Politics

I can’t believe another white person hadn’t already made this.

Zogby is polling Obama over Clinton in California and elsewhere, contrasting with other pollsters.

From the appallingly-fucked-up dept: Student sentenced to death for using the internet by an Islamic court. There’s also a petition to free Pervez Kambaksh.

(via The Independent)

Er, now that Edwards is gone, and the Republican race is less murky, the frontrunners are playing nice—aiming their respective barbs at the GOP instead of each other. But really, what this campaign season needs is more Prop Joe.

Edit: The Wikipedia entry for Proposition Joe has a spoiler in the first paragraph. Lame. Lame. Lame.

Two things have been smacking me over the head on my visit to Her Majesty’s shores. One: the sheer comprehensiveness—or at least perception thereof—of surveillance via CCTV cameras. Two: the overwhelmingly common affliction of matriarchal language in advertising. How you’re allowed or permitted to do this, if you pay your taxes or tariff, top-up or submit to thus-and-so. It’s Orwellian and fucking scary, and I can’t help but think of the metaphor of the boiling frog.

Trio of biofuel articles this morning:

Via AP: Wrestling with environmental impact and food crop displacement in southeast Asia. In The Economist: Radically asymmetrical binding targets for emissions reduction, “carbon leakage” and cost in the EU. In the New York Times: Attempting to level the “other” carbon gap, tying biofuel subsidies to crops grown only in an environmentally friendly manner.

It hit me sometime after walking into a deserted replica of a midcentury military cafeteria, between handling a modern automatic rifle and its ancestor from WWI, and likely around the exhaustive display of killing hardware lined up in ordered blonde scandinavian cases. The prologue was a clinical comparison of the warring behaviors of chimpanzees and their tool-wielding genetic cousins. After stepping rapidly from Nordic and South American idols, their relationship to death, the textually dense displays waste no time gutting glorified depictions of battle. Its editorial patina diverges sharply from counterparts in the United States.

I was oddly reminded of The Wire: The descriptions’ writing was at once brilliantly thorough, in neutral voice, spending equal time detailing casualties as it did battles, kings and logistics of moving troops across Sweden, Russia and mainland Europe. After following the English version for half of the museum, I stopped reading and just wandered from room to room. The artifacts and dioramas carried the message too.

Maybe it wasn’t intended to be neutral at all. Maybe the result—my walking away being a bit more sickened by the idea of war—was what the creators meant all along.

Armémuseum - Riddargatan 13, Östermalm, Stockholm, Sweden.

Clinton upsets in NH.

Finished The Wind Up Bird Chronicle, and am reminded of what a friend said about Murakami: he writes about unremarkable characters who find themselves in remarkable circumstances. Looking for a recommendation as to what of his to read next. Picked up a copy of The Evolution of Useful Things, and still have The Society of the Spectacle and Michel Houellebecq’s Platform to finish.

Listening to the slap-bass happy Buddy Akai, particularly liking Problems, The Fine Line and Cut Me Up. They allow downloads—a particularly nice touch. They are playing at SXSW!

Exit poll links, the New York Times politics blog, the ever-excellent electoral-vote.com, and Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.

Originally posted to ydnar.vox.com in November 2007.

Gavin had 12x the votes of 2nd place, prop A passed and prop H sputtered out.