Author: Mike Bond

2008 General Election Results

So the 2008 election results look like this:

Looks like a pretty close race from this picture.  In fact, it looks like the Republicans might have won.  The problem is that “size” in one sense doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t matter how big the state is, if not many people live in it.  Likewise, it doesn’t matter how small the state is (e.g. New York) if a lot of people live in it.  Electoral votes are given out based on the population size of each state, not on its geographic size.

So taking this into account, if we reshape the US and make states “larger” that have more electoral votes, and states “smaller” that have less, we end up with this cartogram:

That shows quite a bit of difference.  Here the Democrats clearly won.

But what about by counties?  How did each county in the US vote in the 2008 general election?  Here it is:

Again, looking at just this it would appear there was a convincing victory for the Republicans.  But, alas, this cartogram, fails to take into account the size (not geographic-wise, but population-wise) of each county.  Doing this, gives us the following cartogram:

Again, this shows a convincing victory for the Democrats.

All pictures were taken from here.

Moving a Picture, Shape, Text Box or WordArt in Microsoft Word

Office logo

Oftentimes when doing design work in Microsoft Office program, you need to move various items fractions of an inch.  In Publisher this is rather easy; simply, hit the various arrow keys and it moves ever-so-slightly in that direction.  But in a program like Word, hitting the arrow key results in a much bigger movement of the object than is normally desired especially if you are lining up various objects.

Thankfully, Microsoft has an answer to this.  Simply select the item you want to move and instead of hitting the arrow key by itself, hold down the CONTROL key and then hit the arrow key.  Doing this moves the selected object one pixel in the chosen direction.

Another helpful feature is when you want to drag an object to a certain location.  Oftentimes it is impossible to simply drag the object horizontally without also moving it slightly vertically; the reverse is also true–it’s hard to move the object vertically without moving slightly horizontally.  But sometimes you just want the object to go up/down or left/right.  To help users with moving an object in only one direction simply press the SHIFT key and then proceed to drag the object in the direction you want it.  This saves you the step of having to realign your object.

These shortcuts and helps apply to Excel, Word, Powerpoint, and Outlook.

Every Guy’s Dream — Finding “Jenny”

WANTED:

Inverted Jenny
Inverted Jenny

This is one of the world’s most infamous stamps.

William Robey in 1918 went to the Post Office and bought 100 of the these stamps when they were first issued.  All of them had the bi-plane inverted.  They were the only stamps to have the JN-4H bi-plane inverted.  It was an instant hit as Robey sold the stamps for $11,500.  Last year a perfect “Inverted Jenny” (named after the bi-plane on the stamp) was sold for $825,000.