iamcal.com Since May 2000

From the same guy who explained the difference between England, the United Kingdom and Britain, comes a video explaining the Netherlands. Or Holland, Or Whatever.

Buildy seems like it might be fun, in a modern City Creator sort of way, but I haven't managed to create anything cool myself (here's my effort) and there's no good directory of player-created stuff. Have any of you been playing with it?

Just in case any of you were desperately trying to figure out a gift to buy me in the next two weeks or so, I wouldn't say no to this Gin Advent Calendar. In fact, I'd be pretty happy about it.

Does anyone know anything more about the amazing Lego Christmas tree at the Trafford Centre in Manchester. I've only come across a single tweet, saying it was made of 350,000 bricks. Pretty impressive.

Mark Newman at the University of Michigan has put together some nice visualizations of voting patterns in the 2012 US presidential elections, scaled by number of electoral college votes, rather than by land area.

There's a great little piece in New York Magazine about the restoration of the NYC subway after Hurricane Sandy. It echoes some of the things at the start of The World Without Us about the huge level of everyday maintenance required to keep the subway system from flooding completely.