{"id":304,"date":"2008-11-04T03:35:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-04T03:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/11\/04\/the-election-selection\/"},"modified":"2008-11-04T03:35:00","modified_gmt":"2008-11-04T03:35:00","slug":"the-election-selection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/11\/04\/the-election-selection\/","title":{"rendered":"The election selection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As one of them pesky foreigners, I don&#8217;t think I should say any more than I already have about the US election.<\/p>\n<p>Instead I&#8217;m going to link to a bunch of excellent posts from around the blogosphere*. (Edit: OK, and apparently I&#8217;m going to comment on them too &#8211; couldn&#8217;t resist. Please pretend you didn&#8217;t read the first sentence of this post).<\/p>\n<p>Good luck to my American friends &#8211; I think I&#8217;m hoping for the same result as almost all of you! I&#8217;ll be at the <a href=\"http:\/\/vwxynot.blogspot.com\/2008\/10\/how-stupid-am-i.html\">Canucks-Predators game<\/a>, but with my ear close to the <s>iPhone<\/s> ground for updates. If anyone would care to leave comments here as the evening progresses, I&#8217;d be very grateful &#8211; I&#8217;ll see more of the hockey if I just wait for the beep that means a comment has been emailed to me than if I&#8217;m constantly refreshing cnn.com manually!<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>First up is <a href=\"http:\/\/arduousblog.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/my-vote.html\">Ruchi<\/a> with a wonderful post that literally brought tears to my eyes. <span>&#8220;It doesn&#8217;t matter if your parents came from Kenya, or India, or North Dakota; you CAN still become president. [&#8230;] I may not want to be president anymore, but somewhere out there, I know a young child of immigrants is now free to dream big&#8221;.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>(Although, as <a href=\"http:\/\/digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com\/2008\/10\/i-proudly-am-atheist.html\">Digital Cuttlefish<\/a> points out, young American atheists are obviously gonna have to wait a bit longer for their chance to be <s>treated as equals<\/s> president: <span>&#8220;No need to watch your language, Or to treat us with respect\u2014Because demonizing us is still politically correct&#8221;<\/span>).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/microbiologistxx.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/electioneering.html\">Microbiologist XX <\/a>also posts about the importance of voting, regardless of where you live. It&#8217;s not just about the Presidential ballot! Oh, and also, <span>&#8220;If you don&#8217;t vote, then you forfeit your right to complain about the government until the next election&#8221;<\/span>. Too right.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/drjekyllandmrshyde.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/inadriwrimo-1-obama-95.html\">Dr Jekyll and Mrs Hyde <\/a>shares her experiences as she volunteers for the Obama-Biden campaign in a swing state. <span>&#8220;We had lots of pro-Obama responses, with the only exception being some people complaining they had been called TOO MUCH by the Obama campaign. If this is our biggest problem, we are doing ok.&#8221;<\/span> Good luck Dr J!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/evolutionarynovelty.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/linear-evolution-mccain-and-obama.html\">Todd Oakley <\/a>injects some evolutionary theory (and a much-needed chuckle) into the proceedings. <span>&#8220;A common theme of this blog is to share cases of &#8220;linear evolutionary thinking&#8221;. These are instances, usually graphics, that illustrate the common conception of evolution as a line of progress, from worst to best&#8221;.<\/span> Click through for this particular example &#8211; you don&#8217;t need to be a biologist to appreciate it!<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Bonus posts for my Californian reader(s), who are voting on Proposition 8:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/drugmonkey\/2008\/10\/californias_proposition_8_mean.php\">DrugMonkey<\/a> neatly eviscerates the alleged logic of the pro-(H)8 side: <span>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure there are other classes of arguments and I&#8217;d like to hear something that sounds halfway rational. Have any of you Californians heard anything that makes any kind of sense? Because from where I sit, all I hear that makes any consistent sense in any of this is the following: &#8220;I just don&#8217;t like gay people, in fact I fear and hate them.&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile <a href=\"http:\/\/digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com\/2008\/10\/modest-proposition-eight.html\">Digital Cuttlefish <\/a>skewers the proposition in rhyme. &#8220;<span>It\u2019s a simple little proposition, Proposition Eight: All we ask is that you join us, as we all discriminate!&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>And here&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/arduousblog.blogspot.com\/2008\/11\/heart-felt-speech-from-republican-mayor.html\">Ruchi <\/a>again with <span>&#8220;A Heart-felt Speech From The Republican Mayor of San Diego&#8221;<\/span>.<br \/><\/span><br \/>I am very proud that gay couples in both my native and adopted country can marry. I&#8217;m therefore wishing for an extra dose of good luck for my anti-prop 8 buddies and blog buddies down the coast&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Finally, <a href=\"http:\/\/network.nature.com\/people\/boboh\/blog\/2008\/11\/03\/they-need-your-help\">Bob<\/a> is looking for new topics to keep the blogosphere busy after the election: <span>&#8220;We have to save the poor slavering dears by giving them a topic to get excited about&#8221;<\/span>, he says. My suggestion of &#8220;football&#8221; seems to be working &#8211; for now.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;&#8211;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:85%\">*posts featured here are rendered ineligible for &#8220;post of the week&#8221; bragging rights. Why? Because I said so&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As one of them pesky foreigners, I don&#8217;t think I should say any more than I already have about the US election. Instead I&#8217;m going to link to a bunch of excellent posts from around the blogosphere*. (Edit: OK, and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/11\/04\/the-election-selection\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,23,52,39,41,43,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atheism","category-bad-people","category-blog-buddies","category-blog-roll","category-meta","category-politics","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}