First in the hearts of his countrymen

Clever researchers reveal that the ordering of names on a ballot gives the first candidate a significant advantage of between 2 and 9%, nicely quantizing the degree to which the democratic process is influenced by complete cretins. I don't quite understand how (or why) these people manage to figure out where the voting booth is.

(via Billmon)

Dialectics of randomness

Starting the new year out on a random note:

Statistics of Aaarrgh! (and again, here)

Dialectics for kids! (or, Chairman Mao Meets the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People)

Dialectics of American Politics! (by the excellent Billmon)

Science fiction writers argue about solving the socialist calculation problem! (with bonus Eric Raymond reference)

IKEA socialism.

Speaking of dialectics, if the semantic web is the thesis, folksonomy is the antithesis, what is the synthesis? Some efforts to answer this one. Warning: last link contains ugly word mashup folktologies, yech.

Tribalism

Other people are picking up on the story about tribes, notably Billmon, who deftly weaves in the puerile commentary of David Brooks and the cheerful elitists of New Orleans, who say

"Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way, demographically, geographically and politically." (emphasis added.)

Yeah. A little ethnic cleansing and Disneyfication would do wonders. Read Billmon.