Here’s a contest idea from my brother Andy. Submit your entries as comments. Prize: Nothing at all.

Top Ten Reasons Sarah Palin Cancels the VP Debate

Suspicious Russian tourists spotted across the Bering strait in Dezhnevo

Wrasslin’ a bear

Learns Tina Fey will be watching

When taken on tour of White House by McCain handlers, is “inadvertently” locked in Cheney’s man-sized safe

Schedule for memorizing state capitals thrown off by need for new schedule to memorize states

Speechless after finally looking up what “MILF” stands for

On deadline to finish her book, “Namin’ Your Baby the Alaskan Way”

Not yet confident how to work in those hilarious hair-plug zingers

No matter how hard she scrubs, she can’t get Kissinger’s moral stank off of her

Stuck in traffic on the Bridge to Nowhere

[Tags: politics sarah_palin debates humor ]

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The Washington Post has a nice set of interactive features for “decoding” the debates.

You know what would be even better? The open access Larry Lessig and a left-right coalition is calling for.

[Tags: debates e-democracy politics everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Here’s an idea I’m taking from a mailing list. I’ll check with the guy who posted it [Later: It was John Laprise] to see if I can credit him, but I’m sure he’s ok with the idea itself being circulated:

Obama ought to counter-propose that instead of postponing the debate, it ought to be changed to a debate on the economy, and opened up to public questions, as a way for the candidates to address the concerns of citizens.

Nice idea.

[Tags: obama debates mccain politics ]

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Jose Antonio Vargas at the Washington Post wonders how we could make the upcoming presidential debates interactive, given that the teaming with MySpace is disappointing.

If given a choice between having more YouTube snowmen asking questions or hearing McCain and Obama talk with one another for an hour with no moderator and no questions, I would completely go for the YouTubeless version.

But, since that’s not going to happen except in “West Wing” reruns, I think the best we can hope for is a two-parter that makes everything around the debates interactive.

In part one, we the people have an official forum by which we can raise and debate questions beforehand. Maybe the moderators will be moved to ask something that actually matters to us. (The Berkman Question Tool is great for people in an audience to use during a session. It’s been open-sourced. Maybe it could be beefed up for national or regional use. Or maybe, if the debates really had a representative audience, it could be used during the debate. Sigh. Just daydreaming.)

In part two, we the people carry on a simultaneous debate and discussion as the debate proceeds. And before it. And after it. This already happens, of course, albeit these days frequently through Twitter, which is not well designed for this. But we ought to be able to debate along with the debate. And we will, one way or another. [Tags: politics debates question_tool jose_antonio_vargas ]

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Debategraph.org has ambitious goals. It wants to provide a public, commons-based wiki where we can lay out the great political debates systematically, rationally, and calmly. The tool creates highly structured maps consisting of relatively atomized arguments. (The tool itself is pretty darn cool.)

I’m dazzled by it. I’m not convinced that debates can be commoditized the way knowledge can be, and I’m not convinced that debates won’t lose what’s really going on in them when they are forced into rational outlines, and I’m not convinced that debates are really about what they say they are, and I’m not convinced that the truly deep divides are actually debates. But, “I’m not convinced” means only that I don’t know what to think. More important, Debategraph gives us an infrastructure of some depth and power. We’ll figure out what to do with it. I hope.

Take a look. It’s damn interesting. (Thanks to Seb Schmoller for the link.)

[Tags: debategraph politics debates everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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