Short Enough?
KPalicz posts the top ten reasons to lower the voting age at Kuro5hin.#
- Youth suffer under a double standard of having adult responsibilities but not rights.
- Youth pay taxes, live under our laws, they should have the vote.
- Politicians will represent their interests if youth can vote.
- Youth have a unique perspective, they'll never have those experiences again. [This one is kind of weak.]
- 16 is a better age to introduce voting than 18; 16 year olds are stationary.
- Lowering the Voting Age will increase voter turnout.
- If we let stupid adults vote, why not let smart youth vote?
- Youth will vote well.
- There are no wrong votes.
- Lowering the voting age will provide an intrinsic benefit to the lives of youth.
An alternative would be to give anyone the option of not paying taxes or following laws if they choose to give up their right to vote.
Chip Gibbons reports that the death toll of Iraq is up to 646 U.S. personnel. Look at this photomosaic of their faces.#
Richard links to Laren who is single.#
I feel the same way. Now, I'm not going to go into any details about past relationships and all the different ways they have had an impact on me, etc. (okay, you can read a tiny bit here, but that's it), but I'm still fairly mystified by the whole "why are you still single" thing. Why do people ask this? And considering the umpteen years that I wasn't single, I definitely needed to be single in order to really get to know myself as a person -- I don't think it's possible to be in a truly healthy relationship without some quality time alone.
But now? The next time someone asks, "How is it that a girl like you is single?" My response will be, "Someone should take advantage of this good timing. I promise I won't be single forever."
I wonder if it is Kosher to hear something like this, or perhaps, "No one my age ever talks to me, I only get hit on by old guys!" And then say something to person afterwards. Is that consider cheating or cutting corners?
I'm not sure.
Richard Tallent links to The Brick Testament.#
Tyler Cowen proposes an interesting, and he says "crude," model of museums.#
Stop thinking of visitors as the museum's customers. Instead the customers are the donors. Donating a picture is like spending money. The donor gives a Picasso to MOMA, in return purchasing the feeling of "having given a Picasso to MOMA." This yields tax, networking, and other privileges in this life, as well as a long-term legacy. Museums, in turn, take some care to attract viewers, so that their real customers -- the donors -- have greater feelings of satisfaction about the whole enterprise.
In this "model," selling off artworks makes customers (donors) nervous. "How do I know they won't sell off my [sic] Picasso once I've died?" It is only a slight reassurance to respond: "We only sell off the second-rate pictures in our inventory." So museums sit on their huge and growing stashes of art. In this manner they signal their trustworthiness to future donors.
Philip Greenspun analyzes American foreign policy.#
1940s summary: We were at war with the German and Japanese governments and we killed many civilians who did not support those governments and with whom we had no quarrel.
What about today? I have not been following events in Iraq very closely but I seem to recall American officials saying that it is tough to prevail against our enemies there because we can't find them. They hide amongst the general population and only come out at night in small bands. Yet last week in Fallujah a huge group of people who apparently hate Americans and are prone to expressing that hatred violently exposed themselves in broad daylight, right in the open. What better opportunity for rolling out the helicopter gunships? Apparently the military commanders in Iraq did not think so because they didn't bother to attack any of the rioters.
Modern summary: We are at war with subsets of the civilian population in various countries around the world but we are only willing to attack governments. It is tough to see a path to victory via this strategy because we're actually at peace with the governments of France, Germany, et al., and in many cases close personal friends with the owners of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen, et al. We can only occasionally find a government or country owner that we don't like, e.g., the Taliban in Afghanistan or Saddam in Iraq. Our military is able to dispose of said government or dictator very quickly but with victory we become the new government in that corner of the world. And then we discover that it was not the former dictator trying to kill us but rather a subset of the civilians in that country.
Julie Leung writes about reasons why no one would want you.#
But when we started dating, I think we were each surprised. I think each of us had doubts and insecurities. We each wondered why the other would want us.
And we articulated these feelings. I remember sitting in my dorm room discussing these doubts the night we decided to start dating.
"It doesn't matter to you that I'm _______?"
We asked each other, filling in the blank with our various favorite fears. Well, I didn't ask him about my feet or my family. Those came later.
Rick Heller created a petition to ask Bush not accept his party's nomination.#
I'm a political Independent.
If the election were held today, I would vote for John Kerry.
If somehow John McCain was the Republican nominee, I would vote for McCain over Kerry.
Niall Ferguson talks about what's going on in Iraq. He thinks that Vietnam is a bad model.#
When I suggested that the problems of privatisation in Poland might not prove relevant on the banks of the Euphrates, she seemed surprised. And when I suggested that she and her colleagues ought at least to take a look at the last Anglophone occupation of Iraq, her surprise turned to incredulity. Not for the first time since crossing the Atlantic, I was confronted with the disturbing reality about the way Americans make policy. Theory looms surprisingly large. Neoconservative theory, for instance, stated that the Americans would be welcomed as liberators, just as economic theory put privatisation on my interlocutor's agenda. The lessons of history come a poor second, and only recent history - preferably recent American history - gets considered.