Atwater 1981

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry S. Dent, Sr. and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964 and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster.

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger” — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

i don’t think you’d like my fossil watch

I’m a world explorer. I scour the world, looking for the best web apps and native cultures. I came across a small Chilean settlement. They had developed the most amazing group scheduling application, to solve their jalapeno farming needs. They called it.. tusiyu.com

I wrote a crossword

No theme, although it might as well since I picked 4 long answers I liked in advance and wrote the puzzle around them. Didn’t focus on the clues, I did this moreso to experiment with how constrained xwords really are.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1705/cw.puz

John reads bash.org (so that you don’t have to)

(11:36:07 AM) John Hawksley: it’s unfortunate for you that you don’t understnd the post, but you deserve that fate
(11:37:44 AM) Boyuan Zhu: w/e
(11:37:46 AM) Boyuan Zhu: too hipster

xoebus: *sigh* One of my flatmates just asked “Where is Admiral Ackbar from?”, I replied “Mon Calamari”. He then said “No which series, Star Trek or Star Wars or something else; you fucking geek.”
xoebus: I feel loved.

In which John awaits the questions to which he has prepared answers.

This is John Hawksley talking. There will now be a slight pause while everyone says, “Who cares?“

It’s no use attempting any kind of originality, so I’ve stolen the opening line of Jack Benny‘s first radio broadcast in 1932. In principle one should address the italicized question, but it would be hard (and require some sort of averaging argument as the value of this blog is purely hypothetical). My rule is not to exert too much effort artificially, as it would set a quality threshold to which I have no desire to commit. I will therefore indicate only two small comments: (1) that “Who cares?” is not really a question for me, but rather something the audience itself should report, i.e. “Who among you is a member of the subset of people that care?“, and (2) that it’s still a difficult concern, as I’m not sure if I belong to the subset myself.

Here’s an ongoing list of celebrities I like who are invited to my upcoming secret conference:

• Jeff Probst
• Darren Brown
• Joe Biden
• Timothy Gowers
• Jeff Van Gundy
• Norm MacDonald

There’s explanation behind that (I like each for the identical reason), but for now let me mention that I’ve been highly inspired recently by Professor Gowers. I’ve been trying to follow his so-called polymath1 project, but lacking any relevant background I saw only a cursory view of the problem and how it was being approached. His beautiful rewording of the proof of the corners theorem snapped many understandings into place at once, and I credit that invigoration for the mathematical bent of this post.

I apologize in advance if I never blog again.