Happy Turkey Day, kids.

I'm stuffed at the moment, or rather, have been, since noon.

The luxury of being able to sit in a warm house and type these words is more than enough to be thankful for.

That and water chestnuts wrapped in bacon cooked in a special marinade...mmm....I think I'm hungry again.

I've always loved maps and globes. The mixture of pure information and imagination (I wonder what it's like over there) is a killer combo. A while back, Helena scored me a great globe with a depiction of the world as it was thought in the past. In many ways, this is even superior to an up-to-date map as if you put two maps together, you can see a visual representation of history, of wars, of the effects of colonization. I always wanted to have a house one day with a giant map on the wall or a huge table, perhaps an electronic one, that I could zoom in or pan around on.

In that spirit, I present the coolest globe ever. It's another stephensonesque object, in the spirit of The Confusion Globe.

Of course, the brand-spanking froogle wish list doesn't have it available to link to. Yet.

Snow Crash is here.

Living last year at Economy Storage in Waldorf, Lawrence said, were a young couple, the man in construction and the woman working odd jobs; an older couple, a minister and his wife; and a woman who owned a car and had a membership at a nearby gym. After what amounted to a neighborhood dispute took them to court, the judge asked the county to look into the situation.

The people had to move out immediately, since living in a storage shed violates housing codes.

"They just want a place to sleep at night where they're not wet, not cold," Lawrence said. Most people who stayed there went to work every morning and came home at night and didn't bother a soul, she added.

Ah yes...those court orders upholding housing codes. Perhaps our government could actually build more houses that were spec'd to code, and then the problem wouldn't force people into rental lockers. I'm sure tons of kids right out of college would pay $100 a month for an super tiny efficiency that was government subsidized. Maybe it's time for better Projects...

Okay, I've uploaded about a month's worth of new images to the website.

This one is from arizona and was taken the morning after.

I once was blind, but now can see.

If only my fingers worked, I'd be fine. And, of course, if my idiotic insurance company didn't just tell me I was screwed until May. Thanks CareFirst!

Nothing starts your day worse off than slamming your fingers in a door.

Especially if your job involves lots of typing.

Ouch.

So Vilsack is out.

This means it's probably going to be Dean vs. someone...in my mind, most likely Alexis Harman or Simon Rosenberg. Rosenberg vs. Dean would be ideal, because some actual issues would be discussed.

My head and heart thing Dean would be the best, but Rosenberg would be the second best. So I'm happy either way.

Okay, so the name of the team is the awful Nationals..

The new logo sounds atrocious too.

There is one bright spot: whenever the team gets sold they can change the name and the logo...and best of all, it turns out the mayor was in the Grays corner all along:

Another choice -- the Grays, in reference to the old Negro League team -- lost out as well as baseball and team officials performed marketing studies and held focus groups to determine what the public might like best.

"The mayor was on Grays," Tavares said. "Bud was on Senators. I think you see a compromise candidate. But I don't want to sell it as that. I think it's a great name. I really do."

Despite the celebration surrounding the announcement, the name could well be temporary. The franchise is owned by the other 29 major league teams, and is currently up for sale. Baseball officials have said that a new ownership group would have the right to petition for a name change once it takes control of the club.

The team's red, white and blue color scheme is reflected in both the logo and the hats. Final decisions on uniforms are still being made, though the team will wear white at home and have an alternate red "Saturday" jersey, giving it more marketing options.

So ideally, someone new would snap up the team, produce cool black, white and gray unis, with the standard blue G, and we'd be back in business. Go Grays!

So, word on the street is the guys who designed T9 predictive text have now added support for Urdu to the upcoming 7.2 version.

No more having to type "HBP" anymore...you can just type "laugh out loud" in a few keystrokes on your phone!

Yes, they also added Bengali and Tamil support. These guys really rock.

I want one of these watches. Got it?

So I guess the cross of gold man was a little too good at uniting the masses. Not behind labor rights, of course, but behind his side of the Scopes Monkey Trial. How else to explain this unbelievable poll?. How sad to see Bryan's twisted legacy in this.

From the site:

Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don't know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.

If anyone has a subscription to the gallup site, please let me see the rest of the text. I'd be interested to see their internals. Perhaps the large oversampling of Republicans influenced this poll as well?