The Florida voting experience

Wonderful animated spoof by Boom Chicago. Very funny unless you know about Diebold voting machines. Thanks to Gerard for the link.

The new iPod…

… does indeed — as the rumours predicted — handle images as well as music.

Quote from NYT story:

“SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 26 – Apple Computer introduced on Tuesday its next generation iPod music player, which has the ability to display digital images as well as play songs.

The new iPod Photo, priced at $499 and $599, will be able to store up to 25,000 wallet-size digital images and display them on a television via a cable. It comes with 40-gigabyte or 60-gigabyte disk storage, capable of storing up to 15,000 songs.”

Footnote: At today’s exchange rate, (USD) 499 translates into (GBP) 272. So guess how much the 40GB model costs at the UK Apple store? Why (GBP) 359. What a racket.

Vorsprung durch technik

This image puzzles most people who aren’t interested in cars.

But for anyone who is interested in automobiles, it’s obvious: the filler cap on an Audi TT roadster!

The Cornell note-taking system

What every student should know.

Explanation here. Thanks to Ben for link.

Unstoppable eBay

Text version of my Observer column about eBay is here.

Google mail

I’ve been using Gmail for nearly a fortnight, and am very impressed at the slickness of the interface and the speed with which it works. Webmail used to be like wading through treacle. Gmail changes that. Jon Udell has done some poking under the bonnet/hood and come up with this informative account of how it’s done.

Be nice to the Yanks

Europeans’ detestation of George Bush is leading many of them to forget their manners. Visiting Americans report increasing (and IMHO unforgiveable) hostility directed at them personally — as if somehow they were individually responsible for the excesses of the Bush-Cheney regime. For any Briton disposed to take such a view I suggest the following thought-experiment. Just imagine how you’d have felt if you had been held personally responsible for Margaret Thatcher during her interminable and repressive reign.

What kind of democracy, exactly, is Dubya proposing to export?

The US has an electoral system which looks increasingly corrupt and rickety. On the corruption front, just look at the relationship between campaign funding and legislators’ behaviour — e.g. on copyright law — not to mention the way in which electoral districts for the House of Representatives are comprehensively gerrymandered to ensure that there is a real contest in only a minority of seats. (See the Economist‘s piece “How to Rig an Election” for details.) On the rickety front, see this NYT editorial. It reads, in part,:

“In Florida, voter registrations are being thrown out on pointless technicalities. Missouri is telling soldiers to send nonsecret ballots by e-mail through a Pentagon contractor with a troubling past. Nationwide, eligible voters are being removed from the rolls by flawed felon purges. And nearly a third of this year’s votes will be cast on highly questionable electronic voting machines. No wonder a large percentage of Americans doubt that their votes will count. The election system is crying out for reform.”

Through a glass, lightly

Photographed in a London basement today.

Counting beads

A headline in today’s Daily Telegraph reads “Rosary is not just a fashion item, explains church”. Accompanying it is a photograph of footballer David Beckham wearing not one, not two but four sets of rosary beads around his neck. “The soaring popularity of rosary beads among the fashion conscious”, explains the Telegraph, “has provoked the Roman Catholic Church to issue a leaflet stressing their religious significance”.

That loud whirring sound you hear is that of my late mother (a fanatical Catholic who said the rosary every day of her life) rotating at 5,500 rpm in her grave.

Google tells me that Beckham appeared on the front of Vanity Fair wearing his, er, religious kit — thus.