Around the Tubes - November 1, 2007

Sorry things have been slow the last few days. I'm literally writing the conclusion to my book, which will be completely finished within the next two weeks. Content production will pick up considerably around then, but might be spotty for the next couple weeks.

Here's some stuff I've been sitting on:

• Ben Adler has written two fantastic pieces about the role of young voters in the Iowa Caucus: Youth Vote an Untapped Source of Support and Caucus Hurts Youth Turnout (a great exploration about how the format itself disadvantages younger voters).
• If you aren't reading it already, you should be checking out It's Getting Hot in Here, the unnoficial blog of the student climate change movement.
• A few quick thoughts about Obama's turn in the MySpace/MTV Dialogues:
  1. Was it just me or does even Obama - the youthful candidate (in years) - sound a little out of touch talking about Teh Google and Teh Facebook? We've got a long way to go yet before we really get a candidate who understands the internet. In the meantime, yay on Obama for supporting (and trying to explain) Network Neutrality.
  2. WTF was up with those two softball questions at the end? You know, the ones about who would play Obama if his life was a movie and what he thought about Stephen Colbert's candidacy? Those were scripted questions - MTV and MySpace knew and approved of them. WTF? Did they really run out of substantive issues to discuss in only one hour? There were a whole lotta folks in that auditorium taht didn't get a chance to speak. I'm betting a lot of them could have asked more substantive questions.
  3. The format seemed to be driven a lot more by questions from online, and the voting was modified to take into account users opinions to an even greater degree. That was good to see,and I can't wait until a Republican gets in the hot seat.
• Scoop 08 is set to launch in 3 days. It will be a newspaper about the presidential election run completely by high school and college students. I'll be interested to see what they can do.
• Some new polling also came out, but I'll try to write up a real piece on that later tonight.