Then morning happened. So I'm going to vote after work.

shrift is me. But I knew it was going to happen, so didn't bother with the whole early alarm and all that. Hoping the past is an indication and the real rush is in the morning.

No real lines at my polling station at 6:45ish this morning.

We had a seriously complicated issue on the ballot which was pulled. Seems there was a last minute conflict surrounding the number of legal signatures to get the issue on the ballot. It was about workers' compensation (a HOT topic here in Ohio). But it included a provision that made it possible for people who are raped while on the job to get workers' compensation payments for missed work. I'm boggled that that wouldn't be allowed now. I mean, you'd have to take sick time for missed work or not get paid?

There was a bigger turnout that I expected, which is not good for my people. My precinct is very conservative (in a religious right sort of way as opposed to wealthy sort of way).

I'm annoyed by all the signs urging people to vote no on the Stem Cell issue. All the no signs are about stopping cloning and the amendment explicitly prohibits cloning.

Personally, I don't think cloning is all bad. I think there could be some good uses for cloning cells and the desire to prohibit it is mostly knee jerk reaction to the science fiction picture of cloning.

One person has already wandered around the office asking if people had voted. While I applaud the sentiment, oh my god, lady, right now I don't even have the fine motor control to keep my coffee out of my lap; I'll vote when I'm awake.

Didn't we talk about this here?

From the Pharyngula blog (probably the most famous cephalopod-loving blogger out there):

How can you eat a genius?

Maybe with a little butter and garlic.

This article makes a troubling point: if cephalopods are so smart, shouldn't we feel some guilt about eating them?

I think I actually agree with some of the ethical issues raised, and probably should hesitate to kill and eat something like the octopus. However, it also commits the sin of lumping an extraordinarily diverse clade like the Cephalopoda into one poorly characterized gemisch. Yes, the Pacific octopus is a very clever beastie, but those schools of small, fast-breeding squid that get netted and chopped up for calamari? Not so much. The article makes a mistake comparable to highlighting the brilliance of Homo sapiens, and then arguing that we shouldn't eat cows for fear of losing the next Shakespeare. If you want to make an ethical argument against the consumption of squid, that's fair…but don't do it by falsely concatenating all cephalopod species into an inaccurate classification of 'smart, tool-using problem solvers'. It just isn't true.

I also find this weird:

This evidence has so convinced officials on the Animal Procedures Committee (APC), the experimentation watchdog in the UK, that it has recommended to ministers that the law governing animal testing be amended so all cephalopods are given the same protection as animals.

So what have cephalopods been considered until now, mushrooms?

I'm annoyed by all the signs urging people to vote no on the Stem Cell issue. All the no signs are about stopping cloning and the amendment explicitly prohibits cloning.

The amount of brazen lying by Republicans seems to be higher than usual this year....

Ooh - there's a nearby cafe that's giving away free coffee to everyone who voted... so off I go. (I'll be dark for about ten minutes.)

I think the stem cell amendment we have here will be bad news for the dems. It's helping to get the base out for the republicans. Every church in my area that's not methodist has a thick fence of 'vote no' signs.

Personally, I don't think cloning is all bad.

That's just because you're waiting for the day when you can release your own clone army onto an unsuspecting public.