Misc = Primaries, Schmap, Clock, and Map

This map and graph, courtesy of Wikimedia and the U of Iowa, respectively, depict the current status of the contest to select the Democratic nominee for this fall's American Presidential election. Barack Obama is currently leading according to the futures chart at bottom by a margin of over 2 to 1, after having criss-crossed with Hillary Clinton just over two weeks ago. As of now, Obama is leading by about 64 delegates. With almost half of the delegates not yet tallied, there is still a long way to go in this historic contest.

I did indeed vote for one of these two candidates, as part of the Democrats Abroad primary (which amounts to a total of 11 delegates that are sent to the Democratic National Convention in Denver starting on August 25th). In the map at left, these expat votes are shown in grey next to those for Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. Obama = blue, Clinton = Red, Edwards = green, stripped of delegates = black, and not yet assigned = grey. So, the 11 expat delegates have not yet been won. I must say that at this point, I am essentially indifferent to whichever candidate ends up as the Democratic front-runner, as long as the party successfully unites behind the chosen nominee and ushers him/her to the White House.

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Next of these several miscellaneous things - this phenomenal World Clock gizmo is one of the most interesting things I've seen on the internets in a while. You can set the timer by year, month, week, day, and "now," so play around with the different settings to see how fast the tallies rise and how many of the given events have occurred already in those 5 categories. I find it most fulfilling to press "now" repeatedly in order to constantly be aware of how much of each event happens every instant, even after you reset the clock. AIDS, oil, computers, births, species, etc...and after you play around with this world clock, check out the other "clocks" of time zone, U.S. crime, Christmas countdown, etc...This is a great resource.

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Schmap is a solid resource for finding information on activities in urban areas throughout the world. Check it out!

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Mal-connected:



If your computer's internet connection is as slow as mine at the moment (perhaps due to a cut cable thousands of kilometers away at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea), then you might want to perform a speed check on your connection. Hopefully, your bytes are flowing faster than mine were when this test was logged.

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Next is an enlightening map sequence from Maps of War that depicts the succession of empires that have ruled over the Middle East. It's rather insightful.