and indeed, for many voting (in a particular way) is a fashion statement, and/or a cultural talisman.

I have chuckled more than once over the radio lip-flappers (national and local) dogging Senator Obama as an empty suit, lost without a teleprompter….while they never hesitate to instantly begin genuflecting in the direction of the Great and Saintly Ronald Reagan!

Our local lip flapper (and onetime on-air partner of the Proprietress) ventured to say that making great speeches ain’t part of the job description of President of the United States…!

Hello?

(I called and got through, and pushed him into retreat on that one, just by invoking Saint Ronnie…and then it was time for a commercial!!)

Sometimes the scrap is so good it’s worth keeping. For instance, I have the most fabulous above-ground garden/flower box in canary yellow. People ask if it’s some cool new thing they’re selling at Home Depot or someplace. Nope, I tell them, it’s custom made. From the fascia of a Shell gas station canopy.

Have had some of my own musings lately on people who don’t vote. This is purely anecdotal and unscientific, but it has been my observation that the nonvoters of my acquaintance, when they say they’ve got to get home to watch the news, are referring to Entertainment Tonight. They get hot under the collar when conversation rolls around to politics — not because they necessarily disagree with anything being said but rather because they’re uninformed and such discussions make them uncomfortable. While I’m amazed if not outraged that they remain ignorant of the issues of the day, they likewise are annoyed with me because I don’t share their vast knowledge of the culture of celebrity or grave concern for what’s happening to Madonna’s marriage, etc.

In short, these are people who rely on the rest of us to make decisions for them and seem to think that the herd always knows best. For them, life is a fashion statement.

http://twistedphysics.typepad.com/cocktail_party_physics/

I took Latin and Greek, German and Russian, and have grown to an overripe upper middle age sorry that science other than biology completely escaped me, as did any sort of math that didn’t involve Archimides and the 2,3,4 rule that rules carpentry. I rue the lacunae in my education, but I guess the more you are educated, the less you know.

My knowledge of physics is limited to a nebulous understanding of the fascinating phenomenon (and isn’t alliteration without repeating consonants something to consider, and does it exist outside of English, where ghoti spells fish?) of red shift. As I understand it, this proves that all matter is moving away from some central point (Bang!) and accelerates as it moves away. If E equals MC squared, doesn’t that mean that matter must reach a point where it goes so fast it all becomes energy? That would be intelligent design, I’d say, and maybe the point of Kurt Vonnegut, other than that love may fail but courtesy will prevail.

Anyway, Cocktail Party Physics is a wonderful contribution to the internets Al Gore invented after John Kerry didn’t really get wounded pulling him out of the Mekong, and some of you might enjoy it.

And Jeff, Berliners are more like crullers, or even Napoleons, than doughnuts.

Re voting: Part pf the problem is the intensely ignorant that vote religiously and the informed that give the fundamental right a pass.

Ted non-voters, his age and younger, are the ongoing Holy Grail (or Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch) of the Democratic Party — “this time, we’re going to get them feeling like they can really make a difference and they’ll come to the polls and vote for #$%^!!!!!!!”

But they don’t. And 200,000 Berliners aside (mmmm, doughnuts), i don’t think they will this time, either. Racism, that’s a factor (both ways); and the kind of cognitive disenfranchisement that Weinberger was trying to get at — but i was wanting to say about non-voters only that they are casting a vote, but not enough people are listening to what it’s saying, maybe because you have to listen real close.

I don’t think we’d have a nirvana with 96% voting rates, but the size and type and motivations (or lack thereof) of non-voting populations is worth more attention.

A missing manhole cover, say one of the fine products from Neenah Foundry (and I know, because I specify them for construction projects), is not quite deadly but very problematic for bikers. I imagine it could be a matter of life and death if I hit one of those open storm drains or sewers when I’m riding my Triumph. It leaks oil but goes fast, and I’m thinking of ditching it for a Vincent if I can find one. (Good enough for Richard Thompson, good enough for me, and Brit bikes rule, Harley’s not withstandin’.)

But anyway, what sort of world, exactly, are we living in when people feel the need to rob manhole covers for scrap value? Did the apocalypse come without a bang and such a sigh we didn’t notice? No joke. Mad Max? William Gibson world? Stainless Steel Rat? How did things come to such a sorry state while Democracy was being outsourced by force?

We’ve got a government that says that CO2 is several things beyond simple elemental atoms and covalent bonds. Now that’s creationism at a whole new level. And manhole covers are currency. Not a pretty picture.

Jeff is right about non-voters, I suppose, but I’m more worried about idiots that have that franchise. One thing to think about Kerry. What dredged up the intense hatred that produced the feloniously fabricated, basically moronic Short-boat slander (that was bought hook, line and sinker after Fox ran it 24/7)? BCCI investigation that exposed Great Communicator as greater Constitutional criminal.

http://www.alternet.org/election04/20268/

But people still buy that crap and if they don’t, aholes like Ken Blackwell make sure their votes never get counted. This election, they will come out of the woodwork.

You know, the minimal, woefully uncritical coverage of McCain’s reinvention of the surge is hilarious, but it’s not funny. Surge didn’t do dick. First Sadr called off the dogs. Second, Iraq became an unseemly network of racially cleansed neighborhoods separated by US-built walls (while millions became emigres). Then, there was the Awakening, which, when you get right to it, was handing over palletfuls of cash to tribal leaders to cease being members of the fabricated Al Qaida in Iraq. Then there was the ’surge’, which was supposed to buy time for forming some sort of Iraqi governmental consensus. That hasn’t happened. The only thing Iraqis agree on is that they want America gone.

The president’s job for the day was to deliver a speech on health care, a subject on which Ted might well have taken an interest. Ted is 37 and makes $15 an hour, unless it rains, in which case he makes nothing. His main experience with health care is not having it — a situation that, despite his youth appearance, is not exactly irrelevant. Twice in the last few
years, Ted had seizures that left him unconscious. Once, it happened on the banks of a river he was fishing; had his best friend, Brian, not been there to drag him out of the water, he likely would have drowned. Ted could barely scrape together the $400 a doctor charged him to tell him that she didn’t
know what was wrong with him and that he’d have to see a specialist. The specialist was out of the question, financially, so Ted just keeps his fingers crossed and worries about those frequent headaches.

Ted also has no dental insurance. This, too, is not irrelevant. A few years ago, when a balky molar began to bark, Ted did not see a dentist. Instead, he says, he sat in his kitchen, loosened the tooth with a pocket knife and then yanked it out with pliers from his tackle box.

The presidential appearance had been all over the news in Muskegon for more than a week, but Ted hadn’t heard about it until the day before, and only because someone told him. He doesn’t read the papers much, except for NASCAR results and sometimes the classifieds. On TV, for information, he watches
the Weather Channel or the farm reports.

It was a nice day. As Ted wielded his hammer, something amazing happened, something that a hack writer — an abuser of cliches searching for a perfect moment soaked in irony and pregnant with meaning — would not dare make up. Air Force One roared directly overhead.

Ted didn’t even look up. Because, when it comes to politics, as Ted will tell you himself, he just doesn’t give a rat’s ass.

* * *

And yet, since 1960, voting rates have been steadily declining.

Political scientists point to several reasons, among them the ascendancy of negative campaigning, which tends to sour voters on the candidates and on politics in general. Some cite the fact that, in the era of cable TV, we have too many choices of where we obtain our information, making it easier to ignore politics in favor of entertainment. Actually, politics used to
provide entertainment; historians have observed that in other eras, people felt about their parties much as they do, today, about their sports teams. Turn-of-the-century urban political clubs sponsored neighborhood athletic teams, and their meeting houses served as social clubs. That sort of generations-long loyalty and blind partisan devotion is gone, even among the politically astute. Involvement in all civic areas has declined.

Most political experts see low voter turnout as a problem to be fixed.
Earnest citizen-advocacy literature — the sort of things passed out at
polling places and party headquarters — makes the passionate argument that every vote counts. Those documents tend to include long, familiar lists of important matters decided by one vote (Thomas Jefferson wins the presidency; Texas enters the Union; France becomes a republic). Unfortunately, such
examples, while well-intentioned, are bogus. All of the “elections” cited are not popular votes but votes within legislatures, where one-vote majorities are not only commonplace but typically are illusory — the deliberate result of leadership compromises on issues.

Every vote, to be impolitic, does not count and never has. In America, no presidential election, no gubernatorial election, no U.S. senatorial election has ever been decided by a single vote at the polls.

All of this raises a valid, if impertinent question: When it comes to voting or not voting, why should any individual give a rat’s ass?

One of the more intriguing books about nonvoting, To Vote or Not to Vote, actually begins by wondering why anyone votes at all. Author Andre Blais tries to answer this question by applying the modern economist’s favorite scientific model, the Rational Choice Theory. Rational Choice analyzes human decision-making based on a fairly simple mathematical cost-benefit ratio. Blais, who is a Rational Choice acolyte, winds up basically throwing up his hands. The costs of voting (registering, going to the polls, waiting in line, etc.) so outweigh any palpable benefits (no vote is ever likely to directly influence anything) that the model essentially falls apart.

Can it be that those who don’t vote are the most rational among us? If a single vote is without influence, isn’t casting one illogical?

Mathematically speaking, sure. Even in Florida, even in 2000, the breathtakingly narrow margin in the official vote tally was hundreds of times larger than one person’s vote.

But there is something profoundly unsettling about the idea that voting is, basically, senseless. That may be because mathematical logic is not the only type of rigorous reasoning. Moral and political philosophers have spent centuries mulling civic duties and obligations. Perhaps that’s the place to
look for guidance, because deciding whether to vote is not so much a
question of math as a matter of morals.

Immanuel Kant, the 18th-century German philosopher, lived in an era of monarchy; his works never directly addressed the issue of voting. But he addressed, at great length, issues of moral responsibility. In his treatise on the Categorical Imperative, Kant concluded that all human actions, if moral, must be taken not to achieve what is best for you, or even to accomplish a particular result you desire. The moral act, he said, is the one which, if universalized, would result in the greatest good. In other words, in a given situation, minor or momentous, the moral person acts the
way he would want everyone to act if they were faced with a similar choice.

What would happen if, literally, not a single person voted? Jefferson’s Grand Experiment ends in ignominy. Anarchy reigns. Regional warlords rise to power in a return to a feudal state. There are medieval codes of honor, indentured servitude, after-dinner floggings.

Hence, Kant would argue, the only moral choice is to vote.

Implicitly, we understand this. In a totalitarian state, voting is a distant dream; in a democracy, it is a civic obligation. But that still leaves the United States with low voter turnout, for which we have no ready explanation.

All we have are more questions: Since nonvoters tend to be less politically knowledgeable than voters — all polls confirm this — might it not be worse if these particular people cast an ignorant ballot? Who needs them?

And: If voting is a matter of morals, and America practically leads the world in nonvoting, are we an amoral country? Is something else in play?

To help find the answers, we decided to talk to a typical nonvoter. Unfortunately, since half of America doesn’t vote, it’s no more possible to find a “typical” nonvoter than it would be to find a “typical” woman. So, instead, this is what we did:

We asked The Washington Post pollsters to generate a list of people who, when telephoned in the last few months for their political views, had identified themselves as nonvoters. This was basically a list of discarded calls; no one conducting political preference polls particularly cares what nonvoters think. We did.

We took a list of 90-odd names, eliminated those people who were not from battleground states (we wanted people with resonant nonvotes) and then started telephoning. To eliminate any bias in our choice, we decided to profile the very first person who agreed. The first name on the list, as it happens, was Ted Prus. Here is how the call went:

“Hi. This is The Washington Post. Are you registered to vote?”

“No.”

“Are you planning on voting?”

“No.”

“We’d like to write a long story about you. Would you be interested? It would make you famous.”

“You mean a famous idiot?”

“Actually, we’re not sure. There’s no guarantee one way or the other.”

“Sounds good.”

TED IS IN HIS TRUCK, and I am following in my rental car. We are driving to a restaurant of his choosing for a dinner on The Washington Post; price is no object. Muskegon is not renowned as a mecca of haute cuisine, but the Sardine Room does offer a robust $26 filet mignon, and for $49.99 you can get two lobster tails at Dockers Waterfront Cafe. Ted, however, has chosen Famous Dave’s Bar-B-Que.

Ted’s preferences are simple. He drinks Bud Light because he likes it; the importeds cost too much and taste skunky to him, anyway. He smokes Basics, which are generic cigarettes that don’t jack up their price for fancy packaging or slick ad campaigns. He likes the Steve Miller Band because he can make out the damn words. He can do fancy, decorative stonemasonry — fireplaces and things like that — but it’s a painstaking process, and he’s impatient, so he prefers flatwork, which means pouring garages and sidewalks.

With Ted in the cab is Kim Miller, the woman with whom he has been living for nine years but whom he never married because neither of them sees any good reason to jump through that hoop. Between them is their 6-year-old son,
Slate, who got his name because it’s unconventional and Ted wants his boy to be his own man, and because it’s a construction material Ted respects for its hardness, and Ted wants his boy to grow up strong.

The truck pulls into the restaurant parking lot, then jerks to a stop. Ted bounces out of the cab and nods sourly toward the restaurant entrance, around which a few parties of three and four congregate. “Sorry,” he explains, “I don’t wait in lines.”

* * *

“Here’s another nonvoter!” This is how Ted’s friend, Troy Ropp, announces his arrival. Troy is 37, with flaming red hair and a backwoods beard. Troy used to work at a Herman Miller furniture factory, but he rose so far he got a semi-management position, and he found it too distasteful to boss people around. So he runs his own tree service now.

I ask him about the election. Troy thinks President Bush made a bad mistake going into Iraq the way he did. There were other ways of solving the Saddam Hussein problem, he says. “They could have took Saddam out with a 50-caliber at 500 yards.” Nods all around. A brief discussion of firearms ensues.

Troy seems to have given the issues of the day more thought than either Ted or Kim. It occurs to me that what we have here might be a statistical anomaly — a well-informed nonvoter. I press him on why he’s not voting.

“Because I don’t think my vote will matter.” Plus, he says, politicians are all alike. “Bush is just like . . . ” Troy pauses.

” . . . like that guy he’s running against.”

“You mean Kerry?”

“Yeah.”

I look at him, he looks at me. He laughs.

“I would have thought of it if you’d gave me a little time.”

NONE OF THE ABOVE — Washington Post Magazine

You want to know why Ted Prus doesn’t vote? Well, he wants to know why anybody would

By Gene Weingarten

Sunday, October 31, 2004; Page W14

[sorry, i can't find a link, this is from a .txt file i made out of admiration for the craft of the original piece]

[webmaster's note: Here's Gene's entire 2004 piece on the WP site.]

Allan Pinkerton was working for the railroads (essentially a counter-insurgency campaign against the folks who were fooling with the railways) when they got wind of the plot to murder the president-elect (as he switched trains in Baltimore), and foiled it.

By way of saying, fooling with the railroads is an old idea, and the railroads never fool around in their response.

And as a digression, a year ago the Logansport newspaper ran a fascinating article about a major trainwreck that happened in tiny Walton, Indiana (about 9 miles away from Logansport) in the late 1940’s. Two boys placed an obstruction on the tracks (a reel of fence wire, or some such), and then waited to see what would happen. A speedy passenger train struck it and derailed, killing some number of people (six or eight), and injuring many more.

The hook in the story was that the kids were never charged or prosecuted; some sort of deal was made (I seem to recall that their parents were well respected or local muckety-mucks, or some such), and they weren’t named in the modern article, either(!!) - since the (presumeably remorseful) old men still live in the area.

Seriously, the same act in 2008 would instantly trigger the question “was this an act of terrorism?”, and might get one a ticket to Gitmo

edit: I got this far in Google; looks like the trainwreck was in January 1947, and killed 4