OK, this should be filed under something that’s more like Election 3028, but whatever. Inspired by this asstastic idea, Robin and I were discussing our own pie-in-the-sky visions of electoral utopia tonight.

We agree that our current political system, in practice, does not reflect America at all. Our politicians are, for the most part, rich and homogenous. We’ve been debating strategies on how best to turn the country into a truly excellent representative democracy.

Here’s one idea we had:

First off, Election Day should be a holiday. I could stop right there. Why isn’t it a holiday? Really, we take days off for some of the most arbitrary things. The single calendar day arguably most rationally suited to being a holiday is not. What gives with that? I’m making it part of my Personal Life Crusade to get at least this plank of our plan enacted.

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On Election Day, everyone eligible to vote gathers in geographically divided groups of 20. They spend all day trading words, talking ideas, deliberative polling, all the good civic stuff. Then, they elect a representative for the group, ostensibly the smartest and savviest member.

Then those representatives gather in groups of 20, and do the same.

Now it’s Wednesday, and we’ve got 500,000 representatives, who gather in groups of 20, and pick 25,000 representatives, who gather on Thursday in groups of 20 and pick 1,250 representatives. Who gather on Friday and choose a legislature.

That’s the gist of it. Thoughts?

This is serious gleeful miscellany. CraigsList rocks the party that rocks the body.

A few researchers at the U. Washington have announced that they can predict if a marriage is going to fail or succeed.

I wonder if they’ve re-jiggered their algorithm to take into account the recent gay marriages in San Francisco. According to information from Focus on the Family and the Campaign for California Families, these developments will destroy an estimated 5.3 percent of all marriages.

We can all relate to this month’s Esquire Complaint — people who sit through the credits. I’m not sure why I’m linking to it, because I’m an Esquire subscriber, and unless you are, you probably can’t read it. And in any case, it’s good enough and short enough that I’m going to reproduce it here in toto. Sorry, Esquire:

You are fooling no one.

You know who you are. You are impressing no one, and it is time you learned the truth: Nobody thinks you’re smart because you sit through the closing credits at the end of movies.

You do this all the time (and particularly at the end of Miramax films). The movie concludes, the houselights come up, and you silently pretend to be fascinated by the cast listing. Somehow, this is supposed to indicate that you are a serious person. What this actually proves is that you are an inefficient person, because all the information you are pretending to ascertain is already on the Internet (and most of that information doesn’t matter to anyone who doesn’t actively work in the film industry). You do not have a favorite gaffer. You do not care what record label released the soundtrack. You do not know the difference between the motion caption coordinator and the environmental technical director, so why would you care who these people are (or who their first assistants are)?

Now, I realize you do this because you think your date will think you’re intellectual. She does not. She either thinks you’re a pretentious fraud (which you are), or she suddenly feels insecure (because she can’t figure out why she’s supposed to care who the secondary location scout was). The movie is over. Leave the theater. Go to the bathroom.

Being one who sits through the credits, I take umbrage, even as I appreciate Chuck Klosterman’s sneering. But I’d like to answer on behalf of the Credits-Watchers. (Others who watch the credits, feel free to chime in.)

Read more…

This thread about the pronunciation of the word “forte” turns out to be excellent. As does this one, about popular songs of misunderstood intent.

These two posts, in conjunction, raise an interesting issue (if you’re me) that I’d like to call out here.

People always snark out Alanis Morissette for misusing the term “Ironic.” But it seems to me she clearly didn’t do so. Her usages of the term are all “poignantly contrary to what was expected or intended.” And it seems like all the protestations amount to, “That definition doesn’t count.”

Hey, if anyone wants to nominate anything I’ve written for a Pulitzer Prize, I’ll totally return the favor. We’ve got three days left.

Sigh. I sort of miss the days when we could just daydream possibilities, entirely unperturbed by things like “primaries” or “votes” or any other little reverie-ruining nasties like that. Reality has this uncanny way of biting you on the ass.

William Safire is playing fairy godpundit to conservatives, complete with random Hillary Clinton reference.

Honestly, I don’t understand all the excitement among Dems about the prospect of a brokered convention. Yes, it’s nice for the candidates to have an exciting three-way (possibly four-way, but I can’t see Clark going too much further) political race going on, but after March, it would get real old, real fast. The more these three candidates are mired in the need to beat each other, the more they polarize their supporters among each other. Already, bitter-but-defeated Dean supporters have decided they just can’t support John Kerry, so they’ll probably be sitting this one out. I imagine a good number of Kerry’s supporters feel the same way, or will, by the end of an even rougher nomination battle. Whoever emerges from such a bloody fight can’t be in good shape to take on the incumbent President. Can they?

I mean, I know our national attention span is short, but are the months between July and November long enough for Dean/Kerry/Edwards/Clark supporters to forgive and forget their grievances, and rally behind the nominee?

At any rate, Robin was right that the expectations game cuts like a knife. A week ago, Dean was absolutely finished. Then on Thursday, things began turning around, and he had to take second in order to hang on. Anything less than second, and he was done. By Monday, his poll numbers were trending up, and he had to take a solid second to remain competitive, not just edge out a Mo-powered Edwards or Clark. Now, the story is apparently that although his second placing was solid, it wasn’t close enough to Kerry to count as a victory of any sort. Remarkable.

If you ask the History Channel, it won’t mention anything particularly notable that happened on November 18, 1980.

Google begs to differ.

On November 18, 1980, President and Mrs. Carter watch the movie “It’s My Turn” before retiring to bed.

A huge, triangular UFO floats around a 100-mile span in Northern Missouri and Kansas, according to reports.

The sixth season of “Laverne and Shirley” begins with the dizzy duo moving to Los Angeles, ushering in a whole new era of hijinx and hilarity for the popular show.

A 19-year-old gangbanger named Gil Porras is beaten to death by rival gang members in East L.A. Police arrest one man for the murder, Jos

From Crooked Timber: Books I Did Not Read This Year. Also see the MetaFilter thread this post inspired. (And note well the title that dominates the thread!)

This strikes me as a not-very-cricket lede for a news article:

The U.S. military death toll after 10 months of engagement in Iraq reached 500 on Saturday, roughly matching the number of U.S. military personnel who died in the first four years of the U.S. military engagement in Vietnam.

This strikes me as inappropriate for a couple reasons. I’ll, of course, expound.

1) The WaPo never explains why they’re making this seemingly random connection. I mean, why not mention the death toll from the Spanish-American War? Or why not “…roughly matching the size of The Price Is Right’s studio audience” or something as seemingly arbitrary? Obviously, we know what the WaPo‘s insinuating (In less than a year, we’ve racked up the death toll of over four years in Vietnam!!! This war is at least four times worse!!), but they may as well come out and say it, and defend the connection they’re trying to draw.

2) Even though they didn’t say it say it, I think they can be attacked for saying it anyway. The wars in Iraq and Vietnam are similar in that they involved the U.S. sending soldiers to a foreign country, and the similarities pretty much end there. And the Post knows this:

Noting that many Americans polled before the war began said they anticipated about 1,000 combat deaths, Kull said, “There are no signs of the population going toward a Vietnam-style response, in which a large minority or even a majority says, ‘pull out.’ ” That goal has steady support among 15 to 17 percent of the public. …

The casualties remain far lower than those incurred during the 14-year U.S. engagement in Vietnam, when a total of 58,198 troops were killed, including 47,413 combat deaths and 10,785 nonhostile deaths.

So … a lot of people expected at least this many deaths in the first place, and at any rate, it doesn’t seem like 60,000 people are going to die anytime soon over in Iraq. If the Nasra Cong start getting all guerilla on our asses Tet-style, then we’ll reassess this comparison. Meanwhile, WaPo, you can’t have your quagmire and eat it too.