Make butter, not guns!
I saw a UCSD student wearing a "Make cows, not war!" shirt from Cowparade Prague. It made me think of the phrase "guns and butter" from economics.
Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah
The LA Times had an article about the war between "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays": This Season, Greetings Are at Issue. The article was followed by commentary, an editorial, and letters.
Virgin Mobile picked the right year for its "Chrismahanukwanzakah" ad campaign.
Winning an election with 22% of the popular vote
A presidential candidate could be elected with as a little as 21.8% of the popular vote by getting just over 50% of the votes in DC and each of 39 small states. This is true even when everyone votes and there are only two candidates. In other words, a candidate could lose with 78.2% of the popular vote by getting just under 50% in small states and 100% in large states.
The optimal set of states to take (the one that lets a candidate win with the smallest popular vote) is not the N states with the smallest population. It's also not the N states with the smallest value for (population/electors), which would be optimal if you could get exactly 270 electoral votes that way.
The optimal solution happens to get exactly 270 electoral votes. In this solution, the winner takes DC, the 37 smallest states, the 39th smallest state, and the 40th smallest state. (The winner takes Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.)
Read on for my assumptions and algorithm.
Continue reading "Winning an election with 22% of the popular vote"Political Halloween costumes
Some ideas for political Halloween custumes:
- Bush supporter
- Flip-flopper: wear flip-flops instead of shoes, maybe wear a Kerry or Bush mask
- Battling green eye shades (with a partner)
- Poland
- Robert Acosta
Update 2004-10-30: Other people came up with funnier ideas for political Halloween costumes and illustrated them:
Foreign policy debate mistakes
Some of Bush's mistakes:
| 0:06:10 | "Do you believe the election of Senator Kerry on November the 2nd would increase the chances of the U.S. being hit by another 9/11-type terrorist attack?" "No, I don't believe it's going to happen. I believe I'm going to win." |
| 0:07:55 | "The enemy understands a free Iraq will be a major defeat in their ideology of hatred. That's why they're fighting so vociferously." |
| 0:14:20 | "Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden." |
| 0:15:44 | Bush tries to pound on the podium. |
| 0:30:57 | "What's he say to Alexander Kwasniewski of Poland?" |
| 0:32:37 | "Well, actually, he forgot Poland." |
| 0:40:25 | "Let me finish" (who was interrupting him?) |
| 0:42:20 | "You know, it's hard work to try to love her as best as I can" |
| 0:45:35 | Bush interrupts Kerry. Lehrer lets Bush respond, but Bush pauses for five seconds and then babbles about mixed messages. |
| 0:52:00 | In response to a question about Iraq: "the enemy attacked us, Jim". (Kerry called him on it.) |
| 1:10:35 | "You cannot lead if you send mexed missages." (How are the Capitol Steps going to make fun of this spoonerism?) |
| 1:11:55 | Referring to his daughters: "I'm trying to put a leash on them." (Kerry called him on it: "Well, I know. I've learned not to do that.") |
| several times | Being the president is hard work. |
Some of Kerry's mistakes:
| 0:37:00 | "United States, the America and Great Britain" |
| 0:57:15 | "Global test". (Bush called him on it.) |
| 0:58:00 | "Iran and Iraq are now more dangerous -- Iran and North Korea are now more dangerous." |
The times refer to the Washington Post's Real stream, which I watched using Real Alternative and Gebest's Media Player Classic. Political Animal: Clip Contest, commenters on Daily Kos, and georgewbush.com caught some mistakes I might have missed otherwise. I copied some quotes from the MSNBC/FDCH transcript of the debate.
A math joke involving Clinton
Steven Pinker, Listening Between the Lines:
In his grand jury testimony, Mr. Clinton expounded on the semantics of the present tense ("It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is") and of the words "alone," "cause" and, most notoriously, "sex."
Clinton's rebuttal to the Starr report:
Literally true statements cannot be the basis for a perjury prosecution, even if a witness intends to mislead the questioner. Likewise, answers to an inherently ambiguous question cannot constitute perjury.
A joke:
Have you ever touched Paula Jones or Monica Lewinsky?
It depends on your definition of "or".
Kerry beats Bush in Google
Kerry has an impressive PageRank 8 while Bush only has PageRank 7, like me. (Via curious on IRC.)
Kerry also beats Bush in a search for kerry | bush and even in a search for president.
Political humor
- Keep your Jesus off my penis. Wow. NSFR.
- This Land (unframed). So funny, I didn't mind it letting Bush off easy.
- Bush in 41.2 seconds. Surprised me.
- Yet another edited State of the Union address. Not as good as the ones from previous years.
Nader to run for president
[16:48] * MightyMu sabotages Ralph Nader's seatbelt
Google "for president"
Howard Dean leads in a Google search for "for president". He is followed by Bush, Kucinich, Clark, Kerry, Nader (2000), Edwards, Lieberman, Gephardt, Braun, Cthulhu, Bradley (2000), a hamster named Potus, Cusack, nobody, and Tony Blair.
Lies via Fox
Political anagrams of "axis of evil":
- Lies via Fox
- A xvi of lies
- Fix oil aves
- Fox is a veil
- Fox is alive
- xvi is of ale
- xvi? oil safe!
- Save oil fix
Nonpolitical anagrams:
- Fax is olive
- Foil via sex
- Flies via ox
I found these anagrams by feeding "axis of evil" and various subsets (such as "axis of evil" - "oil", or "axs f evi") to Andy's Anagram Solver.
Laid to governation
Gabriel Neer: "Governating the countryside! Governating the peasants! Especially the women!"
Two years ago
I connected to IRC soon after getting up on September 11. I didn't usually do that. My first class was at 8:10.
Session Start: Tue Sep 11 07:50:09 2001
[07:50] *** Now talking in #mozillazine
[07:50] *** Topic is 'Planes crash into world trade center's twin towers, Pentagon | http://www.abc.net.au/streaming/newsradio.ram Live Audio'
[07:50] *** Set by Hendikins on Tue Sep 11 06:52:42
[07:50] <ksosez> oh my goc
[07:50] <ksosez> god
[07:50] <ksosez> Jesse you okay?
[07:50] <nvs81> free to air tv does me good
[07:50] <rkaa> ...we have a report that ...airplane..pennsylvania...747...no details yet..but it's crashed southeast of pittsburg
[07:50] <ksosez> yeah i hear that
[07:51] <grissu> 2nd plane flying to pentagon !!!!!
[07:51] *** Hendikins changes topic to 'Planes crash into world trade center's twin towers, Pentagon | http://www.abc.net.au/streaming/newsradio.ram Live Audio [DOWN]'
[07:51] <Anthem> Arafat condemns plane attacks in U.S. - Reuters
[07:51] <sodapop3k> whoa.
[07:51] <Jesse> ksosez: yes, why?
[07:51] <doron> Anthem: he condemns everything
[07:51] <rkaa> poor sod
[07:51] <grissu> 2nd plane flying to pentagon !!!!!
[07:51] <Anthem> 10:48am 09/11/01 BOEING 767 CRASHES NORTH OF SOMERSET COUNTY AIRPORT
[07:52] <Hendikins> Jesse: read topic
How did you find out about the September 11 attacks?
California recall
Capitol Steps: Interview with "Arnold Schwarzenegger" (mp3).
Meanwhile, SFGate reports that 52% of registered California voters "said the recall does not make California look foolish to the rest of the country". (via Erika Rice)
The British government has learned...
Bush: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." (State of the Union address)
Rice: "The statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that."
Rumsfeld: "It turns out that it's technically correct what the president said, that the U.K. does -- did say that -- and still says that."
"Randy": "I never said your wife's a whore. What I said was: Jim found out your wife's a whore." (a comment on dKos via causality)
