The Atlanta Humane Society has an on-line Pet of the Week, ready for adoption. Today’s sounds adorable: 10 month old male puppy, Pitt Lab mix, lovable, playful, has lived with cats and other animals. The picture, though, shows a sharp fanged killing machine, ready to rip the heart from the cameraman.

Happy Birthday to Ghost in the Machine! Kevin Murphy was the first person to call me a progressive to my face. His simple comment in a short email made me realize for the first time that my political bent had wandered away from the Libertarians square into the progressive camp. And now that I’m looking around, I realize that I really like the view from here. Here’s to another superb year for one of the best weblogs out there!

South Carolina’s The State newspaper is reporting that al least two S.C. electoral college delegates say they have been asked to change vote to Gore. One delegate is a Bob Jones University graduate. “I’d cut my arm off first before voting for Al Gore. "

This is probably making the rounds like wildfire. But since I haven’t read up on the other weblogs in a few days, I can pretend like I’m the first… Amazon.com recognized a good thing when it saw it and redesigned its user interface based on the ease-of-use standard set by the Palm Beach county ballots.

There’s an odd case before the Georgia Supreme Court right now. A county near here has banned outdoor signs, except a sinle sign advertising a business’ name. The intent, of course, is to ban billboards. Interstate 95 runs through the county, and it’s near the state line. Prime billboard territory. There is a strip club up the road a bit called Risque Cafe. The owners of the club formed a new company, incorporated under the name “Risque Cafe / We Bare All Exit 10, Inc.” They then leased a warehouse along the interstate and erected a sign bearing the company name. The county cried foul, and now it’s in the supreme court.

While I’ve been busy putting in some serious time at work this week, Kevin at Ghost in the Machine has been writing what I would have. There’re many words there, but they’re all worth reading.

I’ve had my own toll free number with voice mail (877-353-3869 , given to me free of charge by ureach.com) for fourteen months now, and I just got my first message. It was a wrong number. Not that that stopped them from inquiring about my “foreign currency program.” Perhaps my outgoing message sounds a bit too much like the bank’s that my caller was a customer of.

While we await the presidential returns, there is cause for celebration here in Athens. The progressive Greens (well, they’re all Democrats, really) have swept the county commission. Maybe we’ll actually get a real land use plan and smart growth.

This weblog is taking the day off for election day. I’ve clumbsily turned the colors green to show my support for the Green Party today. I’ll return tomorrow, to a brand new world.

Here’s a tribute to Steve Allen for his best work, but that which he was least famous for: Meeting of the Minds , a TV series that “pitted Socrates, Marie Antoinette, Sir Thomas More, Tom Paine, Karl Marx, Attila the Hun, Emily Dickinson, Galileo, Charles Darwin, and other historical figures in dialogue and disputation.” Brilliantly written, it was axed by TV executives as being “too thoughtful” for the American public. His writing here led to the publication of several books, including an epic critical analysis of the Bible and western morality, and his latest, to be published next Spring, a call to raise the standards of popular culture.