It's curiously soothing.

http://www.nobodyhere.com/toren.hier

Wave your mouse over them and watch.  The world becomes a better, calmer place.

And on a more purposeful note, Counter to the popular notion that the two main political parties are nigh-indistinguishable, Ascription is an Anathema to any Enthusiasm (http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/) has analyzed the statistics of the last 50 votes from the US Senate, and created two animated charts.  No, not animated with cartoon animals.  Settle down, I'm talking about Important Issues.

http://enthusiasm.cozy.org/archives/2006/08/1243/

Each point on the charts represents one US Senator; they don’t move. The idea of this technique, “Optimal Classification Estimates”, is to reduce each legislator to two numbers and them pin them onto that graph. It’s extremely reductionist, but it works. The lines slicing thru the chart illustrate how voting proceeds on various bills. A line running from top to bottom reveals that a bill was decided largely on economic issues; while a line running left to right is a bill that was decided on social issues. The democrats on the left are economically liberal, i.e. they tend to look out for the weaker and more numerous economic actors. The Republicans on the right are economically conservative; look after the economically large, but few.

So is voting based on economics or social issues?  Check it out and see how it all works.