Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Random!

In my US Government class, we have weekly quizzes. On Fridays. This week, we have the option of writing a paper that assess two of the presidential election candidates (Obama/McCain or Barr/Nader) on their personal qualities and their views on issues, and then we also talk about what our political party identification is.

Since a lot of people think they're one party or the other but their views match something else, we're supposed to do a short exercise online which tells us what party we actually match up with based on our opinions of 30? things. And then the results are pretty specific, too--there are Republicans who are "Enterprisers", there are "Social Conservatives", and "Pro-Government Conservatives." Or, there are "Liberals", "Disadvantaged Democrats", and "Conservative Democrats". Plus there are "Upbeats" and "Disaffecteds" and "Bystanders." Huh. Interesting.

It takes like, a minute to complete. If you want to do it, you can here:
http://typology.people-press.org/typology/

And you don't have to enter your email address or anything.

But anyway, what I really wanted to post about is:
I'm doing the essay instead of a quiz this Friday (since I'm going to be in Boston and would miss the quiz). An issue that I'm saying is important to me is "he/she would be a good commander-in-chief" and I'm looking for evidence that one of the candidates is not qualified.

I'm looking at congressional voting records.

AND, turns out, you can sort voting records by astrological sign. On the Washington Post website. For example, you can see here that on a vote confirming John G. Roberts, Jr., of Maryland, to be Chief Justice of the United States, all 5 Aries voted Yes, and so did all 4 Geminis. Or in the same vote, you can also sort to see the results divided by gender, Baby Boomer/ Pre-Boomer status, and when the voter is up for re-election. (Also, you can sort by the party, state, and region. But I expected those.)

Random! I wonder if they put that in there just for fun, or if there are people who take that stuff seriously.

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