In the interest of submitting my work to the wisdom of the crowd, I’m trying out a new way to teach the philosophy of science, using visual cues to articulate concepts. I’d love feedback on how this will go over. I picked:
“Nature Boy” Ric Flair for Popper’s Falisifability
The movie “Clueless” for Kuhn’s Paradigms
A hive of worker bees for Lakatos’ research programmes
Seinfeld’s “The Opposite” episode for Feyerabend’s counterinduction
Here it is: let me know what you think.
Both sites welcome you to substitute their adjective for your own. It’s interesting to see the distinction in the entries for both sites. Keep in mind the lefty bias on the web.
Both allow for twitter-like expression of political views in a sardonic way. But Palin’s tend to derisively emphasize a sense of undeserved, fleeting fame status. Among the last suggestions were “Sanjaya” “Ted McGinley” “Regent University Dropout” “Pontiac Aztek (sp)” and “chia pet”
The Barack Obama site is more prosaic and includes gems like Barack Obama:
“e-mailed your dad and told him how great you are”
“laughed at your joke”
“listened to your mp3”
“saved his dessert for you”
These critiques are more oriented towards the perceived emptiness of the “hope message.” The idea being that Obama represents all things to all people. In a small way, both sites engage civic participation by allowing for an additional outlet to express underlying discomfort with a presidential or vice presidential selection. In the Palin case, the concern is the preparadness for the job. In the Obama case, the concern is empty platitutdes. Both provide great insight as to the political zeitgeist.
“paid your speeding ticket”
Over the last few election cycles we’ve been seeing what Henry Jenkins calls convergence between politics and popular culture, but this is a new plateau for presidential politics. What does this type of convergence do to the political process when popular culture? Does this humanize her in a way that attracts new voters? Does it frame her in a way that focuses on Palin as a mother rather than Palin as a professional politician? I suspect there are going to be multiple framing and re-framing of each of the candidates in the election. It will be interesting to see how the Republican party handles all of this during their convention. Will they paint her as a victim of a scandal obsessed culture? Or will they ignore the coverage and build upon their own framing of her?
A look inside the CBS numbers reveals the fault lines in the electorate for the next 60 days and gives some clues as to why Mccain made the selection of Sarah Palin for vice president. All of Obama’s lead appears to be coming from Women. Bush won this demographic is 2004, but according to CBS, Obama is winning this group by 14 points.
Ideologically, Obama is winning a greater share of independents. For all the talk of Democrats reluctant to vote for Obama, both candidates are pretty even in their base support. However Obama has a six percentage point lead among those described as independents.
Another interesting tidbit is that, according to the CBS poll, the effect of Palin as VP on support for McCain is a pretty break even proposition. But as Nate Silver pointed out yesterday, support for the Palin choice is stronger among Men than among Women. Whereas the Palin choice helps McCain among the constituency in which he’s already strong, it seems to have no effect among the constituency in which he needs the greatest help. 17% of Men said they were more likely to support McCain because of the Palin pick while only 10% of women were similarly inclined. Nate Silver attributes it to ideology:
it may simply be a matter of ideology. Men are generally a bit more conservative than women, and opinions of Palin are very strongly determined by ideology. Conservatives have a favorable impression of her by a 79-8 margin, but this falls to 43-35 among moderates and 26-46 among liberals. Likewise, by a 48-22 margin, conservatives think she’s ready to be President, but she loses this question 23-54 among moderates and 9-67 among liberals.
This is the problem with the Palin pick, locking down the base with this selection comes at the expense of turning moderate women off. These numbers can change but the initial roll out appears not to have significantly moved the needle for McCain. If this was supposed to be a great “game changer” pick, the game is still waiting to be changed.
Republican operatives can always lean on the penchance of Blue America (not necessarily liberal) to mock working class people and norms. The R’s have mastered the art of “you think you’re better than me” politics. It’s the worst form of demagoguing, although the Democrats economic populism is a pretty close second.
But the Democrats are complicit in the Republican’s gambit. The Obama camnpaign’s initial response to the Palin pick smacked of “liberal elitism.” Criticising McCain for picking a candidate that was mayor of a town of 9,000 may be rational, but it also signals to people in small towns that they are inconsequential. Are they saying that small town mayors are incapable of being effective administrators? Are small town people in general to stupid to govern?
Case in point, a new CNN poll has the election tied even after Obama’s spectacular acceptance speech. While Galup saw an 8 point lead in its tracking poll on Saturday, that number is down to six today and will probably fall to 2-3 as the Thursday and Friday polling falls out of the three day average. This is all due to the popularity of the Palin pick among a god chunk of the public. According to the CNN poll, 38% view her favorably, while 21% view her unfavorably.
Why in heaven’s name would 38% of people be excited about picking a candiate with 18 months of experience governing a state. Because she doesn’t appear to be “better than” people in small town America. Obama with his fancy lettuce and fruity teas may not think he’s better than those in smal towns, but he certainly exudes that vibe.
It would seem to be a tired trope. Like anyone could see that you shouldn’t reward poor governance in one party with another chance to govern. But presidential politics is intensely personal. It’s a symbolic decision about who represents me to the world and to my peers. For whatever reason, the Democrats are incapable of understanding that. If they would, they would pay all due deference to Sara Palin, celebrating her small town values and her personal story, and then go after how her and McCain’s policies would be destructive to small town America.
“I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine. You ma’am are no Hillary Clinton.”
Update — Palin analysis potpourri:
McCain’s Sexist VP Pick
National Review Editors on the Palin Pick
From a quick blog-o-scan, it looks like the both the Right and the Left are estatic. I find it to be further evidence that the right are eternally done with a “run to the middle” strategy. They’ve decided to go “base vs. base” against the Obama juggernaut. I wonder if this is an effective strategy in a year where the Republican brand is damaged.
For someone who was supposedly entertaining the idea of selecting John McCain as a running mate in 2004, he sure lit into him. I think drawing the distinction between “Senator McCain” and “Candidate McCain” was something the Obama people better insert into his stump speech right away.
Kerry was brilliant (I never thought I’d ever utter those words). And he actually showed passion and humanity. He was even self deprecating about his 2004 defeat by ending his attack on McCain with “Talk about ‘I voted for it before I voted against it!’ Give me a break”
Of course, CNN decided that Wolf Blitzer’s blabbering on about the “best team on television” or how you can get all the speeches on cnn.com was more compelling television, so only the voluminous C-SPAN audience got a sniff of the red-meat.
Conversely, where are the efforts to define McCain? Why shouldn’t I vote for this guy? If this framing process doesn’t happen soon, the Republicans will get a free shot to continue to define Obama and they will, and should, paint him in a way that will guarantee them the election.
It seems that Democrats, for whatever reason, fail to take power seriously and as a result, lose. I’m afraid that we’re headed down that track again.
Today’s Gallup tracking poll showed a McCain lead against Obama since May of this year. The cause of this sliding is unclear. Perhaps a combination of celebrity ads, external conflicts and flat footed-ness on the part of the Obama campaign.
Several members of the pundi-tariat speculated on whether the Democrats had squandered the first night of the convention by not framing a stark distinction between McCain and Obama. But the reality is that if your boat has several leaks, you can’t fix them all at the same time.
The improbability of Obama’s run was evident last night. I watched Michelle Obama’s speech with a hint of sadness. Why does this accomplished American have to plead with America to see her and her husband as “normal.” This sneaking suspicion that anyone of color is “un-American” until proven otherwise is a steeep hill to climb. It seems impossible to both defend yourself against this absurd charge, stake out an agenda for the future and attack your opponent at the same time. But this is the needle the Obama folks have to thread for the next three days.
I’m interested in the role that placeblogging might play in challenging both hegemonic and transactional power, but particularly the latter. A transactional view suggests that power is forged through the process of social production. Social production is the process of pooling resources to achieve a desired goal. In the urban context, important resources like wealth, knowledge and political power are seen as narrowly controlled.
However, placeblogs have the potential to redefine the social production process. While there aren’t many of them, they are growing. Lisa Williams describes placeblogs as focusing on:
the lived experience of a place. That experience may be news, or it may simply be about that part of our lives that isn’t news but creates the texture of our daily lives: our commute, where we eat, conversations with our neighbors, the irritations and delights of living in a particular place among particular people. However, when news happens in a community, placeblogs often cover those events in unique and nontraditional ways, and provide a community watercooler to discuss those events.
In their intent, these blogs are designed to reduce the costs of social production. One example comes from a website called Clever Commute in which transit riders on the Baltimore Washington corridor alert each other of delays and cancellations. The Baltimore Sun reports that the website has partnered with the Baristanet.com placeblog to expand the service’s reach.
In this case, if the end goal of social production is to gain greater information about commute delays, “the crowd” is a much better gatherer of knowledge resources than traditional news sources. The placeblog provides a convenient way to aggreagte information of interest to residents in a neighborhood. Recent development have made it easier to aggregate individual placeblogs. Type in outside.in/(your zip code) and you will get an page that collects placeblog postings about your neighborhood. For example, here’s the page for my neighborhood.
My interest is in the potential for these networks of placeblogs to engage in social production that challenges power. Have placeblogs been used to stop development or to get a pothole fixed?
