Well, I covered my first election. That experience might become a blog post in itself. And I nearly hit 20,000 words last night in my NaNoWriMo novel. If I had been able to stay awake any longer I would have written the 308 more words required to actually reach 20,000! But now for your weekly dose of really random links… ban Comic Sans – oh my. It’s a haven of hilarity for graphic design nerds. And there’s even a host of alternatives to Comic Sans. How’s that for a positive approach to what could become a wholly negative campaign? (HT: Wesleigh ) The United States Department of Fear – parodying the real Dept. of Homeland Security. It’s amusing, though I don’t entirely agree with its politics. And I’m always a fan of parody and satire because, done in the right way, it can point out inconsistency, hypocrisy and/or subconscious assumptions that need to be recognized. ( Stuff Christians Like is by far my favorite parody website.) Along those same lines, the Chicago Tribune recent...

The New York Times website has a nifty little gadget that lets you balance the budget… well, theoretically anyway . It’s set up with check-boxes that you select, and as you select options (either cuts to spending, or tax hikes) two diagrams at the top show the headway you’ve made in closing the budget gap. The U.S. House Republican whip has a project called YouCut which operates on the same principle of you-solve-the-problem. It has more options, I hear, but is designed to work on a weekly, case-by-case basis. The difference with this one is that it actually makes a difference: it’s weekly because the winning cut is put to an up-or-down vote in the House of Representatives. These things are fun. The one on the NYT website and came up with this: 20% saved by raising taxes, 80% saved by cutting spending.