Quick Hits 5/1/08

Via a friend, this is nerdtastic.

Related to yesterday’s Heartland Institute post, another right-wing organization is paying children to “debunk” global warming. There is no “debate”, flat-earthers.

Hmm, look at this: the Rockefellers are pushing ExxonMobil to focus less on quarterly profits (only $11 billion in the last quarter) and more on cleaner energy. Yeah, that’d be nice.

10 Straight for Obama

Obama won both Wisconsin and Hawai’i last night.  And I didn’t do so bad in predicting the outcome this time:

Hawaii is easy: Obama 70% - Clinton 30%  (Actual O 75.7% - C 23.6%)

Wisconsin is harder, but I think Obama 58% - Clinton 42%   (Actual O 58.1% - C 40.7%)

 *****

With that, Hillary is in real trouble.  Obama won amongst almost every demographic in Wisconsin.  He even almost won the women’s vote (49%-51%), his best showing yet.  I was watching CNN returns all night - they had a decent time series graph of demographic break-downs.  He might not have performed the best in  Wisconsin in every category, but his portion of each has decidedly increased since Iowa a month and a half ago.

Recent polls from Ohio and Texas showed a tightening race.  With the win in Wisconsin, I expect Ohio to break towards Obama.  He might even garner more delegates from Texas based on assignment rules if he loses the popular vote or by percentages.  However, things have been dynamic since Super Tuesday, so I fully expect more change to show up by the time we get to the next round.

Hillary’s take no prisoner / scorched earth approaches are doing nothing to endear herself toward me.  We’ve got a guy in the White House that played by those same rules and Democrats were livid because of it.  Interesting how it’s alright when a person with a (D) behind there name uses the same techniques.  Well, not with this Dem.  Here’s to hoping Obama runs the tables.

Wisconsin and Hawaii Prediction

Hawaii is easy: Obama 70% - Clinton 30%

Wisconsin is harder, but I think Obama 58% - Clinton 42%

Results later.

2/9/08 Caucus/Primary results

The following were my predictions on Friday and how they candidates fared (as of this morning):

Washington - Obama, not 2-1; Obama 68% - Clinton 31%, which was 2-1

Louisiana - Obama, 2-1; Obama 57% -Clinton 36 %, which was not 2-1

Nebraska - Obama, 2-1; Obama 68% -Clinton 32%, which was 2-1

Virgin Islands - Clinton (not 2-1); Obama 90% - Clinton 10%, which was way more than 2-1

*****So how’s my rough estimate of delegates holding up (since I didn’t do any more analysis or guessing after the initial post)?

Predicted Obama: 52+37+16=105

Predicted Clinton: 26+19+8=53

Estimated actual Obama: 35+33+16=84

Estimated actual Clinton: 15+22+8=45

Note all the delegates haven’t been assigned yet, but the broader pattern seems to agree with my predictions.

So what about the rest of the predicted states? I’m going to shift some numbers. My original guesses:

Maine - Clinton (not 2-1)

Maryland - Obama (2-1)

D.C. - Obama (2-1)

Virginia - Obama (2-1)

I think Clinton will likely win Maine, but by 53-46. Obama will carry Maryland 65-35, D.C. by 70-30 and Virginia 68-32. Let’s see how these pan out.

*****

Update: A few internet sources have delegate counts like this:

Washington– Obama 52, Clinton 26 (different than the 35-15 I listed above)

Nebraska– Obama 16, Clinton 8

Louisiana– Obama 32, Clinton 24

Thus the totals from yesterday could be: Obama 100 - Clinton 58

Obama’s take in Louisiana could be larger.  Official results will be available later this week.

Bought a camera

So far, I like it a lot.

It’s a Casio Exilim 7.2 mega-pixel.

Now I’ll have to play around with it. 

“I was calling on Jesus”

So a line of severe storms roared through TN and surrounding states yesterday into this morning.  Deservedly, the story is currently center-stage on CNN’s website.  But their lede choice is interesting, Tornado survivor: “I was calling on Jesus”.

A question, if you will.  If a survivor had said, “I was calling on Mohammed” or another prophet from a different religion, would they have run the quote?  For that matter, why include the quote at all?

Day with friends

I haven’t played much hockey (inline) for a while - I obviously didn’t play while vacationing in Mexico, my team got knocked out of our league playoffs the next week, then I went to New Orleans for a conference, then this past week’s games got canceled due to the snow. So I got my buddy to go practice with me today. I enjoyed skating around and chatting.  I also play better when I get some rink time outside of the games.

After that, I went to a belated b-day dinner with more friends. To share in my recent experiences in New Orleans, we went to the closest thing Colorado can probably get to southern seafood cooking. We enjoyed hurricanes, oysters, shrimp, mahi and lobster. Then back to my friends’ house for cake, presents and wine. All in all, a damn good day!

Catching up

I’m back from my conference.  I did two presentations - both went very well.  I met some good contacts and was introduced to students at my alma mater.  I’ve never had so much to do outside the conference - restaurants by the hundreds, good music everywhere.  I can’t wait to go back with just friends.  I tried switching which card the room was charged too and they didn’t remove it from the initial card presented.  I have to give the hotel a call and take care of that.

When I got there, I discovered my laptop wasn’t working.  It’s a dinosaur, but up until then had worked just fine.  It acted as though a key was being held down - system beeps during start-up, start menu not staying open.  Pretty frustrating since one of my presentations wasn’t finished at arrival.  I finally fixed it - but I’m not quite sure how.  The hotel wanted to charge $15 per day of internet wifi access.  Yeah right.  With the laptop acting up, I didn’t want to take it to the convention center.

All that to say I didn’t do any blogging while away.  I also didn’t have access to email - yikes!  So I’m catching up on this.  I kept track of national news, but nothing local.  So here’s the first thing I found:

Rep. Udall (CO) has introduced a bill that might do some good things for consumers using credit cards.  He’d like to include H.R. 1461 to the economic stimulus bill (as of the 21st of Jan.).  The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2007 would, among other things, require advance notice of increases in card interest rates, impose a freeze of interest rate terms and fees on canceled cards, prohibit penalties for on-time payments (thank you!!!), prohibit fees for non-use of cards, and prohibit over-the-limit fees for creditor-approved transactions.

While these steps don’t go far enough, in my opinion, they sound like good steps.  I’ve written about this before: the frame that needs to be applied to this situation is one of taxes being applied to consumers that are not directly approved by legislation.  It could be argued that by inaction, Congress approves of banks taking advantage of us, but that’s not how things work at the end of the day.

I think interest rates should be capped at a more realistic level.  I also think that since banks couldn’t do a good enough job discriminating people who posed too high a risk to the products they were seeking, Congress should intervene there too.  It’s not a stretch to argue that its in the interest of the entire economy, and by extension the world economy, that banks shouldn’t be allowed to run around without oversight.  It’s clear to me there hasn’t been enough oversight of banks for some time.  It’s time for Congress to exercise their duly appointed powers.

Work and play

One year ago, I had a paper written and had started on a presentation for a conference.  Then the sponsor revoked travel authorization.  No presentation for me.  So I wanted and needed to present something this year.  It turns out I got the chance to do two presentations - one for each group I work for.

When I submitted abstracts last summer, I was very excited about the thought of presenting.  I need to write papers and present results to continue to advance in my career.

On a slight tangent, I took an Oceanography course last fall.  We were responsible for writing seven research papers during the semester, which really wore me down.  It was a very aggressive schedule and we had to use software and datasets that had high learning curves associated with them.  What ended up happening was I spent a large amount of time writing for class and letting my work papers slide.

So crunch time came today: the papers had to be submitted to make it into the official program.  One paper was in pretty good shape, as I’ve worked on that material for almost four years now.  The other paper was much more raw and unpolished.  I finished writing a draft this morning and sent it to my boss.  I met up with him earlier this afternoon and he laid down the hammer on me.  He basically said it was too raw and as written shouldn’t be submitted to the official program.  I would still present results, but he didn’t want what I had written to be in the permanent records.

He correctly summed up the paper by saying it lacked coherency; too many stray thoughts pushed together.  As I said, he was correct in his appraisal - I was thinking the same thing as I sent it to him.  But to hear something like that from your boss is fairly disheartening.  In the immediate aftermath, my confidence is shaken.  I know I put off writing it too long and couldn’t recover in time, but….

So he’s working on it now, hoping to finish it by the submission deadline later tonight.  He also made it clear that him fixing the paper really doesn’t help me.  I need to work on fixing it so I learn how to write better.  I’m debating whether I should look at a version that he uploads.  I need the experience in continuing to work on it.

Anyway, I’ve been crazy busy the past few weeks and am glad the conference is almost here.  I really just want to finish up with everything and put it behind me at this point.  I haven’t been able to write here about the things I’ve been keeping track of.  And it’s likely I won’t be able to for another week or so.  But, there’s a time for work and a time for play.

Speaking of which…

Digital Camera

I don’t have one and I want to buy one.  Maybe one like this.

Not for that advertised price, however.  Microcenter had it on special for $129.99 around X-Mas time.  $149.99 with a $30 rebate?  I don’t think so.  I’ll wait until I see a better price.

Sigh.