A “GOOD” poster illustrating the first 100 days of the presidency of every American president since Franklin D. Roosevelt. (It’s CC by-nc-sa licensed, awesome).

I like what different ideals are expressed by the inauguration speeches, and all the details, such as the popular vote.

By the way, if you are fast enough, allegedly this can be bought at Starbucks up until today.

(via Jason Kottke)

Nice: About a week ago, world-class trumpeter Wynton Marsalis was on the Colbert Report, and here’s a video of it:

If you don’t care about them talking, forward to 5:10ish and listen to Steve Colbert and Wynton Marsalis in a duet version of the US national anthem.

By the way, that’s one fine horn Marsalis is playing there. It’s made by Dave Monette from Portland, Oregon. Incidentally, I was there once and got to play Wynton’s trumpet (the same kind only, obviously) and it’s the heaviest trumpet I’ve ever played: It felt like a solid chunk of metal. Believe me, making that sound good takes some serious skills. Needless to say, Marsalis has them.

(via allaboutjazz.com)

This morning, I got a kick out of looking at the origins of the license plates I came across while walking to school. To my surprise, there were quite a few, which is why I share the list with you (in alphabetical order, not by preference ):

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia

And two that don’t come from a US state:

Ontario (Canada) and a US federal license plate (“For government use only”)

That’s a total of 16 different origins. Not bad for a single walk!

Also, if you’d like to see the history of how license plates looked in your state then and now, I found the website 15q.net that has a pretty comprehensive picture collection that’s worth checking out.

Mr. McCain is correct that there appears to be a growing gap in height between North and South Koreans, likely due to poor nutrition and impoverished living conditions.

(…)

While the conditions for North Koreans are troubling, Americans have a similar height gap to worry about, and it also appears to be due to a lower standard of living, poor health care and inadequate nutrition. Last summer, the journal Social Science Quarterly reported that Americans are, quite literally, falling short of Europeans.

New York Times columnist Tara Parker-Pope on the irony that in the first presidential debate, John McCain pointed out the height of the North Korean people (in comparison with South Koreans) as a sign of how bad life there is–while his own American citizens quite literally “fall short” of their European counterparts, for different political, but similar biological reasons.

(link)