Widely covered by the AP, a British study in Nature that claims wearing red, particularly in team sports, is the mark of winner. In surveying four olympic sports, and drawing connections between the color red in wildlife as a sign of aggression, the authors find "Across a range of sports, we find that wearing red is consistently associated with a higher probability of winning."

So, I guess it's in the bag. There's a great history by Tom Zeller of the use of red/blue to depict either republican/democrat, but at this point, with the current associations fused into our national psyche, the democrats will be forever losers until the world gets scared of the sky, or at least Sinatra.

The article mentions that the Patriots are a winning team with a bit of red in their team colors. Of course there is a *bit* of red there, but of late, save the throwback jerseys, their uniform colors have been either white (XXXIX) or blue (XXXVIII, XXXVI). The all red Patriots uniform? My strongest memory is the 46-10 Super Bowl loss to the Bears.

My favorite headline for this AP story comes from Cincinnati, the land of the Reds: "You're joking right? Red helps you win?"

red|blue is covered, with a snazzy graphic even, in the New York Times Year in Ideas issue (click here to see it online):

Let's say you somehow find yourself stuck behind enemy lines in the new divided America -- a Democrat in suburban Dallas, say, or a Republican in the East Village. Surely there's someone around who thinks the way you do; but how to locate that lonesome kindred spirit?

Senator Kerry reveals fall campaign strategy by clearly going after those undecided voters who play on special teams (recent polls show undecideds are on teams assignments at a ratio of 3:1, versus strictly offense or defense). In reprising the role of the long snapper for the cameras, Kerry courts the football specialist whose job it is to pass the ball (between his legs) to someone else to punt -- perhaps a move by notable Clinton long snappers McCurry and Lockhart.

BC'04 hails this as a victory, as Kerry is clearly relinquishing courting Offensive players (with Bush's repeated "we're on offense", and the prominent inclusion of Jim Kelly - notable losing quarterback on four Super Bowl teams -- at the RNC and QB Tom Brady sitting beside Hall of Fame halfback Ahmed Chalabi at the State of the Union). KE'04 response to the charge: "We'll play Franco Harris over Chalabi any Sunday."

[Every fall is for football, but there is no greater sport than the election]

red | blue is now available in three flavors -- the original Nextel GPS version, a version for Blackberry, and a quasi-generic version for any Java/Internet enabled cellphone -- just in time for the stretch run to the election.

With inspiration and data from Mike Frumin and FundRace.org, red|blue transposes the experience of looking up individual campaign contributions onto a Java-enabled phone. With a GPS-enabled phone, the application will take your current location and figure out if you're in a Democratic area or Republican area. The app will also take this information and plot it around you -- in a compass -- to show which direction the money comes from. It's fun to walk or ride about the city, and see how the money changes -- and see how that's reflected in nature of the neighborhood or your surroundings.

For the many without GPS capability, you can enter in your current address, or your current zipcode to get the same data, if you use either the Blackberry or generic-java-cellphone version. These versions aren't quite tweaked out to optimize for the device, it's more of a general J2ME version that will be subject to the whims of your handset's implementation. You get the idea, tho'. It would seem silly to do something like this without a Blackberry version, right?


You can find out more, and download files for installation. The apps are also available on Handango, which will give you more support and structure to manage the install process -- which is varied by phone and carrier. Use the Free Trial Version -- it's fully functional, no need pay any money (I need to offer a version for $$ so that they will list it). If you install it and run into any problems, or can share any phone or carrier specific tips -- lemme know!

"Paranoia Goes Better With Coke " is the title of the AP story about a GPS/cellphone promotion that has got the military a bit scared. Sure, it looks like a campaign issue from 2000, but it's not. This ain't the biggest issue facing the US military, but it's sure getting it's share of press. A spokesman for Coke responded:

"It cannot be an eavesdropping device," he said.

Nonetheless, military bases, including the U.S. Army Armor Center at Fort Knox, Kentucky, are asking soldiers to examine their Coke cans before bringing them in to classified meetings.

"We're asking people to open the cans and not bring it in if there's a GPS in it," said Master Sgt. Jerry Meredith, a Fort Knox spokesman. "It's not like we're examining cans at the store. It's a pretty commonsense thing."

Is the Army saying that terrorists could infiltrate a company as apple-pie as Coca-Cola? What would John Kerry do about it?. I have a solution: Armed Forces Radio has got Rush Limbaugh but no Al Franken, obviously it's not a place in the universe that avoids unilateralism. How about No Coke, Pepsi?

Updated: 7.26 with image of the X-rayed cans.

At http://www.electoral-vote.com/ you can see the electoral college votes as they lay based upon polling data, updated daily. Kerry had been ahead, but a recent Survey USA poll placed Florida once again in Republican Red, swinging the tide back to GW.

Finished Lessig's Free Culture, and it's an amazing read.

He starts the discussion with the tale of P2P versus the RIAA, and end up in the middle of the Eldred case he argued (and lost) in front of the Supreme Court. In the chapter about Eldred, Lessig steps outside of his usually very orderly and lawyerly discourse to show his passion (and dissapointment) about the case -- his very public mea culpa points to his focus on precedent, and not on the concrete damage that endless copyright extensions do to our culture (and society). Who knew Sonny Bono's legacy would be more notable than Gopher from the Love Boat? What would've happened if Ike Turner became a congressman? But I digress. Lessig offers some possible solutions -- or at least a roadmap out of the current mess -- partly by pointing out the fact that we should not legislate around the current technology in a way that limits advancement -- but find solutions that will support growth, and equitably handle these same issues with the technology still to come. If we had generated complex laws to protect consumers from the danger of electricty in the days before plastic cheaply covered copper wire, where would we be?

Too bad, Lessig's just declared email bankrupcy. No, in fact, it's kinda cute that he even still cares enough to bother to try to reply to all the mail his work generates. His work is critically important, and he is a hero for "the little guy" fighting the big corporate machines. Buy it, really.

Clive Thompson of Collision Detection notes the appearance of pro-Republican, RNC funded games --- or perhaps better described as anti-Kerry online games. I won't include a picture: they are so ass-ugly I would hate for someone to misconstrue them as my work.

 Maybe we could settle it all with a death match between Kerry and Bush -- hell, you can invite Nader -- for a 3 joystick arcade battle of Tron or something. No wait, I take that back. Bush must be practicing pretty hard for that on his numerous vacations.

From the President's press conference:

Reporter: In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa.

You've looked back before 9-11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?


President Bush: I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it.


John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could've done it better this way or that way. You know, I just — I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet.

Been thinking about Nixon a lot recently. Not just the John Dean comment about corruption in W's Whitehouse, but comments by the likes of Pat Buchanan that makes you realize that even the Nixonians see the current regime as too extreme.
 But, take it one step further, and Scalia is now in the middle of a tape-erasing fiasco (when will we stop calling it "tape" I wonder?). And he's getting to be a jowly fellow, too. Almost looks like Nixon, but without the little button nose. This is the man who picked our President, and is holding-up (not upholding) the Constitution. It's 1972 all over again. Not to mention the sound of Phoebe Snow and John Sebastian wafting through the wet air.