There were a lot of cool things about Barack Obama's inauguration this week, but this picture by David Bergman rates right up there with the best of the best. Wow. This is what technology is for.

From New Scientist, this article about what we're likely to see from the Obama administration. Also, this video, called "Blueprint for Change: Technology," which appears to be an edited version of the Candidates@Google event held November 14, 2007.

The latter is long, and less about science and technology than I would like, but these election maps created by Mark Newman won't take you much time to digest. I found them very heartening -- the great divide is not so great when looked at in these ways.

I think this will be my last post on the election -- see, I found this patch that helps ease the cravings for presidential/political news...it will probably work until at least mid-January. In the meantime, I'll just stick to reading The Onion. (Warning: As the movie ratings people say, they use language in their reporting.)

I heard two excellent speeches last night. John McCain's was very different in tone and content from what I heard in the last few months (and I think the election would have been much closer had it been that version of McCain we saw and heard all along). Barack Obama's was very much a continuation of the tone and content that helped convince me to support him last December.

I think we elected the right person to lead us. President-elect Obama has at least 8 years of bad road to repair, so I hope he got a good night's sleep.

If you're a citizen of the United States and registered to vote, please head out to your polling place tomorrow. To paraphrase (and quote a little) from the late David Foster Wallace's superb essay "The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub", don't kid yourself into thinking there's such a thing as not voting. There is no such thing:

You either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard [partisan's] vote.

So cast your own vote, not somebody else's.

Updated, Nov. 4: I just voted, and I hope however this turns out that, unlike the way campaigns and partisans on all sides typically conduct themselves, people will take a lesson from John Wayne. Yeah, that John Wayne. I doubt I'll ever have the occasion to quote him again, but he said just the right thing after the 1960 presidential election. He supported Nixon but said this about Kennedy:

I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job.

There's a lot that needs doing, and fixing, in this country. So while I hope the candidate I voted for wins, whoever it is, he will be my president and I hope he does a good job.