Virtual reality ride in invisible glider over snowy mountain tops, tilting your wings and/or turning by moving the mouse. Serene and lovely. I am going to bookmark this to cool me off in the next heatwave but it is also an antidote to November’s wet-dead-leaf rain days.

Three Dee Whee!

And yes, we did! Thank you, America, for electing Barack Obama.

I predict a new surge in American productivity, starting right NOW, as millions of us start to break our time-sucking addiction to political minute-by-minute analysis.

In my case, starting tomorrow. You know, the Karl-Rovians have been running against me personally for so long — East Coast born and bred, married to a professor, driving a hybrid car, and supporting gay marriage–that it’s great to wake up and discover that America’s burning question is no longer whether the Democratic candidate might be a Marxist who wants Bin Ladin to bomb us and hates iceberg lettuce.

Could this finally be the end of the culture wars? The WSJ seems to think Obama found the answer:

What would beat the culture wars was always clear from the pseudo-populist language in which they were framed. In place of a showdown between a folksy “middle America” and a snobbish “liberal elite,” Democrats needed to offer the real deal — the conflict between a public that craves fairness and an economic system that enables the predatory.

…When your mortgage is under water and your neighbors are being laid off, the need to take up the sword against arrogant stem-cell scientists becomes considerably less urgent.

The Republican response, of course, was to double down on the righteous rhetoric of red-state grievance and spin the wheel one more time.

It was sad to see John McCain sink down into the culture war Karl Rove dog whistle politics, like an old dog so thirsty he drinks water out of the toilet. I hope McCain is getting some sleep right now. Obama is the one with tough jobs ahead of him now, and I have more hope than is perhaps rational that he is going to be a great President.

Speaking of more sleep, I really need some more sleep too.

Whew, we just got home from scary Halloween fun, with huge noisy machines that hurl or blast ginormous pumpkins across farmers’ fields!

Jon Hotchkiss is creating a show for Discovery Science Channel about Delaware’s annual Punkin Chunkin festival. It will air for an hour on Thanksgiving Day, hosted by improv comedian Brad Sherwood (of Whose Line is it Anyway, and he’s really funny!) with the physics explained (of course) by a Nobel laureate–who is Frank Wilczek.

And Betsy Devine is getting a credit too, I am told, as “Prop Ninja” for supplying marshmallows, rubber bands, and lots of other useful items you’ll see onscreen.

My Flickr photoset documents just a small chunk of the massive punkinology that I recommend you sit down to on Thanksgiving Day

Here you see Frank Wilczek talking at Reiter’s Scientific Books. Aka “Reiter’s Scientific, Professional Technical Books”. What a great bookstore! It was a real bookstore like this that helped Frank (and many young people) get started in science.

Amazon recommends books on the basis that others who bought book X also liked book Y. In a bookstore, you also look into your own future, because shelves include books that people might read after finishing books X and Y.

Such help and encouragement are especially useful to young people or to those who are trying to study something by themselves.

If you go to Washington, don’t miss Reiter’s Book Store. They will ship your purchases to you by UPS, and said purchases can include not just books and magazines but anatomical models of brains or a lifesize skeleton.

By October 17, banks had figured out just what to do with all that free money, and making new loans was not part of their plan.

Is it too late for Congress to rein Paulson in again, just to attach a few strings to the rest of the bailout?

Funny, warm-hearted, and charming, from the wild and crazy dudes at Portal-A Interactive, who explain:

we decided to make this parody music video in support of the Obama campaign and to show women everywhere that we can shamelessly pander with the best of them.

Thanks to the always awesome Liz Lawley for sharing this!

What wonderful news that Yoichiro Nambu finally got a Nobel Prize! Frank and I were just beaming at each other when the announcement came. It felt like having the Red Sox win the World Series, although minus the cars honking and people screaming in Harvard Square.

Frank is a big admirer of Nambu, whose work he praised in in a postcript to his own 2004 Nobel Lecture (pdf):

I’d like to mention specifically a trio of physicists whose work was particularly important in leading to ours, and who have not (yet?) received a Nobel Prize for it. These are Yoichiro Nambu, Stephen Adler, and James Bjorken. Those heroes advanced the cause of trying to understand hadronic physics by taking the concepts of quantum field theory seriously, and embodying them in specific mechanistic models, when doing so was difficult and unfashionable.

In fact, Nambu won the prize yesterday for a different part of his work, which just goes to show how brilliant and creative he is. I hope he will have as lovely a time in Stockholm as we did; it is a wonderful party.
Meanwhile, I quickly uploaded my own snapshot of Nambu to Wikipedia. And that photo soon went to the front page of Wikipedia, which delighted me. But it also soon went up all over the Google News with a credit to Reuters instead of to Betsy Devine and/or Wikipedia. That is a violation of the photo’s license, and I think that Reuters should be ashamed of itself.

This Dutch dentist’s window is full of no-nonsense examples of what a dentist can actually do for you. I love this, and this is so Dutch. Teeth that human beings might have or might want to have or might need to get help with.

No glossy photos of impossibly retouched glamor teeth.

Real teeth.

This is just one example of why I love the Netherlands and the people who live here.

Hortus Haren, just south of Groningen, is the largest botanical garden in the Netherlands, but flowers were not the main attraction yesterday.

Just beyond its greenhouses is the insectarium, a small one that specializes in really big creepy things, e.g. tarantulas, a scorpion, stick insects, and cockroaches the size of dinner plates. OK, maybe I’m exaggerating on that last point. Cockroaches big enough to make Sarah Palin reach for the gun she uses when she’s hunting moose.

I learned a bit of Dutch when we lived here ten years ago, and one of the Dutch words I think is much better than its English equivalent is “kakkerlak,” which means “cockroach.” Another word where Dutch is better is “kikker,” for “frog.”

The “mystic” time tunnel, the Celtic tree horoscope, the rescued parrots, and the traditional Chinese teahouse that serves delicious traditional Dutch sandwiches are also fine features of the Hortus Haren. I recommend it! (But go with a Dutch friend or at least a Dutch dictionary–signs are all in Dutch.

So let’s see the Republicans do a little of that famous Country First stuff.

Bush and Cheney must resign immediately. No immunity, no pardons. Nancy Pelosi will become President, promising not to run for re-election on November 4. Her term will be one of the shortest in US history, just long enough to enact the provisions of the bill being proposed by the Republican administration. If it really is the best thing for the country and not a trick, then the Republicans, being impressed by the seriousness of it, would have to insist that Bush step aside and let the Democrats execute the plan. The entire Bush cabinet stays in office through January 20, but reports, of course to Pelosi. And that includes Paulson.

It’s pretty simple. If they won’t do it, we know they’re bluffing.

I don’t think they’re bluffing, but I don’t think their plan for “solving” the current crisis is to save homes and jobs and retirement for small-town America. There are a lot of big smart guys who know Bush much better than we do who have very big hands out to snitch any government hand out.