The Littlest Hobo Has a Time Machine

Chapter 1 (Democracy Before America)

1. If you lived in a monarchy, would you rather be the king or a slave? Why or why not?
2. What is the central ideological difference between democracy and cannibalism?

Chapter 2 (The Founding of America)

3. Have you ever founded anything? If so, is it something that went on to become a global superpower? If not, why not?

Chapter 3 (The President: King of Democracy)

4. Who was you favourite American president? Why?
5. Surely somebody can name their favourite president.
6. Ok, how about any president?
7. No?
8. Come on people. We just did an entire unit on this.
9. No one in this class came name one single president?
10. Fuck it, man.
11. Does anybody have a light?

Chapter 4 (Congress: Quagmire of Freedom)

13. What does “bicameral” mean? Are any of the girls in your class “bicameral?”
14. Which would you rather see being made: sausage or laws?
15. In Star Wars Episode II, Chancellor Palpatine convinces the Galatic Senate to grant him emergency powers in order to squelch the Separatist movement’s droid army, led by Count Dooku. But Palpatine ultimately abuses his authority, disbanding the Republic and appointing himself the lone ruler of a new Galactic Empire. Could it happen here?

Chapter 5 (The Judicial Branch: It Rules)

16. How many of the nine Supreme Court justices can you name? How many of the nine members of The Brady Bunch can you name? What does that say about you?
17. At what point during a typical Supreme Court hearing is it most appropriate to leap to your feet and shout “I’m out of order?!? This whole court’s out of order!”
18. Separation of church and state is one of the fundamental principles of our government, yet court witnesses are required to swear on The Bible. Justify this.

-America (The Book)

If Coke Zero has Coke’s taste… is it possible someone out there has your face?
“To connect people by how they look like each other is sort of uh, a bizarre thing…”

Is this an acceptably edgy advertising campaign?
1a. Quasi-spooky red/white letters posing an inane question that is very tenuously related to the product point they’re pushing? I understand the tangent, and I understand the broad appeal of making your ad campaign into a facebook app that key demographics (People who drink diet soda, ie - easy targets) will unquestionably want to try - you know, want to go viral on web 2.0 or some rot like that.
1b. After the initial flurry of futuristic type face poses the question, we bring in the voice over, in this case neither a laid back ‘miracle whip is fucking edgy’ post-ironic riot grrrl, or his counterpart, the ‘check out how fucking cool this is’ guy, but instead a third and oft-underheard voice in the advertisers wasteland - guy who has trouble articulating much of anything. He’s a likable enough guy, a pretty sympathetic character, we can all empathize with a guy who’s having trouble counting his fingers without coming up with 11, he’s very middle america. dude.
1c. So we’ve got this real cool app, see, and it’s a really far out concept. It’s bizarre. We’re gonna connect people. People want to be connected over the INTERNET now, right? It’s a bizarre thing. Just how bizarre is it, to attempt to find your doppelgänger? Well, as the voiceover guy goes on to explain, with about the same level of lucidity as say, a Kanye West blog post, the person you’re matched up with could be on the other side of the world, or they could be your neighbour. Your fucking neighbour man. Just think about it. You don’t know! This could happen to you man, this could happen to anybody.

but hey, i’m talking about it.