The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Matt Stevens:

One phrase, though, chilled me:

Even though the Russians have little sympathy to the man who saved millions of American lives

Have little sympathy?! Why in the world not?

Goddam it!

Best of luck to Teresa and hopes for a speedy recovery.

I managed to read long enough to learn that his codpiece is made of Kevlar.

Thanks, this is thought provoking.

However, I have to add: I'm a Warcraft player today, but I was a D&D player 25 years ago, and certainly Warcraft is a less participatory activity than D&D is and used to be. I'm just not sure the progression is even or unidirectional.

There's also a bit of populist schadenfreude on display: Oh look, a bunch of rich white "libertarians" got knocked around by the cops. *snicker* Don't bend over for the soap, assholes! Sickening, but it looks like some of them are on "the left," like it or not.

Yeah, as you note, the first question sucks. I'm more forgiving of
#2 and #3. You can't ask people an infinite number of questions, and
you want results that are easy to categorize and summarize so it isn't
practical to let them make up their own answers. If you want more
complex answers you need a focus group or in-depth one-on-one
interviews.

The problem is that when you talk of Nader you use "democratic" to mean "legal" (he followed the rules, so it was "democratic"), but when you talk about people using the law to stop Nader, what they do may be "legal", but you say it's "unethical" and "undemocratic" (they may be following the rules, but it isnt nice). You're playing word games, using different definitions for different players.

That's garbage, Greg. Efforts to reduce competition are undemocratic. Running for office when it's inconvenient for "our side" is not, necessarily, undemocratic. Is that so hard to understand?

I think you need to throw out whatever you're using for a dictionary and start looking at the world for a while.

Listen: I work for the Democratic Party in New York. I have a PhD in politics. I have a better idea of what political "reality" looks like than you do, and you can take your smug comments and shove them up your ass.

I don't like what happened in Florida, but that was because votes were not counted and the Republicans managed to stop them from being counted. Nader didn't make it undemocratic, he just helped the bad guys -- guys who really did use undemocratic methods -- win. That's not the same as being undemocratic. Think about it!

Greg, that elaborate sophistry doesn't survive scrutiny. The problem is the term "the system," which as far as I can tell just means "legal means." But not all legal actions are ethical, or visa versa.

Besides, you seem to have missed my point that I don't like Nader and have no intention of defending his actions. Nevertheless he shouldn't face discrimination when seeking ballot access.

Gee Lee, I wouldn't say all options have been exhausted here. The best option, naturally, would be to convince those radical leftists to vote Democratic. Hiring legions of lawyers to throw their favored candidate off the ballot may interfere with that effort, however.

Jim, even if he is a "Republican dirty trick" (which is questionable but we'll let that slide), he's still a "dirty trick" who gets hundreds of thousands of left-wing votes. Nader shouldn't have to face any special obstacles to getting on the ballot. Submitting such efforts to extra scrutiny means, in effect, denying his idiotic, ultra-leftist supporters their democratic rights. I just don't think that's right.

I think it's entirely fair, for instance, to challenge submitted signatures, be a stickler about deadlines, and like that. If Jim meant any more than that, I hope he'll correct me.

I'm sorry Bruce (and Jim), but while politicians do this all the time, I want nothing to do with such efforts, and I don't think other people should either.

As I said, when Republicans do this sort of thing in the name of "fighting fraud" we condemn it as voter suppression, as we should. There are two sides of democratic elections -- they should be competitive as well as participatory -- and efforts to keep legitimate politicians off the ballot are unethical and undemocratic, just like efforts to keep voters from the polls.

I say this as a committed Democrat who hates Nader and who thinks Nader threw the election to Bush. I don't want to ally myself with Nader's partisans, but I think Jim was wrong in advocating this sort of thing.

Matt, he has the right to try to get on the ballot. We have the right to try to keep him off. Unless you believe everyone has the right to be on the ballot, there's nothing wrong with trying to keep someone off.

Listen: "Trying to keep someone off" means an active effort, not sitting on your butt and praying Nader doesn't get enough signatures. It sounds like active (if presumably legal) sabotage -- in New York, for instance, hiring lawyers to check every signature, checking for trivial violations of New York's arcane election laws. When Republicans use techniques like these we say, rightly, that they're trying to suppress turnout. It's no better when Democrats do it to limit competition, even against a demagogue like Nader.

Again, I'm a Democrat who hates Nader, but I'm appalled that Making Light's readers don't find Macdonald's statement controversial.

Look, I have never voted for Nader, think he's an egotistical freak and blame him (partially) for the 2000 debacle. Nevertheless he has the right to run and (assuming he has the signatures and all that) be on the ballot. It's silly to tell people they should "work to keep Nader off the ballot in your state." I don't like it when politicians use legions of election lawyers to kick competitors off the ballot, and I'm not going to help them in this case.

Heck of a thing when even the pollsters don’t know what ticket you’re running on.

I've worked on a number of telephone surveys, and and we never tested interviewers for their political knowledge. It's rarely necessary, since interviewers are supposed to follow a script closely and keep ad libs to a minimum.

Chances are that the interviewer saw a list of Democratic candidates on the computer screen and Gravel wasn't on it, so she assumed Gravel was a Republican.

"What Plants Crave" is from the movie, in which (sort of spoiler warning) Brawndo was sprayed on crops instead of water, as well as being used for nursing babies, etc.

I should note that the movie's "Brawndo" was clearly a Gatorade-style sports drink, while the real-world "Brawndo" is probably a diuretic.

Uh oh, a thread on Israel-Palestine on a site with a famous anti-trolling policy. Can we place bets on the disemvowel-percentage?

Can we have a discussion of gun control, too? And maybe abortion? How about a thread on gun control and abortion in Palestine? Might as well try for the full monty.

I'm sorry I came too late to read this thread from the beginning, but...

Is this woman saying she hired a ghost writer to pen a novel for a vanity publisher? Or have I misread something?

If so it's horribly sad, like hiring a models to stand in for you in your wedding photos.

I'd really like to see a sociological study which shows associations between fashions in body-size and other variables. It seems the preference was for voluptuousness up until the 1920s. Thinness became fashionable for a decade, and then curves were "in" again until the 1960s. Skinniness has been considered the ideal ever since.

I suspect it's related, somehow, to class. Thin is in when the poor are plumper than average (as in America today). When the poor are starving curvy girls become the rage.

Of course these fashions may depend a lot on the audience. I suspect (although have no real evidence) that fashion models are thinner than, say, the models in (male heterosexual) pornography, partly perhaps because the audiences have different standards of beauty.

Yeah, the MTA does a horrible job getting information out to its riders. Lines are often closed without any notice whatsoever. They could win a lot of goodwill with more frequent service announcements. Just shout it over the intercom of something.

Agreed, though, that the MTA really does need money to repair aging infrastructure. I wish they'd save their money for repairs, though, and not (say) the 2nd avenue subway line.

It's funny how we can complain about Cerebus but not, say, Superman, who's been smacking Lex Luthor around for almost 80 years now. Authors who don't exploit their characters until the sun blows out end up getting more flak.

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