A follow-up to the AOL electoral map post: the map above shows (to the best of my clumsy image manipulation ability) how the McCain and Obama maps differ. There is, indeed, a lot of overlap.

I still can’t really figure what this map is showing or how it’s generating its data.

This is overwhelmingly awesome. It’s from this collection of photos of Chinese anti-terrorism military exercises in preparation for the Olympics. The original caption says they’re “members of China’s armed police [demonstrating] a rapid deployment during an anti-terrorist drill.”

Ideas to ponder while contemplating this photo:

• Why would you carry a sniper rifle on a Segway? (see center-rear person)
• What happens when you shoot a gun while on a Segway? Won’t it push your center of gravity back and send the Segway flying backwards? Especially with that assault rifle on the left side.
• Since when are there offbrand Segways? Is there really that big a market for them that it’s worth ripping them off?

Stolen shamelessly from akamediasystem’s delicious feed.

We really like interesting ways of thinking about the electoral process. Sometimes, we’re also amused by disastrous failures in the same arena.

The above image comes from AOL’s Political Machine. To see the results, you need to vote by entering your state of residence and which of the two major candidates you’re voting for. Once you’ve voted, you’re presented with the results map.

The poll results, in effect since July 14, show McCain winning every single state and taking 67% of the popular vote. This strikes me as highly suspect, given that virtually every reputable poll conducted in the past several months has predicted a close race, and many put Obama in the lead. There’s lots to be said here about selection bias and sampling methods (and, probably, about ballot stuffing), but we’ll skip it for now.

What’s really mind-blowing is the pair of “view results by candidate” maps. All you’re ever asked for as a poll participant is your state of residence. How, then, do they have the data to create a finely gridded electoral map? If they’re doing IP lookups, why did they ask for a state of residence? If they’re not doing an IP lookup, are they just making the data up?

Also puzzling: the vast majority of “sectors” on the per-candidate map appear to be won by both candidates. Basically the entire north half of the country appears to have exactly the same dot patterns, but in different colors for the different candidates. Things are a little bit different in the Gulf area, but there’s still substantial overlap. Weird. (Update: this is shown in more detail in this follow-up post). Also, AOL seems to think that the only four important pieces of information about the candidates are their hometowns, number of years in office, marital status, and age.

As a side note, the tagline for the Political Machine is “cranking 24/7 to sort the spin.” There’s some serious irony there. They’re trying to cut through the “spin.” With a rotating motion. Oops.

(Thanks, Lee!)

Full disclosure: the above images were altered to remove the “you voted for…” tag that was in the upper left corner of all of the maps. Please fax pitchforks and torches to our complaints office.

Sun Microsystems, I generally have great respect for you. Don’t start pulling this crap. Also, “Install a free program with the Java” is a truly heinous sentence. You have also committed a crime of apostrophes in your third bullet point.

Come on, guys. Let’s get back to the reputable, dignified software thing.

A fortuitous pairing of headlines in my RSS feed. Bernanke says we have a long road ahead of us. Bush says everything’s great. My money’s on Bernanke.

I hadn’t heard about Mirror’s Edge until this evening, but it looks fantastic. All you need to see about it is on Joystiq. It looks quite wonderful, and seems to incorporate a lot of the dynamism of movement and combat of Oni, but with more compelling environments. Story-wise, it’s feels like you’re kind of playing a YT from Snow Crash on foot with a bit more ass-kicking.

The interview video in particular is pretty interesting. Going with first person for a game like this is challenging, and they address that as being their big difference. But it’s not clear to me that they really have a clear answer for why that fits with the vision of the game. Is the physicality somehow accentuated by being inside Faith’s head? Hopefully they’ll get that worked out before launch. It would be a shame for that aspect of the game to just be a “because it’s different” design decision.