Thanks to Stewart I tracked down the double issue of The New Yorker and I am so glad I did. I don't know why I suddenly became so fascinated with politics, but here I am yelling at my TV while Jake's surfing the net. Maybe it is cause I can't vote.

One of the articles in the New Yorker, titled The Word Lab, is about what language the candidates use and how they get selected. It has quite a few interesting points. For the article, they created a focus group and one of the things they discussed was death tax. People's opinion of the amount you're allowed to pass on after you die was a lot more than people had originally guessed. But even after the facts were given, almost none of the participants changed their opinion on whether to abolish to tax or not. "The point here was that if you introduce a subject using language that will produce a strong opinion no subsequent information will get people to change their minds."

Another thing they did during the focus group was to make them put these five words in order of what matters most in their life. The list was opportunity, community, responsibility, accountability, and society. (I listed them in the same order as the magazine) What would be your order?

I gotta go back and yell at my TV some more.

Before?