Double dip

Because what else am I going to do whilst home for the holiday (read Ada?), here's the interesting stuff I read in the September
13th and 20th issues of the New Yorker:

From the 13th, "Bushspeak" and "The Wilderness Campaign" are both interesting. If Al Gore really does launch into 10 minute digressions on the history of everything while carrying on a conversation with an interviewer, then yeah, maybe the media didn't make fun of him enough during the 2000 election. The Shouts & Murmurs was kind of funny, too.

From the 20th, the piece on personality tests didn't reveal anything unobvious; personality tests are good at judging certain broad characteristics, but not good at judging how people will actually behave under set circumstances. Jeffrey Toobin's Poll Position is about changes to the national policies protecting voting rights and sounds really important, but I kind of spaced out while reading a lot of it. You should probably read it, though. The profile of Bob Shrum, Kerry's Karl Rove, made me feel really bad about Kerry's chances. Joyce Carol Oates's short story was worth reading, if creepy.

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