An embarassing day to be an American

It's a sad, sad day when a country can re-elect a fear-exploiting, liberty-squelching, fact-ignoring, world-angering President like Bush. I mean, seriously, if you want to live in a religious state, go start one in the Middle East. And I sure don't feel safer.

(As an aside, how absurd is it that people have to wait hours to vote? That's equivalent to disenfranchising whole portions of the population. Internet voting is so clearly the wave of the future...)

Visual design and the campaigns

Every time I see footage of rallies, I'm shocked that Bush (and, to a lesser extent, Kerry) can use such ugly, almost farcical fonts for their signs. They project power in a 1984, Starship Troopers kind of way. I was trying to see if anybody was analyzing this on the web, but didn't have much luck. The best I could do was a blog about social design which had a recent post about a Times article comparing the two campaigns' logos and a post about this amusing painting. I also found the Design Observer blog, which has some interesting stuff.

On hold

I've been waiting on hold with Time Warner Cable to ask a billing question for over fifteen minutes. Pretty lame. Stupid regulated monopolies. All to remove a charge for TV Guide which I didn't ask for in the first place. And then the person keeps me on the line to try to sell me on their phone service. Yeah, fat chance. (All that said, their DVR is pretty slick, if a little buggy and feature-limited compared to Tivo.)

Politics on my mind

I put up a new Annotated Debate, and I also just had dinner with Will, who's pro-Bush. This, plus some other things, has me wondering about politics.

I still wonder if it's possible to create a place for reasoned, evidence-based, point-by-point political discussion online. Something like REALM (results here - I wish I could maintain this better!). Perhaps not. Nobody seems to change their mind or act on the basis of reason, anyway. Then again, maybe voters are just stupid or incompatible.

Or maybe part of the problem is that, unlike ketchup or soda, voters don't have enough choice. Spoiled by segmentation and the long tail, we demand Diet Kerry or Caffeine Free Bush With Lime. On Leno the other night, the audience clapped loudly at the suggestion they deserved more choices. Leno egged them on, noting both candidates were rich white Yalies, while Chris Matthews noted (rightly, I'd think) that the candidates offer the starkest political choice than in recent memory.

Bad weekend for wallet, good weekend for tummy

Catherine got a Zagat, which led to us hitting up Meskerem, Mexicana Mama, and Cho Dang Gol. All three had tasty vegetarian options.

I also finally bought a bookcase and rocks glasses and the REM Album. Also found a promising place to buy curtains, West Elm. It's very exciting to only have 3 boxes left to unpack.

An experiment

I wrote a little hack that matches Fact Checks up against the body of the past two debates. Anyone think this is good? Bad? Any other places to draw from? (Other than blogs, which would be cool, but a lot of work. ;-)

• Bush-Kerry Part I
  
• Cheney-Edwards
  

Television...villain that thou art

Just when I was patting myself on the back for avoiding getting sucked into The Apprentice this season, I've found a new addiction.

Also on television, the debate. I feel like Kerry made some good points, but should learn to repeat them. Did he miss the fact that George Bush seems to dupe America in large part by repeating falsehoods ad nauseum? (Not that Kerry is innocent, either.) In order to understand conservatives better, I will try to read more conservative blogs. You should, too. (Sadly, I missed the real action.)

I also need to read up on North Korea, since I had no idea what they were talking about.