We're all caught up in the show, we're all caught up in the entertainment value of politics. We have to serve up something every day for the press. It's like feeding lions. If they're fed they don't turn on us. But the day they're not fed they're hungry and they turn on us. So we have to serve up the daily entertainment, the daily side show.
Getting people elected, whether we like it or not, is not pretty, but getting people elected, unfortunately, has a lot to do with dividing. Setting up bases of support and fracturing off those that, you know... it's like busting a big rock. You try to chip off your piece and break the rest of it into so many smithereens that they don't matter.
But that is different from what it takes to govern, because what it takes to govern is all about finding concensus on contention issues and bringing together people who don't always agree under some sense of common purpose. And we are obsessed with getting people elected, and we are obsessed with the show.. and so are you or you wouldn't be here. So we provide daily entertainment. What we are not providing is serious solutions to what's going on in the country. Not us, not Clinton, not Bush. Not anybody.
Here are the haiku posted so far to flickr:
From Eli:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thepipes/973458/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/termie/973460/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dparko/961926/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/52752028@N00/961105/
From Jason:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49503091004@N01/962990/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28183076@N00/480159/
William Gibson has returned to the world of blogging, and this time instead of writing about book tours and other uninteresting things, he's taken up politics.
Do I have a hundred thousand politically conservative fans, and if so, *can't they read*?.....
If I were to put together a truly essential thank-you list for the people who most made it possible for me to write my first six novels, I'd certainly owe as much to Ronald Reagan as to Bill Gates or Lou Reed. Reagan's presidency put the grit in my dystopia. His presidency was the fresh kitty litter I spread for utterly crucial traction on the icey driveway of uncharted futurity. His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.
Although I have to agree with Gibson that I too much prefer the work of his friend Jack Womack. Elvissey BLEW MY MIND.
Womack is a major talent, and thus naturally labours in obscurity.
The 1950s radio play adaptations of Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" are spiffy.
They become more spiffy when an anonymous French-man remixes them with music created in the TRAKTOR program.
Traktor vs. Ray Bradbury
Hosted on Webjay, these tracks are hella good and can be found nowhere else on the intarweb. Google it, should ye doubt.
not Edmonton's Stephen Mandel, but one from Illinois
Stephen Mandel is Mayor of Edmonton. And I am pleased. How weird to be on the winning side in an election. This is the first time in nine (!!) years of voting that I've ever placed a vote for a winning candidate (Students' Union elections aside)
But what happened?
Mandel has consistently been in third place among decided voters throughout the campaign. How did he slip into the winning spot?
Here's the poll results Mandel himself commissioned a week before the election:
Noce - 24%
Mandel - 17%
Smith - 19%
Undecided - 29%
But of course the large number of undecided voters, the largest of any group in the survey, could swing the election for any of the candidates.
The final tally:
(percentage in brackets = change from initial poll)
Noce - 25% (+1%)
Mandel - 41% (+24%)
Smith - 33% (+14%)
The Mystery Pollster has highlighted what is called the "breaking for the challenger" effect, which suggests that because the incumbent is well known, very few voters are actual undecided about the challengers record. They have had a minimum of three (and in Smith's case, nine) years to get to know the candidate.
Which means that undecided voters tend to swing heavily towards the challengers on voting day.
... voters find themselves conflicted -- dissatisfied with the incumbent yet also wary of the challenger -- and may carry that uncertainty through the final days of the campaign and sometimes right into the voting booth. Among the perpetually conflicted, the attitudes about the incumbent are usually more predictive of these conflicted voters' final decision than their lingering doubts about the challenger. Thus, in the campaign's last hours, we tend to see "undecided" voters "break" for the challenger.
If, of course, they bother to vote at all.
As for Noce's failure to pickup any of the undecided vote? It must be because he's a jerk.
From The Edmonton Journal:
Smith seemed pleased he was defeated by Mandel rather than Noce. "I think Mandel will make absolutely the best mayor. If I had to lose, then I'm glad it was Stephen Mandel."
Here's to City Council being (I hope) less retarded!
Boys,
This week's project:
For the next seven days find one photo a day on Flickr and reply to it with a haiku.
Bonus points if the comment is replied to with another haiku.
Don't forget to post your forgotten haikus in the comments when you're done! --ianEdmontonians blog furiously to take back the net! Hack teh Gibson!
