Opie, Andy, Richie, and the Fonz want you to vote, too.

Brilliant, but Ron Howard is far too cavalier with his toupees.

World Exclusive: Dannation election endorsements

My grandfather once said that the most important elections are for judges, because they are the ones who will interpret the law. As I sat down with my early ballot this week, I tried to find information about my judges here in Iowa and found nothing on the websites of the Des Moines Register, Iowa City Press-Citizen, or The Cedar Rapids Gazette. Nothing. Was there anything out there on these officials?

As it turns out, I have a co-worker who is also on the county democratic party. He suggested visiting the Iowa Bar Association for their recommendations. Success! The Iowa Judicial Branch also provides a voter guide about the judical candidates.

One other idea: in Nevada, Clark County would send out sample ballots prior to each election with the candidates up for each elected office, plus the propositions and tax levies up for vote. Simple. Brilliant. Iowa, can we do this?

On to other election news...

So, what is the Dannation endorsement? Dannation endorses...voting. Making your voice heard. Engaging in the process. Our nation is a body, democracy is work, and each of us are muscles - please flex November 4, if you haven't already. Your fellow Americans cannot bear your inaction any longer. Your nation needs your participation.

"Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life"

So what happens when you cash your chips in on Wall Street? You write a letter announcing that you and your winnings are leaving town.

Andrew Ladhe, who had an 870 percent gain in 2007 (according to New York magazine), has retired from the capital management business. In these uncertain times, it's nice to have perspective:

Moreover, I will let others try to amass nine, ten or eleven figure net worths. Meanwhile, their lives suck. Appointments back to back, booked solid for the next three months, they look forward to their two week vacation in January during which they will likely be glued to their Blackberries or other such devices. What is the point? They will all be forgotten in fifty years anyway. Steve Balmer, Steven Cohen, and Larry Ellison will all be forgotten. I do not understand the legacy thing. Nearly everyone will be forgotten. Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.

Ladhe also suggests more philosophy and reintroducing hemp as a commodity.

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the tip.

Big news

Visit here for the details.

Metablog

Andrew Sullivan attempts to define blogging as a medium:

But a blog, unlike a diary, is instantly public. It transforms this most personal and retrospective of forms into a painfully public and immediate one. It combines the confessional genre with the log form and exposes the author in a manner no author has ever been exposed before.

True. Blogs are instant, but not immediate. They are revelatory, but not always relevant. They allow for communication, but not dialogue. Allow me to explain.

A blog allows anyone with access to a computer and internet connection to post anything about anything, but that post is mediated: that is, the post is communicated through the medium of the blog. In a sense, the post waits for its audience to read it. Some audience members may respond through other media (comments, email, etc.) to react by communicating with others or responding to the author of the post. All of that communication is mediated; the blog allows anyone to track what is communicated within the blog.

The blogosphere may, in fact, be the least veiled of any forum in which a writer dares to express himself. Even the most careful and self-aware blogger will reveal more about himself than he wants to in a few unguarded sentences and publish them before he has the sense to hit Delete. The wise panic that can paralyze a writer—the fear that he will be exposed, undone, humiliated—is not available to a blogger. You can’t have blogger’s block. You have to express yourself now, while your emotions roil, while your temper flares, while your humor lasts. You can try to hide yourself from real scrutiny, and the exposure it demands, but it’s hard. And that’s what makes blogging as a form stand out: it is rich in personality. The faux intimacy of the Web experience, the closeness of the e-mail and the instant message, seeps through.

A blogger continually reveals in one's blog. The revelations are often responses to experiences, feelings, observations, ideas about what the blogger has sensed or thought. Often, these revelations, while important for the blogger, are not always important for the blogger's audience. They may create a faux sense of connectedness by mediating what is sensed or thought.

To blog is therefore to let go of your writing in a way, to hold it at arm’s length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while, and to let others, as Montaigne did, pivot you toward relative truth. A blogger will notice this almost immediately upon starting. Some e-mailers, unsurprisingly, know more about a subject than the blogger does. They will send links, stories, and facts, challenging the blogger’s view of the world, sometimes outright refuting it, but more frequently adding context and nuance and complexity to an idea. The role of a blogger is not to defend against this but to embrace it. He is similar in this way to the host of a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate.

Finally, while bloggers communicate, they do not engage in dialogue through their blog. Meaning is imparted, ideas are shared, but the dialogue of the dinner party does not take place. Where is the eye contact? Where is the intentional silence? As Sullivan writes, "the key to understanding a blog is to realize that it’s a broadcast, not a publication." Bloggers and their audiences are, in a sense, talking past each other.

The instanaity of blogging and social networking comes up often in my work. Our constituents are passionate, vocal, and honest. Between blogging, Facebook, and other online communication, we can hear what people are saying. Not all of it is pleasant, and that troubles some of my colleagues. I believe that we must look deeper than words or even meaning to understand "what" our constituents are saying. For example a complaint about the food at an event is not really a complaint the food at that event. Really, the complainer is saying, "This matters to me." Before blogs, the person may have said their complaint, but the barriers to communication were too high to broadcast it. Now, this person can broadcast their complaint on a blog, Twitter, or Facebook, and we can hear it. This is a fantastic step forward in building relationships with our constituents.

The human unit is not a single person. We crave immediate interaction. Let us accept that blogging is a facsimile for authetic, immediate communication.

Political polls, explained

Nate at 538 has explained the merits of the various political polls.

Smashing Pumpkins

October Math: 2 giant pumpkins + crane + abandoned Ford Probe = awesome.



(Thanks to Dave Barry for the tip and Billy Corgan for the title. Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage.)

Diagramming Palinisms

Kitty Burns Florey at Slate diagrams Sarah Palin soundbites. Rather, Kitty tries to diagram.

I remember diagramming sentences in Mrs. Barnard's 8th grade English class. For a whole-thinking person like me, diagramming a sentence was a great way for me to understand the mechanics of language.

Reading comprehension has always been (and continues to be) a challenge for me. I struggle to find what is being said, focusing instead on the style - wordplay and linguistic tricks. Alliteration and juxtaposition are the shiny objects that distract me from the meaning imparted by a memo.

Recently, I attended a dinner party with guests from several lands who spoke several tongues. The guest of honor, Linda Klepinger Keenan, had given a reading of a memoir she had translated, Beyond Loyalty: The Story of a Kibei, by Minoru Kiyota. Fluent in both Japanese and English, Kiyota wrote in Japanese about his experiences in internment camps during World War II. He asked Keenan to translate his work into English. Other guests had also been published in multiple languages but did not translate their own works.

Other than assignments in Latin class, I had only written in English. I asked them why they did not translate their own works. They explained that each language is unique in how meaning is constructed and imparted. For example, at a Chinese academic conference, a speaker may tell an anecdote and share information leading to a conclusion, a why-this-is-important. Here in the United States, academics expect to hear that why-this-is-important very close to the beginning.

My fascination with wordplay instead of meaning has probably cost me a few A grades, 100 points on the SAT and GRE, and some career advancement. It also gave me a thesis on satire and a sharp wit. Still, I wonder if I am a linguistic foreigner, a naturalized citizen of the English language who has yet to find his mother tongue?

(Thanks to Heather Mac Donald for the tip.)

Nice "handshake"

Video from the end of the 2nd Presidential debate:



I guess this means the Obamas shouldn't expect a Christmas card from the McCains?

(Thanks to Deadspin for the tip.)

Understanding the economy

Here are links to a good listen and good read. NY Times' David Leonhardt explains why we should watch the Standard & Poors 500, not the Dow Jones Industrial Average. He also references a 2003 post by Daniel Gross on the same topic. Basically, the S&P is more representative and accurate in measuring activity than the Dow.

The fabulous radio show This American Life presents "Another Frightening Show about the Economy." Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson try to unwrap the current economic situation from the credit crisis to the $700 billion bailout. They speak with businesses, financial and policy analysts, and physicists. This follows another economy explainer from May 10, 2008, "Giant Pool of Money," which talked about the bursting of the real estate bubble and subprime lending. Blumberg and Davidson have also started a daily podcast Planet Money.

(Thanks to Andrew Sullivan and Smileycue for the tips.)