A Rube Goldberg Voting Machine, the U.S. Economy Breaks Us, “Ben Bernanke, Please Send Me Some Green,” Women Have Cooties and MORE.

We are experiencing what seems to be an apocalyptic financial crisis, and the economy is only getting worse. We are fighting two wars, neither with remarkable success. We are unloved around the world, and don’t we know it.

Nonetheless, up until the last few weeks running up to the presidential elections, “it remained unclear whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change,” says one news report.

Now we know. Barack Obama has been elected the 44th president of the United States — the first time an African-American has won the nation’s highest office and the rare occasion in which a newcomer to national politics has captured the White House on his first try.

“Things are finally as terrible as we’re willing to tolerate,” the news report quotes President-elect Obama as having said to a crowd of unemployed, uninsured and debt-ridden supporters. “[T]hese last eight years must have really broken you.”

From The Onion, of course.

An Improvement on Florida Ballots?
Gizmodo recommends: “[C]heck out this Rube Goldberg machine by some kids over at the University of California Berkeley and feel relieved that, unlike in 2000, it’s easy this year to laugh about this kind of stuff.”

Take Heart/Not Alone
The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has lost more than 35 percent since January, with every single sector seeing declines of about 20 percent or more. Meanwhile, the equity value of 401(k)s and individual retirement accounts continues being wiped out.

Even brothels have been hit hard by the economic downturn.

If you’re one of those people who finds comfort in the misfortune of the rich, new research by compensation consulting firm Steven Hall & Partners, which ran from the start of the year through the close of trading Oct. 29, may offer some solace: The average year-to-date decline is 49 percent for the corporate stock holdings of CEOs at 175 large U.S. companies.

Rounding out the top five wealthy losers in the study, with a total loss of 32.5 billion, according to the Associated Press:

• Warren Buffett has seen the value of equity in his company, Berkshire Hathaway, fall by about $13.6 billion so far this year;

• Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison has seen his equity stake fall by $6.2 billion;

• Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer has seen his company’s equity fall by $5.1 billion;

• Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos has seen his fall by $3.6 billion; and

• News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch saw a $4 billion contraction.

Now here is some positive economic news: Madonna’s directorial debut made only $18,000 in theaters.

NY Fed Looks to Bear Stearns for Leadership
This is one of those You-Can’t-Make-This-Stuff-Up developments. The man who was in charge of risk at Bear Stearns when it almost collapsed earlier this year has landed a job as a senior vice president in the Bank Supervision Group with the Federal Reserve.

In March, if you’ll recall, Bear Stearns was on the brink of bankruptcy when Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — with the involvement of Chairman Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner — orchestrated a buyout of the investment bank by JPMorgan. The deal was forged with a $29 billion federal backstop from the Fed acting as central bank.

Last Friday, the New York Fed quietly announced it had hired Bear Stearns’ former chief risk officer. To supervise “the financial safety and soundness of banks.” Seriously.

Ben Bernanke, Please Send Me Some Green
Here a barbershop quartet offers its take on the financial crisis, in a little ditty called “Ben Bernanke, Please Send Me Some Green” (via Fark):

Hands Down, Women Lead Men in Bacteria
A new study has found that women have a greater variety of bacteria on their hands than men do.

A University of Colorado at Boulder study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this month indicates that “not only do human hands harbor far higher numbers of bacteria species than previously believed, women have a significantly greater diversity of microbes on their palms than men,” ScienceDaily reports.

“The sheer number of bacteria species detected on the hands of the study participants was a big surprise, and so was the greater diversity of bacteria we found on the hands of women,” said the study’s lead author, Noah Fierer, an assistant professor in CU-Boulder’s department of ecology and evolutionary biology.

In other words, science has confirmed what third-grade boys have known forever: Girls have cooties.

Cheers.