Obama.
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Cosmic Variance is a group blog by people who, coincidentally or not, all happen to be physicists and astrophysicists:
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November 5th, 2008 at 12:15 am
Congratulations from South Africa
November 5th, 2008 at 12:55 am
Dan,
Caught yer UTube Plug for Obama…RightOn.
I share your concerns, and am breathing abit easier this eve. Cannot believe the nightmare of the last 8 YEARS.
Maybe it is a MultiVerse simulation, that ends well ?
November 5th, 2008 at 1:02 am
Congratulations!!!
November 5th, 2008 at 1:20 am
A good day for the country. That is all.
November 5th, 2008 at 1:25 am
Congratulations from Poland! God bless you America (with his noodly appendages)!
November 5th, 2008 at 2:16 am
Congratulations from the Philippines. What a relief!
November 5th, 2008 at 3:34 am
Again, congrats from Poland. Hope, a better future not only for US the whole world.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:49 am
Congratulations America.
It took the awful nightmare of Bush to wake up the people, and they chose wisely.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:53 am
Awesome! congrats from the UK
It was a lovely surprise to wake up today and know the world has a new US president.
November 5th, 2008 at 5:03 am
Congratulations from Egypt!!!
November 5th, 2008 at 6:04 am
and from Germany
November 5th, 2008 at 6:34 am
YaaaYYY!
Currendli drogging blunkenli
November 5th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Congratulations from Israel! In hard times like now you need charismatic leader.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Congratulations, but most of all: Thank you, thank you, thank you on behalf of all the non-US citizens of the world (and of my daughter!)
November 5th, 2008 at 9:48 am
From Canada—for the first time in awhile, I have a warm feeling about the
USA. Despite the overwhelming problems, I think Obama will do as well as anyone can. He seems to surround himself with extremely talented disinterested people instead of ideological ciphers.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:42 am
A sad day for our copies in the sector of the multiverse were McCain won
November 5th, 2008 at 11:02 am
YES WE DID!
In my area of VA, Democrats celebrated in the Hampton Holiday Inn. Cautiously optimistic as the electoral votes started rolling in, we really got a lift and reinforced hope when Pennsylvania went to Obama. Not a big surprise, but it meant that McCain had a tough fight. Then around 23:00 Virginia was called for Obama and the crowd went wild, and almost as if on cue for followup: Obama projected as US President 2008! What joy, relief, and (for the mostly black crowd) pride. I exchanged many a high-five and even some fist bumps and hip style handshakes. Obama’s proud but conciliatory speech was very stirring, it said just what needed saying. Congratulations, baby! John McCain gets credit for a gracious concession speech and for supplying a colorful character into the public eye (now safe to chuckle over.)
For those of us who worked to canvass and register voters, it was especially poignant and rewarding to have won Virginia. I didn’t do as much as I could have. Still, it helped and that made me feel a part of history not just for the USA and the world, but my state as well. The young “kids” who had been organizing for Obama around here were happy but dazed, as if they couldn’t believe it. We had record voter turnout, I don’t have exact figures yet.
And now, it is still “Yes we can” to solve America’s problems and pitch in for the world as well. We all have to pitch in.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Congratulations from Tehran.Obama is become the symbol of new era.Hope he will do the best for people.
November 5th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Let’s hope.
I find pulse race and my palms get a little sweaty when I try to absorb as fully as I can the myriad pressing concerns our nation faces. In the estimation of many more knowledgeable in such matters than myself, it is difficult to overstate the enormity of the challenges our President-Elect will face, and already the pundits have declared the “honeymoon” over before it started. America can turn on a dime; this election amply proves it. And it can do so again, as we saw in 1994 during the grim period of the GOP’s “Contract With America”.
I am guardedly optimistic, but I’ve seen too much of how the opposition operates to get my hopes up too high, and while roughly 2% of my fellow citizens pleasantly surprised me in the popular vote, that mushy middle is liable to bolt if things don’t get better yesterday. I. e., they’re already setting Obama up for a fall, either consciously or subconsciously, and the next couple years are likely to be wild ride indeed.
I’ll smile watching the Inaugural Ball for the first time in three cycles, and that’s something to be grateful for. I think this crew has their hearts and minds in the right place. If they’re given even a slight chance to accomplish a modicum of what they’ve promised, we’ll be better off. But let’s not underestimate the millstone of the Bush years hanging around their necks, nor the eagerness of the so-called “real Americans” McCain tried to appeal to to blame the coming woes on the new elitist liberal incumbent.
Now is a time for cautious optimism, but triumphalism will be rewarded with bitter disappointment. The Republicans, and the crazy world at large, will see to that.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
In January, we will be entering our darkest hours ever for the next four years.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Shant, thank you for your hopeful sentiments. They are especially impressive coming from a nation the US has condemned and suffers friction with. I hope that can heal, and of course you realize it’s a two-way street to better relations. BTW, my click on your link gives me a page load error. I suspect this is a sign of how distrust between nations sets up barriers even to the Internet. I hope freer communication can be worked out.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Please make this work.
Please.
I still worry that Bush declares marshall law, invades Iran and Syria or some such similar horrible thing just to make the job even worse for #45. But I don’t seriously believe he will.
More likely he’ll make Gitmo harder to get rid of somehow. And of course he’ll pardon himself and his whole administration. Again.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
What struck me most of all about the acceptance speech at Grant Park was the measured, thoughtful and recollected delivery. Obama is a very cool cat indeed. But in his case cool sits easily with discipline and organization … being laid back doesn’t mean being disengaged.
The speech showed moments of genuine humility. These are the marks of a truly great human being, and I believe also of a great national and world leader. Obama is cut from different cloth. The America he has invoked is a new America … younger, diverse, progressive.
November 5th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Congrats America! You deserved it!
Finally, the silent majority of decent and generous people of this great country has woken up and spoken! And the world rejoices!
There are many challenges Obama faces. But he is the only one who has any chance of addressing them—no one comes close.
What a beautiful day!
(From a non-American who had studied in US during BushSr-Clinton yrs and has many fond memories)
nano
November 5th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Let’s ;eave politics and get back to the real stuff — science!!
November 5th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Another Canuck here, chipping in his congratulations.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
It’s been incredibly frustrating for many of us Americans to not only watch our own country head downhill from the inside, but to see our reputation in the eyes of the rest of the world so damaged. Not only the reputation of our government, but of our people – the amount of anti-american sentiment I’ve been witness to over the past few years has been staggering, as if we were *all* to blame for the choices Bush made.
Nearly all of our presidential elections are extremely close in the end – Bush won by a very small margin in both cases. Those of us Americans who have deep concern for our world reputation have never been a silent majority, but with any democracy, ignorance can rule the day despite the best efforts of many.
Yet that same system that gave us Bush also has given us Obama. It’s a great feeling to see people here from around the world relieved and congratulating us, as if the real America is back. Yet it’s a tad bittersweet because we’ve always been here, just overshadowed by those who brought us down.
But make no mistake – this is a victory for so many of us in so many ways. As much as the world seems to be celebrating, the reaction of our own nation is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime. Watching our citizens spontaneously gather in the thousands and celebrate outside of the white house gates evoked memories of the falling of the Berlin wall – so many of us have felt trapped in our own nation for far too long. We’ve always been a passionate people, for better or for worse – thankfully,
So from an American to the world – thanks for the good vibes.
November 6th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Congratulations America! A very BIG thanks to all Americans from the rest of the world =)
November 6th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Congratulations from Germany, France and Portugal!
November 6th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
“You can turn off the stadium effect now Obama.”
Lots of hopes… I think you have to wait for the box to be opened first!
At least, you didn’t need rigs this time.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
The subject of our international reputation is one I’ve been ruminating on lately.
On the one hand, France, Germany, and England, for instance, heartily approve. And those of us who supported Obama generally have been craving this acceptance.
But let us consider: Would France elect a man of Algerian descent to its highest office? Would England elect the child of a Pakistani immigrant? Germany elect a descendant of Turks? I wonder.
And before we get too comfortable, let’s not overlook a sad irony of this election’s near-record turnout: The minority voters who were mobilized in such numbers by the prospect of electing another minority to the Presidency were likely part of the same demographic that gave the needed push to ratify CA’s Proposition 8. The conservative Christian streak in the Black and Latino population made for some strange bedfellows.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Low Math, Meekly Interacting “But let us consider: Would France elect a man of Algerian descent to its highest office? Would England elect the child of a Pakistani immigrant? Germany elect a descendant of Turks? I wonder.”
your analogy is benighted–there are more atheists in america than algerians in france.
blacks in usa constitute 13.4% and have been residents for aleast 300 years. algerians in france, south-asians in britain, and turks in germany constitute less than 3%, 3.7%, and 3.1% of those populations, respectively. none of those minorities was sizeable even 50 years ago. going by these percentages, european minorities are comparable in size to ralph nader supporters and atheists in usa (about 6% of us population).
so you should resume your sanctimonious wondering once an atheist becomes president of usa. in europe on the other, that’s happened several times.
obama on the other hand was an agnostic for most of his life. he caught the church flu whilst embarking on his political career in chicago. such a late-in-life leap of faith would freak europeans out enough (ask tony blair why he didnt reveal his new found catholicism until recently) rule him out of contention from high office there.
November 6th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Odd. “I wonder” is not equivalent to “certainly not”, nor even “I doubt it”. I leave the question of the appropriateness of craving foreign acceptance an open one. At present, my attitude is it’s good to be multilateral (and far more so than American conservatives have been inclined to be), but we shouldn’t uncritically romanticize our international peers. At any rate, I’m not certain the mere percentages you quote have any power to explain anything, nor do I think normalizing to those percentages would eliminate the appearance of underrepresentation of people of those ethnicities in the respective nations I mentioned. Alberto Fujimori was the president of Peru, a country where people of descended from any East Asian country make up less than 3% of the population. What are we to make of that?
Ethnicity and religious faith are quite different, though often interdependent, variables, and it’s interesting to consider what it means for atheists in this nation to be a “minority”. The controversy over headscarves in France springs to mind as an illuminating contrast. Unjustified discriminatory treatment of the faithful or the faithless is equally wrong, our (often unrealized) ideal of “religious freedom” tells us on this side of the pond. To what extent does this ideal even exist worldwide? Again, it’s useful to ponder these questions BEFORE (highly operative word) passing judgement, both on our neighbors, and ourselves.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
It’s a sad day for america, and the world, to all that think change is coming the only thing that is coming is being pulled down to a 3rd world class. Its a shame america can be bought for 500-1000 dollors that your grand kids will have to pay.theres only one thing a political person gives you and that is lies, dem or rep the are all the same some better then others but all will say anything for a vote.
November 8th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I had to keep this thread from ending on such a sour note. Blip, all politicians are flawed but some are better than others. Obama is smart and will gather bright and serious people around him. All we can hope for is improvement over alternatives, but that is good enough (and has to be.)
November 8th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
posting this abit late.. but congrats from New Zealand! the world is in a bad shape right now and all eyes are upon you(America) with a glimmer of hope.
November 12th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Aguante Obama!!!
Saludos desde Argentina