Fucking memetic cognitohazards…

I have two devices, one is my phone, and one only plays music. I only ever use my phone as my phone, and my music device as my music device in my car, and both run over Bluetooth.

It is a crapshoot as to which role my car will assign to which device. Sometimes I have to put my phone in airplane mode so that the car won’t try to assign it the media player role in Bluetooth settings. I’m not impressed.

The single most successful third party presidential candidate since 1900 was Teddy Roosevelt, who had already been president twice, when he ran under the Bull Moose Party ticket. He got 29% of the popular vote, spilt the Republican vote, and handed the presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

The second most successful third party presidential candidate since 1900 was Ross Perot in 1992. He got 18.6% of the popular vote, drew conservative voters away from George H. W. Bush, and handed the presidency to Bill Clinton.

Third party candidates by all means should run for local and down-ballot offices, but above a certain level, if you haven’t got a realistic plan for how to win beyond wishful thinking, then the responsible move is to run as hard as you can in the primary, try to drag the primary electorate in the direction you want it to move, and endorse the major party candidate that most closely aligns with your views. If you aren’t even hitting twenty percent in the polls leading up to the general, then you’re acting as a spoiler and helping your most-hated opponent win.

War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him… but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing… but controlled and purposeful violence. But it’s not your business or mine to decide the purpose or the control. It’s never a soldier’s business to decide when or where or how — or why — he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people — ‘older and wiser heads,’ as they say — supply the control. Which is as it should be.

–Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers