Whoa, interesting night last night.
For
Introduction to Research 110 we were required to give five minute surveys (for
election) to ten different people over the
phone (random phone numbers). Some interesting points I had:
-First call recently got
DSL, said it's great once you got it, but terrible to install. That's what I've heard.
-My second call was to a 85 year old lady. When I asked who she voted for in the
'96 election she responded "Hmm, I can't remember... it was whoever was the
Democrat candidate." This was so funny yet so sad to me at the same time. *Sigh*
-Third caller: when asked who he voted for in the '96 election he replied "I just remember not voting
Clinton. Ya, whoever was running against Clinton..." <more ranting about Clinton being evil>
-One girl answered the phone obviously excited/giddy and out of breath, while going through my rountine, "Hi, I'm a student at
George Mason University and ..." all I could think about was "what was she just now doing????" at the time only one thing could pop into my head,
sex, but now I'm fairly certain she found out she's
pregnant or
getting married or something. She also hung up on me, if anyone wants to say "hi" to her, her number is (
US) 703-352-- heh, I wouldn't do that.
-Out of ten people, only one really thought about the questions. Most were simply like "whoever the
Republican guy is" or "I'm Democrat, always been one... choose that"
-Seven votes for
Bush.
-Three votes for
Gore.
-No votes for anyone else.
-I think this poll was really off though for a) it's only 10 people, b) they all live in a fifty mile radius, and c) they live in a
conservative majority area.
This brings me to breakfast I had today. Chris made a comment "both candidates are idiots" and I had heard it so many times from so many people that I just had to say "Well c'mon, they're not idiots. They obviously have to be pretty smart to get to where they are now,
Governor and
Vice President."
"No, they are idoits."
"What makes you think that then?"
"Because they are."
This election has been really horrible. Maybe it's because it's the first one I've really started to pay attention to since I'm voting in it. But everyone single fucking person I know immediately writes off both Bush and Gore because... arg, they don't even give a rational answer. It's all "they do whatever the party tells them to" or "they're an idot". Not "they were a major backer for this
bill- which I disagree with" or some actual facts.
Nothing really interesting happened today other than the above. I mostly played
Command and Conqueor: Red Alert 2 and some noding work. I'm working on three big projects for
E2. For one I'm monitoring the reputation of some nodes to see if there's biased torwards certain users on E2. It's pretty surprising how badly (and hard) people
vote down. I'm really expecting to hit the upper -30's or -50's when I write it up. We need a "
Lowest in Cool News" section. Another I'm doing
actual research to counter someone's non-researched argument. It's extremely annoying to spend hours looking up stuff whereas they just wrote it off the top of their head. I only wish I had the kind of (or lack of)
ethic to just make arguments without checking my sources.
Sigh