Sure to start neighborhood fights. Been playing around with this site which lets you see which US candidate your neighbors have contributed to. You can even look people up by name. Apparently, you have to be pretty up front about contributing, because even famous people are listed (along with their addresses, which I wont post here). My comments in brackets:

Former pols:

Barbara P. Bush (Retired):
George W. Bush $2,000

Michael S. Dukakis (Professor Northeastern University):
John Kerry $2,000

Walter F Mondale (IR IR):
Bob Graham $500

Henry A. Kissinger (Chairman Kissinger Associates):
George W. Bush $1,000
George W. Bush $1,000

H. Ross Perot (President Perot Systems Corporation):
George W. Bush $2,000

Big money dudes:

George Soros (Investor SOROS FUNDS MANAGEMENT):
John Kerry $2,000
Bob Graham $2,000
Wesley Clark $2,000
Howard Dean $1,000 <-- interesting, he gets less

Donald J. Trump (President The Trump Organization):
John Kerry $2,000
George W. Bush $2,000
[That's a head-scratcher. No, I guess not. Trump just wants
to be on the winning team.]

William H. Gates (CEO Microsoft Corp.):
George W. Bush $2,000

S. ROBSON WALTON (CHAIRMAN WALMART):
George W. Bush $2,000

Big money entertainers:

Jerry Seinfeld (Entertainer Self-employed):
John Kerry $2,000
Wesley Clark $2,000

Jessica Seinfeld (his wife):
Wesley Clark $2,000

[None of the Friends cast, those rich indolent bastards.]

[None of the big shot hosts: Leno, Letterman, Oprah, Colin O'Brien, Kilby, Jon Stewart.]

Barbra Streisand (Actress/ Musician Self employed):
Howard Dean $1,000
John Kerry $1,000
John Edwards $1,000
Dick Gephardt $1,000
Al Sharpton $1,000
Bob Graham $1,000
Wesley Clark $1,000

Susan Sarandon (Actress Self employed):
Howard Dean $2,000

[Pundits: no Michael Moore, Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Ollie North, Ann Coulter.]

Stephen King (Writer Self employed):
Howard Dean $2,000

Tabitha King (writer Self employed [his wife]):
Howard Dean $2,000

Robert Deniro (Filmmaker Tribeca Productions):
Howard Dean $2,000
Dick Gephardt $2,000
Wesley Clark $2,000

Ben Affleck (["]Actor["]):
Wesley Clark $2,000

Edward Norton (Actor Self-employed):
John Kerry $2,000
Dennis Kucinich $2,000

Michael Douglas (Actor and Producer Furtler files):
Howard Dean $2,000

Meg Ryan (Information Requested):
Wesley Clark $2,000

Helen Hunt (Actress Self employed):
Howard Dean $2,000

Steven Buscemi (Information Requested):
Wesley Clark $1,000

The national and city maps are very interesting too.

Quitters Inc. I was talking to Marjorie the other day about my tendency to crack my knuckles, and my neck. I said, since I'm sharing an office, that these are probably not the most endearing qualities in an office mate. She replied, "Or a spouse."

So I hereby give them up. While I'm at it, I'll throw in biting my nails.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, it's easy to quit, I've done it hundreds of times. I actually quit nail-biting before, for a good long time, by wearing a rubber band around my wrist, and snapping it whenever I caught myself mano-a-boca. But then, five years later, I started up again. I tried the rubber band trick again a few years later, and it didn't work at all; I snapped it several times daily for a good long month, but never stopped the biting.

I generally have pretty good will power, though, so this time I'm going to quit these habits just by trying really hard, and by the old public shame method -- letting others around me know I'm trying to quit. Hence this post.

If you're not scared to find out about all the horrible lies our president is telling on a daily basis, and all the hundreds of ways in which what you hold sacred is being violated, then check out Move On a site dedicated to democracy in action and getting Bush out of office. Especially worthwhile are the Bush in 30 Seconds Ads, I think the most powerful ones are "In My Country" and "What are we teaching our children?". Go Kerry go!

Just about the most depressing thing ever. When my job sent me to an Air Force base in Germany for a month, and then a Nato base in Italy for a month, it used to boggle my mind that there were so many people in both places that had been stationed there for years but had never ventured off the base, or learned a word of the native language. A few -- just a few -- of the military guys there shared my frustration, and these were the guys I befriended, and went out exploring with when I could.

So today I when I stumbled across this blog on Blogdex, I thought, here's a guy who feels like I do. He was even better than me at befriending locals and taking the sorts of photos that I never had the guts to take, especially given that he's stationed in Iraq. And it sounded like he was truly trying to help the locals. He's a guy I would like to hang out with if I ever found myself stationed there. I went back and read half his archive, and planned to add his blog to my list of blogs I check routinely.

Then, reading further down in Blogdex, I discovered another link that explained why his blog was rated so high in Blogdex. With a sick feeling I found that he was just killed in an ambush while making a foray out of the safe zone.

Just, so senseless.

I pieced together this panorama from Tioman Island. I'm not sure if the variations in lighting from frame to frame are the camera's fault or the weather's. We holed up in the little shacks to the left of the picture.

Monthly geek-out! Bear with me. A tenth planet has been discovered. "Sedna" is actually not really a planet, but it's the biggest thing that's been discovered since Pluto.

Someday I'm going to start a website that's all about trying to give a sense of size and scale to our universe, especially our solar system, with splashy diagrams and descriptive text. (And of course I would have to call it the Total Perspective Vortex, in honor of Douglas Adams.) In the meanwhile, here's some decidedly non-splashy graphics I whipped up that'll give you a sense of how far away this new object they've discovered is:

Se---j----s--------u----------n--------p-------------------------------
--q-@--------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------!--

where
S is the sun
e is the earth
j is jupiter
s is saturn
u is uranus
n is neptune
p is pluto (on average)
q is quaoar
@ is Sedna, at its CLOSEST
! is Sedna, at its FURTHEST

Just how far away is that?

Have you ever seen a car with 186000 miles (300000 kilometers) on it? Imagine traveling all that distance -- every side street, vacation trip, work commute, whatever -- in a single second. That's how fast light travels. A (say) radio message traveling that fast would take over ten hours to reach Sedna at its closest point, and it would be another ten hours before you got a response. At its FURTHEST point, your message would take 117 hours (almost five days!) to reach Sedna.

Picture our moon; Sedna's about half as big, best guess. And at the distance it is out there, it's not going to be reflecting a lot of sunlight. It's amazing that they could spot this thing. The article doesn't say, but I'm sure it found near it's closest point in orbit, which it makes the rounds to every 10000 years or so. So, its last visit this close was around the time that agriculture and the bow and arrow were novel concepts.

Commericals. Some of my favorite commercials here in Singapore:

1. Two guys are looking out a hotel window, wide-eyed. They gleefully run out of the room to the elevator, then down and through the lobby (slowing down to try to appear calm when passing the reception desk) and out into the street, where it is snowing. It is obviously their first time seeing snow, and they look up to feel it on their faces, and start throwing snowballs at each other. The commercial is for Emirates (the airline out of Dubai) and features their slogan, "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" Sure, it's a feel-good commercial, but it makes me feel good.

2. Travel commericals for Malaysia, New Zealand (featuring, unsurprisingly, "Don't Dream It's Over"), and lately, some island off the coast of South Korea, just because they remind me there's a lot of places left to visit.

3. A young Singaporean couple, very much in love, are consulting their auntie about the most fortuitous day to get married. The auntie is taking the dates they suggest and looking them up in her book of astrology. Or so it seems; actually, inside the astrology book she has a TV schedule. So for each date, she's actually looking up what's going to be on TV that day, and responds "Saturday the 6th, hmmmm, not auspicious", or "No, Friday the 12th, doesn't look good..." (because there is so much good on TV, you see). Nicely captures a lot about Singapore and their melding of the modern and the traditional.