The Cauceyed State

This Thursday the Iowans caucus. That arcane communal ritual may decide who squares off in the November presidential elections. Most of the candidates have focused on winning the Hawkeye state. All of their destinies hinge on the outcome.

Those candidates who did not establish an early lead in Iowa faced two fates: stagnation or surge. Initially undecided Democratic caucusgoers have sided with the three initial frontrunners -- Obama, Clinton, and Edwards. Richardson, Dodd, Biden, and the other trivial candidates have stagnated at minuscule percentages in the polls. The lesser candidates of both parties must envy Huckabee, who has experienced a remarkable surge since October. He has probably attracted the values-voters who might have supported the bygone campaigns of Brownback and Tancredo. And after Thompson's lackluster start, it was easy for an evangelical Southern candidate to pick up steam as an alternative to Romney, the flop-flipping heathen from Massachusetts.

Although Huckabee stands a few points ahead of Romney in the most recent poll, his recent gaffes could catch up with him by Thursday. The floating cross campaign ad suggested that under Huckabee's upright facade lies a cancerous growth of Clintonian insincerity. Supporting evidence for this possibility came on Monday, when Huckabee held a press conference claiming that only 30 minutes earlier, in the spirit of clean-handed politics, he had decided to pull a TV spot attacking Mitt Romney. Huckabee proceeded to air the ad on a projector, in effect broadcasting it free of charge via journalists. To peals of laughter from the audience, Huckabee insisted that it was essential to show the ad in front of the hypercynical media to prove that it existed in the first place.

If Huckabee takes Iowa, he'll be a shoe-in in South Carolina. Romney wins Iowa in the event of a Huckabee loss. The resultant windfall of publicity could propel Romney over McCain in New Hampshire, in effect deciding the nomination. McCain is currently polling in single digits in Iowa -- he needs a big assist from Huckabee.

An article in the Times discusses the possibility of an inconclusive result in Iowa. Among the Democrats, a neck and neck finish between the three top contenders would throw Edwards a life raft. He could go on to victory in South Carolina, assuming that he doesn't lose too badly in New Hampshire and Obama doesn't rally the entire black vote behind him. An inconclusive result probably disfavors Obama, who would split the radical liberal vote with Edwards in Iowa and then New Hampshire, thereby guaranteeing Clinton's victory. Obama needs victory and a clear Edwards defeat in Iowa to contend with Clinton in New Hampshire. If Clinton blatantly loses in Iowa her game could be up in New Hampshire.

The consequences of an equivocal Republican result in Iowa could be even more convoluted. National poll leaders -- McCain and, until recently, Giuliani -- obviously benefit from a near tie between Huckabee and Romney. If that situation allows McCain to handily take New Hampshire, Giuliani's investment in the later primaries would probably yield paltry returns, since Giuliani and McCain seem to derive support from similar constituencies.

The unprecendented amount of money flowing into the Iowa campaign means that a stalemate among the candidates could be considered a devastating loss of resources. Although Iowa might have marginalized its political significance by caucusing absurdly early, either a stalemate among candidates or checkmate by any one candidate in the Hawkeye state will determine the course of events in the rapid succession of primaries that follow.

Year in Ideas

I have spent the past three weeks reading the best magazine issue of the year: The New York Times Magazine Year in Ideas. Little by little--during meals, before bed, in between finals studying--I have made my way through the issue, which lists the innovative, bizzare, and sometimes ridiculous "ideas" that emerged this past year.

Many magazines have December issues in which they detail the technological innovations of the year. What separates The New York Times Magazine rendition is that it is not simply devoted to technology. It is far broader and less concrete. Some of the "ideas" are technological innovations, but others are abstract concepts on subjects ranging from sports, to politics, to relationships.

I could probably do a blog post for almost every idea. However, instead I will simply list my favorites:

-Craigslist Vengeance (pg. 62): In March, a vengeful niece placed on ad on Craigslist, inviting all readers to come to the home of her aunt and "take what you want. Everything is free. Please help yourself to anything on the property." Though the ad was up for less than 2 hours, the aunts house was stripped bare--even the front door and kitchen sink were taken by a rabid bunch of Craigslisters. With the enormous readership of The Vegan Dessert, who knows what sort of vengeance I could achieve?

-Electric Hockey Skate (pg. 68): Since I have recently committed myself to getting good at ice skating, this one was particularly interesting. Some guy from Calgary has designed an ice hockey skate with a heated blade. The heat is not meant to warm the skaters foot, but rather to melt the ice below. By melting the ice, the ice skate faces less resistance and allows the skater to move faster. Several NHL players are trying out the skate. Seems kind of unfair to me. Some sort of regulation has to be put in place to set a limit on skate temperature.

-Left-Hand-Turn Elimination (pg. 80): Who doesn't hate left turns? They're stressful, waste time, lead to accidents, force you to turn down the radio volume...According to the NYT Mag., U.P.S. really hates left turns. U.P.S. has a fleet of 95,000 delivery trucks, and each time a truck must wait to make a left turn, it wastes gas and thus money for the company. To save cash, U.P.S. employs a computer program that maps out every delivery route and seeks to minimize the number of left turns, while taking into account the added distance that results from the extra right turns. Last year, the computer program saved close to 3 millions gallons of gas for U.P.S.

-Smog Eating Cement (98): This one had a special place in my heart because I actually understood some of the chemistry involved. An Italian Company produced cement with titanium dioxide in it. When exposed to light, the titanium dioxide can oxidize nitrogen and sulfur oxides (which make up smog) to the less hazardous nitrate and sulfate forms. The concrete has been proven to significantly clear up smog--pretty cool.

-Vegansexuality (103): I saved the best for last. Though I am not vegan or even vegetarian, I do for whatever reason write on a blog called The Vegan Dessert, so this idea has to some how relate to me. According to a survey conducted by a researcher at the University of Canterbury, some vegan eaters are rather reluctant to have carnivores as sexual partners. "I couldn't think of kissing lips that allow dead animal pieces to pass between them," said one respondent. "Nonvegetarian bodies smell different to me," said another respondent, "They are, after all, literally sustained through caracsses -- the murdered flesh of others." Maybe if I just eat vegan desserts along with the meat, I'll smell alright for vegansexuals, veggiesexuals, and carnosexuals.

Gameday

If you somehow haven't heard, you can watch the Patriots play the Giants tonight at 8:15 on the NFL Network, CBS, NBC, My Nine, MTV, TBS, Comedy Central, the Discovery Channel, and Lifetime.

Also, if you haven't heard, the Patriots are 15-0. If they win, they will be the first team to ever go 16-0. The Giants are 10-5. They have absolutely nothing to play for in terms of playoff seeding. The coverage of the game has been obscene, but in reality, I know pretty much nothing about the match-up. All I've heard about on TV is rest. Will Eli take a snap? Will Brady go 4 quarters? Will Strahan break a sweat? I wouldn't be surprised if on tonight's broadcast, the game is not shown beyond the first possession. I can picture it now. First play of the game:

"Holy Cow! Eli Manning is not on the field! The Giants have decided to rest! The Patriots win and become the first team to ever go 16-0!"

Has anyone else watched Eli Manning and the Giants play this year? If the Patriots really are one of the best team's ever, shouldn't they crush the Giants either way?

On the one hand, ESPN has presented the Patriots as an unstoppable Goliath and on the other hand they've assumed that the game, and the fate of the free World, lies in Tom Coughlin's decision to rest or not rest his players. I don't get it.

Throughout the season, I've had mixed feelings towards the Patriots. I am a Giants fan, and I am typically ambivalent towards the Pats. After the ridiculous start to their season, I started actively rooting for them. As with Roger and Tiger, I like to watch history being made. But then came the Baltimore game, and my fandom took a 180. There is no doubt the Patriots should have lost that game. If not for a stupid time-out, the "greatest-team ever" would have lost to a Ravens team that has now lost nine in a row.

From then on, I joined the Patriot-hater bandwagon. After a game like that, the Patriots didn't deserve to go undefeated.

So tonight, I will be rooting hard for my G-Men. But more importantly, I will be rooting hard when Tom Coughlin decides not to rest Eli, for that will mark the end of the Patriots undefeated season. Right?

Food for Thought

A roofer would use a zax, or roof hatchet, to cut up these slate shingles. How do I know of zaxes? Read on...


Besides my brief image caption, there's no prolegomenon to this post. My father stumbled across a website called Free Rice that donates rice to the needy when you correctly define words. The site presents you with a word and four potential definitions. If you correctly define three words in a row, you advance a difficulty level. If you incorrectly define a word, you go back a level.

Free Rice is becoming an ecumenical phenomenon. Yesterday alone, over 150 million grains of rice were donated by the website. Since the website's inception on October 7, the amount of rice donated per correct answer has been raised from 10 to 20 grains. The average amount of rice donated daily has more than doubled from one month ago.

The perspicacious reader might wonder from whence Free Rice gets money to purchase rice. The answer is internet advertising. At the bottom of the screen, small advertisements pop up for the duration of the question. I noticed that one was for Woodwind Brasswind, an amazing music superstore off I-90 in Indiana; this clinched my support for the Free Rice scheme.

Read My Lips

To kick off the Vegan Dessert Book Club -- and allow me a head start on the reading -- here are a few suggestions.

Selected Poems, by Zbigniew Herbert. I'm not sure if either poetry or compendiums qualify for the Book Club, but we can leave that caveat to our lawyers. Herbert gained international fame in 1968, when the other great Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, and the Canadian Peter Dale Scott translated Selected Poems into English. I imagine that my bibliophilic uncle discovered this volume at Amherst upon its publication in the United States, and decided to send it to his nephew 40 years later as a holiday present.

Herbert's poems are simultaneously avant garde and traditional. Unique for a disenchanted Soviet bloc writer, Herbert wrote ironical streams of consciousness yet invariably resorted to Shakespearean, mythological, and classical Greco-Roman allusion. Herbert withstood the dehumanization of Stalinism and the rigors of the Polish resistance to Nazi rule and found the truest expression of modern tribulations in the ancient world. Following is a favorite of mine in Selected Poems. It encapsulates Herbert's style.

"From Mythology

First there was a god of night and tempest, a black idol without eyes, before whom they leaped, naked and smeared with blood. Later on, in the times of the republic, there were many gods with wives, children, creaking beds, and harmlessly exploding thunderbolts. At the end only superstitious neurotics carried in their pockets little statues of salt, representing the god of irony. There was no greater god at that time.
Then came the barbarians. They too valued highly the little god of irony. They would crush it under their heels and add it to their dishes."

Archives of Empire Volume I: From the East India Company to the Suez Canal, edited by Barbara Harlow and Mia Carter. The other day, a friend's father asked whether anyone reads primary sources anymore. I was pleased to squash his argument with an answer in the affirmative. In a way, Archives of Empire cheats in terms of primary source material, since it culls the best documents of British Empire during the time span of the book's subtitle. There is no dead end journey to the library, no scholarly disappointment, and also, no miraculous random find in the stacks of C level.

Yet Archives of Empire, as exhaustive and carefully compiled as the O.E.D., occasionally sends a chill down the spine of my intellect as only the dustiest and most disintegrating of tomes has the capacity to do upon discovery in the library. Required to purchase this book for a history seminar last semester, the professor never got around to using it. Instead of letting the book go to waste, I decided to educate myself on the Suez Canal. Gladstone's speech advising against British intervention in Egypt after the Arabi Uprising and further expansion of an unsustainable empire rings true to American ears after Afghanistan and Iraq. "For the romance of political travel we are willing to scour the world, and yet of capital defect in duties lying at our door we are not ashamed."

Founding Brothers, by Joseph J. Ellis. Over Thanksgiving break, I got through a few chapters of this Pulitzer Prize winning book and now have time to finish it. Just under 250 pages, Ellis's book paints biographical portraits of the marmoreal men of the Revolutionary generation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton, and Burr. Ellis, a professor at Mount Holyoke recently chastised for classroom bragging about Vietnam War exploits never had, upholds the nearly mythological stature of those founders. He contends that in spite of their human foibles, they recognized the precarious nature of the democratic experiment and reached deals to give the United States a best chance of survival. (The obvious exception, which Ellis addresses, is that of Hamilton and Burr.) I'm not far enough into Founding Brothers to comment further, but this book would be an excellent founding choice for our great literary experiment.

Merry Christmas All

I want to wish all our readers a very merry Christmas. Make sure to tune into TBS before it's too late. Also, if you are feeling extra lazy, the Robots 24 hour marathon on FX is pretty good as well. Oh, and I just saw a commercial for Home Alone--6 o'clock on FX!

I will be away from a computer for the next few days, so hopefully Miller will take the reigns admirably. Look forward to some very long posts.

Also, while I'm gone, make sure to suggest some books for the first ever Vegan Dessert Book Club.

The Vegan Dessert Book Club!

Since I have vacation for the next five weeks, I thought it would be a good idea to read a book or two. To add some enjoyment (and motivation), I am inaugurating the Vegan Dessert Book Club. We (me, maybe Miller, and our hundreds of readers) can read a book together and discuss it.

For the next several days I will be taking suggestions. The book can be fiction or non-fiction and 400 pages or less. I am open to anything. Please make the suggestions in the comments section, and I will make the ultimate selection.

What Christmas Means to Me

Some how, some way, Miller grew up without cable television. He missed, and continues to miss so much: Dirty Jobs, Man v. Wild, ESPN, Nickelodeon, Flavor of Love. The list goes on.

I guess I can imagine a world without cable. If I weren't such a big sports fan, cable TV wouldn't be all that important.

That is, on everyday but Christmas.

The cable TV highlight of the year comes every Christmas, when TBS broadcasts 24 hours of A Christmas Story. Typically over winer break I am in Vermont on a skiing vacation (since I don't celebrate Christmas). Here's how Christmas typically goes:

-Wake up around 6. Watch A Christmas Story as I eat/get dressed.
-Ski from 8-4.
-Come back to the hotel room to clean-up. Watch A Christmas Story as I wait for the shower
to open.
-Eat dinner.
-Watch A Christmas Story while I read the newspaper.
-Watch A Christmas Story while I floss my teeth.
-Watch A Christmas Story until the lights go out.

The schedule varies somewhat from year-to-year, but you can get the general idea--I am a big fan of A Christmas Story. There are so many great scenes: the one when the kid gets his tongue stuck on the flagpole, when Ralphie beats up the town bully, when Randy hides under the sink, where they have Christmas dinner at the Japanese Restaurant...

The movie is perfect for a 24 hour marathon because each scene can stand on its own without explanation. The other 364 days of the year, TBS doesn't do that much for me-they stopped the Saved by the Bell, Family Matters reruns years ago. Yet, for this one day, TBS comes through huge. Tomorrow at 8 the 24 hour marathon commences. Tune in.

Update: I just watched the first hour of the marathon. The movie is even better than I remember. Randy, the little brother, has to be one of the greatest movie characters of all time).

Incredible, No, but Pretty Darn Good

Ever since seeing Ratatouille over the summer (one of the best movies I have ever seen), I've been wanting to see every Pixar movie I can get my hands on. This past Thursday, it was The Incredibles.

When reviewing Pixar films, it's not a question of good v. bad. The answer to that is implicit. Rather, it's more very good v. excellent. The Incredibles lies on the "very good" side of the spectrum.

The Incredibles has the same basic storyline of other Pixar films. The main character is unappreciated (Mr. Incredible, Remy the Rat, Woody...), becomes self-absorbed, and is recognized and humbled in the end.

The major problem I had with The Incredibles was that the main character was under appreciated and self-absorbed for too long. With Woody and Remy, I had sympathy. I looked past their self-absorption, and actively rooted for them. With Mr. Incredible, this wasn't the case. His self-absorbed phase went on for too long. He deceived his family and was a total jerk for nearly half the movie, and I couldn't look past this.

It's odd that I'm basing my critique of a computer animated film on whether or not I rooted for the main character. Yet, my rating is strictly based on how much I enjoyed the film, and my dislike for Mr. Incredible definitely impacted my overall enjoyment.

Nonetheless, The Incredibles was very good. Though I couldn't stand the main character, what made this movie stand out was the minor players--the costume designer, the insurance boss, Dash, and the mom. These were all remarkably crafted characters who only Pixar could make up. The music was also an excellent touch.

I know The Incredibles has quite an ardent following, and I don't want it to seem like I disliked like the movie. It was a very good film. All I mean to to say is that it's not going up on my Facebook profile, in the pantheon of great movies.

Correction: After an incredibly embarrassing Facebook exchange with an Incredibles aficionado I realized that the sons name is Dash not Flash. I have fixed the mistake and apologize.

Encore

Most good things have to come to an end. The Vegan Dessert does not.

After a semester away, Miller and I have decided to return. We have much more to say, and we hope you, our loyal readers, still have an appetite. This blog will continue to have absolutely no focus. Miller will continue to post 5-screen essays and I will continue to post my short, but sweet entries.

This comeback is likely to last only 5-weeks, so enjoy it (and comment) while you can. This is not going to a Michael Jordan/Jay-Z type comeback. No, we expect to return better than ever, not a shell of our former selves.

I'll sign off with a YouTube video my brother showed me this evening. It's been viewed by 10 million people, so you've probably already seen it. But if not, enjoy: