David Mamet and Shawn Ryan were interviewed about The Unit, the CBS drama they created in 2006 (air Sunday nights this season).

Today’s Front Pages, a daily gallery at the Newseum, is particularly worth checking out today. My favourite is the cover of today’s Orlando Sentinel:

Like I said here.

Using the terms “red state” and “blue state” to refer to states with a Republican or Democratic bent respectively is a thoroughly modern construction, credited to the late Tim Russert, who coined the current usage during the 2000 election.

The November 3, 2008 edition of Dispatches (MP3, the interview is in the second part of the program) features an interview with Rose George, the author of The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters, a book that has captivated me for the last week (thanks to Ray for the link).

I took a tour of suburban Charlottetown yesterday and visited some of the water and sewer locations I mapped yesterday, taking photos as I went. You can see the results in Flickr and also on the updated Charlottetown Sewer and Water Map, where I’ve added photos to the sites I visited and fixed up their locations in situations where I’d got it wrong.

The new JetBlue Terminal 5 at JFK in New York features furniture from the Italian company Moroso.

Google Transit for Montreal is now available. At m.google.ca/montreal there’s a mobile version too.

Using this snow removal tender call, I’ve created a map of Charlottetown Sewer and Water — water and sewage stations. Some of the locations are approximate because it’s hard to tell the actual location from Google Maps.

With Ohio as an important battleground state in tomorrow’s US election, it’s interesting to note that at almost 250 years ago this area of the country was to become a colony called Charlotina, named for the same Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz after which Charlottetown is named. The colony was never actually established, but it does appear on a map showing British colonies of the day:

Other places named after Queen Charlotte:

• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Charlotte County, Virginia
• Charlotte Hall, Maryland
• Charlotte Place, Sydney, New South Wales
• Charlottesville, Virginia
• Port Charlotte, Florida
• Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand
• Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia