Whoops, too late for that. Once Hussein became your Messiah as a dead republic and democracy decided it as your Rule of Law, whoever comes afterwards inherits the throne.

Nate Silver anybody? Bombshell accuracy right. Not a problem for me, since I don’t use polls. Oh, they’re useful as propaganda, yes, but not useful in the way most people here tried to use them as.

That’s a great story!
I muck around a bit with music, but I’m always amazed by people who are levels ahead of where I am (and there are many of them!). The amount of mental juggling that went on in that pianist’s head in that moment… Very cool!

In HS, our choir and theater department always did a “Broadway” show annually, and “How to Succeed” was one of our productions. I ended up as a tech that year, and eventually served as the page-turner for the “orchestra” – one pianist, a long-time buddy of our director, who taught at a state university. He was incredible in general, but the most amazing feat I witnessed was the night our J. Pierrepont began to go flat so badly on one song that the pianist stopped playing momentarily; I watched as his hands, poised above the ivories, mimed the key change needed, came down bang on the singer’s pitch, and played the rest of the piece in the new (unscored) key.

I think there’s an analogy to life and elections in there somewhere.

For me, Nick’s comment was both funny and timely. When I voted this afternoon, I was sorely tempted to write in my own name for president.

My reasoning was much the same as Nick’s. I come from a people who are pathologically modest, so you can believe me when I say that my ambition was out of character.

In fact, if not for the anonymity of blog comments, I couldn’t even confess my temptation.

It’s called society. Without telling others how to live (and binding yourself in the process) you have anarchy.

Simple. We believe that our lives are complex and unique, and that other people’s are simple and uniform. Partly that’s due to the fact that we’re aware of our own situation’s subtleties due to proximity. Partly we’re just that arrogant. Oh, and partly, other people’s problems are obvious to figure out because they’re boneheads just like we are and make obvious mistakes.