Assume that the relationship between citizen dissatisfaction and participation in the electoral process can be described by a curvilinear function: mild to strong levels of dissatisfaction lead to increases in participation, but strong to extreme levels lead to disgust with the process and decreased participation. Under this assumption, is it more strategic for a President already unpopular among African Americans to attempt to build bridges or to hire the (former) Los Angeles Police Chief as an advisor in the hope that people who wouldn't vote for him in any case will be disgusted and stay home?
You are in a burning building with a teenager and a test tube containing a fertilized human egg. The teenager's leg was broken by the heavy beam that is pinning her to the floor, but she is conscious and it is just possible that she could push off the beam and crawl to safety before the roof falls in, without your help. The egg, on the other hand, can't move unaided no matter how hard it tries. Just outside are a mobile hospital unit, a team of obstetricians, and a willing surrogate mother, all ready to give the egg every chance to grow up to be President of the United States. Also, a boy scout with a tourniquet to set that leg. You have time to save only one, the teenager or the egg. State which and be prepared to justify your answer in court.
You are an association of software publishers. The NSA offers you a deal, involving expedited export approval for some software, getting around the holdups that the State department imposes on software that includes encryption capabilities. All the NSA asks of you is that you not tell anyone just what the deal is. What do you do?
These being thought experiments rather than questions on a test, there are no right answers, but there are plenty of wrong ones. More on political participation: If politics is the art of getting elected, the problem of the homeless, politically speaking, is the nuisance of sidewalk traffic disruption; the disenfranchised are not a constituency. Congressional candidate Glenn Tenney (415-574-3420, voice or fax) is my source on governmental efforts to keep e-mail crackable. Aside to Nelson Richardson in New York: I can't answer your question about deconstruction and mathematics, but I'm off to France next week to research it.
And now, here are the answers to June's quiz....
RTFM (Universally ignored advice.) Read the flaming manual. (You see this a lot online.)
RTFS (Same advice, but for engineers.) Read the flaming spec.
RTFB (Advice for novice users of Macintosh System 7.) Read the flaming balloon. (System 7 has "help balloons" for novices.)
RWFM? TFRM, TFUM, OTFG-SM? (Choices, choices.) Read which flaming manual? The flaming reference manual, the flaming user manual, or the flaming getting-started manual?
IAEF, RTFM (Last-resort advice.) If all else fails, read the flaming manual. (The full version of the original acronym.) YWTFS/WRSN&IWTFMASAP (Said the documenter to the developer.) You write the flaming software real soon now, and I'll write the flaming manual as soon as possible.
IRTFM&ISCUTFS/W (Why the advice is universally ignored.) I read the flaming manual and I still can't use the flaming software. ("U" can also mean "understand.")
ICRTFM; T1WWTFS/WWTFM2 (Why programmers should program.) I can't read the flaming manual; the one who wrote the flaming software wrote the flaming manual, too. (For hardware, the acronym might add, &TIFTT, "and translated it from the Taiwanese.")
RWFM? TJOS, TKR, OTKS? Read which flaming manual? The Joy of Sex, the Kinsey Report, or the Kama Sutra? (I don't understand this one.)
Real friend or nuts? = Userland Frontier. Magic land of lost tribes = Bill Gates and Microsoft. Comment in jest by MIS; grad gets poorer = Object-oriented programming systems.
Why is Christmas the same as Halloween? Because Dec(imal) 25 = Oct(al) 31.
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