ABC News has video and excerpts:

“Frankly we’re, we’re scared,” one voter told McCain. “We’re scared of an Obama presidency. And I’ll tell you why. I don’t want to bring a child up in a country uh where — I love this country, we’ll bring our child up no matter what — but I’m concerned about someone that cohorts with domestic terrorists such as Ayers.”

Said McCain, “I want to be president of the United States and I obviously I do not want Senator Obama to be. But I have to tell you, I have to tell you, he is a decent person. And a person that you do not have to be scared as president of the United States.”

The crowd booed.

People also continue to repeat the line that Obama is a Muslim:

 Another woman stood and said, “I got to ask you a question. I don’t believe in — I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him. And he’s not, he’s not – he’s an Arab. He’s not.”

Shaking his head no, McCain grabbed the microphone away from her.

“No ma’am,” McCain said. “No ma’am. No ma’am. He’s a, he’s a, he’s a decent family man, citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues. And that’s what this campaign is all about, he is not. Thank you.”

Scattered applause followed.

Many election offices have extended hours for early voting. You can even vote on the weekend.

• In Fairfax County, where I reside, you can vote now at the Fairfax County Government Center. Starting, Oct. 15, you can vote at 15 additional locations as listed on this page.
• In Arlington, Va. you can vote at the County Administration Building at 2100 Clarendon Blvd.
• In Alexandria, Va.,  you can vote now at 132 North Royal Street in Old Town.

If you live in another jurisdiction, you can look up your local Virginia election’s office. If you live outside Virginia, look up your polling place at Vote411.com.

My son and I spent a few hours today at the Small Press Expo, an annual festival of comics and cartooning in Bethesda, Md.

Our biggest find was discovering Frank Cammuso, author of a terrific new children’s comic book, Knights of the Lunch Table. My son and I just read his book at bedtime. Cammuso has a wonderfully vivid style, with bright colors and bold lines. His tale of a young boy struggling to fit in at a new school is conventional, but supremely entertaining. Even though my son didn’t understand the Arthurian references,  I had to tear the book from his hands to get him to go to sleep.

Bonus: Cammuso is a political cartoonist for the Syracuse Post-Standard. I’m acquainting myself with his fine work.

My son and I are also fans of Jen Sorenson’s Slowpoke cartoons, although he isn’t old enough to grasp her political commentary. He just likes her funny, exaggerated characters. Jen seemed genuinely surprised and flattered to have a 6-year-old counted among her fans. She patiently told him how she got started in drawing. She graciously signed her new book for him and drew him a character.

I was also pleased to get a signed book from August Pollack, one the most compelling up-and-coming commentators, I follow. When he’s not working at his new job at the Cartoon Network, August draws and blogs at someguywithawebsite.com.

I found these via my buddy Tim Arnold.

• Palin can’t name a single court case that she disagrees with other than Roe v. Wade.
• If a girl was raped and impregnated by her father, she would counsel the girl to “choose life.”
• Although her running mate is 72, voters have a choice between Joe Biden and his “tremendous amount of experience” or her “new energy, the new face and the new ideas.”
• Palin gets her news from “general sources.”
• Her worldview is not shaped by life experience: “The way I have understood the world is through education, through books, through mediums that have provided me a lot of perspective on the world.” Yes, “mediums.”
• Palin can’t name a single newspaper or magazine that she read regularly prior to being picked.
• Alaska’s proximity to Russia and Canada is an important part of her foreign policy experience: “As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there, they are right next to our state.”
• She can’t give a single example of where her running mate called for additional oversight of Wall Street. She said, “I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.”

Sources:

1. Sept. 24 transcript
2. Sept. 25 transcript
3. Sept. 30 transcript
4. Oct. 1 transcript

[McCain] was asked about nearly $200 million in congressional pet projects Palin requested for 2009 for her state, despite her boasts that she opposes such projects and his claim that she didn’t ask for any. McCain responded by criticizing Obama for seeking more than $900 million in these earmarks, by one count.

“That’s nearly a million every day, every working day he’s been in Congress,” McCain said. “And when you look at some of the planetariums and other foolishness that he asked for, he shouldn’t be saying anything about Governor Palin.”

Of course, it’s easy to pick on astronomers. They are a small constituency — numbering fewer than 10,000. They are also easy scared by bright lights, and, when not wielding a slide rule, utterly defenseless.

But still, what does McCain have against supporting science education? After the most anti-science administration in years, do we really need more of the same?

Charlie Gibson: Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine?

Sarah Palin: In what respect, Charlie?

Charlie: What do you interpret it to be?

Palin: His worldview.

Charlie: No, No, the Bush Doctrine. He enunciated it in September 2002, before the Iraq War.

Palin: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is to rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hellbent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership–and that’s the beauty of American elections and democracy–with new leadership comes the opportunity to do things better.

Charlie: The Bush Doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory defense. We have the right to preemptively strike any other country that we believe is going to attack us.

Fail!

You know, I attended a meeting at my son’s elementary school today. The PTA president spoke. I listened to her thinking, “you know, she’s well-spoken, self-assured, and clearly possesses strong parental instincts. She could very well have three, four, perhaps even five children. Perhaps she’s vice-presidential timber?”

Now, he’s asking us to get to know her in fewer than 70 days.

As conservative Andrew Sullivan writes to a conflicted McCain supporter:

This isn’t just about the number of days Obama or Palin have been in office. Since breaking onto the national stage Obama has given countless print, radio, and television interviews. He has been bombarded with criticism and praise until a sketch of the man could be draw from the stack of clippings. I’ve only seen a handful of Palin interviews. And I’ve little to no idea about her judgment or what she thinks about the issues. And I don’t know that McCain knows her much better than I do. If voters had found Obama, his experience, or his policies wanting, they had a chance to reject him. They approved. Only McCain has approved of Palin.

In Palin’s next national interview, I’d like to see her asked, “just how many times did you speak to McCain about the position prior to being selected?”

Job applicants for even the most entry-level positions typically endure several face-to-face interviews. How many did Palin have with McCain?

McCain’s pick is a roll of the dice. His first executive decision was extremely irresponsible one.

There’s truth in the romanticism of train travel. You wind through cities and neighborhoods and see things you can’t see from our interstate highway system. The stretch through Baltimore is especially eye-opening. From the tracks, you can see block after block of depressed neighborhoods. Some houses have boarded up windows. You can see people mingling on small porches and children playing in the street.

Biden describe his commute this way:

I’ve never seen a time when Washington has watched so many people get knocked down without doing anything to help them get back up. Almost every night, I take the train home to Wilmington, sometimes very late. As I look out the window at the homes we pass, I can almost hear what they’re talking about at the kitchen table after they put the kids to bed.

Like millions of Americans, they’re asking questions as profound as they are ordinary. Questions they never thought they would have to ask:

“Should mom move in with us now that dad is gone?”

“Fifty, sixty, seventy dollars to fill up the car?”

“Winter’s coming. How we gonna pay the heating bills?”

“Another year and no raise?”

“Did you hear the company may be cutting our health care?”

“Now, we owe more on the house than it’s worth. How are we going to send the kids to college?”

“How are we gonna be able to retire?”

That’s the America that George Bush has left us, and that’s the future John McCain will give us.

Biden’s speaks from ground level. He effectively paints a picture he is almost sitting with families at the kitchen table with his fellow Americans — hearing and sharing in their concerns.

Now contrast this to the closing paragraphs of Dick Cheney’s acceptance speech in 2000. He spoke about flying in a helicopter over Washington and Northern Virginia:

When you make that trip from Andrews to the Pentagon, and you look down on the city of Washington, one of the first things you see is the Capitol, where all the great debates that have shaped 200 years of American history have taken place. You fly down along the Mall and see the monument to George Washington, a structure as grand as the man himself. To the north is the White House, where John Adams once prayed “that none but honest and wise men may ever rule under this roof.” Next you see the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, the third president and the author of our Declaration of Independence. And then you fly over the memorial to Abraham Lincoln, this greatest of presidents, the man who saved the union. Then you cross the Potomac, on approach to the Pentagon. But just before you settle down on the landing pad, you look upon Arlington National Cemetery its gentle slopes and crosses row on row.

I never once made that trip without being reminded how enormously fortunate we all are to be Americans, and what a terrible price thousands have paid so that all of us and millions more around the world might live in freedom.

This passage has always bothered me because that italicized sentence includes a lie. Anyone who has ever been to Arlington National Cemetery knows that you don’t see “crosses row on row.” The headstones are tombstone-shaped. From the air, you won’t be able to make out crosses — or any other religious symbol for that matter — as you can see in this aerial photo.

(Cheney’s sentiment also proved dishonest, of course, because the Bush-Cheney policies have betrayed the legacy of these American heroes by asking our men and women in uniform to sacrifice not for freedom, but for incompetence and false objectives.)

But thanks to Biden’s words, I now realize that Cheney’s words were essentially true. Cheney and Bush saw it as their role to observe America from the air. While some Democrats have been getting tweaked for not caring about the so-called “fly-over states” — those “red states in the center of the country — Bush and Cheney have been conducting fly-overs of American families. We saw it when Bush rode Air Force One over New Orleans after Katrina. This is the enduring metaphor for this administration. They look down on real American households, never lingering long enough to mentally and spiritually internalize the family’s concerns.

I know that Biden’s speech, like all political speeches, is a product of persuasion and hyperbole. I may be nothing more than a wide-eyed true believer. But for me, at least, his words had power.

Son: Daddy, look, my friend gave me a Pokeman card at camp.

Me: Cool, I like it.

Son: I need 15 of them to play. You can buy more cards for me. They don’t cost very much. They are very, very cheap.

Me: If they don’t cost very much, then you can buy them with your allowance.

Son: But Daddy, I might not have enough money. You can buy them, they are really, really cheap.

Me: If they are really cheap, you can buy them.

Son, raising voice: But I might not have enough money!

Me: How much do they cost?

Son: I have no idea.

Curtain.

I’m not sure why this happens. It just might be that due to network congestion, the download times out or something.

This happened this week when I attempted to download Apple’s keynote presentation from the World Wide Developers Conference. It’s a mammoth video file that is now available via Apple’s Keynote Podcast.

There’s no obvious way to reload the episode. But here’s how you do it:

1. Click on “Podcasts” in iTunes.
2. Expand the podcast in question and then delete the bad and/or missing episodes (by selecting and hitting “delete” key).
3. Collapse the podcast by clicking the triangle, and then expand it while holding the option key. This will cause iTunes to totally update all episodes in the podcast. It will add the other episodes back in and restore the item you just deleted.
4. Click the “Get” button to re-download the episode in question.

Thanks to “plutopup65″ for the tip.

Exciting news this week for Internet movies (photo above). First, Netflix has released a $99 box that lets you watch their titles on your TV. You get instant access to 10,000 of their nearly 100,000 titles — mostly older titles and TV shows.

Even more exciting: The Blockbuster Museum is now open! It sounds better than historic Williamsburg. Onion TV has the scoop:

Historic ‘Blockbuster’ Store Offers Glimpse Of How Movies Were Rented In The Past

Speaking as someone who declared support for Obama when he first got in the race, I’m fine with Clinton staying in through the final primary. She’s been campaigning for some two years. How is another two weeks going to matter?Let her enjoy her victory in Puerto Rico and then exit gracefully.

Yes, we all can see that Obama is several comfortable strides ahead of her — he’s ahead in pledged delegates, superdelegates, states won, and the popular vote. But only a quitter drops out when the finish line is in sight.

People who call for her to drop out keep saying that she’s dividing the party. Do you know what’s dividing the party? Calling for her to drop out in the final lap.

So cut it out, will ya?

Poetry.

(Hat tip: Some Guy With a Web Site.)

MoveOn is announcing their finalists tomorrow. Here are five that caught my eye:

• Vote Hope: A hip ad with Juno-styled credits.
• Ask Me About My President: A time-lapse of a Republican bumper over the past 8 years
• It’s Time to Listen: A few troops speak out. The ad format isn’t highly original but I like hearing from troops themselves
• Unity: Clever animation with a positive message.

Finally, this one — while void of any real substance whatsoever — has really affecting music and images. Goose bump material:

When done with this, you can watch his video explaining why Hillary Clinton can’t beat John McCain.

Veracifier’s is topped only by the Daily Show in its ability to distill hours of video footage down to the tastiest cuts of meat. Here for instance, they showcase Doug Feith, who is either a blind idelogue, or the dumbest man on earth:

NPR Blog: Media Ask “The Beginning of the End for Clinton?”:

A “drumbeat” has started to sound in the media the past week with the speech on race by Sen. Barack Obama and with the announcement of Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Obama - “this could be the beginning of the end for Clinton.”

Time’s Mark Halperin writes in Painful Things Hillary Clinton Knows — Or Should Know that Hillary can’t win without dismissing the will of the people:

1. She can’t win the nomination without overturning the will of the elected delegates, which will alienate many Democrats.

2. She can’t win the nomination without a bloody convention battle — after which, even if she won, history and many Democrats would cast her as a villain.

3. Catching up in the popular vote is not out of the question — but without re-votes in Florida and Michigan it will be almost as impossible as catching up in elected delegates.

Politico: Story behind the story: The Clinton myth:

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

The New York Times’ analysis of fundraising suggests that as of the end of February, Hillary is at severe financial disadvantage to the virtually debt-free Obama campaign.

Once the outstanding campaign debt of $8.7 million is factored in, Mrs. Clinton has only $3 million in free cash for the battles ahead — one-tenth of the $31 million the Obama campaign has in primary cash.

Slate’s Christopher Beam says that Clinton’s path to the nomination is “barricaded”:

All this being a long way of saying, Hillary’s path to the nomination is not “narrow.” It’s barricaded. Yet still there seems to be a hesitation among the media to declare Clinton dead. Maybe it’s her zombielike ability to rise again—first in New Hampshire, then in Nevada, then most recently in Texas and Ohio. But people have to understand there will be no knockout blow, no head shot. Rather it will be a long, slow exit that causes pain to everyone involved.

The New York Times says that Clinton can only win if she a) wins Pennsylvania soundly, b) leads in the popular vote come June, and c) succeeds in casting doubts on Obama via some revelation that causes superdelgates to overturn his lead — basically subverting the outcome of the popular votes in previous primaries and caucuses.

NYT: Clinton Facing Narrower Path to Nomination:

For Mrs. Clinton, all this has seemed something of a long shot since her defeats in February. But that shot seems to have grown a little longer.

My read of these articles is that with re-votes in Michigan and Florida looking doubtful, it’s looking unlikely that the campaign will continue into May. Although Hillary will likely win Pennsylvania on April 22, Obama may counter that with wins in North Carolina and Indiana two weeks later. At that point, the math will be undeniably clear, and Clinton will have no choice but to bow out.

He writes that in person, Obama is quite authentically normal:

I’ve spent time with a lot of politicians in the last 15 years. Most of them talk at you. Listening is not their strong suit — in fact, many of them aren’t even very good at faking it.

Senator Obama, in contrast, comes across as a normal human being, with a normal interaction style, and a normal level of interest in the people he’s with and the world around him.

And to Obama, the Internet is not just a series of tubes:

We were able to have an actual, honest-to-God conversation, back and forth, on a number of topics. In particular, the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, Youtube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us on what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics — with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more. We also talked about a pretty wide range of other issues, including Silicon Valley and various political topics.

Finally, Andreessen group asked about the Senator’s experience:

We asked him directly, how concerned should we be that you haven’t had meaningful experience as an executive — as a manager and leader of people?

He said, watch how I run my campaign — you’ll see my leadership skills in action.

At the time, I wasn’t sure what to make of his answer — political campaigns are often very messy and chaotic, with a lot of turnover and flux; what conclusions could we possibly draw from one of those?

Well, as any political expert will tell you, it turns out that the Obama campaign has been one of the best organized and executed presidential campaigns in memory. Even Obama’s opponents concede that his campaign has been disciplined, methodical, and effective across the full spectrum of activities required to win — and with a minimum of the negative campaigning and attack ads that normally characterize a race like this, and with almost no staff turnover. By almost any measure, the Obama campaign has simply out-executed both the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

Read Andreessen’s entire post.

(For an entertaining read on the problems with Diebold’s electronic voting machines, I recommend Brave New Ballot.)

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Obama had just been introduced by Virginia governor Tim Kaine. We’re in the circle:

Also, here is the C-SPAN video of the entire event. Or, below is a more digestible excerpt. An undecided voter asked Obama why she should vote for him instead of Senator Clinton. Here is his response:

T.C. Williams, by the way, is the high school depicted in the movie “Remember the Titans.” In fact, Coach Herman Boone was sitting the front row. Obama called him out and joked that he was better looking than Denzel Washington.

I had a great view, as my mediocre photo below shows. He spoke about how hope isn’t merely “blind optimism,” but actually a way to take stock of the difficulties ahead. Nothing important that has ever been accomplished in America has happened without a fight, he said.

I’ve seen Obama speak on TV lately, and many of the words and themes were familiar. So the most unique part of the event was when Obama took questions. He called on a high school student sitting right in front of me, and she asked a smart question about strengthening relations with Latin America.

His speech and his time during the Q&A re-affirmed my personal impression of Obama as not only a uncommonly inspiring figure, but also extremely wise about the issues facing our country at this pivotal moment. He’s a quick study.

This post on Raising Kaine has a detailed description of the rally, more photos, and a summary of the excellent questions asked by the audience.

Still crunching numbers here, looking at absentees in American Samoa, reading the exits from Alaska, etc., and the one obvious conclusion is that the contest for the Democratic nomination may be decided by the very frightening Credentials Committee mentioned yesterday by Howard Dean. The Credentials Committee will try to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates at the convention, even though they are supposed to be punished for their jumping-the-gun impunity. That will, in turn, incite lawsuits galore — really apocalyptic stuff with heavy hitters emerging from the Palm and the Capitol Grille to let fly with legal briefs that will curl the hair on your back. And that legal case will surely go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Which means that, as in 2000 with Gore v. Bush, it’s going to come down to the whim of Justice Scalia.

More from Achenblog.

Richardson is torn as he is an former member of the Clinton Administration. But as the Post reports, ” he said he likes Obama, telling a story about how Obama saved him from looking inattentive during one of last year’s Democratic debates:”

“I had just been asked a question — I don’t remember which one — and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn’t going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, ‘So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?’ But I wasn’t paying any attention! I was about to say, ‘Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening.’ But I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, ‘Katrina. Katrina.’ The question was on Katrina! So I said, ‘On Katrina, my policy . . .’ Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, ‘Obama, that was good of you to do that.’”

Obama has always struck me as fiercely competitive. Do stories like this suggest that a fair and compassionate adversary as well?

Mysterious Traveler Entrances Town With Utopian Vision Of The Future

(Tim is right. Posting videos is much easier than writing).

Thanks to my friend Steve Rowe passing this along.

In short: In 1983, the holiday was opposed by Ronald Reagan and many (but not all) members of the Republican-controlled Senate. The bill’s future was in doubt. then, the bigoted Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) rose to the floor and called King a Marxist. At that point, many Republicans felt they had to dissassociate themselves with his remarks. They switched sides and supported the creation of the holiday.

From the Washington Post on October 4, 1983:

Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), charging that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. espoused “action-oriented Marxism” and other “radical political” views, yesterday temporarily blocked Senate action on a House-passed bill to create a new national holiday in memory of the slain civil rights leader.

Helms’ assault on King, which prompted a scathing denunciation from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), came as the White House was putting out word that President Reagan intends to sign the measure, even though the administration once had opposed it.

Helms had hardly begun his attack on the bill when Senate leaders of both parties, including Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), the conservative chairman of the Judiciary Committee, filed a cloture petition to shut off debate and bring the bill to a vote, perhaps as early as Wednesday.

And Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.), floor manager for the legislation, acerbically attacked the contention by Helms and other critics of the bill that another federal holiday would be costly for the economy. “Since when did a dollar sign take its place atop our moral code?” Dole asked.

Allison Silberberg, who in 1983 was an intern for Sen. Edward Kennedy, recalls the scene in today’s Washington Post:

Right after the Senate vote, which I watched from the packed gallery, I rushed in excitement to the room that had been set aside for a reception. Not seeing anyone there, I turned around. I remember hearing a thunderous sound coming toward me. A crowd turned the corner, and there were Kennedy, Coretta Scott King, other famous civil rights leaders and so many other supporters filling the long hall. As they walked, arm in arm, they began singing “We Shall Overcome.” It was a glorious moment.

Glorious, indeed.

But In my opinion, John Edward’s second-place speech soared. He hit all the right notes. He nearly Kennedyesque in its passion and eloquence. I’m talking about Robert, not John.

His speech reminded me of this Bobby Kennedy quote: “Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.”

Read Edward’s speech for yourself, or watch highlights below.

The 2008 presidential campaign is the first campaign since 1928 without incumbents in the primaries. In this vacuum, someone has to pick of the incumbent mantle. For many months, this person has been Hillary Clinton. Recently, she grafted “change” onto her slogan, but even this new tagline equivocates: “Ready for Change.” She’s ready, don’t you see, whereas her opponents are not.

When Bill Clinton ran in 1992, he was the man from Hope. His first campaign was about the future.

If Hillary Clinton’s campaign asked us to reach back nearly eight years to her husband’s administration when we were at peace and the country was prosperous, she might have a hook. But instead, she’s mainly asking us to consider her senate resume. She’s not an agent of change, she’s merely ready for it.

Competence alone doesn’t often win elections. Her slant recalls a flat appeal from a few elections ago:

Because this election isn’t about ideology. It’s about competence. –Michael Dukakis, 1988 Acceptance Speech.

Clinton is still very much in this race. But if she’s asking voters to choose competence over hope, I place my money on hope.

I’ve been drooling over the iPhone with its visual voice mail, integrated Google Maps, Safari browser, slick email, and beautiful screen. But alas, as everyone knows, the iPhone works on AT&T only, and I’m a Verizon customer with nearly a year left in his contract.

Verizon’s Wireless’ most comparable phone is the new LG Voyager. I used the Voyager briefly in the store and concluded that while it has some nice attributes — its flip-out keyboard is much easier to use than the iPhone’s error-prone keyboard — it’s a poor iPhone imitation it most regards.

But again, the iPhone is on AT&T. I’ve been using Verizon Wireless in the Washington DC area and around the country for nearly ten years and am rather pleased with their coverage.

My experience is validated by Consumer Reports’ latest cellular survey, which is published in their January 2008 issue. It’s survey of 47,629 respondents resulted in rankings of the major carriers in 20 metropolitan areas. Verizon Wireless came in on top everywhere except in the three cities where Alltel has a major presence (Cleveland, Phoenix, and Tampa).

Leaving Alltel out, the rankings were uniformly in this order:

1. Verizon Wireless
2. T-Mobile
3. AT&T
4. Sprint

Of AT&T, Consumer Reports wrote: “home of the iPhone but trails the better carriers in almost all respects.”

So I’m sticking with my trusty LG VX6000 for the time being. Thanks to pressure from Apple’s iPhone and Google’s new Android project, new developments in mobile technology seem ripe in 2008.

Here is the Consumer Reports Magazine’s cover story on their cellular survey, but not ratings are available to paying subscribers only.

My favorite is his pick for number 2, even if it is actually a video. It shows a solar eclipse taken from a space-based solar satellite. A total solar eclipse, you may know, is when the moon passes in front of the sun completely obscuring its disc, and casts a dark shadow on the earth. It’s an astounding event in which, for a few minutes, the sky grows dark, the temperature drops, and a fire-ringed hole appears in the sky right where the sun used to be. I’ve seen two solar eclipses in my life: one in Mexico 1991 and one near Guadeloupe in 1998.

Total solar eclipse are also quite rare — at least on any given point on earth. There’s no more than one per year and many appear over the ocean, the earth’s surface being mostly water, you know. So how rare? Well, the continental United States hasn’t had a total solar eclipse since 1979 and won’t experience another one until the total eclipse of August 2017.

Note that the “Bad Astronomer” is not to be confused with my dad, who is actually a very good astronomer as well as solar eclipse chaser.

Now where was I? Oh yes, this amazing new video is taken of a solar eclipse from a space-based satellite. Ordinarily, the apparent size of the sun and moon are nearly exactly the same size, an amazing coincidence (or divine plan, depending on your perspective) and is what makes solar eclipses possible. But from space, the apparent size of the moon is much smaller.

So, for the first time, we have a video of Earth’s moon passing in front of a much larger sun. Like I said, amazing:

Meanwhile, some friends of mine had a better idea for their holiday travel. They live in Alexandria and need to catch a flight to California tomorrow for a ten-day trip. Traditional options:

1. Drive their own car and park in Economy Parking: $9 x 10 days=$90.
2. Take a taxi or van service =$100+ round trip.

Their alternative: Rent a car from National Airport, drive it to Dulles, and return the car. When returning from California, they will rent another car and return it to National. The cost of two days of rental: $60.

A brilliant idea. While its a bit of a hassle renting and returning the cars twice, its easier than escorting two children under the age of 4 on public transit or the unreliable Economy Parking Lot shuttles. The rental car shuttles at Dulles, they say, tend to be more reliable.

COLUMBIA, S.C. — It was a staggering sight. Upwards of 29,000 people at a political rally. And the Democratic primary in South Carolina is not until Jan. 26.

The Double O Express — Oprah for Obama — drew what is easily the biggest crowd at a campaign event, for any candidate, so far this season. It may have helped that the day was unseasonably warm, above 70 degrees, and gorgeously sunny. But this size crowd is rare even for a general election in the fall. (JFK drew about 35,000 for a Labor Day rally in 1960; get to work, Caucus readers, and tell us if you know of a bigger campaign rally without an incumbent president.)

The next measure will be to see if Oprah helps drive up Obama’s fundraising numbers in the next few weeks. Could Obama beat Clinton’s fundraising machine in Q4? We’ll know in a few weeks.

NPR hosted a debate this week between the Democratic presidential contenders. Unlike the overhyped YouTube debates, the discussion was substantive and detailed — they focused on three main topics. Everyone got fairly equal time. Bonus: no questions from snowmen.

Hopefully the two party nominees will return for an NPR for another debate in 2008.

NPR has posted the audio as an MP3, which makes it easy for anyone to download and listen to the debate on your computer or iPod at the gym, in the car, whenever.

Initially (first day or two) my wife and I just watched our five hours that comes in our monthly plan; we got hooked though. When we started watching Heroes there had been 28 episodes, and now we wanted to watch them all. At Apple’s iTunes or Amazon’s Unbox, each episode would have cost us $2, or $56 total to own lease the video. With episodes only being 43 minutes though, it only costs $0.72/episode on Netflix. So we just upgraded our plan by $12, and got caught up to the current episode in about a week (yeah, we didn’t do much else that week).

Moveover, Netflix’s “Watch Now” certainly seems to offer more selection at a better price than most pay-per-view or video-on-demand service. They have 5,000 titles available for watch now and 90,000 titles on disc for postal delivery.

David Pogue, as is his custom, has his thorough review plus another column listing many additional obscure goodies. For instance, Spotlight, the ever-present search utility, now does math, is a dictionary, and launches any program in less than a second: Just press Command-Spacebar, type the first few letters of the program’s name, and then press Enter.

Probably the best addition is the “eat your vegetables” feature: “Time Machine.” It’s an idiot-proof backup system that is completely integrated into the operating system. An exact duplicate of your hard is quietly maintain on an attached hard drive. Pogue writes:

Time Machine updates its mirror of your main drive every hour, although you can also trigger updates on demand. At day’s end, Time Machine replaces those hourly backups with a single daily backup; at the end of the month, those are replaced by a single month-end backup. (Apple assumes that it won’t take you a whole month to notice that your hard drive crashed.)

If disaster strikes — sunspots, clueless spouse, overtired self — you enter Time Machine’s recovery mode. The sleek, modern-looking Leopard desktop falls away like a curtain, revealing — startlingly — a deep-space starfield. The window that once contained your files remains floating before you, with dozens of iterations of itself, like file cards, receding into the background.

You can now scroll backward through time until the window looks as it did before the unfortunate event. (You can also use the Search box to find missing files.) When you find the files you want and click Restore, the regular desktop slides back up into view. The recovered icons are back in their original window.

Given that all hard drives fail — it’s a matter of “when” not if — easy built-in backup has been criminally overdue.

While online backup services are getting better all the time, hard disk resurrection is always faster when you are pulling your files from a connected hard drive instead of sucking down Gigabytes through your Internet connection. While the backup utility SuperDuper has a number of advantages, as Andy Ihnatko argues, people are much more likely to use something that is just there on every Mac. There’s no additional software to install.

If you own a Mac that’s less than five years old, Time Machine is reason enought to upgrade. Your hard disk’s contents — your photo library in particular — are worth more than $110, right?

When I called this cousin right after the election, I was dismayed to hear that she hadn’t made it to the poll. It wasn’t her fault. Her boss called an early meeting at the last minute on election day. With her bus ride into Manhattan, she didn’t have time to vote in the morning, and she wasn’t able to make it back home that evening before the polls closed.

Don’t let this happen to you. Whenever there is an election and there’s any chance at all you might not have time to vote, get an absentee ballot now.

Virginia has an election on Nov. 6. (Yes, in an odd year. Hey, we’re a commonwealth, we do things our own way).

It’s easy, you just call your voter registration office and ask them to mail you one. Having a long commute on election day is a perfectly valid reason to vote absentee.

Or you can do what I did and vote early. I live in Fairfax County and you can vote at the main government building or in one of seven satellite locations around the county. I did it earlier today and there was no line. It took less than 10 minutes and you still get the hip “I voted” sticker.

All of these local jurisdictions allow walk-in voting. Here are links the hours and locations for:

• Alexandria
• Arlington
• Falls Church
• Fairfax County

So don’t take a chance on election day, Virginians. Vote early!

He’s breathing and eating on his own now. My sister, her husband, and their eldest son traveled to their new home in Altoona, PA this week, a day after Quinn was discharged.

Today he went to his first pediatrician appointment and he now weighs 6 pounds, 7 ounces — up from his birth weight of 5 pounds 11 ounches. Keep eating those Wheaties, Quinn!

(My brother-in-law is still maintaining a journal. Annoying, the site doesn’t let you link to individual posts.)