The older I get the more I feel like I don’t understand the world. For example, Botox. I don’t understand why anyone would want to paralyze their facial muscles with a poison so that they can possibly look a little younger but mainly just look like they can’t move their face around properly.

I saw this outside a spa in Tribeca:

Oooh fun. Cupcakes, champagne and mild paralysis. Count me in!

The fabulous Sarah Haskins has more on this:

Don’t do it people. As Mark Twain said, “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”

This has been such a rollercoaster week. Purple prose aside, I really do feel like I have witnessed something momentous. I’m not an American citizen but I live in this country and, in any case, I think Obama’s victory is something that the whole world has a stake in.

To cut a long story short, I am very, very happy and very, very hopeful.

Here are some photos from the night. I started out at Rockefeller Center before the polls closed in New York and then moved to a friend’s house to watch the results unfold. After the speeches (and much weeping and jumping up and down) we took it to the streets and joined the jubilant crowds at Union Square. I hugged a lot of strangers.

Rockefeller Center lit up and ready for action

Tense and hopeful at our election party

Celebrations at Union Square (I was clearly too excited to hold my camera still!)

Yup!

It ain’t a party without saucepan music!

Happy voting everyone. May the force be with you.

Banksy is at it again – you may have noticed a bunch of really big rats on buildings in downtown NYC. Here are two of them.

UPDATE: And another one!

This is very, very cool: breathingearth.net

It is a real time simulation that displays the CO2 emissions of every country in the world, as well as their birth and death rates. Make sure you move your mouse over the countries to check out their stats.

I’ve always been obsessed with maps. That’s why I love books like You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination and I am really interested to see how people are using new technology to map events, people, places, and ideas in new ways. Thanks to Lina Srivastava for the heads up.

I listened to The Giant Pool of Money show on This American Life earlier this year and felt like I finally understood how the subprime housing crisis had happened and how devastating it was for the people who bought houses they couldn’t afford (I’m sure the collapse of the subprime market was also devastating for the rip-off merchants earning huge amounts doing these deals but I find it hard to feel sorry for them). As one of the affected home-owners, Richard, said in tears: “They put you in a situation where after a while you’re going to fail.” More recently, Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson have followed up on the current financial crisis with Another Frightening Show About The Economy. Both shows are really worth listening to. Good old This American Life!

Continuing with today’s politically-themed posts, I feel like it would be remiss of me not to post this clip from NBC’s Meet the Press where Colin Powell explains why he is endorsing Obama.

I just returned from California where many of my friends are involved with the fight against Prop 8, a proposed amendment to the Californian Constitution that would eliminate the rights of same-sex couples to marry. Inserting inequality into the Californian Constitution is not my idea of a good way to protect human rights for all and I would personally not want to get married knowing that same-sex couples don’t have the same rights as me. Check out these PSAs encouraging people to vote no on Prop 8:

This is rather old news but I love this quote from Madeleine Albright after Sarah Palin misquoted her earlier this month:

“Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen to cite me as a source of wisdom, what I said had nothing to do with politics. This is yet another example of McCain and Palin distorting the truth, and all the more reason to remember that this campaign is not about gender, it is about which candidate has an agenda that will improve the lives of all Americans, including women.

“The truth is, if you care about the status of women in our society and in our troubled economy, the best choice by far is Obama-Biden.”