Why Dont You Blog?

Praise be to Thor. Finally, after what has felt like a campaign that lasted my entire life, the US presidential election is about to be over. I can not express in words the true depth of my relief.

For months now we have had coverage of the run-up to today on pretty much every news bulletin. The early stages were just annoying - outlines of the varying candidates as they slugged it out to represent their parties. As the election got near though, it has become a joke. We have local news stations running “US Election specials” - when I can pretty much guarantee that there are no more than one or two listeners who even have a chance to vote.

Today was the worst, although it points to the light at the end of the tunnel, with almost blanket coverage. Odin forbid something newsworthy happens today (for example, a series of bombs in Northern Ireland) because it isn’t getting any coverage. Instead we get to listen to genuinely subnormal people, who actually have got a vote, demonstrating their prejudice and ignorance.

Having met quite a few Americans, all have turned out to be basically normal so I can only assume the examples on the radio were specially selected to demonstrate ignorance, racism and general stupidity. Shame on all the news agencies. (Shame on America for making such ignorance socially acceptable anywhere inside its borders).

Here in the UK, the coverage of the US election has, without a doubt, been greater than the coverage of a UK parlimentary election. The only thing missing would be daily party political broadcasts. Being an avid news watcher, I feel I have been fed so much about the elections I should have a right to vote. I could certainly make more of an informed decision than some of the whackos on the radio.

The madness of this was highlighted on BBC Radio 1 yesterday. During one of the shows (Scott Mills) a researcher went out and asked members of the British Public how they would vote in the election today. Every single person asked named a politician they would vote for. None passed comment on it being the US elections, there was the implicit assumption that people could vote. When challenged if he could vote in the elections today, one person said “Yes, I am 19, of course I can vote.”

Now, survey techniques aside, this pretty much shows how much we have endured over this election. Finally the light at the end of the tunnel is in sight.

The big problem remains what is that light? Is it the end of the tunnel or an on-coming train?

Popularity: 9% [?]

Popularity: 9% [?]

From this distance, the McCain campaign seems to have become so demented that you wonder if they are deliberately trying to lose. For instance, they’ve spent the equivalent of several yearly minimum wages to dress a woman (whose entire USP is supposed to be that she’s just an ordinary Mom, you betcha) as a Vogue businesswoman.

And Sarah Palin then numbed the mind further by claiming that opposition to this Olympic-standard rate of expenditure is “sexist”. (No, Sarah, how can I explain this… Where do I start? Beauty queen contestant. Pitbull with lipstick. Hockey mom. Cute winks. I suspect you know what pandering to sexist stereotypes is, anyway.)

Plus, she claimed - in some travesty of self-defence - that she hadn’t worn most of them anyway.

“The whole thing is just bad!” she said. “Oh, if only people knew how frugal we are. It’s kind of painful to be criticised for something when all the facts are not out there and are not reported.”

Indeed. Like this:

It was disclosed today that she paid a make-up artist $22,000 in the first fortnight of this month, following the revelation earlier this week of a $150,000 spending spree on clothes

Oh, that awkward “sexism” again. Twenty two thousand dollars on make-up in two weeks? Thats $1571.43 a day. Assuming that the person who applies it earns $1000 a day - which is insane - that still leaves $500 worth of materials to be squeezed onto the small surface area of a human face. Even the ugliest pit bull in the world couldn’t need that much coverage to look like the Mona Lisa. How can she physically lift her head if it has to support the weight of 20 kilos of nanosome pentapeptides?

From sexism to racism. The Republicans have really pushed the boat out here. Who could even imagine anything as weird as the Republican-supporting girl - with a backwards B (that seemed to be drawn in lipstick) on her cheek and the apparent black-eye makeup - who made the patently ludicrous claim she’d been robbed by a black man in pursuit of an Obama victory?

So the deeply troubling violent attack in Pittsburgh on a McCain campaign worker by a “tall black man” who carved a letter B onto her face, telling her “you’re going to be a Barack supporter”, turns out to be a deeply troubling racist fantasy invented by someone we’ll charitably describe for the time being as disturbed (from the Guardian)

Popularity: 9% [?]

Popularity: 9% [?]

The makers of the Rapture Ready Index are getting really quite upset about the prospect of Obama’s winning. (Make it so. Please, make it so.)

So upset that they seem to see Obama in a rapture-causing category almost all of his own.

…If Obama should win in November, I plan to issue the most dire warning I’ve ever issued during the history of this ministry.

That will be pretty damn dire then. Isn’t that their whole raison d’etre? Issuing dire warnings? And this will be the most dire.

I admit to being too dumb to understand the whole “dire warnings” thrust of the Index. Aren’t these people counting the minutes until they get raised up to heaven on a big cloud? Is their Index supposed to list bad things or good things, from their perspective?

In fact, if they really believe that an Obama victory will issue in the end of the world, then why are they condemning the “liberal” media for supporting him? Shouldn’t they be welcoming him for supposedly hastening their coming move upstairs?

Why are they supporting the emetic McCain/Palin combo, then?

(Well, not quite. They barely mention McCain. All their hopes seem to be on Palin, who is much scarier even than McCain to my godless self - and quite a threat to moose, wolves and polar bears, too, apparently.)

Of course, they manage to get in a sly insinuation that Obama is a mysteriously secret Muslim. This is utterly confusing, apart from obviously being the worst kind of nonsense, although it seems to be believed by a fair proportion of the people on their chatboards. How can such people both blame Obama for the words of his former Christian pastor and still see him as a Muslim? (Quite apart from their bizarre assumptions that “Muslim” is just a euphemism for “being a suicide bomber” and would self-evidently disqualify anyone from the presidency.) But, again, if they really believe this, shouldn’t they be welcoming it, following what I hesitate to call their logic?

Rapture Ready’s avid enthusiasm for the prospect of the destruction of humanity is expressed perfectly in another disturbing piece on the same page, which complains that the US is stopping the rapture by failing to support Israel:

The perfect prophetic storm is upon this last-time generation. To understand the darkly serious truth of America’s tinkering in the matter of forcing Israel to make human peace with its enemies, we must delve heavily into the relevant prophetic Scriptures.

(If only the US would force Israel to “make human peace.” ) They reckon that America and the UN are interfering in god’s plan for Israel.

…America’s and the Quartet’s (U.S., E.U., U.N., and Russia) attempts to force the making of a Palestinian nation upon land that is Israel’s by divine right.

I’m not going to be too snide about people with absolutely no education in history, let alone modern international politics. These are tough subjects and I am already marvelling that people as mentally challenged as the RR gang can write sentences and use the Internet.

I am going to challenge “god’s plan.” Either their god wants the world to be scourged of us evil humans or he doesn’t. If he does, but is too idle to do it himself, shouldn’t they be welcoming any potential anti-christ figure who fills the bill? If god wants the US to support Israel right into the jaws of Armageddon, why can’t he bloody do it himself?

Look, RR people. I wouldn’t dare suggest you try reading history books or anything. But there are plenty of other holy books that you could take as literally true. You could take the Eddas or the Mabinogion or the Baghavad Gita or the Dao de Jing (however they are spelled.)

I’m not saying that you still couldn’t do serious damage if you believed in any of these books as accurate prophecies but at least the rest of us would get a break for a few centuries while you worked up an appropriately life-destroying worldview.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Popularity: 10% [?]

Now, I am sure every one knows that New Scientist is “pop science” - scientific news processed for laymen. In general this is great as is gives people an insight into the wonders of science without the tedium of years studying. Peer review is great, but only in its place. New Scientist is not the place.

Sometimes, this causes problems.

In this weeks issue, there is an article titled “Read my lips… and my voice, and my face” (online version titled “Software spots the spin in political speeches“) which is (at best) bad science being used for electioneering purposes. On the surface this is nothing more than the old idea that you can tell when people are lying by their gestures and use of language. This is a subject close to my heart and generally falls foul of the greatest of problems - it is sort of true. Body language, eye access, word selection and the like can give you an indicator of lies (for example) but only in the broader context of the persons behaviour.

Take the often cited example of people rubbing their nose when they lie. Yes, some people do this. But most of the time it means the person has an itchy nose and nothing else. The same with eye-access (as highlighted in The Negotiator), but the problem is people are different - not everyone looks the exact same way. Language choice is possibly the worst indicator as this is dictated by your background, education and the like. Simply put, there is no easy way you can use this information as a reliable indicator of deception or misdirection. You need to study the person in a variety of controlled circumstances and build up a pattern of their behaviour.

With this in mind, we can return to the New Scientist article. It seems someone has come up with an automated way of monitoring the terminology used, the voice and the facial expressions of politicians to measure how much “spin” there is in their speeches. Amazingly this has not resulted in 100% returns each time. This is how it is described:

The algorithm counts usage of first person nouns - “I” tends to indicate less spin than “we”, for example. It also searches out phrases that offer qualifications or clarifications of more general statements, since speeches that contain few such amendments tend to be high on spin. Finally, increased rates of action verbs such as “go” and “going”, and negatively charged words, such as “hate” and “enemy”, also indicate greater levels of spin. Skillicorn had his software tackle a database of 150 speeches from politicians involved in the 2008 US election race (see diagram).

Now, this strikes me as inherently flawed given that politicians have their speeches written for them by teams of “experts” (who are more than capable of concluding which words mean which things), and are nearly always well coached in delivering them in a manner to “stir” the audience. It strikes me that adding an arbitrary judgement as to what is, or is not, spin gives nothing that even resembles science. In an attempt to dismiss this, Skillicorn (the systems creator) says:

Additionally, [Skillicorn] says, little details count: pronouns such as “we” and “I” are often substituted subconsciously, no matter what is written in the script.

But you have no idea which ones are added by the script writers, which ones are subconcious and you certainly still haven’t proven that using “we” means there is a lot of “spin” in the speech. We still don’t really know what “spin” is - is it a good or bad thing?

The “Headline” results of this study are that Obama’s campaign has more spin than any of the other politicians (+6.7, where 0 is average for a politician) while McCain’s campaign had the lowest (-7.58). It states this supports McCain’s claim to being a “straight talker” (*cough*) and on the surface looks like it is a Republican Political Campaign masquerading as Science. In the articles defence, there is some balance:

So the analysis appears to back up McCain’s claim that he is a “straight talker”. However, for the purposes of political speech-making this may not be an entirely good thing for him. “Obama uses spin in his speeches very well,” says Skillicorn. For example, Obama’s spin level skyrockets when facing problems in the press, such as when Jeremiah Wright, the reverend of his former church, made controversial comments to the press.

Great from a science point of view. We would like to think that the readers of New Scientist are able to accept the idea that spin is a positive force for a politican.

However (and this is supported by a quick scan of the printed media that have picked up on this), the general population are not. We have been indoctrinated by decades of thinking politicians spin is an inherently bad thing. This article has generated several headlines in the free media about Obama being full of spin and McCain being straight talking. Both can translate into political capital. Shame on the New Scientist.

One funny bit which never quite made it into the free-papers is this nugget:

“The voice analysis profile for McCain looks very much like someone who is clinically depressed,” says Pollermann, a psychologist who uses voice analysis software in her work with patients. Previous research on mirror neurons has shown that listening to depressed voices can make others feel depressed themselves, she says.

Well, that pretty much summed up the effect his speeches have on me.

It is during the US Presidential elections that I thank Loki I live in the UK….

Popularity: 20% [?]

Popularity: 20% [?]

The world is pretty unanimous about the need for regime change in a rogue state, long known to carry out torture of detainees and to have WMD that can be despatched at a mere 3 minutes notice.

Democrat Mr Obama was favoured by a four-to-one margin across the 22,500 people polled in 22 countries (from the BBC)

However, another poll, taken from within the rogue state itself, suggests that many women have been subject to the traditional tribal brainectomy, according to the Independent.

Women voters flock to McCain despite new Palin disclosures
By David Usborne in New York
John McCain has benefited in the polls since announcing his running mate was Sarah Palin, the ‘hockey mom’ Alaskan Governor
Democrats may not want to believe it but there is fresh evidence that the addition of Sarah Palin, the “hockey mom” Governor of Alaska, to John McCain’s ticket is winning him women voters in droves.

Well, I’m not even a Yank and certainly don’t want to believe it. The whole article could have penned by Stereotype Central. Usborne says that

…enormous numbers of women who previously favoured Barack Obama have had their heads turned since the introduction of Mrs Palin, according to a new ABC/Washington Post poll.

Had their heads turned….. (!!!!) So American women apparently thought that nice Mr Obama was so charming but now they’re sticking up for the gals and want to see a hardworking mom win.

(Cue Americanism.) Gimme a break. Why didn’t Hillary Clinton get chosen then, if femaleness is all it takes to engage women voters?

Approximately half of the population is male. Are the guys now supposed to be rooting for Obama solely because he can’t bear his own offspring?

The single, low-income women who turned out for Mrs Clinton – some 18 million – are increasingly balanced by Republican women, ecstatic about Mrs Palin’s deeply conservative religious views.

Excuse me if I misunderstand US politics even more than usual, but doesn’t “Republican women” mean “women who identify with the Republican party?” Wouldn’t that make them McCain voters anyway, even if he had indeed picked a farmyard animal wearing Max Factor lipstick as a running mate?

As the BBC reported, the rest of the world is unsurprisingly not “ecstatic” about “deeply conservative religious views.”

USA, we respect your exotic tribal culture and your quaint religious beliefs and all that, but please don’t let them spill out on the rest of us.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Popularity: 11% [?]

Youth and beauty are really poor reasons for picking world leaders. Lots of people in the real world and on tinterweb point out that Obama is younger and prettier than McCain. Well, no doubt about that. E.g, Things younger than McCain or look at this image on Covert History with obvious implications that Obama is fitter to be president as well as win the swimsuit round.

Ditto, in the UK, which tends to copy the USA, but following the precept that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. The homely older Brown is contrasted with the younger better-looking David Miliband.*

I’m certainly all for Obama, although less won-over by the Blairite-careerist-style charm of Miliband. (Am buggered if I can see any significant policy difference between Brown and Milliband. I want Alan Simpson for PM, whether he’s standing or not….) But, is “younger and prettier” really an adequate criterion for picking a leader?

The only justification I can see for this is where a leader is just a front-end. A marketing device, cynically stuck there while the real power gets operated elsewhere.

Who cares about how user-friendly the front-end is, when it comes to politics? Or if we are all happy to pick the prettiest candidates, with the longest political-aristocratic pedigrees, then we’ve only got our own stupidity to blame.

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* No, that’s not the sociologist (“Belgian-born Marxist theoretician Ralph Miliband” a/c Wikipedia)whose books I read as a student. He’s said sociologist’s not-at-all-privileged-by-birth (sarcasm alert) nuLabour offspring. Wikipedia is quite informative on how he got to Oxford.

David Miliband was educated at schools in London, Benton Park School in Leeds and Boston, Massachusetts before being educated at Haverstock Comprehensive School in North London, where he obtained a Grade ‘D’ in Physics A-level, and 3 Grade ‘B’s. Despite these results being lower than the normal entry requirements, via a scheme for children from deprived backgrounds, he was admitted to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he achieved first class honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. (from his Wikipedia entry)

Blimey, how lucky that schemes for “deprived kids” are so broadly defined. I mean you can hardly get more educationally-deprived than being the son of a world-class academic. (w00t, my A level results piss all over his. In your face, foreign secretary. But, obviously, I had the good fortune to grow up on a council estate so I didn’t get the benefit of schemes for deprived kids like him…..)

Nor is it his brother Ed who has also overcome the obstacle of his background to get into Brown’s cabinet.

Isn’t democracy great? None of that ancient “hereditary principle” crap, so discredited by the Enlightenment. I mean look at George Bush who won political power on an amazing log-cabin-to-White-House trajectory.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Popularity: 11% [?]