Politify: Find Out How Your Candidate's Policies Will Affect You

I came across a fascinating tool on Twitter. Politify purports to show you the impact a presidential candidate's policies will have on a personal, local, and national level. It's a slick and cool-looking tool and the people behind it are fairly open about the sources they use in putting it together. So I took it for a spin and took a look at how Barak Obama and Mitt Romney's policies would affect me and my three most recent home towns.

The results were quite dramatic. And quite skewed:

Haltom City, TX

Plainfield, IL

Chicago, IL

I must admit to a bit of schadenfreude at seeing my staunchly Republican brother's conservative enclave of Plainfield so heavily benefitted by Obama's policies. For that matter, I also got a kick out of seeing my new home of Haltom City in the midst of the red as can be state of Texas awash in a see of Democratic blue. (Here, the intensity of the red and blue colors which represent the Republican and Democratic parties respectively are meant to show how many people benefit from which party nominee's policies not how the areas are expected to vote.) But it was shocking to see nevertheless.

Nationwide, the results were similarly skewed:

Nationwide

Of course you might at this point, yell "Bias! Bias!" And maybe you'd be right. But I've been scratching my head over Romney for months, wondering what he's trying to do other than cut his own taxes. While Politify may or may not be biased for one side or the other, I for one am inclined to believe its results. Perhaps that's just because I was already leaning for Obama anyway but I don't see any reason to doubt their results right now.

Try it and see what results you get....

The Fountain at Daley Plaza

Facing City Hall

Facing the Picasso Sculpture

Rainy Day Flowers

It's amazing what can get your attention sometimes. Last week it was this the water in these flowers following some morning rain.

Zooming out....

For Your Sitting Pleasure

There is a building in downtown Chicago which has been under construction for quite some time. While it still is under construction, several stores have opened making for an interesting contrast between shiny, new stores and unfinished ones. It also has the coolest looking bench:

Christkindlmarket (sp?) in Daley Plaza

A lot of German-American food, tiny shops selling holiday and Germanic themed trinkets, and a lot of people milling about. And also a puppet show!

Took a Walk in the Park...

It was about 34 degrees Fahrenheit today when I took a walk through the park, just barely above freezing. Usually the water fountains of Piotrowski Park are broken even in the summer. But on the way home, I chanced upon this one:



There's just something so interesting to me about the water in the fountain wears away the ice from previous, colder days.

Wherein My Obsession With a Lone Flowerpot Continues...

I guess it's another sign that winter is coming when the Chicago Cultural Center switches from weird flowers to nothing to pine:

Halloween in Daley Plaza

This Halloween I went to Daley Plaza for "Chicagoween." The place looked great.



And there was a showing of Young Frankenstein.


Funny movie but I was a little disappointed. Last year they had live entertainment.

Then Pyrotechniq came on to the stage....

Those Clouds Are So Red...

So I was out for a walk at sunset and the sky was an incredible color....

In Praise of Hard Buttons

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Winter hasn't exactly come early to Chicago but it is unseasonably cold right now—cold enough that I've had to break out a jacket and gloves. This kind of leaves me in a bind gadgetwise. I still love my Palm Pre and am satisfied with its little sliding keyboard but the cold weather makes it less useful when I'm out in the cold. While the Pre is a slider phone a perfectly usable little keyboard, when the slider is closed the Pre is basically all screen with a single button that does only one thing. Other than turning it on and off and changing the volume, all other interaction with the Pre is through its screen. Normally this is no problem—in fact it's normally quite enjoyable. But when you are wearing gloves suddenly it becomes impossible to interact with the Pre.

Now contrast that to my older T-Mobile G1. The most recent firmware update gave this phone a new lease on life by making it fast enough to be usable again. And now the cold weather is is making it a lot more relevant for me because it has something that the Pre lacks—real hardware buttons. The G1's trackball is very responsive and allows me to interact with the phone quickly and efficiently. The home button allows me to get to the G1's "desktop" and access my shortcuts. And finally, the back button helps me get around the phone even faster.

I've always felt that the G1 was something of a evolutionary odd duck. Not as pretty as the iPhone or as elegant as the Pre but an interesting phone because it shows the potential of Android as a phone OS. With the release of the Pre and its webOS operating system, suddenly the potential of Android doesn't fascinate me aas much as it used to. But the ability to scroll through a bus tracker web site on a cold day without having to take off my gloves doesn't need to be fascinating, it just needs to be quick and efficient.

Urban Moon

Yeah, they're crappy phone-cam shots and they don't do their subject justice but nobody said that the expectations are high when you blog. My point with these pictures is something that can't easily be expressed without them. Typically, in a large city like Chicago, the glare from street lights obscures the night sky. But here the low-hanging, full moon in these shots holds its own quite nicely with the glare of the lights of downtown Chicago. A mere phone-cam can't do justice to the beauty of a full moon but it is a lovely sight that has to be seen for itself to be appreciated. And it can be seen every month. Just look up.

I Have Nothing Interesting To Say

So here are some pictures of an eagle statue in the Logan Square neighborhood.

More Clouds...

Chicago At Night