Because I’m sure I’ll need to reference this at some point in the future…

From Wikipedia.

Duverger’s Law is a principle which asserts that a first-past-the-post election system naturally leads to a two-party system. The discovery of this principle is attributed to Maurice Duverger, a French sociologist who observed the effect in several papers published in the 1950s and 1960s. In the course of further research, other political scientists soon began calling the effect a “law.”

Some researchers and mathematicians have devised alternative voting systems which do not appear to be subject to the apparent drawbacks of first-past-the-post, though many would argue that a two-party outcome—all things considered—is a benefit to society. A frequent consequence of Duverger’s law is the spoiler effect, where a third-party candidate takes votes away from one of the two leading candiates.

Getting all the meat off the bones, then going for the marrow…

I’d meant to write this about a month ago; so while the timeliness of the post isn’t exactly optimal,  at least this is an exercise in following through.

The sign read “everything up to 70% off”, and they weren’t kidding; even the fixtures were marked down to a price point that tempted me to buy, and I don’t fucking need 15′ of commercial bookshelves.  That was just a few steps into the store.

Within minutes I had in my hands six books, including Solzhenitsyn’s tales from the Soviet gulag,  one on how Kennedy’s wiz kids borked up Vietnam, and a mangled Calvin and Hobbes compilation.

The mob now occupying our local Borders was vastly different than the cast of characters that could be seen here just a year ago.  Then, you’d have just swam with a fairly typical slice of “book people”; the creepy, middle-aged manga fan, the self help guide collector, or the recovering goth chick.  But now, it was as if these players were replaced with the cast of “Desperation: The Movie”.  People who clearly hadn’t been into a bookstore in years if ever, were now streaming into the building with the same ferocity Read the rest of this entry »

I know, even more irony, eh?

Photo from my tablet, of my netbook.

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