It’s election day. If you are having trouble finding your polling place, the website Where’s My Fucking Polling Place will help you locate it and cuss you out at the same time. If you still haven’t reached your limit of f-bombed politics, have a visit to What The Fuck Has Obama Done So Far. (via Kottke).
A few (one?) of the new interns at JP Morgan had the guts to email Jamie Dimon for a recommended reading list. And he actually emailed them back. The following is his list of recommended books “which includes a variety of business and history books.”
Business
The World is Flat
Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
Security Analysis – Classic 1940 Edition
The Intelligent Investor
Execution – The Discipline of Getting Things Done
Jack: Straight From the Gut
Sam Walton – Made in America
Double your Profits in 6 Months or Less
Built from Scratch
Only the Paranoid Survive
Built to Last
History Bio
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation
Autobiography of Ben Franklin
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words that Remade America
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
Eisenhower: Soldier and President
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
Washington: The Indispensable Man
Lincoln
Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant
Jefferson
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
History Other
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos
A History of Knowledge: Past, Present, and Future
The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order
The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are so Rich and Some so Poor
Dimon also attached a copy of his Syracuse commencement speech and a copy of a fake Bill Gates speech in the email.
It’s true that Lyndon Baines Johnson, our 36th President, was very concerned with his pants riding up “in the crotch, down where your nuts hang.” A valid concern among to many of us. Though, most of us don’t have our concerns recorded and entered into the Miller Center’s Presidential Recordings Program. Take a few minutes to listen to more than you ever want to know about LBJ’s nether regions.
While you’re there, take a little time to listen to John F. Kennedy, a known and avid user of methamphetamine (and Demerol, methadone, Ritalin, meprobamate, miscellaneous barbiturates and thyroid hormone), order a few more “of those blue pills”.
Mark Newman has updated his famous election maps page with last night’s presidential voting results. He went ahead and made NC blue despite it not being officially called yet. I like that kind of optimism.
If you have read this blog for any amount of time, you know I’m not a stickler for correct spelling and grammar, but I thought you would get a kick out of this. Merriam-Webster has succumbed and updated the pronunciation of nuclear on their website citing:
Though disapproved of by many, pronunciations ending in \\-kyə-lər\\ have been found in widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, United States cabinet members, and at least two United States presidents and one vice president. While most common in the United States, these pronunciations have also been heard from British and Canadian speakers.
It’s pretty amazing how close these one minute video synopsizes of the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention actually mimic the words that are highlighted in the speech visualizations I created. (Videos are below if you’re too lazy to click on the links. Thanks Montastic).
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Above are the word clouds for the acceptance speeches from Obama and McCain (on top for you colorblind readers) that I created using Wordle. The larger the word, the more often it was said by each candidate. I think both the words “promise” and “fight” are too large for any candidate this time around.
The New York Times does a great job of visually distilling the acceptance speeches. I think of particular note is the fact that Rudy Giuliana (of all people) saying, “Of great concern to me, during those same four days in Denver, they rarely mentioned the attacks of September 11, 2001.” The total count of the time the phrase “September 11th” was said by Obama: 2, by McCain: 0.
Fear and Loathing is a great photoblog that provides “an outlaw view of the underbelly of the beast during the 2008 Democratic National Convention” that has been going on here in Denver the past few days.
