Votes and the counting thereof

A couple of people posted links to the remarkable anti-Diebold campaign posters. Go read them, if you haven't.

The first one has a quote which I have on a t-shirt in a different form--my shirt says, "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." and attributes it to Stalin. The poster gives it as "It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes." and notes that it's apocryphal, which I'm sorry to discover, since it was such a wonderful pairing of sentiment and source.

There's a good discussion of the quote on About.com which notes a good possible source:

"It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting." --Tom Stoppard, Jumpers, 1972.

Some comments I wrote in other peoples' LJs

In response to a post from nancylebov about whether Dumbledore is doing a good job running Hogwarts:

In the cases of both Hagrid and Trelawney (the divination teacher), Dumbledore has kept people on staff to whom he feels an obligation. In Trelawney's case, though, I'm not sure that anyone else would do much better than she does; the evidence within the novels (mostly, admittedly, from Hermione's trash-talking about it) is that divination is the least reliable part of magic and that when true fortellings happen, they do so completely at random. I think it's amusing to see a bunch of wizards tying their brains around superstitions....

As to the question of Dumbledore's competence: In the fifth novel, we finally get to see him in action as a wizard, and it's clear that he is, indeed, the most powerful wizard of his age, or very close to it. He's also deeply wise. But that doesn't mean that he's always on top of things, because his opponents are numerous, skilled, and well-coordinated, and Dumbledore's potential allies often don't believe there's a threat. He mis-handled things badly in the fifth novel by foolishly trying to protect Harry from The Big Picture, and he doesn't follow through with Harry's private lessons with Snape; both of these have terrible results.

On the specific question of Buckbeak, Hagrid's job requires teaching students about dangerous creatures. He well understood how to handle a hippogriff and correctly told the students what to do to keep themselves safe. Malfoy had to disobey his teacher and disregard his lessons to get injured, in a situation in which he had been warned there was a serious danger. While this wouldn't be allowed in a modern American school, what the third-year students are learning at Hogwarts is by its nature more dangerous than what a typical 13-year-old in the real world would be learning. Malfoy should have understood by that point in his education that when a teacher says that something is dangerous, that teacher should be believed.

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In response to a post by redbird in which she notes that she had occasion recently to cross between subway cars while the train was moving, I decided to record one of the odd bits of my life habits:

I pass between cars frequently.

To get home from midtown, usually take a northbound 4 train, getting on at Grand Central or Union Square. If it's anywhere near rush hour, the train is crowded, but less crowded at the far ends than at the middle. For some reason, more people sit in the northernmost car than the southernmost, so I usually head for the southern end of the train. However, once I get to Woodlawn, I want to be at the northern end of the train, because that's where the only exit from the station is located. So I often walk the length of the train somewhere between Burnside and Woodlawn.

I don't do it as much as I used to, because the new model of train cars actually make it harder to open the doors from outside the car--it takes both hands, which is really stupid. (It only takes one hand to open them from inside.) So these days I mostly just sit in the back of the train and walk the length of the platform at the end of the line instead.

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jimhenley posted a very funny restaurant review of KFC's new Roasted Chicken Dinner. He really goes to town on the green beans.

According to chemical analysis performed by William Poundstone (described in one of the Big Secrets books), the "eleven herbs and spices" in the KFC breading are salt, black pepper, flour, and MSG. Period.

Do they force you to take beans and rice with the roasted chicken? The potato wedges would be my first choice for a starch side at KFC, and my memory is that both the slaw and the greens are pretty decent as a vegetable. Of course, I get a full day's regimen of vitamins in pill form here in the amazing future world of the 21st Century, so I don't actually *need* to eat such low-tech "food" except for the fiber. But still I like the taste of green veggies.

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On a post by redbird about the National Day of Mourning for, as she put it, "the man who invented the Taliban" (a somewhat inaccurate but still important characterization):

It was widely reported that this was the first presidential Day of Mourning since LBJ's death in 1973, but that turns out to be false. According to a couple of pieces online, including one at Google Answers, there was a National Day of Mourning for Nixon in 1994. The practice began with Kennedy, and there has been a National Day of Mourning for every president who has died since 1963. However, I don't know if the stock markets closed for any previous president.

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Incidentally, the B component of the minihaha collective posted an awe-inspiring review of Eigensinn Farm, a restaurant run out of a farmhouse two hours north of Toronto. B's reviews are generally extremely good--the Minicon 34 Restaurant Guide, which B wrote with K, the other component of the minihaha collective, was nominated for a Hugo for Best Related Book--but this one was particularly good. Unfortunately, it's currently friends-locked, so you can only read it if you're on minihaha's LJ Friends list. Let's hope they decide to unlock it; this is a review which needs to be read more widely, especially by someone like docbrite, who also does great writing about food.

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That's enough for now.