Its sequential date is just one of the many curiosities about this day.

By Melissa Breyer
Wed, Oct 10 2012 at 11:47 AM EST



Now that we are more than a decade safely beyond Y2K and secure in our knowledge that the big calendar switch didn't incite the collapse of the modern world, we can relax a bit and enjoy some of the cooler quirks that come along with living in the infant stages of a new millennium.

One such curiosity is the advent of palindrome dates. Jan. 2, 2010, for example, was just the second time in more than six centuries that the day's date could be read the same forwards as backwards. Palindrome dates, by their very nature, only occur in the early centuries of a millennium. There will be 36 of them during this millennium — the last one will be on Sept. 22, 2290. The next one after that won't be until Oct. 3, 3001.

But palindrome dates aren't the only way that calendar number geeks — I mean enthusiasts — get their thrills.

Among other patterns, there are repeating dates (1/11/11 = 11111), repeating sequences (10/31/03 = 103 103), and sequential dates (8/9/10 = 8,9,10; and if you start with the time of 12:34:56.7, you get 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

Which brings us to Oct. 11, 2012 — otherwise known as 10/11/12, a classic sequential date. If you start with the time of 12:34:56.89 (you'll need a very precise clock) you get the golden sequence of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. Wow!

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http://www.thedailydolt.com/2012/10/09/missouri-gubernatorial-candidate-finds-out-what-happens-when-you-try-to-pass-your-home-economics-degree-off-as-an-economics-degree/


Republican Candidate For “Governer” Finds Out What Happens When You Try To Pass Your Home Economics Degree Off As an Economics Degree


The Missouri Democrats have won the internets this week in spectacular fashion.

Their Republican opponent for governor, Dave Spence, recently launched a television advertisement touting his SpenceForGoverner.com [sic] website. So what did the Missouri Democrats do? Did they just sit back and laugh at the misspelling, maybe make a few redneck jokes? No they did not. The Missouri Democrats are apparently on the goddamn ball when it comes to humiliating their opponents, because they immediately purchased the misspelled website in order to troll the hell out of Spence.

Oh, but what would be the best way to troll him? Luckily for the Missouri Democrats, they had a lot of material to work with (seriously, how have we never heard of this Spence guy before? He’s political humor gold, apparently). Most hilariously, Spence has a habit of bragging about his serious-sounding economics degree at campaign events and on his website. Except, he actually graduated with a degree in… home economics.

And so now that the Missouri Democrats own the SpenceForGoverner.com website, they’ve decided to highlight this embarrassment by linking it directly to… well, check it out for yourself:http:// www.spenceforgoverner.com.

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http://www.thedailydolt.com/2012/10/10/former-bain-employees-own-voting-machine-company-used-in-swing-states/

We’re not really into conspiracy theories here, so let us just say this upfront: we are not presenting the following article as any kind of conspiracy theory. We will say, though, that the people who own voting machines in some important swing states have a pretty remarkable bias toward Mitt Romney and, you know, someone should probably keep an eye on this, no?

Okay, so here’s what we know:

Hart InterCivic is a national provider of election voting systems that are used in swing-states Ohio and Colorado, as well as in states we don’t really care about so much because we already know how they’ll turn out (e.g., Texas, Oklahoma, and Hawaii). Private equity firm H.I.G. Capital, LLC bought out a “significant” portion of Hart in July of 2011, and now the majority of Hart’s board directors are employees of H.I.G. (It’s not entirely clear how much of the voting machine company H.I.G. owns, but the financial advisors responsible for the transaction state that “Hart Intercivic was acquired by HIG Capital.”)

H.I.G., in turn, has ties to Bain & Co. and Mitt Romney directly:

H.I.G. was founded by Tony Tamer, a former Bain employee and bundler for Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Of H.I.G.’s 22 American directors, 21 donated to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. One person made no political donations at all; one person donated to both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama; the remaining 20 directors donated exclusively to Mitt Romney in 2012. (See below for links to donations.) Of these 22 American directors, seven of them (nearly one-third) are former Bain employees. Now, we should note (as a reader helpfully pointed out), this is Bain & Co., where Mitt Romney used to work way back when and then left in order to start the affiliated Bain Capital. The connection is therefore a little more tenuous, but we still find H.I.G.’s overwhelming allegiance and financial support of the Romney campaign surprising (not that it’s surprising that a private equity company would lean Republican, but this level of support is pretty unusual).

Four of H.I.G.’s directors, Tony Tamer, John Bolduc, Douglas Berman, and Brian D. Schwartz, are Romney bundlers along with former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve


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http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/07/how_often_were_mitt_romneys_ma.html


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Factcheck.org reported, based on an independently-obtained list of veto override votes, that out of more than 800 budget line-item vetoes during Romney’s four years as governor, 707 were overridden. A separate Factcheck.org post put the exact number of Romney’s vetoes at 844 – and noted that “more than 700” were overridden.

George Dvorsky
http://io9.com/5948902/an-11-year+old-boy-has-discovered-one-of-the-most-exquisitely-preserved-wooly-mammoths-ever


Russian media outlets are reporting that an 11 year-old boy named Yevgeny Salinder has uncovered the remains of a wooly mammoth that died about 30,000 years ago. After stumbling upon the extinct animal, Yevgeny ran home to tell his parents, who in turned alerted the local paleontologists (well, as local as these things can get in Siberia, anyway). And as their preliminary analysis has revealed, it may be one of the most pristine remnants of a wooly mammoth ever discovered. The remains were found about three kilometers from the Sopkarga polar weather station in Taymyr, Russia, where Yevgeny lives with his parents. The area is in the far north of Russia in the most northern part of the Eurasian continent.

Once the paleontologists started digging around the remains, it became obvious fairly quickly that it wasn't just bits of fragment or a badly decayed carcass, but the entire body of an approximately 15 year-old male that weighed half a ton. And incredibly, they were able to gather well-preserved fragments of its skin, meat, fat — and even several organs.

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Preliminary analysis indicates that the mammoth featured a camel-like hump — a fatty deposit that would have made life considerably easier for the ice age-era mammal. This may help to confirm a long standing hypothesis that mammoths did in fact feature such humps. Speaking to Russia's Pravda, the deputy director of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexei Tikhonov said that, "For the first time, it was seen in Paleolithic drawings, and everyone tried to guess why the animals are humped. Scientists believed that it was so because the animals had very large neural spines of the thoracic vertebrae. Now it turns out that it is not true to fact. We can see that this animal was very well adapted to the conditions of the north. The animals were saving fat for winter."

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1) Most people cannot even name their own congressperson or mayor. and most people are not political junkies

2) Even though millions of people "watched" the debate, probably a LOT of them changed channels because it was a bit boring, and "Tweaky-Mitt" was as hard to watch as "Sleepy-Barack".

3) Replays of the debate came during "regular-tv-time", in the mountain & west time zones and too late for other time zones, so people were probably watching their DVR-ed stuff or something else

4) Partisans watch MSNBC & FOX and we have already decided

5) Combined viewership of CNN, MSNBC and FOX is miniscule compared to the population numbers

6) Most people do not read a paper these days

7) The angst we feel, will pass

Romney was one jittery, fast-talking, tweaky dude

President O could have a box of these on his podium and every time Mittens "pops a zinger", he could toss him one

It's going to be a hell of a season based on episode 1..