Last month I had the pleasure of visiting the GVU Center at Georgia Tech and talking with some of the professors and graduate students. Here are my (mostly unedited) notes on their research projects and interests. If anyone wants more info, please leave a comment.

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A few months ago, the Wall Street Journal ran a feature article on Lee Myung-Bak, the then-presidential candidate (and now president) of South Korea. As an aside, the article said that as mayor of Seoul, Lee had ordered an elevated highway torn down to unearth a buried stream and turn it into a park. Of course, I couldn’t let that pass without doing more background reading.

The stream that was restored is called Cheonggyecheon, and the success of its restoration helped launch Lee’s presidential candidacy. Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon web site has a link to an interesting Discovery Channel Asia documentary (411 MB Windows Media video file, 47 mins), which covers engineering, environmental and archaeological aspects of the project. (Yes, of course, I’ve already watched it!)

While reading up on Cheonggyecheon, I remembered that Taipei had a similar situation. After more research, I found out that Xinsheng Road follows the path of an old canal, and that when he was mayor of Taipei, Ma Ying-jeou also proposed daylighting the canal (although not the part that’s under the elevated Xinsheng Expressway). And now Ma is running for president of Taiwan! In east Asia, tearing down roads is becoming the clear path to launching your presidential career.

A few months ago I said I’d blog about the highlights I had gleaned from my friends’ blogs. Well, here they finally are:

• Twitter is the latest social software craze from the valley, whose appeal I barely understand. Anyway, if you want to know what the buzz is about, Thomas Han, an avid user, has a great tutorial, a review of Twitter clients for the Mac, and some tips and tricks.
• Jason Hong found a video of a nifty game for tablet PCs called Crayon Physics Deluxe.
• Jason also found a web site that “measures” the reading level of a blog. According to the site, my blog’s reading level is high school. But there is no explanation what they are measuring, and Jonathan Bailey in his blog Plagiarism Today has pointed out a sleazy ad technique they use.
• Meanwhile, Juicy Studio has a more rigorous discussion on how reading levels are measured. According to them, my Gunning Fog Index is 9.18. What does that mean? Find out.
• Danyel Fisher ran into a rant about pie charts by Coda Hale, although other viewpoints were discussed in the comments.
• Nicodemus clued me in on three spinoffs for Mystery Science Theater 3000: Riff Trax, The Film Crew, and Cinematic Titanic. Isn’t the net wonderful?
• I had no idea where “Don’t tase me bro!” came from, but I was enlightened by Dulbecco (1, 2). Now, a certain comic strip make more sense.
• Dulbecco also blogged about the delightfully wacked song “Still Alive” in the game Portal. After I heard it, I wasn’t surprised to find out that Jonathan Coulton wrote the song. He is interviewed about the song in the gaming web site Primotech.

It’s amazing how fast this year’s primary season is going, thanks to the compressed primary schedule. Two weeks ago Senators Clinton and Obama were essentially tied. A little over one week ago, Willie Brown, former San Francisco mayor, former speaker of the California State Assembly, and all-around political guru, said that since Obama was favored to win most of the contests between Super Tuesday and the March 4 primaries, he wouldn’t gain momentum, since momentum comes from something unexpected.

Looks like Mayor Brown was wrong. Obama has gotten momentum from his 9 wins in a row because something unexpected did happen: he has won by double-digit margins and cut into Clinton’s base of support. Clinton needs blowout wins in Ohio and Texas just to back into the delegate count lead.

Clinton’s campaign wants to seat the delegates from Michigan and Florida at the convention, even though the Democratic Party took away their delegates because those states defied the party by moving up their primaries too early. To me, trying to change the rules in the middle of the game shows a lack of respect for the voting process, which made my opinion of Clinton more negative.

The Democrats should have done what the Republicans did and take away only half their delegates.

I’ve gotten really swept up in the excitement of this year’s election. Every primary night, I am glued to the 24-hour news networks, switching mostly between CNN and MSNBC. I love listening to the endless analysis, such as from Pat Buchanan (on MSNBC), who is as feisty as ever. The way he describes McCain’s speeches is hilarious. For example, regarding his victory speech on February 12:

McCain looked like he was briefing a flight crew, frankly, rather than a speech. Behind him you’ve got John Warner—I know all of them. They’re all good buddies of mine. What are these old guys doing there?

For a political and news junkie like myself, this year is the best I’ve seen.

This year, I watched the Super Bowl at a party where almost everyone was for the New York Giants. I wasn’t strongly for either team. On the one hand, when I lived in Connecticut, I rooted for the Giants. But this year, I was leaning towards the New England Patriots, because I wanted to see history made. Instead, I saw a different type of history: one of the greatest upsets in pro football history. I can’t truly imagine how absolutely crushed Patriots fans are or how elated Giants fans are.

But I can’t say I was surprised: I watched the Giants come close to defeating the Patriots in their last regular season game, and I also watched them defeat heavily favored Dallas and Green Bay. The Giants played scrappy, bare-knuckled football and made plays when it mattered most; they deserved to win the game. This Super Bowl was one of the best I’ve seen.