Jarrett House NorthNow with 80% less politics!

I don’t have the energy or time to write the summary of how I feel about the election, except to note that others have already done a pretty good job of summarizing for me.
From a campaign strategy perspective, 2008 will be discussed for many years, but a few things I found interesting in looking at [...]

James Brown, “Funky President (People It’s Bad)”
William S. Burroughs, “When Did I Stop Wanting to Be President”
The Cure, “Primary (Morgan Studio Outtake 9/80)”
Max Roach, “Freedom Now”
Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come”
Virginia Glee Club, “I shall not die without a hope” (Testament of Freedom)
Jay-Z and Danger Mouse, “Dirt Off Your Shoulder”
Youssou N’Dour, “Hope”
Branford Marsalis, “Freedom [...]

Holy cow. 284 electoral votes at 11:01 PM. Barack Obama will be the next president of the US.

I voted this morning at around 8:25 am. I was number 325 at my precinct; a line about 100 people long had been there at 7 am, so I was catching things at a brief resting point. There was a PTA bake sale on the way out. It was a traditional end to a most [...]

I don’t often repost entire blog posts, but this needs to be disseminated widely. Thanks to Estaminet for saying what I wanted to say. Take a look at this and spread it to your friends and family:
estaminet: an open letter to american social conservatives.
Please stop.
Please stop saying that Barack Obama is Muslim. He’s not. He, [...]

The endgame of the 2008 election season is interesting in a few ways. First, I find it interesting that Obama’s numbers go way up after people get to see him in action (e.g. during debates), and start to edge back down when robocalls and other personal attacks start to hit. In particular, it’s interesting to [...]

My friend and undergrad classmate Erik Simpson has been following an interesting trend on Intrade, the prediction market that allows predictive “bets” on realworld events. Specifically, Intrade’s prediction results were diverging from other predictive models, specifically those of fivethirtyeight.com. More research dug up the interesting fact that Intrade doesn’t agree with other predictive markets either. [...]

…because something tells me this race is going to be a rollercoaster for the next few weeks.
Screenshot below from the excellent Election ‘08 iPhone App, from Pollster.com and Slate. For a more nuanced view, look to the fine folks at Electoral-Vote.com, which shows Obama’s lead 338 to 185 electoral votes, with 15 ties. This high [...]

American representative democracy is based on some non-intuitive principles–that we the people should care enough about how we are governed that we develop an informed opinion on it, that power is best when dispersed and checked–and on some non-obvious assumptions. The one assumption that is absolutely key is that the people will have access to [...]

Though the AP has called the Democratic nomination for Barack Obama based on its own private delegate counts, I think it’s too early–or maybe too late–to celebrate. Cause the weirdness is just beginning.
Aside: An email list I’m on recently sent out an article advising blog authors to focus on one thing only, and I’m about [...]