I promise to come back with a real post soon. Promise.

One very cool thing and one very frightening thing.

Cool: Thin Film Solar Panels It would be great to have affordable solar power, wouldn't it?

Frightening: The Dynamic Tower Eighty. Rotating. Floors. *shudder*

Obama stuff behind the cut tag.



A cool Obama thing:

A primer on Obama, great for kids too. In .pdf form, printable into a little booklet.
Obama Poised to ReBrand America: " "The arrival of Obama, as an African-American president, gives people a reason -- an excuse even -- to start loving America again," Oakley said.
But with expectations so high, experts say Obama will have to work to capitalize on the opportunity before him.
"Obama needs to show that he is prepared to listen to America's allies, to consult with them genuinely on issues like Afghanistan and climate change, to open up to new thinking about Iran and Cuba, to re-shape the world's economic institutions," Oakley said."
++What I found most interesting about this article, is that I read it right after reading the Diplomacy Book Club choice for November, an essay by Samuel P. Huntington entitled "The Lonely Superpower." The essay was written in 1999, and includes this passage: "First, it would behoove Americans to stop acting and talking as if this were a unipolar world. It is not. To deal with any major global issue, the United States needs the cooperation of at least some major powers. Unilateral sanctions and interventions are recipes for foreign policy disasters. Second, American leaders should abandon the benign-hegemon illusion that a natural congruity exists between their interests and values and those of the rest of the world. It does not. At times, American actions may promote public goods and serve more widely accepted ends. But often they will not, in part because of the unique moralistic component in American policy but also simply because America is the only superpower, and hence its interests necessarily differ from those of other countries. This makes America unique but not benign in the eyes of those countries."