The looks of John McCain are being bandied about, as though he was in a contest rivaling the Miss Universe pageant. In an article on Slate, someone was commenting that the Saturday Night Live appearance that Senator McCain made, made him look very old, but only on HDTV.

Since I did not see the appearance (my SNL habit left when Mike Meyers did) I don’t know, but a recap of the appearance was pointed to, and the quality of the YouTube presentation shows none of the flaws described in the Slate article.

I tend to wonder how many people vote based on looks by any measure. It certainly seems an incredibly stupid thing to do, yet the fact that JFK was good looking, and Richard Nixon looked like he had not shaved, and was a sweaty guy under the hot lights of television, was said to have greatly worked in JFK’s favor. (I wasn’t there, but reruns are available to show the dowdy and unkempt looking Richard Nixon.)

If that is the case, Nixon would have really been sunk, as the sweat, the stubble, and the shifty eyes would have all come through on HDTV - had it been available. On the other hand, the resolving power of a typical YouTube video is much less than a good standard definition television, so someone watching Richard Nixon debating JFK on this medium would have no idea how bad he looked.

How strange that something that is less up-to-date, and technically inferior could be a plus for forcing something other than looks to persuade voters. And how odd is it that more people would rather watch things on YouTube, rather than television, assuming similar content.

With the technical prowess we have today, the youth still seem to eschew much of it, preferring mp3 music reproduction to the best of analog or digital on different media. The same people will watch a television episode on a computer screen, limited in resolution by the bandwidth of the connection, rather than watch the same content on an HDTV.

Perhaps in some things, a certain amount of blur is necessary, even desirable.

BTW, I’ll be voting for Barack Obama, and not John McCain, not because he is old, or doesn’t have the looks of a younger man. I’ll be voting for Obama because McCain’s ideas are simply wrong, and no television or YouTube video was needed to reach the decision.

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[tags] YouTube, HDTV, mp3, perceived quality of reproduction, resolution [/tags]

Technorati Tags: YouTube - HDTV - mp3 - perceived quality of reproduction - resolution