A few quick links.

Let's get the blogging week started with a few interesting pages to check out:

• Nate Silver's writeup of "So Just Who Did Vote For The Bailout?" - A lot of interesting stuff in this one, including a statistical analysis of factors contributing to voting patterns on the first bailout bill last year and a brief discussion of the implications of writing one's own definitions of terms like Progressive.
• The Daily Beast - "The Best of Blago" - He is not only crazy; he has the ability to take legitimate literary quotations and warp them to suit his purposes. Wonderful spin, Rod.
• Bit.ly - An alternative to the Tiny URL service, Bit.ly has all of the same features, but is also copying (in their entirety), cataloging, and organizing all sites that users create shortened URLs for. It will take a while or the benefits to pan out (beyond the link-shortening, that is), but it should be interesting to see what researchers can pull off with that amount of information.
• Red Bull Snowscrapers - On February 5 a bunch of professional snowboarders will be jumping off a 90' ramp built in East River Park. Carly and I drove past this last week and saw the main ramp being built. The ramp is pretty cool, with the main support being provided by stacked shipping containers (see photo below). I kind of want to figure out a way to see this from afar so I don't have to hang out with a bunch of snowboarders to see one person jump this. Check out this site for more pictures of the actual ramps.
  

• Update: I also meant to include the fact that Texas dealt a blow to creationism in a recent schoolboard ruling.