Youtube now allows captions to be written for videos. Check it out in the developer video above, and toggle captions by clicking the icon in the lower right menu. It will be great to see this grow and become widespread. They’ve even enabled Google’s translation abilities for automatic translations.

• Paul McCartney says he wants to release a Beatles song that no one has heard. It’s fourteen minutes long and “very experimental.”
• This is an alien. Just look at it. But where is all of its advanced technology? Probably cloaked.

by Patrick Moberg.

And here’s a Flickr collection of Obama’s election night, taken by a campaign photographer. It always seems funny to me that the nominees have to find out from television.

One of the ways that I’m beginning to digest this presidential election is to look into the history of the White House itself. There are countless interesting facts and charming anecdotes about its occupants, but the White House itself is amazing. Like a stage set it has been torn down, redesigned, and built up on a clockwork schedule that now spans centuries. Written accounts and photos remain of rooms that only existed for a few years but reveal much about the style of the time and its occupants’ priorities, tastes, and day to day lives.

There are a few sites devoted wholly to White House history (and they both go deeper than they seem to at first glance): The White House Historical Association, and The White House Museum. Of course, you can always count on Wikipedia to break down a list of rooms.

Photo above is the master bedroom during the Truman renovations.