This is at the same time that the City of Philadelphia is trying to cut funding and close 11 city public libraries… In an effort to save money in the economic downturn.

With as much effort as they’ve put in to rezoning the Market Street Gallery Mall to make it able to have a casino, and how little effort they’ve put in to saving the libraries *AND* are now asking for that much money to place a casino in the center of the city…

Mayor Nutter will not get my vote when he’s up for reelection.

Please Support : http://www.casinofreephila.org/

I’d like to share though, what I’ve been waiting for all week after the election.
The maps.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/

This guy, at University of Michican has for the last two elections been making maps based on electorial votes and population density, and cross referencing them against the real “popular” vote numbers. Red vs Blue shows a very ‘black and white’ view of the country, and its very difficult to show how many people really voted for that guy, or the other. The large geographic sizes of some states in comparison to others throws off their perceived value, when seen just in a visual.

Its a little better when you get the chance to see a table of numbers, but then you lose the value and power of a map.

His response is perfect.

The states are colored red or blue to indicate whether a majority of their voters voted for the Republican candidate, John McCain, or the Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, respectively. Looking at this map it gives the impression that the Republicans won the election handily, since there is rather more red on the map than there is blue. In fact, however, the reverse is true – the Democrats won by a substantial margin. The explanation for this apparent paradox, as pointed out by many people, is that the map fails to take account of the population distribution. It fails to allow for the fact that the population of the red states is on average significantly lower than that of the blue ones. The blue may be small in area, but they represent a large number of voters, which is what matters in an election.

We can correct for this by making use of a cartogram, a map in which the sizes of states are rescaled according to their population. That is, states are drawn with size proportional not to their acreage but to the number of their inhabitants, states with more people appearing larger than states with fewer, regardless of their actual area on the ground. On such a map, for example, the state of Rhode Island, with its 1.1 million inhabitants, would appear about twice the size of Wyoming, which has half a million, even though Wyoming has 60 times the acreage of Rhode Island.

Here are the 2008 presidential election results on a population cartogram of this type:

The result of this cartogram shows the value of each state in a measurement of how large their population is, yet keeping their position relative to each other.
This gives us a much better idea of how many people voted for each person running for office, while also looking at where they live.

Take a closer look at his maps, as there are a lot of other views he shows, including the popular vote color map, which ranges from red to blue showing how truly purple our nation is.

Its a much more useful view of how our nation is, politicaly, and how the population effects the out come of the election.

This evening I’m headed up to NYC to visit my brother for a few days. I decided to take Bolt Bus. They say it has wifi, and the price is very good.
So what the hell. It can’t be worse then the China Town bus, can it?

Right now, as I type this, I’m sitting about midway back on the bus, plugged in and on the internet at 75mph headed north on I95. The fall evening has turned dark, and I’m listening to friskyradio typing in to the glow of my monitor as the highway blurs by me in the windows. I’m in a sort of future pause right now, as I see what tomorrow will bring us, and how its already here if you’re looking in the right spot.

In 83 Gibson wrote about a ubiquitous data network. At the time it was raw fantasy with the “internet” as we know it only a sketch on a drawing board, and barely connecting only the most major Universities in the world. His vision was of a matrix of computers, connecting everyone together, making communication and the exchange of data effortless and integrated fully with our daily lives. We’re not quite there yet with the level of Virtual Reality he predicted, but its almost impossible to not find somewhere where I can get on line… and the power to share, collaborate, and integrate that it brings us is amazing.

Case in point.
Obama Iphone App.

The Obama campaign continues to blow the lid off of what you can do with the internet in coordinating grassroots campaign movements. Wired has a great article on how it is connecting people all over the country in a way that has never been done before, for the purpose of grassroots organizing.

And now the Obama campaign has an iPhone app thats leveraging the digital device we have in our pockets to track and manage that same campaign at the level of what you, as a single person can

The ability to share information quickly and effortlessly is the biggest problem with running any organization. Your team can not execute the plan if they don’t have the knowledge to do what you want them to do. The advent of the internet as a way of distributing that information easily was the first step. The devices that most of us carry in our pockets are just waiting for the connectivity to take the next step.

The iPhone, I’ve always said, is the first generation of a new paradigm in connected devices. its easier to use, slicker, better interface, and developed in mind for applications as a small computer, not as a phone. Its screaming for applications that leverage our own personal data, such as your phone book, and GPS sharing, with a larger organizaation that needs you to participate in the mission at hand. Leverage this for any grassroots or low capital oganization that needs to maintain connectivity and organization and you no longer have to have offices, phone trees, or even email if the system communicates the data you need to share exactly how it needs to be consumed at the other end. If that data integrates with you personal knowledge, such as the phone book, or GPS system, you then have the ability of coordinating that data with real action in real time. The Campaign software tracks calls made, and your position when you make the call (its not tracking who, just that a call was made from its interface). This data can be shared with the head quarters, and you’ve instantly got a knowledge network based on not only abstract contact info, but also geospecial relationships. You know know exactly where the holes are in your coverage, and can see whos near by to fill it.

I think its brilliant, and for the purpose of a volunteer force organizing to elect a man president its perfect for their needs.

this *IS* what we’ll see in 4 years, and in 8 years, and I cna’t even imagine in 12 years….

The military has been working on the smart warrior technology that does this for the use of soldiers on the ground for decades, I think a simple iPhone app made it look old, and useless all of a sudden.

I don’t want a day when you can’t unplug.
But the day when everything I need to do my job, and connect with who and what I want to connect with is right around the corner, and I can taste it. The future is in beta, and we’re all testing it.

from…

I think people really are missing the point about McCain’s failure to look at Obama. McCain was afraid of Obama. It was really clear–look at how much McCain blinked in the first half hour. I study monkey behavior–low ranking monkeys don’t look at high ranking monkeys. In a physical, instinctive sense, Obama owned McCain tonight and I think the instant polling reflects that.

From the same site, its explained that this reader is an honest to god primate researcher… and would know exactly what he’s talking about.

it makes perfect sense to me, from all the nature shows I’ve watched as a kid at least.
And its damn funny.

Really… a mother at an airport…

Fuck the republican fear based politics

Obama states first, clearly, that he was opposed to it.
He links McCain and Bush again.
He lists the 600BILLION+ that has been spent on a wasted war.
He states clearly how Al Queda is stronger then ever before.
“We took our eye off the ball”

Obama destroyed the bullshit coming out of McCain.

Core issue:
“Mccain is right cause of the sacrifice of our troops”.

Obama calls McCain on it.
McCain won’t look at Obama
Obama can face him.