Pretend you're working and play with this
A friend sent along this link that's been so much fun to toy with that productivity has lagged a bit (unless, of course, you're a supervising editor reading this, in which case we spent only two minutes and 11 seconds on the site. During lunch. While writing another blog item with the left hand).
The premise is you answer "yes," "no" or "unsure" on 23 questions, rank the individual question's importance to you -- low, medium or high -- and the tabulator tells you which presidential candidate is the best match. Kind of like eHarmony for uncertain voters.
If you leave the intensity setting at "medium" and click "yes" for all the issues -- from supporting gay marriage to supporting the Iraq war and school vouchers -- your candidate is Rudy Giuliani. If you click "no" for all the issues, you get Ron Paul. If you click "unsure," Joe Biden's your best bet.
This is where it gets fun. Just start clicking willy-nilly. We alternated "yes" and "no" down the list and got businessman John Cox. Who, you say? Then we reversed, "no" and "yes" down the list and got Mike Gravel. If the only issue you're sure of -- and you rate it high -- is drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, then Sam Brownback's your man.
Go ahead. Play with it. We'll watch for the hall monitor.
-- Scott Martelle
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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lol that's just great for Brownback and Biden!
Posted by: John | December 18, 2007 at 01:58 AM