What a day. History being made.
After voting, I celebrated with a bacon-wrapped hot dog from a local street vendor. Mustard and onions. America, baby.
Let’s take this country for a spin and see what it can do!
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Cosmic Variance is a group blog by people who, coincidentally or not, all happen to be physicists and astrophysicists:
Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
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November 4th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Yeah, let’s!
^_^J.
November 4th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Great pic…wish I was in the next car w/ them!
November 4th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Today, Americans are finally showing what we are made of!
November 4th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Like, particles?
^_^J.
November 4th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
…from the dark sector. But its alright – here we don’t hold it againt them.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Whew! Thank goodness. I turns out the U.S. has moral fiber after all. Now I can get back to my normal life, content that a sane election has finally happened.
Honestly, this is probably the most exciting moment of my life.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
America has redemmed itself (for many things) tonight…
November 4th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
So lets hope Obama adopts sane economic policy and doesn’t take the rout as a carte blanche to spend spend spend like Bush did. Some of us voted for him b/c we felt he was the best suited amongst the two to keep a moderate (not extreme, one way or the other) tax policy and to balance the budget.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Congrats America! You’ve shown the flexibility that we all thought you had. Moral fiber – yep. Hope you go light-years ahead in Science and technology. You’ve got some serious challenges and real opponents – ones that grew these last 8 years. Hope you lead the world again the right way. Hope there’s a real rational approach to the decisions you make. Hope you’ve finally entered the 21st century after ushering the rest of us in. Good luck!
November 4th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Excellent, gracious speech by McCain.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Fantastic! The long national nightmare is over. Obama will be a great president. Now I can consider moving back someday
November 4th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Indeed Sean, in his speech tonight, McCain was finally what I thought was the real McCain.
To me, the most poignant TV moment, was a shot of Jesse Jackson, just as a single person in the massive crowd at Grant Park, with tears streaming down his cheeks. Not that I’m a huge JJ fan, but it was clear from his face that he was overwhelmed, and moved to tears, that the thing he had fought for his whole life had actually happened.
I’m so happy with America tonight!
November 4th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Congratulations America!
November 4th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Pop the champaigne bottles people — it happened. An eight year national mini-dark age is over.
L. C.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Thank you very much for restoring my confidence in you, America. Just remembered why I came to study in this country… It has been a looong time, though….
November 5th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Well done USA. Up here in Canada, Obama would have taken about 85% of the popular vote, so we are breathing a big sigh of relief.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:14 am
I, for one, welcome our new Canadian overlords
November 5th, 2008 at 12:17 am
He gotta win, he taught in U of C for crissakes.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:40 am
A truly great and historic night for our country. But we wake up tomorrow with tremendous challenges ahead. I hope that we all can work together to make this a better, safer, and more humane planet.
e.
November 5th, 2008 at 12:49 am
Magnificent speech by Obama.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/11/5/0510/83437/390/653543
Congrats again, America! Dont think, Run with this!
November 5th, 2008 at 1:15 am
McCain’s concession speech was great. It reminded me that I once thought, like, here’s a decent guy who’s in the wrong party, or in the right party but at the wrong time, and stuff. But the reaction of the crowd, well, that was different. It looked as if that McCain wasn’t the McCain they would have wanted to win the election.
Sad.
^_^J.
November 5th, 2008 at 2:05 am
McCains position was always sad. He knew he couldn’t win as the person he really is (eg the 2k centrist version) so had to sell his soul to even stand a chance. Eg pander to the right, and go negative.
Honestly, I think a lot of liberals did a great disservice to the country in the long run by demonizing the guy, as much as his campaign was distasteful (and it was). He is still about as good a candidate fundamentally as the R party has produced in a long time.
So instead, all thats going to happen is they’re going to go right back to being uber conservative and picking a Palin or a Huckabee in 4 years (disenfranchising the remaining center right people).
I am convinced it is not in the US’s interest to have an extreme right wing party.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:27 am
Hard to imagine but even here, in Poland, we were excited by this elections;) Hope this mean change not only for US but hole world!
November 5th, 2008 at 7:51 am
I had accepted years ago that I had just become jaded and cynical about American politics. I’m a staunch conservative, but even I had become extremely disillusioned with the state of our country, our government, and America’s global presence. It’s very painful to watch the decline of a great Republic at the hands of a sub-par President.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself swept up in a huge swell of pride, joy, and amazement this morning when I heard that Sen. Obama had won the election. It felt good, it felt strange, it felt like hope.
We are riding the wave of a major change, please let’s do what we can to live up to the promise we’ve made to ourselves.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:48 am
It is time to enjoy a little schadenfreude. Of course the really tough time is ahead. Obama has one hell of a mess to clean up.
Lawrence B. Crowell
November 5th, 2008 at 10:42 am
So, who won the vote count prediction contest?
November 5th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Stephen told me you took my advice. You are now christened a true Angeleno, vato.
http://www.laweekly.com/2008-02-07/eat-drink/the-hot-dog-so-good-it-sillegal/
November 5th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Joanne,
I had the same reaction to Jesse Jackson’s tears.
Sean, it’s time to get serious about getting you appointed to DOE or DODE (department of dark energy) secretary. Since Dark energy is 70% of the universe and regular energy only 5%, this seems like a much bigger job.
e.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:06 am
Sean “Let’s take this country for a spin and see what it can do”.
Oh dear, that word “spin” again. We’re all too familiar with it in the UK, and let’s hope Obama doesn’t turn out to be a grinning vacuous Tony Blair Mark 2. Some of Obama’s policies sound a bit socialist, which doesn’t bode well. I wonder if everyone will feel so ecstatic in four or eight years’ time.
November 6th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
John R Ramsden “Some of Obama’s policies sound a bit socialist ”
if only. sadly he isn’t even 10% socialist.
this euphoria reminds me of the mid-1990s. then we had “tony blair and the string theorists”–what an awful rock band they turned out be.
back in the present, any lingering hope of progressive politics must be dashed by barack hussein obama’s new white house chief-of-staff: rahm israel emmanuel, a former snake-charmer from chicago. forget change, but enjoy the irony.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:07 am
For the millionth time, Obama is not a socialist, and his policies aren’t even close to socialist. He’s not even left-wing. Obama is a right-of-centre liberal. And to prove himself, like Kennedy, he will govern even further to the right. But he and Biden were still by far a better choice than the unstable McCain and pig-ignorant Palin. So congratulations USA.
November 7th, 2008 at 3:54 am
The commenter “Joshua Zucker”, apparently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._presidential_election,_2008#Grand_total
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/07/03/prediction-contest-update/#comment-320006
Tantalizingly, our averaged predictions were within 1.1% of the actual outcome – and the median, 0.7%!
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/07/03/prediction-contest-update/
Everyone, a round of applause for the invisible hand.
November 7th, 2008 at 11:36 am
I don’t think the numbers have quite settled down enough to declare a winner. But as a crowd, yes, we were pretty good.