You may recall that one month ago I devoted some space on this blog to making fun of a political ad. Now that the elections are over, it turns out that the candidate I was belittling lost the election. He was also the only republican candidate on the ballot that didn’t win in an election marked by lots of republican turnout in an already conservative-leaning county. (But how much difference could party affiliation really make when it comes to sheriffing?)

I’d like to think that this blog has enough influence among Cabarrus county voters to have single-handedly cost him the election. He lost by 6965 votes, meaning that I would have to have convinced 3483 people to change their vote in order to cost him the election. (Neglecting of course the possibility that I changed someone’s decision whether or not to vote.) So... I guess I probably didn’t have anything to do with it.

_{(Incidentally, I actually voted for him myself. Oh well.)}

A few days ago I found the following campaign ad attached to my mailbox. I’ve highlighted the “Personal Accomplishments” section I am about to discuss.

Now, let’s go through these.

Married to wife, Becky, for 30 years. Maybe it’s a sign of the times that this is listed as a personal accomplishment. But I can’t help but read it as an insult to his wife—like the accomplishment is putting up with her for 30 years.

Three children. Okay so your kids don’t sound like hoodlums. I hope my own kids don’t grow up to be hoodlums. Probably the most accomplishmental thing here.

Member of Rocky River Presbyterian Church. I don’t know too very much about Presbyterianism. Maybe I need to consult with my uncle the Presbyterian minister, or my cousin the aspiring Presbyterian minister. But I don’t think it is all that difficult to get in.

Harrisburg resident. Harrisburg isn’t exactly Beverly Hills. I think living there is even easier than joining a Presbyterian church.

The big controversy in the local news today is that Concord Mills Mall (which Wikipedia says Charlotte Business Journal says is the state’s largest tourist attraction) has decided not to renew the lease on Free Market Warrior, a kiosk that sold conservative and anti-Obama bumper stickers and t-shirts.  I’ve never actually seen the kiosk in question, since I avoid the mall whenever I can.  But I checked out their website after hearing about it on the radio this morning, with the intention of making a blog post saying something to the effect of “Look, of course you’re going to get kicked out of the mall if you sell this and this and this.”  But I can’t find anything that really seems that bad.  The site has two different lists of items they were told not to sell.  I’m not sure which is canonical.  In either case, I know I’ve seen anti-Bush bumper stickers that were just as bad (though I don’t know if they were ever sold in the mall), and you can find much more offensive (though non-political) stuff at HotTopic.  Maybe the fact that it’s a kiosk and you see it just by walking by, instead of having to go into a store, has something to do with it?  I don’t know, I’m not a mallologist.

Oh well.  I guess all I’m saying is that I don’t think they deserved to be kicked out of the mall, based on the items I see on their website.

I received an e-mail forward today that contained something I felt had to be pointed out.  So I took a screenshot and added an annotation.  See if you can find it.

Yesterday’s xkcd cartoon discussed the terminology “The West” and “The East”, and how it was confusing to an American:

His map isn’t exactly in line with what I’ve inferred the meanings of these terms to be, so I modified his map a bit to reflect my (also confusing) understanding of these terms:

Generally, “The West” and “The Western Hemisphere” have a meaning roughly equivalent to “First-World Nations”, with the exceptions of Japan and (maybe?) South Korea.  Which is to say, something similar to “developed democracies which were aligned with the United States in the Cold War.”  This generally includes Australia and New Zealand, which makes the map pretty nonsensical.  Sometimes “The West” includes Mexico and Central and South America, but I didn’t mark the map this way because that’s not usually how I hear the term used.

Oddly, “The East” does not mean “Not ‘The West.’”  It is more synonymous with “The Far East”, which is to say, “places where Asian people live.”  That includes Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, and Southeast Asia.  I suppose that if the “Middle East” is really the middle of the east, then “The East” must include all of Asia and Africa.  But I think “Middle East” is a whole other discussion.  You could also debate whether India, Indonesia, and New Guinea belong in “The East.”  I just drew it based on what I’ve inferred.

In either map, I think it is clear that the terms are ambiguous and only loosely correlated to their geographic meaning.

Now that the election is over, I thought I’d share a few thoughts.

One: Stephanie and I went by our polling place at 6:30 PM on election night, just to see what the line was like.  There was literally no line.  We could see inside and there were some booths that weren’t even occupied.  No more waiting in line in the cold for ninety minutes to vote early for me.

Two: As a general rule, I don’t like to hear other people’s opinions of politics.  Especially the opinions of people with extremely strong opinions.  That said, I’ve been surprised and impressed with the mature, sensible way most (but not all) of the extremely conservative people I know have reacted to the results of the election.  Just one example: “My man didn’t win, but I will now support this man as my President.”

I voted early Tuesday night.  In theory, this was to avoid long lines on election day, but I waited for over an hour and a half, so I’m not sure I avoided anything.  I think that’s about how long I waited in line to vote on election day in 2004.  It’s entirely possible that there will be no lines on election day because everyone waited in line to vote early in order to avoid lines.

Stephanie and I went together, and we took Emma, but it was cold and the sun was setting so it was only going to get colder so I told Stephanie I didn’t want Emma in the cold for what looked like well over an hour’s wait (even though she was bundled up quite well).  So she took Emma into the library (the non-voting portion of it) while I waited in line, and she went back during the middle of the day yesterday where she still waited about forty-five minutes.

Anyway this whole post was just an excuse to put up this cute picture of Emma taking a nap after her first trip to the polls.

This post has been retracted.  It discussed this overreaching Supreme Court ruling by doing precisely what the court ruled a felony: I made a link that claimed to point to the kind of content I don’t want to be associated with this site in search engine indexes, but in fact it pointed to www.google.com.  I guess you had to be there.

I’m sure you’ve heard that the Happy Birthday song is protected under copyright by the Happy Birthday Nazis, who actively seek compensation whenever the song is used in a movie or on TV.

As it turns out, their copyright claim has never been challenged in court and it may in fact be invalid.  Now we just need someone to challenge it.

Recently Penny Arcade made a very funny comic about gifts they receive from PR firms, a topic which Joel Spolsky discussed about a year ago.  This seems like a good time to publicly state my gifts policy here at vacant-nebula.  I’ll now shift to the editorial “we” so that I we sound more important.

We, at vacant-nebula.com, like stuff.  Especially free stuff.  We will accept any gift, be it money or merchandise.  We particularly like high technical devices, such as anything that could be found in Best Buy.

Unlike many other blogs, we do not consider ourselves journalists, and as such we are not bound by any code of journalistic ethics.  In particular, this means that we do feel an obligation to disclose the source of any gifts, or even the fact that a gift was given.  We are even willing to praise products that we don’t really like, as long as this means we might get free stuff we do like in the future.

In short, we are preemptively selling out, even though no one is buying yet.  So send us stuff we want and we’ll tell people it’s great.  We won’t write any holier-than-thou blog posts about how we’re too good to accept free stuff.  If you would like to send us gifts, but you are unsure what products we would like, just drop us an e-mail and we’ll be glad to work something out.

PS- if anyone knows a Microsoft PR rep who has an Xbox 360 they are just dying to bribe a blogger with, send them here.