A brief history of the Glenrothes By-Election

Alex Salmond: Scotland should be independent, like Iceland and Ireland - our financial industries will make us a fortune, and Oil is very expensive, so we'll all roll around in cash!
Ireland: *Banking Fail*
Iceland: *Epic Banking Fail*
Bank of England: *Bails out the Scottish banks, with more money than Scotland has*
Oil: *plummets in price*
Salmond: *I blame Gordon Brown!*
People: *Vote Labour*

No, I'm not entirely serious.
Note for those people living outside of Scotland- Alex Salmond is the leader of the SNP, who are the current government of Scotland.  Which is part of Britain, which is run from London.  Ireland is the country to the West of us, Iceland is somewhat North.
Note for those people living in the US - you should probably have skipped all of that, as it happened outside of your country, while you were Having An Election, and thus is Not Important.

Delicious LiveJournal Links for 11-7-2008

• Red Sex, Blue Sex
  During the campaign, the media has largely respected calls to treat Bristol Palinâ™s pregnancy as a private matter. But the reactions to it have exposed a cultural rift that mirrors Americaâ™s dominant political divide. Social liberals in the countryâ™s âœblue statesâ tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughterâ™s pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in âœred statesâ generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesnâ™t choose to have an abortion.
  (tags: sociology sex usa religion politics)
• Why Do Markets Create Bubbles?
  Profitable trading days boost testosterone levels and tend to encourage more risk-taking, more wins and more testosterone. When the risks didn't pay off, the testosterone ebbed away to be replaced by a stress hormone, cortisol. The whole process seems likely to exaggerate peaks and troughs.
  (tags: markets economics)
• Unknown "Structures" Tugging at Universe
  It looks like the entire of the known universe is being pulled in a single direction. Probably into the mouth of Cthulhu
  (tags: universe science physics astronomy)

For the psycholologists in the audience

You learn something new every day

I'm going back through my comics filter to catch up on two weeks of comics (I'm at skip=140 at the moment) and I bumped into an explanation of why there's sound during the space battles in Star Wars. Apparently it's in the first Star Wars novelisation:

Your sensors'll give you an audio simulation for a rough idea of where those fighters are when they're not on your screen. It'll sound like they're right there in the turret with you.

How perfect is that?

Best halloween costume ever

courtesy of octopoid_horror - feel free to post better ones in the comments.

Little Rorshach