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The Fifty Percent Solution

Monday, November 13, 2000

  • TITLE: "The Fifty Percent Solution" Just over half the voting age population participated in the election last Tuesday. Half the county didn't.

  • "Recount Results �"Click here to see the latest recount news from around the country."

  • "�voting age population �" This, VAP, is the common denominator of turn out discussions. The percentage of registered voters who participated would, naturally, be higher, but with motor-voter and instant registration, it is almost impossible for someone who had any interest in participating to go unregistered and therefore unable to cast a ballot on election day.

  • "1,463 days�" Here was the calculation: Four years @ 365 days per year = 1,460 days. One day for leap year = 1,461 days. In 1996 election day was November 5, so two more days for a grand total of 1,463 days.

  • "�Count de Ballot" sounds like a character in a Mel Brooks movie." In Brooks' 1981 movie "History of the World, Part I, there was a character (played by Harvey Korman) whose name was "Count de Monet" which the Korman character pronounced, "Count Dee-Moh-NAY," but which the Mel Brooks King Louis character pronounced "Count da money."
    In this case, the character would be pronounced, "Count Dee-Bal-OH." It's not quite as amusing having had to explain it, it now occurs to me.



    Catchy Caption of the Day


    Tipper Gore (L.) with her puppet, Howdy (C.), and a cardboard picture of a smiling Al Gore (R.) practices waving and riding on an escalator at a Washington mall over the weekend.


  • "The fault, dear Brutus �" Act I, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar. The full speech by Cassius (speaking to Brutus about Caesar):
    
    CASSIUS	Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
    	Like a Colossus, and we petty men
    	Walk under his huge legs and peep about
    	To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
    	Men at some time are masters of their fates:
    	The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
    	But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
    	Brutus and Caesar: what should be in that 'Caesar'?
    	Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
    	Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
    	Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
    	Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with 'em,
    	Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar.
    	Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
    	Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
    	That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
    	Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
    	When went there by an age, since the great flood,
    	But it was famed with more than with one man?
    	When could they say till now, that talk'd of Rome,
    	That her wide walls encompass'd but one man?
    	Now is it Rome indeed and room enough,
    	When there is in it but one only man.
    	O, you and I have heard our fathers say,
    	There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd
    	The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
    	As easily as a king.
    
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