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Wednesday, February 18, 2004 |
 Stephen Dulaney announces that the SmartManila beta is up. It is a slick editing interface for Manila weblogs. This software makes it much easier to introduce nontechnical newbies in your organization to weblogging. No knowledge of tags necessary. Spell check. Undo. Forgiving editing interface (none of the browser problems you currently run into on all Web-based weblogging systems).
3:09:06 PM 
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Add this to the "grain of salt" category:
Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry looks set for another blowout win in Wisconsin, leading nearest rival Howard Dean by 24 points on the eve of the primary, according to a Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby poll released Monday.
Kerry, riding a wave of momentum that has carried him to 14 wins in the first 16 Democratic contests, most by huge margins, leads Dean 47 percent to 23 percent in the Wisconsin poll. North Carolina Sen. John Edwards is third with 20 percent.
"Kerry goes into the primary with a commanding lead," pollster John Zogby said, noting likely voters give the Massachusetts senator the highest favorable ratings and the best chance to defeat President Bush in November.
12:09:10 PM
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Zathras makes that case that Edwards is more electable than Kerry.
Edwards is now where McCain was in the GOP primaries four years ago: popular with the press, more appealing than the frontrunner to independents and members of the other party in states his own party's nominee is less likely to win in November, less popular than the frontrunner among members of his own party. If all Democrats were as likely to vote for Edwards as for Kerry this November, one could argue that Edwards would be more likely to beat Bush. But one could have said the same thing about McCain four years ago, and to Republicans it didn't matter.
Edwards is likely to make hay with an approach that emphasises a rethinking of the US approach free trade and globalization. It is an issue that resonates strongly with many voters -- those who are already hurt by its impact. Most of us are pobably in the concerned middle. We know something is going wrong in the job market, but we aren't sure where to assign blame yet. Hence, rethinking unrestricted trade and globalization makes sense. In regards to a potential backlash: How many people do you know that are willing to make unrestricted free trade one of their top issues in this election? Very, very few.
11:59:00 AM
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The Big Wombassa and hedonic impact bias. Daniel Gilbert thinks that humans have systemic psychological flaws that prevent us from predicting our future happiness with any accuracy. This applies to predicting election results:
We've seen the impact bias in just about every context we've studied. For example, we've studied numerous elections over the last few years, and voters invariably predict that if their candidate wins they're going to be happy for months, and if their candidate loses they'll be unhappy for months. In fact, their happiness is barely influenced by electoral outcomes. We see the same pattern when we look at the dissolution of romantic relationships.
and the perceived value of money:
...social relationships are a powerful predictor of happiness—much more so than money is. Happy people have extensive social networks and good relationships with the people in those networks. What's interesting to me is that while money is weakly and complexly correlated with happiness, and social relationships are strongly and simply correlated with happiness, most of us spend most of our time trying to be happy by pursuing wealth. Why?
Individuals and societies don't have the same fundamental need. Individuals want to be happy, and societies want individuals to consume. Most of us don't feel personally responsible for stoking our country's economic engine; we feel personally responsible for increasing our own well-being. These different goals present a real dilemma, and society cunningly solves it by teaching us that consumption will bring us happiness.
Of course, work does has some intrinsic value. It creates new social networks. It also, in many cases, provides people with a sense of value. Overweening consumption is the flaw.
10:07:34 AM
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© Copyright 2004 John Robb.
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