And I went through and tagged all of them.
(Minus one about jellyfish that Blogger has, for some reason, decided shall never be updated, edited, deleted, or otherwise amended.)
Remember when Eliot posted this? Ohohohohoho! The foolishness! While Eliot was contemplating who had got to 100 first, I was sitting comfortably at 107.
"While it is unknown as to whether Nick or I have accumulated more blog posts over CB's existence (it's certainly turned into a two-man game of late), let's just pretend that I own the lion's share." - Eliot Sill
Ha! Man, I am so hard working.
You might think that just because I've missed a few posts, I'm out of the game. Don't count on it, bitches. Daddy's home.
-Nick.
Showing posts with label i am proud to be Nick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label i am proud to be Nick. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
In Which Nick Talks About Politics
Fair warning: what is about to follow is little more than an unsubstantiated and undirected discourse, fueled by unabashed partisanship and proliferous naivety.
We won.
But hold on, I'm not talking about the presidency. The victories I'm talking about are in the margins; behind the scenes, where they can easily be missed. The election is a giant box of circuitry, a complex interactions of millions of parts, which at the end of the first Tuesday in November every four years outputs a "0" or a "1". A "D" or an "R". But I'm more interested in what's going on inside.
The first game changer that this election brought about was Nate Silver. For those who don't know, Nate Silver is a statistician, New York Times columnist, and speculatively a witch who has been forecasting elections with frightening accuracy. But despite the jokes about sorcery, what Nate Silver is doing is actually removing the smoke and mirrors from politics. In predicting the election almost perfectly, he dispelled the myth that elections are governed by some indefinable "will of the people" or the mysterious power of "momentum." Elections all boil down to numbers that we can study and understand. I'm hoping that (and here's where the naivety comes in) we are going to see this sports-style punditry fall away, and replace it with a new kind of political commentary. One that focuses on facts.
The second thing is diversity. We are finally, finally, in the year 2012, starting to see the house and the senate get just a teensy bit more diverse. Wisconsin elected the nation's first openly gay senator. Hawaii brought in the nation's first Asian American woman. On top of that, this senate session will have a record number (20) of women serving.
And then the last thing, and this is really where the naivety comes in, is a demographic shift the nature of which has never been seen before. Mitt Romney won seniors. All of them, everywhere. And whites. And men. But we're finally getting to the point where the woman vote is just as important as the man vote; where the black vote is just as important as the white vote; and where the young vote will be the deciding factor of the future of our country.
In Colorado, they voted to legalize marijuana. Seniors opposed the measure by a 2-to-1 margin, but it still passed. The same happened in Washington. Maine and Maryland voted to legalize gay marriage. And many of these measures had been attempted before in these same states. The fact of the matter is that the median voter is not the same person that he or she was 10 or even 4 years ago. The millenium generation has arrived, and they are socially liberal. If I'm right about this, then this trend (despite fluctuations) will continue to develop for the rest of our lifetimes.
Maybe I'm still just high on the knowledge that my candidate won; but I'm excited about the future.
-Nick.
We won.
But hold on, I'm not talking about the presidency. The victories I'm talking about are in the margins; behind the scenes, where they can easily be missed. The election is a giant box of circuitry, a complex interactions of millions of parts, which at the end of the first Tuesday in November every four years outputs a "0" or a "1". A "D" or an "R". But I'm more interested in what's going on inside.
The first game changer that this election brought about was Nate Silver. For those who don't know, Nate Silver is a statistician, New York Times columnist, and speculatively a witch who has been forecasting elections with frightening accuracy. But despite the jokes about sorcery, what Nate Silver is doing is actually removing the smoke and mirrors from politics. In predicting the election almost perfectly, he dispelled the myth that elections are governed by some indefinable "will of the people" or the mysterious power of "momentum." Elections all boil down to numbers that we can study and understand. I'm hoping that (and here's where the naivety comes in) we are going to see this sports-style punditry fall away, and replace it with a new kind of political commentary. One that focuses on facts.
The second thing is diversity. We are finally, finally, in the year 2012, starting to see the house and the senate get just a teensy bit more diverse. Wisconsin elected the nation's first openly gay senator. Hawaii brought in the nation's first Asian American woman. On top of that, this senate session will have a record number (20) of women serving.
And then the last thing, and this is really where the naivety comes in, is a demographic shift the nature of which has never been seen before. Mitt Romney won seniors. All of them, everywhere. And whites. And men. But we're finally getting to the point where the woman vote is just as important as the man vote; where the black vote is just as important as the white vote; and where the young vote will be the deciding factor of the future of our country.
In Colorado, they voted to legalize marijuana. Seniors opposed the measure by a 2-to-1 margin, but it still passed. The same happened in Washington. Maine and Maryland voted to legalize gay marriage. And many of these measures had been attempted before in these same states. The fact of the matter is that the median voter is not the same person that he or she was 10 or even 4 years ago. The millenium generation has arrived, and they are socially liberal. If I'm right about this, then this trend (despite fluctuations) will continue to develop for the rest of our lifetimes.
Maybe I'm still just high on the knowledge that my candidate won; but I'm excited about the future.
-Nick.
Monday, March 12, 2012
Nick - Law In Limerick
I had an ungraded test in my Law And Representation course the other day. Because it was ungraded, you had to stay for a full hour to get attendance points so that people wouldn't just blow it off.
I finished in 30 minutes, and spent the rest of the time turning all my answers into limericks.
Section 1: Prevents the hiring of Arabic police and private security contractors.
The scrutiny applied here is strict
The measure will surely be kicked
It's fueled by hate
You can't discriminate
Just because the applicant's Arabic
Section 2: Gives preferential hiring to veterans when two applicants are equally qualified.
A veteran classification
Not protected from discrimination
The relationship's rational
So I guess that it's passable
Despite being poor legislation
Section 3: Discourages hiring of non-native English speakers in public service jobs.
The scrutiny test that they choose
Will decide if this should win or lose
Disproportionate, surely
But not racist overtly
I don't know what I'd do in their shoes
None of you understand law enough to get any of this. Get the fuck out.
-Nick.
I finished in 30 minutes, and spent the rest of the time turning all my answers into limericks.
Section 1: Prevents the hiring of Arabic police and private security contractors.
The scrutiny applied here is strict
The measure will surely be kicked
It's fueled by hate
You can't discriminate
Just because the applicant's Arabic
Section 2: Gives preferential hiring to veterans when two applicants are equally qualified.
A veteran classification
Not protected from discrimination
The relationship's rational
So I guess that it's passable
Despite being poor legislation
Section 3: Discourages hiring of non-native English speakers in public service jobs.
The scrutiny test that they choose
Will decide if this should win or lose
Disproportionate, surely
But not racist overtly
I don't know what I'd do in their shoes
None of you understand law enough to get any of this. Get the fuck out.
-Nick.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Nick - Resting On My Laurels
"Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous."
-Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
It's somewhat ironic that Shakespeare would have Caesar warn against content men, considering he's the first person that comes to mind when I think of the phrase "resting on one's laurels."
A few people have been calling me "New Nick" this week because I changed my hair / glasses / attitude. Which is funny and clever; and let's be honest, I love attention. But pretty soon this joke will die like every running joke dies, and all the better.
I change up when I start to get too comfortable. Too bored, even. Like when I cut my long hair, or that other time. Because if I've gone long enough without learning something new, without changing up, then I'm doing something wrong. Resting on my laurels is bad for me.
One time I told somebody that everything ends, and they got really upset; I'd like to amend that statement. Everything changes.
One of the best compliments I ever received was from Friday Conor, who told me, "you do what you do, and you stick to it."
There's an apparent contradiction here, but really it makes perfect sense. Living in the moment and doing what you do is all you are; what you've done in the past, and what you say you're going to do in the future are things that people see about you, but they don't make you who you are. They're just words and memories.
I like learning and trying and changing; that's who I am.
"It don't matter that some fool say he different, 'cause the things that make you different is what you really do, what you really go through." - D'Angelo Barksdale, The Wire
-Nick.
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous."
-Shakespeare's Julius Caesar
It's somewhat ironic that Shakespeare would have Caesar warn against content men, considering he's the first person that comes to mind when I think of the phrase "resting on one's laurels."
A few people have been calling me "New Nick" this week because I changed my hair / glasses / attitude. Which is funny and clever; and let's be honest, I love attention. But pretty soon this joke will die like every running joke dies, and all the better.
I change up when I start to get too comfortable. Too bored, even. Like when I cut my long hair, or that other time. Because if I've gone long enough without learning something new, without changing up, then I'm doing something wrong. Resting on my laurels is bad for me.
One time I told somebody that everything ends, and they got really upset; I'd like to amend that statement. Everything changes.
One of the best compliments I ever received was from Friday Conor, who told me, "you do what you do, and you stick to it."
There's an apparent contradiction here, but really it makes perfect sense. Living in the moment and doing what you do is all you are; what you've done in the past, and what you say you're going to do in the future are things that people see about you, but they don't make you who you are. They're just words and memories.
I like learning and trying and changing; that's who I am.
"It don't matter that some fool say he different, 'cause the things that make you different is what you really do, what you really go through." - D'Angelo Barksdale, The Wire
-Nick.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Robert - The Center
Poor people are pathetic, and rich people are shitheads, but there's really nothing wrong with middle class people, so I guess that's why everyone refers to themselves as middle class. It's a way of middling out. A way to keep from stepping on anyone else.
Of course, if you're so careful not to step on anyone else, you're not even going to end up making a footprint. Maybe a light toeprint, if you look hard enough, the spot where you danced around people's opinions too carefully. We're okay with that. We're okay with shirking the limelight, the thing that makes us noticeable and criticizable and murderable. We're okay with not being looked at. And that's a funny thing, I think. A funny thing that we're alright with that, with locking ourselves into middling positions and carrying on with our heads down.
We're afraid of being too stupid. Stupid people are ignorant. We're afraid of being too intelligent, too refined. Intelligent people are elitists. No, but you, you are just right. You are perfect right there, and don't move. Don't move an inch. We're afraid of our arrogance. Arrogance is too blunt, too forward, too abrupt. Too striking to others. We're afraid of reproach, to have to defend the roots of our arrogance to the other people who are also afraid of our arrogance. We're afraid of our arrogance and also of our modesty. We're afraid of the weakness of humility, the timidity and the smallness, because smallness does stand out in a crowd, despite what you think. Arrogance and timidity, they are both destructive things, and we try to avoid them both at least a little.
We're afraid of our own political left and the political right, because they are radical and crazy. The center is where our rationale is. That is the safe place where we can't be attacked. And then someone shows us the global scale, that our political left is the world's political center. And that might change things for us, but probably not, because the world is not our neighbors and our neighbors are who can attack us.
Our neighbors are who we have to defend against. They are constantly at the ready to attack, with their antagonizing looks and their loud silences with hasty conclusions in their brains. Mostly, we're probably defending against ourselves. Being afraid of not being rich, not being intelligent, not having other things too, is a powerful fear. It's a lucky thing that we have a middle ground, a place where we can keep from stepping on other people, and from being considered at all. Our neighbors can't attack us if we say we're middle class, firmly agnostic, politically independent. You can't attack what you cannot see.
Of course, if you're so careful not to step on anyone else, you're not even going to end up making a footprint. Maybe a light toeprint, if you look hard enough, the spot where you danced around people's opinions too carefully. We're okay with that. We're okay with shirking the limelight, the thing that makes us noticeable and criticizable and murderable. We're okay with not being looked at. And that's a funny thing, I think. A funny thing that we're alright with that, with locking ourselves into middling positions and carrying on with our heads down.
We're afraid of being too stupid. Stupid people are ignorant. We're afraid of being too intelligent, too refined. Intelligent people are elitists. No, but you, you are just right. You are perfect right there, and don't move. Don't move an inch. We're afraid of our arrogance. Arrogance is too blunt, too forward, too abrupt. Too striking to others. We're afraid of reproach, to have to defend the roots of our arrogance to the other people who are also afraid of our arrogance. We're afraid of our arrogance and also of our modesty. We're afraid of the weakness of humility, the timidity and the smallness, because smallness does stand out in a crowd, despite what you think. Arrogance and timidity, they are both destructive things, and we try to avoid them both at least a little.
We're afraid of our own political left and the political right, because they are radical and crazy. The center is where our rationale is. That is the safe place where we can't be attacked. And then someone shows us the global scale, that our political left is the world's political center. And that might change things for us, but probably not, because the world is not our neighbors and our neighbors are who can attack us.
Our neighbors are who we have to defend against. They are constantly at the ready to attack, with their antagonizing looks and their loud silences with hasty conclusions in their brains. Mostly, we're probably defending against ourselves. Being afraid of not being rich, not being intelligent, not having other things too, is a powerful fear. It's a lucky thing that we have a middle ground, a place where we can keep from stepping on other people, and from being considered at all. Our neighbors can't attack us if we say we're middle class, firmly agnostic, politically independent. You can't attack what you cannot see.
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