whatever you do.

Red states? Blue States? Not exactly. It seems that America actually votes along urban and rural divisions.

Here is the Electoral Map we are all familiar with…

But this give a false impression. Now look at the voting broken down by county (I think that’s what it is) and given hues ranging between red and purple based on actual percentages…

The famous blue west coast looks a lot different. What’s interesting is the bleed out we see this time around though. Back in 2000 the lines were even more sharply drawn between city and country. (Check out Illinois, which went to the democrats in that Election!)

There is much more analysis over here. One final picture that I find interesting. Because of the density of city population, these images are still deceiving. It looks like the Republicans should have won by a landslide. This ballooned image based on population really draws out the real influence these regions hold. (Sorry Montana.)

***Extra Extra***
The University of Michigan websites and I have a lot of history.
Back during my love affair with the work of Salvador Dali I stumbled upon this dadaist/surrealist site.. The Flightless Hummingbird. I am ecstatic that it is still live!

Tags: 2008, Election, Obama, McCain, Map

HT - Patrick Moberg

Tags: election, obama, history, race, president

I don’t know how long this will be available for browsing, but it gives a great picture of the online world from approximately January 2001. Google has made accessible for searching, their oldest available index. Try it out. It provides a peak into the topography of the internet just before it truly exploded. T1 and cable access was still prohibitively expensive for most people. Napster had just recently had its free mp3 sharing curtailed. Believe it or not, Emergent Village did not yet exist… Strangely though, the church emerging was already alive and well

…And being the egomaniac that I am, I attempted to search my name and found that 2001 predates any google-able web presence for myself.

Edit: This is incredible!

Tags: google, search, history, 2001

Western Civilization: The whole is comprised of two dominant worldviews/traditions.

Greek Tradition: detached, disembodied, timeless, universal, reflective, critical, rational

Hebrew Tradition: involved, embodied, historical, local, committed to specificity

If anyone can figure out how to lead a civilization anywhere when it is rooted in this soup my hat is off to them!

Tags: philosophy, western, civilization, greek, hebrew, plato, jesus, culture

On August 10, 612 BC the Neo-Babylonian Empire wrested power from the Assyrians. The previous seat of world power, Ninevah, was destroyed. Its walls are broken by siege engines that Assyria introduced centuries before. Assyrian communities, more than two thousand years old, are obliterated¹. Babylon becomes the world’s largest city (first over 200,000 inhabitants²) and the center of the earth.

(Wikipedia is awesome)

Tags: history, babylon, assyria, nineveh