It's been miserably cold here in Rocky Mountain country. Right now it's still about 15 degrees (F). It's been about this cold for a week now, with a high temperature in the 40s. But there's nothing to complain about here in the big CO. Oymyakon, Sakha Republic, Russia had a high temperature in the -60's (F) last week. This makes it the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth. There's a hot spring nearby, so some water doesn't freeze, even though the ground is permanently frozen. According to Wikipedia, the lowest temperature recorded here was -85.7 (F)! This is just further proof that no matter how bad things may seem, they can always get worse!

This week two tremendous historical events happened. First, the tiny island of Sark (just off the coast of France) voted to end 400 years of feudal rule. Yep, that's old school feudalism that you read about in Medieval History text book. With a Seigneur holding a fiefdom from the Queen, tenants. They had to become a democracy in order to comply with European Laws.

On this side of the Atlantic, W. Mark Felt, the man known as Deep Throat from the Watergate investigation, died this week. As the anonymous source leading to the investigation and resignation of Former President Richard Nixon. Mr. Felt didn't identify himself as Deep Throat until 2005. He even denied it in his autobiography.

These two events mark the end of two eras. I just hope that any era we are currently in will last as long, and end as gracefully as these two.

Forty two years after John Lennon claimed that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, the Vatican has forgiven him. The Vatican said, "after many years [the claim] sounds only like a 'boast' by a young working-class Englishman faced with unexpected success" Why now? Why not on a more even anniversary of the comment? Well, this weekend is the 40th anniversary of The White Album.

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On a separate note, Saturday was the 45th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas. If you get a chance to watch the new Discovery Channel documentary on it, it's quite good. Or if you prefer the conspiracy theories, watch Oliver Stone's film JFK. November 22 is one of those days that have a generational memory effect. That's my term for a day an entire generation remembers where they were. Pearl Harbor, JFK in 1963 and RFK in 1968, and September 11 are the big ones that immediately come to mind. It's quite unfortunate that all of these generational memory events are tragedies.

Well it's been almost two full weeks since the election and first, sorry about the delay on this post. But things are still not fully resolved. Including the state of Missouri, and the senate races in Alaska, Georgia, and Minnesota.

So, what happened? Well the youth vote increased an entire percentage point, from 17% to 18%; Barack Obama received more votes than any person in the history of the United States, somewhere near 64 million votes; and that's about all that matters. Oh, and the US elected an African-American for the first time, I suppose that's kinda important too.

So that's the last post from me about the election! Like I hinted, I've got some fun winter-time science adventures planned.

Well, it's finally here. Polls in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire opened at midnight eastern time and closed just under 15 minutes later. This year there are 21 registered voters in this little town which has been the "first in the nation" to vote in presidential elections since 1960.

This year, Barack Obama received 15 votes, John McCain received 6 votes. This marks the first time that this little town has voted for a Democrat since 1968 (Hubert Humphrey). So, the first votes are in I'll be up late watching results. My recommendation for news sites are: www.fivethirtyeight.com, www.electoral-vote.com, and politics.msnbc.com. The first and last ones will continue to be updated throughout the day. I'll post late in the evening, hopefully once there is a result.

Following up on my last post, thanks for putting up with all the politics nonsense the last few months. It all ends tomorrow!

Then I'll stop talking about all this election stuff. I promise I'll get back to awesome random things. I even have some interesting sciency stuff.

Here's a vague preview of my sciency content.

Barack Obama was back in Denver on Sunday. After going to the Convention speech I wasn't prepared for crowd. Please check out this picture! I couldn't figure out how to make it fit here, while keeping the resolution it's in. The Chief of Denver Police estimates the crowd at over 100,000. Look at the open windows and people on the balcony of the capital, nearly 4 blocks away! To start, Senator Obama asked, "Do you ever have small crowds in Colorado?" I'm glad he wasn't specific because that afternoon he spoke to over 45,000 people in Fort Collins.

Again, just to repeat the news, 7 days and I promise no more Politics. Unless of course it's hilarious or pointless and can't be ignored.

The high prices of metals have resulted in the cost to manufacture US coins, specifically pennies and nickels to rise above their face value. Best guesses put pennies at 1.23 cents to make and nickels at 5.73 cents to make. Oops!