Having trouble figuring out which U.S. presidential candidate to root for? The USA Today "candidate match game" is an interesting way to resolve your candidate conundrum. Through a series of 11 questions, the game shows you the top three candidates for the next presidential election that best match your ideas and values. As you answer each question, colored bars change size to show which candidates match your position on key issues ranging from health care to the environment to the war in Iraq. At the end of the 11-question series, you're given the opportunity to weigh each category on how important it is to you compared to the others. This might be the most interesting part: adding substantial weight to certain categories significantly changed some of my top contenders.
Unfortunately, none of the top three the game referred me to are even remotely considered true contenders in this tight race. Does this mean I'm vastly different from the average American voter/"caucus-goer"? Or does it mean that taking online polls isn't a great way to find answers to extremely important dilemmas?Having trouble figuring out which U.S. presidential candidate to root for? The USA Today "candidate match game" is an interesting way to resolve your candidate conundrum. Through a series of 11 questions, the game shows you the top three candidates for the next presidential election that best match your ideas and values. As you answer each question, colored bars change size to show which candidates match your position on key issues ranging from health care to the environment to the war in Iraq. At the end of the 11-question series, you're given the opportunity to weigh each category on how important it is to you compared to the others. This might be the most interesting part: adding substantial weight to certain categories significantly changed some of my top contenders.
Unfortunately, none of the top three the game referred me to are even remotely considered true contenders in this tight race. Does this mean I'm vastly different from the average American voter/"caucus-goer"? Or does it mean that taking online polls isn't a great way to find answers to extremely important dilemmas?This CNN article is about my generation's increased expectations from our employers. Apparently, we want more money, more vacation time, and better benefits than past generations. Who wouldn't want those things?
My opinion is that the young people of my generation (why's it called "Gen Y," anyway?!? How about "Gen Thundercats"?) were raised with certain expectations, and we're just following through on what was reinforced throughout our lives: in the US-of-A, a good education and hard work will land you a dream job, good pay, and good benefits for life. Unfortunately, even as corporate profits rise and the rich get richer, the economy's taken some severe hits (recession, anyone?) that are affecting my generation's ability to secure the jobs we once thought were ours for the taking. And with rising oil prices and the coming of peak oil sure to drastically affect the economy, the term "job security" might be going the way of Arctic Ice.
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For anyone that doesn't believe killing whales is cruel and that the Japanese have a cultural right to do so, Tony Long at Wired has a good editorial you should check out. The barbaric practice is far from being relevant today, and Long makes some good points. An exerpt:
"This isn't about culture. Like almost everything else in the world that stains the human spirit, this is about greed.
Whaling, as practiced by the nation-states, has always been a purely commercial venture. In the Age of Sail the industry grew out of economic necessity. When a whale was killed all of it was used -- as food, as lamp oil, as lubricant. Whalebone was used to make corset stays and scrimshaw. Blubber was used to make soap and cosmetics. A single whale -- remember, we're talking about the largest animal on earth -- could produce a lot of stuff and that meant a lot of money.
It had to be lucrative. There was no other reason for men to willingly spend months at sea in miserable conditions and dreadful weather for the chance of catching a few whales. Of course, they hunted from open boats in those day, too, using standard harpoons, so the most advanced technology of the day wasn't really very advanced, limiting their catch and increasing their peril.
But that was then. Excepting a few indigenous settlements here and there, where local hunting using traditional methods is still practiced, whale meat is no longer a dietary staple, and whale oil hasn't fueled any lamps in well over a century. There is no byproduct taken from a whale that can't be made or obtained by other means.
In other words, any whale being killed in the open ocean today is being killed for absolutely no good reason at all. Whaling is an obsolete industry, serving no one, which only makes the cruelty of the killing that much more repulsive."