I just found out that my presentation proposal for the 2008 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference in San Jose next February was accepted. Now I just need to figure out how to get away from school for the weekend.

As readers of my sidebar know, an election has been scheduled for November in Australia. Semi-frequent commenter Chris Zorn passed me this Slashdot article about a party called “Senator On-Line” which promises that its candidates will vote, if elected, in accordance with public preferences as measured by online polls of qualified Australian voters.

If nothing else, it’s conceptually an interesting experiment, although I suspect that once the public novelty wore off and Aussies went back to having lives (instead of playing legislator) the process would quickly get captured by intense minority interests acting contrary to the public good.