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Reach out and lie to someone
Excellent news: A U.S. appeal court ruled that “Nader Trading” is legal. As you may recall, the “Nader Trader” phenomenon erupted during the last election. There were people who wanted to voted for Nader, but were terrified that if they did so, Gore might lose to Bush in their state. So a few voter nerds created web sites — Voteswap2000.com, Voteswap2000.com, and Nadertrader.org — to do vote-swapping. If someone wanted to vote for Nader in state “A” where Gore was in danger, she’d use the site to locate a Gore supporter in “B”, a Gore-safe state. The Gore supporter in “B” would vote for Nader safely, in exchange for the voter in state “A” promising to vote for Gore. Presto: Gore gets elected, and Nader gets enough votes to turn the Greens into a funded federal party.
In theory. In reality, of course, Gore (and Clinton) botched the election so horribly that Gore lost his own damn state. And brain-dead liberals went on to blame Nader for Gore’s loss. He lost his own state, people! Anyway … the point is, California’s secretary of state claimed the trading sites were perverting democracy, and tried to get Voteexchange2000.com shut down. The ACLU fought back, the U.S. appeal court agreed: The sites can stay.
Which is as it ought to be. What was at stake here wasn’t just a quirky attempt to get Nader elected. It was a fascinating evolution of how voter coalitions emerge and self-organize. Vote-swapping is a glimpse at the weird new ways democracies will comport themselves in an age when everyday citizens can organize not just locally, but nationally. It was, in essence, a smart-mob phenomenon. “Smart mobs,” writes Howard Rheingold in his book that named the trend, “consist of people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know each other.” Precisely what vote-trading does, in a way that probably would have cracked up — and thrilled — the guys who wrote the constitution.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
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» visit the Collision Detection archives
September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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