Cool thing of the day

The videos here. They're "tilt-shift" photographs, which is a technique to make photos of real things look like miniatures. Combine that with several hours of time lapse, and you get the coolest bathtub toys ever.

Props to amybang for the link.

More election spam

As you might expect, the election has been much on my mind lately. Despite promising myself I wouldn't go crazy with poll tracking, I find myself at Five Thirty-Eight at least once a day, as well as Slate, and the New York Times map (although that one is surprisingly slow to update -- they haven't changed it since October 3rd). I know way more about various Senate races than ever before, and watching the swing states (and not so swing states, hello Indiana!) slowly grow more and more blue has been quite cheering, although I'm not officially optimistic yet. I've seen too many Democrats yank defeat from the jaws of victory to really let myself be too hopeful.

Closer to home, I'm more worried. Not about any particular candidates -- no Senate or Governor's races this year, and I live in Nancy Pelosi's district, which is just about as blue as it gets. No, my worry is in the realm of propositions. Proposition 8, to be exact: the proposition that would un-do the legalization of same-sex marriage in California. It's been down in the polls for a month, but the Yes on 8 team has a huge war chest, and they're starting to run ads -- nasty ads, ads full of lies, but despite that (or perhaps because of it) powerful ads. And so the measure is starting to gain. Not above 50% yet, but close. In comparison, the No on 8 ads are fairly bland, presumably in hopes of offending as few people as possible, but I'm not sure they're at all effective. Especially not in comparison to this one by an independent group:

Now, who knows; maybe this approach would turn off the moderates, the people who aren't so convinced this gay marriage thing isn't just a little bit icky. But maybe it would make them laugh, and then it would make them think. An approach worth trying? Maybe. No matter what, it's gonna be a nailbiter.

In other political news, I recently learned that John Hodgman has a blog, which does make the world seem a little brighter.