Two from the front page of metafilter:

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The Redistricting Game is designed to educate, engage, and empower citizens around the issue of political redistricting.

http://beta.redistrictinggame.org/index.php?pg=game

I played through the missions. UI kind of sucks, but the game does a good job of presenting the challenge of redistricting with varying political goals, and opponents to appease. Obviously intended as an educational device, but I think it is successful at being a game as well.

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Torrent Raiders playfully addresses issues of domestic surveillance and intellectual property by putting players in the role of a mercenary copyright enforcer...

http://www.torrentraiders.com/

I haven't played this yet. 

http://ucsaction.org/campaign/science_idol_2007_vote 

Deus Ex and DX Invisible War.

Quite politically rich and varied in that it presented multiple political groups and views and all the game conflict centered around the clashes between these groups. You could chose your alignment.

I really enjoyed both. 

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/07/people-as-pixels-in-monumental-art.html 

If global warming causes the ice sheets at Greenland and West Antarctica to disintegrate, they will not reflect the sunlight anymore, and global warming will accelerate significantly.

This is very possible.

NASA:s James Hansen has a new paper about this, a short review here:
http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2007/08/james-hansen-and-albedo-flip.html 

nothing new there 

. 

Alpha Centauri is the single most addictive and replayable offline game I've played.

I've deleted it more than once just so I stop playing it. I've played it on and off since 2001.

It's like an offline WoW in the sense of it's addictive and time consuming nature, really evil stuff. Even now, just thinking about it makes me want to play it but it takes 10-12 hours to 100+ to finish a single game.

Sigh ... they shouldn't make games like that. 

:) 

http://caro.tumblr.com/post/52905901 

for the sake of accuracy, every one of those pictures needs a thick brick wall on the tracks in front of the trains. 

I saw yesterday a short summary of a meeting with McCain. And something surprising happened, but I think it was really fair play.
MacCain acted like that: some republicans were flaming Obama saying he was an arab, a dangerous muslim terrorist, etc... And McCain stood up for Obama, saying that regardless of the their different ideas onto economy, policy, etc.. if Obama would be elected, he would be a good President of the USA (OMG !)...
Wow: are republicans (McCain first) already defeated ?
McCain was really fair, and I think he did the right thing: showing he respects a lot Obama, but rgarding the campain that drags sometimes a lot of shit, McCain was surprisingly very fair play...
Anyway... who will win now ? Wait and see... 

this is a pretty good site to keep up with the daily horse race of the election and more importantly the House and Senate races:

http://www.electoral-vote.com

It is ran by two guys, one is a Republican operative the other a Democrat so you can expect a fair balance. 

each state is portioned a number of electoral points based on the number of members they have in Congress. That is determined by the population in the states calculated every ten years using the Census; the number of points needed to win I believe for this cycle is 277. Looking at today's map, Obama has 343 and McCain has 184. That may overstate the odds quite a bit as a 3 or 4 percentage point change in as little as 6 states can switch those positions, but still those are some huge odds to work with. 

Thanks for the website, and thanks for the guidance.
As far as I understood, the US president is not directly elected by US people, but rather "super-voters" (as we name then in France for our senators). I was aware of that point, but not about how complex the calculation is, according to the website...
Well, there is also a factor that is not "officially" taken into account here: the "racial" factor... What would happen at the last minute before voting if voters say: "wtf, a nigger in the white house ! Forget it"....
Well, I think this will be one of the key factor in this election, and as of today nobody knows how it will impact the election, and also how many people will change their mind at the last minute.... nobody want to be tagged as a racist ;) 

nobody want to be tagged as a racist
I wouldn't be too sure about that.

Obama has been named Osama on the voting notes in some NY district or something, go figure. Well, it will be interesting if anything changes in the US foreign affairs, if at all. 

Obama has been named Osama on the voting notes in some NY district or something, go figure

Good thing that NY is a democrat safety then, if they did that in a swing state it might actually change that. (Although I don't think he did him self any favours making the ticket Obama Bi[n la]den).

And McCain's support of him after the arab comment was mirrored (publically at least) by Obama in respect to his war service [ http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4998X420081012?pageNumber=2 skip first 2 paragraphs], it's a combination of basic politeness and trying to appear positive in their campaigns (positive as in the opposite of negative advertising). 

*change things


There are probably others. My head stings slightly... 

how much in control of their campaigns and all the mud slinging those guys really are anymore? They might have gotten quite sick of the "culture war" already.
The opposing side is portrayed as such a devil and the US seems very divided.

I don't know if any policies will change much if either is elected. 

says it's basically a one-party system. 

Well, it is not obvious for us european people, but it seems that in between Democrats and republicans, there are not that much differences... the only visible difference for us is War in Irak :P
Any others ? 

When I say "War in Irak", it is bcause McCain want to satay there, when Obama wants to leave... but I guess it is more complex than that :P 

I prefer Hicks; "puppet on the left hand, puppet on the right hand". But same principle as Chomsky's view 

Dunno... Maybe there are more subtelties... though... :P 

but the presidential candidates are usually pretty centrist compared to their parties, so they can also grab votes from the middle.