Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

yayfulness wrote:File this one under "corrections I liked": http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/89951/

My mayor (city of ~45,000) was elected by a margin of 50-60 votes. This sort of thing happens at the municipal level all the time. Hardly anyone bothers to vote, so the people who do vote have an exaggerated influence.

One of my professors told the class last quarter that a few years ago, the city considered dropping its subsidy of the municipal golf course. Senior citizens turned out in droves to protest, so that effort quickly got shut down, and instead prices were raised but seniors got a special discount (and taxes from everyone in the city, including impoverished non-golfers like yours truly, go to subsidize it). A student happened to be in attendance and asked why there weren't student discounts too. One of the city council members told him, "Look around. How many other students do you see?" There were none. "That's why seniors get discounts and students don't. If you start voting and showing up to meetings en masse, we'll start taking your preferences into consideration."

Back when I was still at BYU, another professor pointed out that if the university's students were to organize, field a candidate, reliably turn out to vote, and vote as a block, the student body would have a permanent and unassailable seat on the city council. But that never happens, because students suck at all four of those things. I don't know if it's ever been attempted in Provo. Someone tried it here in San Luis Obispo, and it failed miserably because the candidate barely put forth an effort and nobody turned out for him.

So I guess it's true that college students typically don't have much influence. But that's by choice, not by anything inherent to the system.

In addition to elections, I've been to dozens of public meetings and hearings over the course of my education. Almost nobody ever shows up. Last quarter, my class created a neighborhood revitalization concept plan for a city in the Bay Area. We had three meetings. Average attendance? About twelve constituents. If you happened to be one of the twelve people who showed up, your voice represented around 8% of the public input into the project.

I recognize that there are some structural issues that can keep people from voting or participating. For college students, things like scheduling, homework loads, and the decision of where to maintain legal residence can complicate things significantly. For other populations, the barriers (especially language- and schedule-related) can be even stronger. But as an educated and privileged person who's well-integrated into society, the only reason that you don't have a voice is because you're keeping your mouth firmly shut.

Genuine Article wrote:Can I bore you with tidbits about script rules? The rule of thumb with scripts is that one page equals one minute of screen time, which is why scripts for movies aren't supposed to go over 120 pages. When shooting a script each page is divided into eighths (sometimes with a ruler), and you build your shooting schedule around how many eighths you can reasonably film in a day (usually between two and five pages). An eighth of dialogue typically takes less time to film than an eighth of action. The classic example of bad screenwriting is putting "the Indians attack the fort" for the action description, because it takes up one line, while showing Indians attacking a fort would probably take several minutes of screen time, and should therefore take up several pages of the script.

I'm a huge Gilmore Gilrls fan, so I liked pondering how many pages they were able to shoot in a day - I'm guessing way more than five.

yayfulness wrote:There are a lot of tropes out there that I can't stand, but virtuous women swooping in to save flawed men is one of the absolute worst. It teaches a woman that she's supposed to give up her happiness to fix someone else's life. It teaches a man that he can just sit back and wait for someone else to fix him, when in fact he himself is the only person with that power. It's a recipe for abuse and misery. It's practically guaranteed to end badly for everyone involved. It doesn't deserve to be glorified in fiction, even escapist fiction.

Apparently I have really strong opinions about this.