I co-founded an academy for game developers almost 20 years ago. As a co-founder, I had a significant influence on the department I managed, and to a lesser extent, other departments. Out of over 1,300 bachelor’s programs in the Netherlands, we were ranked #2 in our first year. The dean told me it was a fluke, and wouldn’t happen again. The following year, we were ranked #1. The program continued to do well, quite possibly in part to my efforts.
I listened to an interview today of Roger Stone. He knew Nixon very well. He noted that Nixon did not have the internet—a platform on which he could fight back against the media.
He believes Nixon might have survived if he had that vehicle. He said that of all the Presidents he knew, Nixon had the greatest intellect.
Stone admires Trump’s extraordinary political and public relations skills. He is amazed at how Trump, “being his own man,” remains calm, resilient, healthy, and committed to his principles under the withering assault from media, which is the greatest he’s ever seen—much greater than what Nixon had faced.
Dr. Zark- as someone who ran for local political office 4 times and lost, I would like to offer my perspective. I live in a small town in upstate suburban NY and except for one instance when I was on the Libertarian line, I ran as a Republican.
In every instance when I ran, I was without a doubt and by any metric, the best candidate for the job. I say this because of my many years working as a volunteer good government taxpayer advocate as well as my career as a legal professional. However, none of the voters knew any of this.
Here's the problem- there is no objective test that one has to take to be qualified to run for office. There is no Regents exam, no LSAT, nothing. Instead, you have to go out and get signatures on petitions to get on the ballot and hope that you get enough good ones that can't be challenged. That's about it.
One day maybe we an have a discussion about running for office in NY and how it relates to the chicanery of our local boards of election, but that's another story.
In any event, a certain number of people got on the ballot and then ran their campaigns. Sorry to tell you but the voting had absolutely NOTHING to do with how good the candidates were. It doesn't matter if they were demonstrably stupid and corrupt, or if they had lost money for the town, or even if they had no idea what the issues were.
The elections were exactly like Junior High popularity contests. Our town supervisor for example, is a woman who has spent her whole life in local government. Despite the fact that she is demonstrably an idiot who has no idea how to run a multi-million dollar corporation that is our town, she keeps getting elected over and over because she's "nice" and doesn't say mean things.
The same is true for a couple of the other incumbents that I ran against. We never had real debates on the issues like I wanted, because they knew they would lose.
Instead there were "meet the candidates" events where they just got to schmooze with their various voting block members.
Meanwhile- since there are no term limits in my town, this same bunch of ass clowns could conceivably be in office for the next 20 years unless they die or become incapacitated. We once had a town supervisor who was in office for 40 years, back in the old days! Recently we had one who had been on the town board for close to 20 years before he retired for health reasons.
Same thing is true on every level of government. There is no real objective test to keep imbeciles like my town board members or FJB off the ballot. Maybe this is something that you can ask Claude about.
I disagree with your comments about scandals. Ted Kennedy had Chapaquidick and the waitress sandwich among others. And where do I start with Hillary? How about Benghazi and the Clinton Foundation in Haiti? Then there is the Clinton body count. Trump has some media driven scandals. I think he is a lot cleaner than Ted and Hillary!
Dr. Zark, excuse my off-topic question: are you familiar with omega4America's work and volunteer mission dedicated to application of fractal, quantum computing to improve states' voter rolls accuracy? I'd be interested in what you think of the quality and effectiveness of their approach (to eliminating invalid addresses from voter rolls) ? Thank You.
Having hired several hundred programmers for IBM over my 25 years of management, I found the resume (which included grade information) got you in the door, but that the interview was the solidifying element. We usually had an hour per interviewee and the interviewee would interview about 4-5 other managers, all of whom could make an offer. Personnel would then determine what offers matched interest, and an offer would be made. I believe this process was successful because many of the interviewees now occupy many key positions throughout IBM (and Lockheed-Owego NY). Though programming is similar to gaming, I realize how your approach might work. Application of your hiring approach to elections, is very clever.
I listened to an interview today of Roger Stone. He knew Nixon very well. He noted that Nixon did not have the internet—a platform on which he could fight back against the media.
He believes Nixon might have survived if he had that vehicle. He said that of all the Presidents he knew, Nixon had the greatest intellect.
Stone admires Trump’s extraordinary political and public relations skills. He is amazed at how Trump, “being his own man,” remains calm, resilient, healthy, and committed to his principles under the withering assault from media, which is the greatest he’s ever seen—much greater than what Nixon had faced.
Dr. Zark- as someone who ran for local political office 4 times and lost, I would like to offer my perspective. I live in a small town in upstate suburban NY and except for one instance when I was on the Libertarian line, I ran as a Republican.
In every instance when I ran, I was without a doubt and by any metric, the best candidate for the job. I say this because of my many years working as a volunteer good government taxpayer advocate as well as my career as a legal professional. However, none of the voters knew any of this.
Here's the problem- there is no objective test that one has to take to be qualified to run for office. There is no Regents exam, no LSAT, nothing. Instead, you have to go out and get signatures on petitions to get on the ballot and hope that you get enough good ones that can't be challenged. That's about it.
One day maybe we an have a discussion about running for office in NY and how it relates to the chicanery of our local boards of election, but that's another story.
In any event, a certain number of people got on the ballot and then ran their campaigns. Sorry to tell you but the voting had absolutely NOTHING to do with how good the candidates were. It doesn't matter if they were demonstrably stupid and corrupt, or if they had lost money for the town, or even if they had no idea what the issues were.
The elections were exactly like Junior High popularity contests. Our town supervisor for example, is a woman who has spent her whole life in local government. Despite the fact that she is demonstrably an idiot who has no idea how to run a multi-million dollar corporation that is our town, she keeps getting elected over and over because she's "nice" and doesn't say mean things.
The same is true for a couple of the other incumbents that I ran against. We never had real debates on the issues like I wanted, because they knew they would lose.
Instead there were "meet the candidates" events where they just got to schmooze with their various voting block members.
Meanwhile- since there are no term limits in my town, this same bunch of ass clowns could conceivably be in office for the next 20 years unless they die or become incapacitated. We once had a town supervisor who was in office for 40 years, back in the old days! Recently we had one who had been on the town board for close to 20 years before he retired for health reasons.
Same thing is true on every level of government. There is no real objective test to keep imbeciles like my town board members or FJB off the ballot. Maybe this is something that you can ask Claude about.
I disagree with your comments about scandals. Ted Kennedy had Chapaquidick and the waitress sandwich among others. And where do I start with Hillary? How about Benghazi and the Clinton Foundation in Haiti? Then there is the Clinton body count. Trump has some media driven scandals. I think he is a lot cleaner than Ted and Hillary!
art zark..... the most interesting man in the world.
shine on, you crazy diamond.
Dr. Zark, excuse my off-topic question: are you familiar with omega4America's work and volunteer mission dedicated to application of fractal, quantum computing to improve states' voter rolls accuracy? I'd be interested in what you think of the quality and effectiveness of their approach (to eliminating invalid addresses from voter rolls) ? Thank You.
I see your point, thanks for the reply.
Having hired several hundred programmers for IBM over my 25 years of management, I found the resume (which included grade information) got you in the door, but that the interview was the solidifying element. We usually had an hour per interviewee and the interviewee would interview about 4-5 other managers, all of whom could make an offer. Personnel would then determine what offers matched interest, and an offer would be made. I believe this process was successful because many of the interviewees now occupy many key positions throughout IBM (and Lockheed-Owego NY). Though programming is similar to gaming, I realize how your approach might work. Application of your hiring approach to elections, is very clever.