Spotted on a school marquee:
Gee, I hope none of them ever runs for office. Some opposing PAC group will dig this up as evidence of constant flip-flopping!
Category: Politics
Maybe not as good a predictor as they think
Last week NPR ran a story on “Applebee’s America”, a book on the way politicians brand and sell themselves to the voting public. One thing they brought up was “microtargeting” or “lifetargeting.” The idea is that you can take a person’s lifestyle and determine which way they’re more likely to vote, then send targeted advertising to people who are most likely to be persuaded.
There’s a link to a quiz on the website. It decided I was solidly Republican. (Hey, I might vote for a Republican someday if they ever run a less reprehensible candidate for something. [Update 2024: they’ve gotten so much worse.]) It took flipping four of the twelve answers before it decided I might be a swing voter.
Either the scoring system is reversed, or they need a new quiz.
I Voted for Kodos
No comment on the candidate, since I don’t live in the city, just… is anyone else reminded of these guys?
Image from The Duff Brewery. [edit: no longer online] Incidentally, while looking for a page on “Citizen Kang,” I discovered that “I Voted for Kodos” is also the name of a band.
Terrorism in Comics
I wasn’t going to post anything about the five-year anniversary of 9/11 because I didn’t feel like I could add anything that hasn’t already been said. But a discussion at Comics Should Be Good reminded me of a mailing list post I made five years ago, on September 17, 2001, on the subject of terrorism in comics. After rereading it, I’ve decided it’s worth reposting: Continue reading
Convicted…huh?
I was listening to the news this morning, and I caught a reference to “Convicted Lobbyist Jack Abramoff.” It occurred to me that the phrasing is a bit odd. It makes it sound like he was convicted of being a lobbyist, which, last I heard, was still legal.
I suppose “Convicted corrupt lobbyist” sounds too unwieldy… and there are people who might consider it redundant!
Hollywood and Space
Some interesting comments by Warren Ellis in today’s Bad Signal on film budgets, and Superman Returns in particular.
$250 million puts you in spacelaunch-budget territory. For $250 million WB could’ve given Bryan Singer his own communications satellite and spent the change on a George Clooney movie.
This is the absurdity of modern Hollywood; that taking more than the GNP of Luxembourg in a single weekend is not actually enough to put a movie in the black.
It’s the “spacelaunch” comment that I find most interesting, as I made the same comparison a few years ago, from the other side of the fence: Assuming that the Spirit and Opportunity missions to Mars are typical, price-wise, it doesn’t make sense to complain that we’re “wasting” money on space exploration when a mission costs as much as two summer blockbusters. Manned missions are, of course, more expensive, but robotic missions? If we, as a society, toss away $250 million several times a year on mindless action flicks, what’s so terrible about spending a similar amount to learn something about our universe?
Yes, I know the difference is public vs. private funding. Movies are financed by studios and private investors, and space exploration is usually financed by governments, and therefore by taxes. But comparing the dollar amounts puts things in a different perspective—whether you’re astonished by the literally astronomical movie budgets, or realizing that exploring outer space is more down to Earth than it seems at first glance.
Probably not how they meant it
I saw a bumper sticker today that read, “The road to hell is paved with liberals.”
That would explain a lot. I mean, conservatives have been walking all over liberals for the past six years. Now we finally know where they’re going with it!