed. But, ask 100 people what causes Autism and you will probably get 100 different answers. Many mothers of children with Autism will tell you it's due to the MMR vaccine, some say its a rotovirus that punctuates the bowel and travels to the brain, others call it a severe allergy to glutin and casein. Researchers in California have just added their two cents to the bucket- rain. Yup, rain. As odd as it sounds, it does appear that there may actually be a link between rainy weather and rates of autism in California and Oregon. No one is quite sure why, whether it's the rain itself or it's becuase the children in these climates spend more time inside with televisio and household chemicals. No one knows, but it's another theory.

This has always bugged me, too

The Amazing Sounds of Failing Hard Drive

The amazing sounds of the killing hordes, the day the hard drive collapses on us.

The sounds that 35 different types of hard drives make as they slowly die.

Additional commentary at Slashdot.

50 Thinks you might not know about the President - Elect

• He likes Spiderman
• He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali.
• His favourite drink is black forest berry iced tea.
• His desk in his Senate office once belonged to Robert Kennedy.
• Daughter Malia's godmother is Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita.

continue . . .

This takes "Change we can believe in" to a WHOLE new level

This election has given us many firsts- first black president, first female on the Republican ticket, etc. Well, I have just found out about another one. Silverton, Oregon has elected the nation's first ever openly transgendered mayor. Stu Rasmussen has been a fixture in Silverton politics for a while now, and actually served two terms as mayor in the past- before he became a she. Amazingly, he doesn't see any of the attention as warranted. He sees being open about his transgendered-ness as "blackmail-proof" saying that because his appearance was no secret, the race could be dominated by the issues that really matter.

No XKCD today

I wasn't really impressed with today's XKCD. Instead, please enjoy this Toothpaste for Dinner comic.

Remember that bombing in Pakistan thing?

You know - that whole "if we have actionable intelligence and the Pakistan government is unable or unwilling, we should attack the terrorists ourselves" thing?

Apparently, we're already doing that.

Way to go, Obama - giving away the Bush Administration's play book.

A cure for HIV?

For years, researchers have known that some people are immune to HIV due to a genetic mutation in their cell membranes. More recently a German physician replaced the bone marrow of an HIV patient with bone marrow from a person with the mutation. Two years later, the HIV is gone.

that is one HOT first lady

Take the brains of Hillary, add the uncomplicated charm of Laura, and the impeccable style of Jackie. Put it all together, and what do you have? One AMAZINGLY hot first lady.




photo available here

Change.gov comes online

President-elect Barack Obama has launched Change.gov, a website that outlines, in plain English and detail, the plan for transitioning governments.

Have a question? Looking for a job in the Obama Administration? Change.gov has the answers.

Interestingly, the content is copyrighted by the Obama-Biden Transition Project, a 501C(4) organization. It seems they were planning and prepared for victory.

For additional commentary, check out Slashdot.

Bad Dog

We now have the most high profile case for the dog whisperer....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27578582/