OverMatter

Blue in the middle, red on the edges

Interesting map perspective of the 2000 USA Presidential election with the states sized in proportion to their electoral votes.

Electoral war in America

US Presidential Election Maps: 1860-2000 and the 1984 Landslide.

Powerline

"Live-Blogging the Debate." Check out:"Teddy Roosevelt on John Kerry's Presidential Debate Performance."

Teddy Roosevelt on the Bush-Kerry Presidential Debate

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Teddy Roosevelt, from his "The Man In The Arena" Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910

Bursting the bubble about the Bubble

"What the Bubble Got Right"

Excerpts:

"Starting in January 2000, Yahoo's stock price began to crash, ultimately losing 95% of its value. Notice, though, that even with all the fat trimmed off its market cap, Yahoo was still worth a lot. Even at the morning-after valuations of March and April 2001, the people at Yahoo had managed to create a company worth about $8 billion in just six years."

"In many businesses, it just makes more sense for companies to get technology by buying startups rather than developing it in house. You pay more, but there is less risk, and risk is what big companies don't want. It makes the guys developing the technology more accountable, because they only get paid if they build the winner. And you end up with better technology, created faster, because things are made in the innovative atmosphere of startups instead of the bureaucratic atmosphere of big companies."

Eminent Domain

The Institute for Justice continues to score big. Most people have no idea what eminent domain is, and thanks to IJ's efforts, hopefully fewer will ever need to worry about government abusing its eminent-domain powers: "Justices take eminent-domain case."

Brevity

"Apologies for the length of this letter, if I only had more time, it would have been shorter" - Mark Twain

Was the Google IPO successful?

(Wall Street Journal Graphic)
'Nuff Said.

Virgin Galactic

"World's first private spaceship to go into commercial operating service."

A whale of a business...

An interesting look at early USA capitalism in relation to the whaling business: "Blubber Capitalism" (warning: "Moby Dick" spoilers!)