• James Landay: “Nice profile of Scott Klemmer’s work in Technology Review: Tools for Better Web Design”
• Watch President Obama announce the death of Osama bin Laden: MSNBC
• [May 1] Osama’s death have prompted huge crowds to gather at World Trade Ctr. (Wall Street Journal) Hard to believe I was there <36 hrs ago.
• Sadat Shami: “Interactive map of emotional reactions and the perceived significance on the war on terror after Bin Laden’s death” (New York Times)
• Overrrated Outcast: “We still haven’t seen Sarah Palin’s high school diploma.”
• Keir Clarke: “Washington Post Map of the American Civil War. I can’t believe how much work has gone into this animated time-line map.”
• New York Times: Intel Increases Transistor Speed by Building Upward. James Landay adds: “This will be more important than people say.”
• “Henry Kissinger”: “I asked Palin for her thoughts on secularism in Turkey. She said she only eats poultry from ‘God-fearing farmers’. #GiveMeStrength”
• Overthinking It: The economics of Death Star planet destruction (via Daring Fireball)
• Why is c the symbol for the speed of light? (Physics FAQ)
• Google at CHI 2011 (via Ed Chi )
• Another sweet stop-motion video: 2000 photos of Paris
• A reminder to all Americans going to CHI 2011: Canada is a foreign country. Don’t forget your passport.

• Sadat Shami: “Giving up tenure… and getting happiness in return? Reflections from someone who did” (The Scientist via Nick Diakopoulos)
• I think I’ll get a standing desk (New York Times)
• Jeffrey Bigham: “How languages may have diffused from Africa, modeling phonemes” (New York Times)
• Boris Smus: “Allow me to explain sorting algorithms through interpretive dance” (YouTube via Pamela Fox)
• This collaboration of cellist Yo-Yo Ma and street dancer Lil Buck is amazing (YouTube)
• Looks like the folks at Red Hat are creating their own JVM language called Ceylon (Ars Technica)
• Sandra Kogan: “Walmart’s $1.85 billion mistake. They relied on what customers said in a survey versus what they actually do.” (Phil Terry)
• Dilbert creator Scott Adams: Forget art history and calculus. Most students need to learn how to run a business. (Wall Street Journal)
• Mugizi Rwebangira: “How to fool yourself into working harder” (Dextronet)
• Impressed by Ovi Maps 3D. Besides buildings, trees and overpasses in suburban Silicon Valley are also 3D.
• Republicans paying $575 an hour to defend Defense of Marriage Act (San Francisco Chronicle)
• Sadat Shami: “Google Map Maker allows you to add your local knowledge to a map [currently for the United States only]”
• Kayur Patel: “1998 Onion article on streaming video. It’s more interesting than funny in today’s Netflix age.”
• Frog Design and design innovation in China (Forbes via James Landay)
• Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice? (St. Petersburg Times via Lynn Wu)
• John Regehr: “‘Facts have no meaning on the Internet.’ —Thomas Jefferson”
• Boyce Avenue not only covered Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream,” they subtly changed some of the lyrics: YouTube video
• Intrigued by Hyde, a static website generator in Python and Django by Lakshmi Vyas. Boris Smus switched his blog to it.
• xkcd: Seismic Waves
• Mike Lee: “So busy bitching about iPhone location logs I forgot to check in on Foursquare”
• The joy of mapping a 2D image on to a 3D terrain model (The Map Room)
• Cities build airport cities — ‘aerotropolises’ — for growth (USA Today via Sara Galligan)
• Sadat Shami: “BO.LT is a web-based tool that enables people to quickly, without code, remix the content presented on a website” (Huffington Post)
• Madhu Prabaker: “Interesting new approach to metered parking in San Francisco. sfpark.org”
• Sadat Shami: “Recommendation service Hunch revisits the Mac vs. PC debate with this infographic based on their users”
• The Onion: ‘The Economist’ To Halt Production For Month To Let Readers Catch Up

• Backbone.js is a model-view-controller JavaScript library in just 4KB (via Boris Smus )
• SparkFun intros IOIO, which allows Android phones to control DIY electronics. (Engadget)
• Everyone in Google Doodle for Charlie Chaplin’s birthday are part of Doodle team, and like many of Chaplin’s films, it was filmed in the Niles District of Fremont, California. More from CNN.
• IBM launches Maqetta, an HTML 5 tool as an open-source answer to Flash and Silverlight. (eWeek via Jeff Pierce )
• The White House launches a personalized tax receipt (Macon Phillips of the White House, via Ed O’Keefe of the Washington Post )
• I’ve often had this very same thought: Tim Pawlenty wants members of Congress to do their own taxes without help. New York Times article
• Mister Rogers defends PBS in front of the US Senate in 1969. (via @Noetic_Hatter )
• The Story of Linux: a 4-minute video commemorating 20 years of the Linux operating system (via Mario Fusco )
• Jen Mankoff, a Carnegie Mellon computer science professor with Lyme disease, tries to make sense of Lyme info online (via James Landay )
• Barack Obama: “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending $1 trillion on tax cuts for millionaires & billionaires.”

Now that oil has fallen to half of what it was in the summer, we should the gas tax should be raised now, while gas is still cheap. The federal gas tax was last raised in 1993, and California’s state gas tax was last raised in 1994. In California, we would need to raise gas taxes by 18 cents per gallon just to keep up with inflation. It should probably be hiked a lot more. And with a higher tax, the price at the pump would not swing around so much; gas prices in Europe showed much less volatility than here.

I’m not the only one advocating this:

• Roadshow: As prices fall, is it time to think about hiking the gas tax?, San Jose Mercury News, November 18, 2008
• To keep gas prices down, raise the gas tax, Fortune, November 18, 2008

There’s still time today to get a free cup of coffee at Starbucks, a free star-shaped donut at Krispy Kreme, and a free scoop of ice cream at Ben and Jerry’s. Originally, only people who voted were eligible for the freebies, but since that apparently violates election laws, the companies had to open it up to everyone.

I’m the guy who keeps explaining to friends that Obama doesn’t need Florida and Ohio to win, he just needs Virginia and Colorado.

— Obama supporter Hank Kornblut

• The New National Pastime: Poll-Watching, Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2008

If you search for “obama impressions” on YouTube, you’ll get a ton of hits. But for my money, the best by far is by a comedian named Marlin Hill. Check out his appearance on a radio show in Milwaukee (part 1, part 2). Uncanny.

Part 1:

Part 2:

(Updated October 13: added part 1)

I’m watching analysis of Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic National Convention, and it’s amusing to see the different (and predictable) slants that the different cable news channels have taken.

MSNBC is basically saying, Clinton did her job, the Democrats are unified, everything is happy. Fox News says, we’re getting inundated with e-mail from Clinton supporters who will vote got McCain, the Democrats are in trouble, there’s still a civil war in the party. (What do you expect from Fox viewers?) CNN is somewhere in the middle. Hilarious.

After Barak Obama scored a 37 in seven frames of a bowling game in Allentown, Pennsylvania yesterday, Hillary Clinton, taking advantage of April Fool’s Day, challenged Obama to a bowling game, “winner take all.”

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.