Photographs of a series of elaborate hand paintings. (via yokiddo)

The NY Times has photographer David Dunlap running around NYC taking updated versions of the photos he took of the city for Paul Goldberger's 1978 guidebook to Manhattan, The City Observed: New York. Recent Now/Then comparisons include Grand Central Terminal, the corner of 59th St and 5th Ave (where the Apple Store is), and, perhaps the most striking pair of photos, the Hudson River shoreline.

The 2008 election voting patterns in the southern United States followed the big cotton production areas in 1860 which in turn followed the shoreline of the shallow tropical seas that covered the southern part of the US 85 million years ago.

This is not a political blog. However, this is a story I couldn't pass up: the story of how voting patterns in the 2008 election were essentially determined 85 million years ago, in the Cretaceous Period. It's also a story about how soil science relates to political science, by way of historical chance.

Headline I'd like to see in 96 pt. type in the NY Times: Obama Elected By Rich Loamy Soils of Cretaceous Seas.

I've been reading this site called I Keep a Diary for I don't know how long, six years at least. The site is a hand-crafted throwback to an earlier web era, a series of annotated photo galleries that document the life, times, adventures, and friends of Brian Battjer Jr. Like its proprietor, the site is funny, enthusiastic, and good-natured, and that's what keeps me coming back for more. I even visit the splash page each time I go because I like the quote that appears on it so much:

i feel nostalgia for things i've never known

IKAD is one of my favorite things on the web and the most recent entry is so truly magical that I had to share. Brian is more than a year behind in documenting his adventures so he's just now getting around to telling the story of his July 2007 trip to Thailand and the United Arab Emirates with his girlfriend, Meredith. After telling his boss that he's taking a month off of work, subletting his apartment, and arranging to stay with a friend in Dubai, he and Meredith speed off to the airport.

At this point, I urge you to just go read the story -- it's great and Brian tells it *way* better than I could -- because I'm going to ruin a lot of it. If you need more convincing of this story's wonderfulness, read on.

Anyway, off they go to JFK for their flight to Dubai. The woman at the Emirates check-in desk has no record of their tickets...becaue they got to the airport a whole day late. After some nervous moments, the woman finds them some seats on the plane.

Fast forward 12 hours or so: they land and deplane. Meredith discovers that she lost her passport and she swears that the thing is still on the plane. Emirates won't let her get back on the plane to look for it but they send an employee to look for it. No dice. They then spent several hours trying to find somone to let them on the plane to search. No luck. Intense panic sets in; the plane is scheduled to leave for NYC in an hour or two.

At this point, Brian phones his friend in Dubai, Bernadette, whom he has never met in person, and explains to her the situation. She says, 'I'm on the way to the airport now...I'll see what I can do.' It turns out that Bernadette's boss is a sheikh, one of the richest men in the world, and one of the most powerful men in Dubai. Bernadette arrives and tells them that her boss has dispatched his 'fixer', his Mr. Wolf. 'You ain't got no problems, Brian. I'm on the motherfucker. Chill out and wait for Mahmoun, who should be comin' directly.'

'Shit Negro, that's all you had to say.'

Sure enough, about ten minutes later a very large, serious-looking Emirati man walked up to the armed guards at immigration and with a nod, they let the dude through! We were like 'Whoa.' Mahmoun came over to us, and asked us to tell him the problem (and he even whipped out a little pad to take notes just like Mr. Wolf!). After we'd finished explaining to him that we were almost 100% sure that the passport was still on the plane, he was like 'Meredith you come with me. Bernadette and Brian, you wait here.'

He came back like two minutes later with ten airline employees in tow and said something like 'This airplane is supposed to fly back to New York in forty-five minutes, but it's not going anywhere until the passport that's on there is found. So let's go find it.'

Did Meredith recover the passport? Does Mahmoun go medieval on anyone's ass? Oh, you'll have to find out for yourself.

Spanish artist Miquel Barcelo spent more than a year painting the recently unveiled ceiling in the UN's Geneva offices. Check out the larger photos at Artdaily and USA Today. The painting isn't exactly aesthetically beautiful, but I love its scale and power. Wonderful.

1. Speed Racer gets a whole extra star from me because I watched it in HD. This movie was made for 1080p...it's a gorgeous gorgeous film. Too bad the rest of it couldn't keep up.

2. When I first saw the trailer for the film, I remarked that the racing scenes seemed like Mario Kart. After seeing the movie, I'm tempted to say that the Wachowskis ripped off Nintendo wholesale. That scene at the beginning with the ghost car? That's right out of racing video games and the aesthetic is all Kart (with a bit of F-Zero and Tokyo Drift thrown in for good measure).

The ballots are being recounted in the Senate race in Minnesota between Norm Coleman and Al Franken because the initial tally was almost too close to call. MPR has a look at some of the ballots that are being challenged...it's amazing how many weird ways people can mark a ballot that uses a simple fill-in-the-circle design.

Goldenfiddle has screenshots of the type done for each of the locations in Quantum of Solace, hand-crafted by Tomato.

Vogue Paris has an editorial in the November 2008 issue which features a 20-year-old model photographed as if she were 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 years old. The hands betray her true age in the 40, 50, and 60 shots but the 10-year-old photo is a little bit of brilliance...just the right angle and lighting. (via the year in pictures)

I'm only posting this so I can say: the Sox got enough of that Coco Crisp.