OK, here's a great article from Slate talking about all of those claims that "it costs the US Economy $..." however much each year for some stupid thing that obviously doesn't cost the US Economy however much a year.

So, for reasons involving the Virginia Department of Taxation, I found myself digging through some old web sites for Inter.net this morning. As a part of this, I needed to make captures of the Library of Congress's web captures of Inter.net's 9/11 site, MyStory.Inter.net. As …

The Washington Post is reporting on a study from the Census Bureau to be published today indicating that 125 million Americans (64% of those 18 and older) voted in the 2004 elections. The article contains the obligatory statistical breakdowns, which are all pretty much as you would expect.

iRobot, makers of the popular Roomba vacuum robot, have announced that they will be releasing Scooba before the Holidays to vacuum, mop, and dry hard surface floors.

This was possibly a victory for good journalism, maybe a victory for the bloggers, and perhaps just a sign that the guy who gets elected gets his way with the media. I'm not entirely sure which, but the Washington Post has an article about CBS's firing of 4 staffers related …

An article from InfoWorld notes that the FCC has approved (PDF) Friday a software defined radio made by Vanu.. The radio is for use as a cellular base station for GSM and will be capable of handling a variety of frequencies (important for GSM, since Europe uses 900MHz and 1 …

It is "with a heavy heart" that the Economist has announced that they have endorsed Kerry for the US Presidential election. A friend of mine points out that if they were going to flip-flop, that'd be the right way to go. Keeping in the same line, if they were going …

Both the Bush and Kerry campaigns have talked about outsourcing as a problem. Bush wants to keep business taxes low and regulation under control in order to keep jobs in the US; Kerry wants to penalize companies for taking their jobs overseas. Today, in the Wall Street Journal, Lou Gerstner …

For those curious, President Elect is a site that contains information about the electoral college, including the popular and electoral vote counts from as early as 1824 (with a couple of missing years) as well as the individual state vote counts for each election (where available). There are some interesting …

With all of the controversy over Ralph Nader and his difficulties getting put on the ballot in various states, including my home state of Virginia, and the pivotal state of Florida, I figured I'd post a link to the Ballot Access website, which contains information on which third-party candidates are …

This isn't a great story from the Washington Post, but it's an amusing comment on our political system and small towns like Cuba City, Wisconsin.

CNet has an article in which John Kerry's Senate record on technology is evaluated. According to the article (without any significant supplemental research by me), he has been less interested in privacy and innovation than in status quo (movie industry copy protection over consumer electronics) and increased taxation.

For the last night of the Democratic National Convention of 2004, I spent about an hour and a half (sorry, folks, I can't sit here and watch that many speakers say the same thing, with varying accents, all night). I did get to John Kerry's speech, which is also available …

The DNC has nicely posted a QuickTime (and WMP) version of the speech by Barack Obama which has been heralded by many as the best speech at the DNC this year (or at least on Tuesday night).

Last night I tuned in for more of the DNC, watching a number of the lead-in speeches to Mr. Edwards, and then the night's big event, the Senator's speech. It's pretty clear from his delivery that he feels very comfortable talking to large groups (and it doesn't get a lot …

Wired has an article about the JibJab version of Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land which stars George W Bush and John Kerry exchanging political barbs. If you haven't seen the short (on the JibJab site), you might want to take a peek before they get shut down by …

Carol and I watched about two hours of the Democratic National Convention on Monday night (sorry, I'm not quite enough of a political junky to watch the entire thing). Unfortunately, I didn't take notes, but the speeches of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter are very fresh in my mind still …

Admittedly, it isn't very likely, but John Dvorak (columnist for PC Magazine) has written a column suggesting that Microsoft may shut down after pushing down the stock price, spinning off some subsidiaries, and off-shoring most of the employees.

Wired has an interesting article about the Republican National Committee's recent web-based efforts to advertise against Kerry. Part of these include the use of video games as the ad delivery medium. This week's ad "Tax Invader" which features little green bullets firing from Bush's head at the taxes that …

Often, these days, I find myself looking at web sites about politics, finance, and government and saying, "wow! that's cool... but what is its effect?" Fundrace.org is one such site. It's worth a look, because with it you can see what your neighborhood's politics look like. However, don't be …