It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.

These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread.

Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times.



Wednesday, October 15, 2003
 

Following the Candidates Down Different Tracks

If you read the newspaper or watch television news, you're regularly inundated with the latest polling data for the Democratic presidential contenders (if you're a real junkie, you can even compare results over time here. And every three months, there's a splash of news coverage regarding the fundraising exploits of the candidates.

But isn't there more than polling data and money to running a successful political campaign? I think so. Voluminous media coverage helps get a name onto people's lips. Visits to a candidate's web site both indicate and generate interest in that candidate. Grassroots organizing can spread good feelings about a candidate without the spending of cold hard cash. And bumper stickers that people put on their cars for a candidate not only spread positive word in a very public way but also reflect a great deal of enthusiasm for that candidate, the kind of support that goes beyond checking a box on a survey form.

On our new Irregular Tracking page, we follow and graph these four less-tracked items on one page so that you can get a bigger feel for how each of the candidates is doing on different levels. Check it out for an alternative view of the donkey horserace.



Posted by James Cook at 9:37 AM. # (permalink)



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