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Archive: memes

A bit of fun with US politics

24 November 2007 15:44

Categories: Current affairs, General, Internet, Personal, Politics, Technology

I came across another of those political quizzes. This one matches you up with the US Presidential candidates. It’s quite smart.

You can choose which topics you’re interested in by distributing 20 points among 14 categories. I gave one point to each category then bumped up a few areas where I feel strongest. It then gives you a set of questions based on those topics.

Once you’ve answered them, it ranks the Presidential candidates in order of similarity. You can go right into each question and see how each of the candidates would answer each question, with all kinds of quotes, voting records and suchlike to back it up.

Of course, it’s not very fair for me to be waxing lyrical about American politics. I have never set foot in the country, and chances are I could have different views on American political issues if I actually lived there. A lot of these are very US-centric questions rather than the big ideological picture.

Still, it is interesting to learn a bit more about the candidates. The names we all see are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani. Sometimes John McCain. It’s not often you hear of any of the others. But it’s important to learn about them.

I remember at around this stage of the last US Presidential election we were discussing the Democratic candidates in our modern studies class. Trying to work out which of the candidates were the most important, our teacher immediately scored off John Kerry because he was a no-hoper! (In retrospect, she was actually probably right.)

Anyway, the quiz. The candidate who comes out as most similar to me is someone I’ve never heard of before — Mike Gravel. We are 81% similar, with very similar views on drugs, civil liberties, gay rights, crime and punishment, abortion, environment and immigration. But we have dissimilar views on social security and economics.

Second is someone else I’ve never heard of — Christopher Dodd, with 75%. We are different on social security and very different on economics. Dennis Kucinich also has 75%, but we disagree on taxes and budget, social security and economics.

Of the big guns, Barack Obama is fourth with 74% (different on taxes and budget, social security and very different on crime and punishment (Obama supports the death penalty)). Hillary Clinton is 66% similar (different views on taxes and budget, drugs, social security and very different on crime and punishment).

All of the Democratic candidates score more highly than the Republican candidates. The top Republican candidate for me is Ron Paul — 9th with 61%. We have very similar views on drugs, civil liberties and crime and punishment, but very different views on immigration, health care and abortion.

Rudy Giuliani only comes out 13th with 47%. We have very similar views on environment and gun control, but very different views on gay rights, Iraq and foreign policy, health care, civil liberties, drugs and crime and punishment.

My least similar is my namesake, Duncan Hunter. We are only 30% similar, with similar views on social security (and even that is only because neither of us has an opinion on it).

Via Blah Blah Flowers.

8 comments

That spinning woman again

28 October 2007 16:28

Categories: Current affairs, Economics, Internet, Technology

A few weeks ago I blogged about a test that purported to tell you whether you are “right brained” or “left brained”. I have just spotted an update to this on the excellent Freakonomics blog. The smart thing is that they’ve actually done a rough and ready study of the results.

In my original post I said that I had the feeling that the author of the article got confused between the clockwise and anti-clockwise traits. Steven Levitt says he thinks so too.

Seemingly the test was, indeed, a load of bunk.

Comments closed

Eight random facts (a meme)

5 July 2007 20:49

Categories: Blogging, General, Personal, Technology

Oh bum. I’ve been tagged.

I now have to post “eight random facts/habits” about myself.

  1. I find having a conversation a stressful chore but I quite like talking to a large group of people
  2. Despite the fact that I love Formula 1, I have next to no interest in cars or driving
  3. I have a fear of answering the phone
  4. I have difficulty waking up. I also have difficulty falling asleep. This means that, if I have nothing to do, I end up waking up later and later every day. I have been known to go all the way around the clock.
  5. I do not have any ambitions
  6. I much prefer spending an evening in by myself rather than going out with a large group of friends
  7. I recently discovered that I am probably intolerant to cow’s milk
  8. I currently have a problem with my jaw which means that I can’t open my mouth wide. This makes eating difficult

I won’t tag anyone — unless someone wants to take it for themselves.

Proper blogging will return soon.

2 comments

Im in ur memes dissin ur lolcats

17 May 2007 14:06

Categories: Entertainment, Humour, Internet, Technology

I know I’m not the only one who thinks this now.

Lolcats. At first, funny. Yes?

Now, about as funny as having your nuts put on a skewer.

Part of this is just frustration with the fact that Twitter is down quite a lot at the moment, but that bloody error page, with a cutesy cat with a screwdriver and “lol im fixin ur Twitt3rs”, it’s just bloody annoying now.

I would join Sarah’s support group.

3 comments

It was war. It is war

20 March 2007 18:21

Categories: Admin, Blogging, Current affairs, General, Internet, Personal, Politics, Technology

Hello there. I’m still really busy at the moment. It’s the last week of teaching at university, and with that comes a deluge of coursework hand-ins. Still, they are all quite interesting so it doesn’t feel too much like hard work, so it is consuming a lot of my time. Typical that this would be the week when I was asked to go into work almost every day.

My point is that, while I normally like to just pop out blog posts as and when, this week’s posts have been pre-recorded, though no more polished than usual unfortunately. I knew that this week would be busy, so I prepared some delightful posts that aren’t about what’s happening right now.

I hope it doesn’t make you feel empty to realise that I wrote that post about Twitter before I liveblogged the grand prix. Nor celebrated the second birthday of my iRiver (and the 21st birthday of me) several days before the actual event. Look out tomorrow for a post with a witty pun on ‘RSS’ which was written a week ago.

But it turns out that, slap bang in the middle of the busiest week I’ve had since the third week of January (okay, so that’s not too impressive…), here I am wasting my time writing blog posts. That is because it is my birthday, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be spending all of it writing about fiscal autonomy.

I have also been tagged with a meme about the Iraq war. For some reason, people seem to think that the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war is more important than the second anniversary of me owning an iRiver. I don’t understand that mentality myself, but I will play along nevertheless.

I was tagged by Clive from The UK Today and the meme was started by Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads.

What did you post on 20 March, 2003?
(or as close to this date as possible)

I didn’t actually post on my blog on 20 March, 2003. This possibly indicates that I am a sadder 21 year old than I was a 17 year old. But I did write a post on the 19th. And another on the 23rd.

I would like to remind you at this point that in these posts I was 16 or 17, and that back then I was even more of a dick than I am now. I wouldn’t recommend anybody to visit my old blog because it really is quite bad. I never look at it myself because I’d rather not be reminded of it. It was from before I learned how to embellish my personal life to make it sound interesting.

I don’t even think I read other people’s blogs back then, so it truly is self-indulgent stuff. So there you have a post about some CDs I got in the post (yawn, mind you it contains an interesting reference to Chris Clark) and another one that actually seems to be about nothing.

As I’ve grown up while being a blogger I’ve been very aware of how much I have changed and… well, grown up. When you’re 16 or 17 you think you’re really smart, but actually you’re not. Of course, now that I’m 21 I am obviously a genius. (When I’m 25 I’ll be bemoaning the quality of this post.)

Seriously though, I always wonder if I will one day seriously regret blogging (and therefore having quite an in-depth record of my life and opinions up on the interwebs for all to see) from such an early age. I mean, somebody can see something I wrote a few years ago and take that as my opinion even though it is a few years old. They might not realise that I was a teenager with ridiculous hair when I wrote that stuff. A few years when you’re in your teens is different to a few years when you’re an adult.

Anyway, back to the matter in hand. Here is a post that I wrote on the 17th of March 2003 which was actually about the then imminent war in Iraq. I actually remember deciding specifically not to blog about Iraq on the day itself. I felt all warred out, which is pretty much how I’ve felt ever since then.

Duncan Stephen: 17th March 2003 (posting as doctorvee)

I’ve not actually re-read that post, because I’m scared of what it contains. So, er, sorry if it’s really bad, which it probably is.

Now I have to tag five people. Tough. We are talking about four years back here, so I have to think of people who might have had something to say on the internet back then, which I don’t think is so easy. Anyway, here is my best shot.

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