McCain versus Obama for geeks - Play Things

McCain versus Obama for geeks

Sidin Vadukut - Tuesday, September 16, 2008 10:30 AM

When it comes to grandstand politics I am a total sucker for the soaring rhetoric and restrained gesticulation. Yet the more I see the Obama-McCain race hotting up the more I am beginning to notice one eye-catching aspect: Sarah Palin.

When a former beauty queen can run for the Vice-President of your country you know, at some level, that your democracy is good for your people. And kudos to the McCain camp for picking the COMPLETE TOTAL ULTIMATE anti-thesis to dungeon master and sith lord *** Cheney as McCain's running partner.

If you ask me what America needs right now is a Obama-Palin ticket. Or just a Palin ticket. Imagine the foreign policy strategy: "What do you mean President Obama does not make you want to stop nuclear development Kim? By the way have you met our Vice-President?..."

Anyhow, if you are a keen follower of the american election phenomenon then you must drop in at www.perspctv.com, in the site's founder's words: "a data visualization project, essentially a dashboard to see how internet activity relates to the 2008 presidential elections".

Perspctv is an example of the brilliant mash-up work you can do with so many web services, like Twitter for instance, opening up the innards of their services and throwing up data for anyone to stream out and manipulate. What Perspctv does is pull data on polls, twitter mentions, blog mentions and so on, and build interactive visual representations of this data. It's hard to put in words. But perhaps this little image of the Perspctv widget, which you can embed on your blog or website, will help:

Of all the mash-up products I have seen on the web Perspectv is probably the best. It is dynamic, well-designed, extremely pleasing to the eye and very, very easy to get used to.

Sort of like Sarah Palin.

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7 Comment

From Raju Narisetti

September 16, 2008 2:11 PM

Sidin--not just you. Maureen Dowd's column on Sarah Palin was headlined, deliciously, as:

Veep in Go-Go Boots

Once you get past the obvious "eye-catching" aspect though, those of us who pay taxes in the world's most important economy also need to ask, as Dowd herself did, the very same questions:

-- What kind of budget-cutter makes a show of getting rid of the state plane, then turns around and bills taxpayers for the travel of her husband and kids between Juneau and Wasilla and sticks the state with a per-diem tab to stay in her own home?

-- Why was Sarah for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, and why was she for earmarks before she was against them? And doesn't all this make her just as big a flip-flopper as John Kerry?

-- What kind of fiscal conservative raises taxes and increases budgets in both her jobs -- as mayor and as governor?

-- When the phone rings at 3 a.m., will she call the Wasilla Assembly of God congregation and ask them to pray on a response, as she asked them to pray for a natural gas pipeline?

-- Does she really think Adam, Eve, Satan and the dinosaurs mingled on the earth 5,000 years ago?

-- Why put out a press release about her teenage daughter's pregnancy and then spend the next few days attacking the press for covering that press release?

-- As Troopergate unfolds here -- an inquiry into whether Palin inappropriately fired the commissioner of public safety for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law -- it raises this question: Who else is on her enemies list and what might she do with the FBI?

-- Does she want a federal ban on trans fat in restaurants as well on abortion and Harry Potter? And which books exactly would have landed on the literature bonfire if she had had her way with that Wasilla librarian?

-- Does she talk in tongues or just eat caribou tongues?

-- What does she have against polar bears?

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