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Sound Bites of the 1908 Presidential Candidates
roncosmos writes "Science News has up a feature on the first use of sound recording in a presidential campaign. In 1908, for the first time, presidential candidates recorded their voices on wax cylinders. Their voices could be brought into the home for 35 cents, equivalent to about $8 now. In that pre-radio era, this was the only way, short of hearing a speech at a whistle stop, that you could hear the candidates. The story includes audio recordings from the 1908 candidates, William Jennings Bryan and William Howard Taft. Bryan's speech, on bank failures, seems sadly prescient now. Taft's, on the progress of the Negro, sounds condescending to modern ears but was progressive at the time. There are great images from the campaign; lots of fun."
Spoiled kids today. In MY day, we had to listen to presidential debates on wax cylinders! And it cost us the equivalent of eight dollars, too!
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
They are MP3s. Listen to them directly
http://www.sciencenews.org/sounds/files/bryan_guarantee_of_deposits.mp3
http://www.sciencenews.org/sounds/files/taft_rights_and_progress_of_the_negro.mp3
McCain must be excited to hear his old wax cylinder recordings again.
which to many Americans (who are, let's be honest, people and therefore stupid)
Fixed that minor point for you. It's not like the good people of the rest of the world are magically resistant to propaghanda or sufficiently knowledgeable about economic systems.
Yes, and some day my "why can't all sites work the same without javascript" campaign will catch on, too.
Why can't all sites work the same without javascript! I shouldn't have to use that trash!
The problem is that the people who were supposed to oversee Fannie Mae are the same people that are now supporting a certain Democrat candidate for president, and it would not be beneficial for the media to expose those relationships to the public-at-large until after the election.
I don't understand how the Enron Trial is on the tip of everyone's tongue, but the media isn't calling to put these banking executive in jail for a fraud that is 10x worse!
Your argument seems to be that the government forced companies to take on loans from 'minorities and the poor'. You didn't quite work yourself into a froth about liberalism, affirmative action or whatever else you think is wrong with left but it seems like you were heading in that direction.
If you look at the people who are defaulting on mortgages it's not really minorities and the poor (I guess in your mind minority = poor?) but mostly middle class Americans who took out loans that they couldn't afford to pay back. Just look at where these defaulters live and you'll see that suburban middle class (white, black, hispanic, etc.) enclaves are most effected.
I won't disagree with you that some of this crisis has it's roots during the Clinton era or that the government is partially to blame. I'd blame the government for not regulating the lending industry enough rather then accusing them of forcing risky loans on companies. These companies, as well as the housing industry, wanted to take on these loans because they saw green and more importantly, other institutions wanted the securities these loans were wrapped up in because they thought it would make them money.
Please don't use this crisis as some sort of attack against the poor and/or minorities. It just makes you sound ignorant.
Really? Flash is pretty easy to use, too.
How easy? Can you use it with your eyes closed? For sake of argument, I'll allow you to have a braille display.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
People didn't have the same concept of time in the olden days, two events in the same century seemed practically simultaneous to them. They also walked very quickly, talked in funny voices, and could only see in black and white.
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The government may have adjusted the rules to try and give people loans to poorer people, but you cannot say the bank was forced to give them loans. There is a lot of process that goes into getting a loan which includes checks and balances on whom is supposed to get approved. The fact of the matter is that too many people had in an interest in pushing loans, good or bad, because they got an immediate payoff and they could pass a bad loan to someone else. Think of all the people who get a cut when you sell a house,
That's right, the bank got an immediate payoff for making the loan! Why? Because they turned around and sold the loan. Basically everyone could pass the buck onto someone else. Unless your were the final sucker who got caught holding the loan which ends up worthless. It was a game of hot-potato being played by financial experts who convinced themselves they knew better than someone else.
As for politcal activism, that is a load of crap. It came down to businesses wanted to do business anyway they like without any oversight, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with this Ponzi scheme. If people had to actually hold onto the loans that they made none of this stuff would have happened. But you would have had rich financial analyst's screaming "this not a free market!"
It's come to a point where simply being elite is considered elitism. John Kerry was considered out of touch with the common man because he liked wind surfing and went to Yale.
How many times during the last few years have you heard people say something along the lines of "Just because you're a respected (climatologist | biologist | economist | theologian | lawyer | diplomat) doesn't mean you know more than me (global warming | evolution | economics | religion | law | foreign affairs) than I do"?
I don't approve of intellectuals being condescending, but it's just as bad when people dismiss an idea as "elitism" simply because they disagree with it and it came from someone with a PhD.
Being a computer scientist means you tell people how computers should work, not that you know how they actually work.
Today's conservatives conserve the values of yesterday's revolutionaries. Today's progressives fight for what tomorrow's conservatives will fight to conserve.
Free Martian Whores!