Edu Hits On Electoral-Vote.com DATA: How politically active is your school? The University of Washington takes third place by this not-so-indicative-of-reality metric: .edu hits on Electoral-Vote.com.

1 - 4431 - harvard.edu
2 - 3782 - umn.edu
3 - 3087 - washington.edu
4 - 2901 - columbia.edu
5 - 2428 - yale.edu

This list is just of raw hits though; it's not adjusted for size. Harvard is just under 20,000 students and Columbia is just over 20,000, but the UW is just shy of 40,000 students -- so per capita (per studenti?) we're not so hot. And the University of Minnesota? Just under 50,000 students. That's just shy of Ohio State University's 50,995 -- which I hear is the largest university in the US. Damn there's a lot of students out there.  ¶ 8:57 AM 0 Comments

  Life vs. Bloging ASSEMBLEME: It's going to be a slow couple days. Working with MoveOn is taking more of my time then I originally thought. Add school and work, and you have a busy busy bee. I'll be posting only occasionally through November 3rd.  ¶ 11:15 AM 0 Comments

  Census Releases (Hurrah!) INFO VISUALIZATION: There have been a few new releases from the census recently.



There are plenty of new pretty maps here. This one struck me as especially interesting, simply because it shows the continuing trend of urbanization. (Blue areas have lost people between 2000 and 2003, red areas have gained.) Another interesting map is the distribution of population of the U.S. by state. Slightly over one out of ten Americans is a Californian... yikes.

Also, check out the election statistics page. It has some interesting info, like that a higher percentage of women vote then men -- I had no idea.

At or about 70%
The 2000 presidential election voting rates in the District of Columbia, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Maine and Minnesota, highest in the nation.

61%
Percentage of eligible women voters who voted in the 2000 presidential election. That is higher than the 58 percent of men who voted.

  ¶ 8:33 AM 0 Comments

  The Science Vote DATA: Reason magazine has a piece asking various people who they are voting for. Reason magazine basically has a libertarian slant, which is wrongheaded in my view, but I share a lot of my views on government and social liberties with them -- which is more than I can say for those good for nothing Republicans.

Anyway, my real interest here is Steven Pinker, whom I adore beyond measure. I've seen him speak here at the UW about The Blank Slate, and never have I been more impressed with someone's ability to communicate a point so clearly. This guy is one of the best minds out there today. Needless to say he's not voting for Bush.

2004 vote: Kerry. The reason is reason: Bush uses too little of it. In the war on terror, his administration stints on loose-nuke surveillance while confiscating nail clippers and issuing color-coded duct tape advisories. His restrictions on stem cell research are incoherent, his dismissal of possible climate change inexcusable.

2000 vote: Gore, with misgivings.

Most embarrassing vote: I left Canada shortly after turning 18 and became a U.S. citizen only recently, so I haven’t voted enough to be too embarrassed yet.

Favorite president: James Madison, for articulating the basis for democracy in terms of the nature of human nature.

Also of interest is John Rennie's comments. (He's the editor-in-chief of Scientific American.)

2004 vote: John Kerry. Anybody who has seen Scientific American’s editorials during the last few years knows we’re deeply unhappy with the de facto anti-scientism of the current administration. Science shouldn’t trump all else in setting policy, but it would be a nice change of pace for a White House to put science ahead of ideology again. Of course, I’m keeping my expectations low.

2000 vote: Remember that guy? The one that everybody said claimed to have invented the Internet, except he hadn’t said that at all? He seemed good.

Most embarrassing vote: Back in college in 1980, flushed with youthful sanctimony, I voted for John Anderson. The voting booth is a bad place to be an idealist. But at least when I threw my vote away on a third-party candidate, it was irrelevant.

Favorite president: John Quincy Adams showed that it was possible for the son of a president to rise to that same office in a highly disputed election without being remembered as a dangerous embarrassment.

Two things I love about his comments.

1) Anti-scientism! What a great word!

2) "The voting booth is a bad place to be an idealist."

3) "Favorite president: ..." Diss!

Wait, that was 3. Oh well...

Here are some other highlights:

* A surprisingly high number of Libertarians are voting for Kerry. It goes to show they share as much with Democrats (max social freedom) as they do with Republicans (max economic freedom).

* Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) removes all doubt and confirms that he is undecided/stupid.

* Some guy named Dave Kopel voted for Nader in 2000 and is voting for Bush in 2004. Insanity!  ¶ 9:31 AM 1 Comments

  Is More Information Better for Decision-Making? INFO SCIENCE: An interesting upcoming lecture for those in Seattle:

Tuesday, October 26th, The Information School's Center for Human-Information Interaction at the University of Washington will be hosting:

Speaker: Dr. Debra Friedman, Director of Special Projects, Development and Alumni Relations, and Affiliate Associate Professor, Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington.

Title: Is More Information Better for Decision-Making?

An abiding assumption in decision theory is that additional information allows individuals to make better choices. This is often applied in the social policy realm. Well-intentioned public and non-profit officials commonly attempt to provide more information to the public to shape decisions such as school choice, public transportation usage, and the like. Recent discussions of the human capacity for assimilating information and analysis of the costs of gathering information have cast doubt on this assumption.

Date: Tuesday, October 26th, 3:30pm-5:00pm

The lecture will take place at The Information School, University of Washington, Mary Gates Hall, Room 420. Directions.

Please see our website for details about the Center.

Best wishes

Center for Human-Information Interaction

Sounds interesting!  ¶ 9:43 AM 1 Comments

  Unrealpolitik DATA: Election anxiety? Maybe you need to make your own game plan and see how it plays out on November 2nd. Slate has a list of several sim-election games available. Their favorite is Political Machine from Ubi.



As for me, the election is officially over. I voted yesterday and am sending in my ballot in a few hours. (Executive summary: Dems, Monorails, No Gambling, Traffic Improvement, and a bunch of judges i know nothing about.) Now starts the nail biting...  ¶ 9:21 AM 0 Comments

  Dear Google INFO TECHNOLOGY: Some random thoughts for Google:

1) Gmail: I want a program that I can install on my local machine that will be the default mail client. When I click on a mailto link, it'll open up a new browser window that will automatically pull up the Gmail compose screen with the addressee specified. This could be a killer app that gives you a huge benefit over Yahoo and Hotmail. And honestly I'm sick of Outlook trying to make me go through the goddamn wizard every time I click on a mailto.

2) Google Desktop: this is cool, but it's not cool enough yet. I want to be able to search not just my Internet Explorer history, but my Firefox history too. And why did you make it search my Outlook emails but not my Gmail emails? You are Gmail, remember?

Also, why can't I click on the folder of a found file rather then just the file itself? Browsers are already equipped to do local file browsing, so this seems like a no-brainier. And why isn't G.D. cataloging the tags of my mp3s and images, etc.? Lastly, it'd be really cool if I could put G.D. on all of my home computers and then have a search for a local file show me the results aggregated.

Overall, it's a great idea... But it's a bit simple at the moment to be really that useful. I'm still waiting for that killer app that links Google to my local machine, and still not quite seeing it.

Update: I just went to submit feedback to the Google Desktop program and found this message:

We're working hard on adding new features and capabilities to Google Desktop Search, and we want to know what you think. If the feature you'd like us to add is included in the list below, you can vote for it by selecting it and clicking 'Submit.' If not, select 'Other' and send us a brief description.

Index .pdfs
Index audio files
Support Mozilla Firefox
Partial word searches
Search folder names
Support more chat programs
More than 10 results per page
Add Desktop Search button to Google Toolbar

Update: Thanks for the tips everyone! I'll be trying out the plug-ins later today.  ¶ 1:48 PM 3 Comments

  Winglee on Slashdot SCIENCE: A new propulsion scheme being researched at the UW caught the eye of the Slashdot juggernaut today:

paltemalte writes "A new means of propelling spacecraft being developed at the University of Washington could dramatically cut the time needed for astronauts to travel to and from Mars and could make humans a permanent fixture in space. In fact, with magnetized-beam plasma propulsion, or mag-beam, quick trips to distant parts of the solar system could become routine, said Robert Winglee, a UW Earth and space sciences professor who is leading the project."

Just looked up the word juggernaut to make sure I was using it correctly...

1. Something, such as a belief or institution, that elicits blind and destructive devotion or to which people are ruthlessly sacrificed.
2. An overwhelming, advancing force that crushes or seems to crush everything in its path: “It doesn't assume that people need necessarily remain passive when confronted by what appears to be the juggernaut of history” (Christopher Lehmann-Haupt).

... I had no idea how right I was. But I digress.

I took an intro Earth and Space Science class from Professor Winglee in my first year at the UW. He was really cool -- he used lots of examples from Star Trek and had a crazy Australian accent to boot. Towards the end we had a home-made rocket competition and tried different types of propulsion -- lots of fun. And he gave me 4.0 which is always nice.  ¶ 11:10 AM 0 Comments

  Same Mistakes from Sony, New Decade INFO TECHNOLOGY:I just watched a video of the new Play Station Portable disc loading mechanism and I can't believe how fragile it looks. They honestly expect this thing to survive in a teenagers backpack? The bottom of a locker? On the bedroom floor?



Honestly, parents who actually get this thing for their kid are going to be the same parents who get a camcorder for their kids -- god knows it's going to cost the same, and from this it looks like it'll be just as fragile.

And from a usability standpoint, the way the person in the video is holding the psp to eject the disk is completely awkward. I can see the manual now, "to eject a disk, hold psp by the left corner with your right hand. Hold the psp angled 90 degrees away from your body. Swing your left hand around the back of the psp and press the eject button. Fiddle with the disc until you figure out how to actually remove it without busting the loading tray." What a nightmare!

Sony just makes the same mistakes over and over again. (They should have avoided these issues after a decade of servicing broken minidisk players.) Comparatively, I've stepped on my GBA, it's been rained on, and it rustles around in my bag for days at a time. It's never missed a beat. I'll stick with GBA or GB-DS, thankyouverymuch.

(This entry is a comment I left on this Engadget post)  ¶ 9:21 AM 0 Comments

  Instapundit == Ass Hat ASSEMBLEME: I've been meaning to update my link list to the right for a while now -- adding new blogs I love and getting rid of ones I never visit anymore -- but I'm again going to have to put it off for a bit.

However, I had to get rid of my link to Instapundit right away, simply because that guy is out of his gourd lately. I used to read him to try to get some balance to my political blog reading, but I'm switching over to Andrew Sullivan. In a political climate that has made lefties get lefter and righties get righer, Sullivan is one of the few pundits that actually has moved to the center. So he's my daily read now. Although I change pundits like I change socks. (I used to hate Michael Moore, you know.)

And hey, he used to be quite a looker, and that always helps.

  ¶ 1:31 PM 0 Comments

  "F*** You and F*** You, Republicans" Money DATA: Slate has a great article on the politics of money.

In September, the research firm Prince & Associates surveyed 400 people worth more than $1 million for Elite Traveler magazine. The rich folk favored Bush by a 58-42 margin. Not too surprising. But when you break out the numbers, they tell a different story. The petit bourgeoisie millionaires were passionately for Bush: Those worth between $1 million and $10 million favored Bush by a 63-37 margin. But the haute millionaires, those worth more than $10 million, favored Kerry 59-41.

[...]

On Wall Street, veterans speak of "f***-you money": the nice round figure a guy needs to set himself up for life, buy (and decorate) multiple residences, create trust funds for kids, and still have enough cash to buy expensive toys and pursue new business ventures. At a certain point—somewhere north of $10 million—wealth may become "f*** you and f*** you, Republicans" money. This is the kind of cash that George Soros, Warren Buffett, Peter Lewis, and the 200 business leaders who endorsed Kerry possess.

  ¶ 1:14 PM 0 Comments

  Politics, Politics, Politics VISUAL COMMUNICATION: The New York Times schools Kerry Edwards on their mediocre logo.



Click on the graphic above for the full version, or you can check out the associated article.

Logos can be powerful, and they're all about subliminal messages. Perhaps because of my Texas roots, I have a weakness for the big and the bold, and the main 2004 Bush-Cheney logo, basically a holdover from the 2000 presidential race, fulfills my expectations. It's brash and snazzy: a field of powerful, militaristic navy blue punctuated with the four letters of his surname spelled out in white in what appears to be Folio Extra-Bold Italic letters. (Even the name of the font sounds forceful, doesn't it?)

  ¶ 10:21 AM 1 Comments

  Where my peeps at? Part 2. INFO VISUALIZATION: Ok, I'm always a sucker for a nice GIS readout, so here's one -- on the house.



So, Seattle is pretty much Democrat country -- no surprise there. But what's up with that little Republican conclave near Auburn?  ¶ 8:53 AM 0 Comments

  Cartograms -- Putting ID, MT, WY, ND, and SD In Their Place INFO VISUALIZATION: Electoral-Vote.com has become the first site I visit each morning now that the election is getting so close (hey, that's a double-entendre, woot). One thing I hadn't noticed until recently was their inclusion of a US cartogram.



The site doesn't say if the states are proportioned by electoral vote or population, (there is a subtle difference since each state gets two "free" electoral votes -- this means per capita a state like Idaho actually gets more representation in the electoral college then someone in a state like California.) but either way, it gives an interesting comparison to the widely used "block" (Demers) style cartogram.

For a fun, if confusing view of America's change population distribution, check out this animated contiguous cartogram. (If you thought Florida looked a little phallic before, wait until you see it balloon up over the past few decades.)

For more fun with cartograms, check out this awesome primer.
  ¶ 8:27 AM 0 Comments

  Iraq Attack INFO VISUALIZATION: The New York Times has an interesting map that charts the chaos happening in Iraq.



In short, avoid all roads and populated areas. You might want to avoid the desert too.   ¶ 7:54 PM 0 Comments

  P2P Growing; BitTorrent P2P King INFO VISUALIZATION: There is some fascinating information on peer to peer networks over at CacheLogic.



Some of the findings:

* P2P traffic outweighs web traffic.

* P2P is not in decline.

* BitTorrent takes up 53% of P2P traffic
* eDonkey2000, 24%
* FastTrack, 19%
* Gnutella, only 4%

Be sure to check out this graphic that shows P2P to be 80% of traffic in Asia. 80%! Http hardly registers!

Also in P2P news:

* Read an interview with BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen. (BitTorrent 2 in the works!)

* The EFF lets P2P developers know what they need to do to keep their software legal.

* Voting for a president based on their P2P stance? Here's the skinny:

President Bush’s campaign says Mr. Bush isn’t in favor of banning peer-to-peer technology because it has legitimate uses, though he wants to vigorously enforce copyright law,” says a September 27 Wall Street Journal story headlined Antipiracy Bill Divides Studios and Tech Companies.

John Kerry’s campaign says he also supports copyright law, and a spokesman says that ‘widespread sharing and downloading of music, movies and software undermines the incentives of individuals and companies to create new content’.” Now you know.

My own take on the issue? Bush and Kerry will both be lap dogs to the content industry for the foreseeable future. However, the next time a teenager loses his or her college fund for downloading the theme song to Full House, I think Kerry is compassionate and reasonable enough to reconsider his stance. Like Clinton. But Bush -- Mr. "I don't understand how poor people think", puts consistency above all else, even commonsense.

(mostly via p2p weblog)  ¶ 9:06 AM 1 Comments

  Nobel Laureate Dr. Linda B. Buck SCIENCE: A Nobel Prize has been awarded to a UW and Fred Hutch CRC scientist. Awesome!

Two American scientists who discovered how people can smell and recall about 10,000 different odors were awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in the category of physiology or medicine today.

The winners were Dr. Richard Axel, 58, a university professor at Columbia, and Dr. Linda B. Buck, 57, of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and University of Washington in Seattle. The two, who will share the $1.3 million award, were cited for a discovery they made in 1991 while working together at Columbia University in Manhattan.

Here is a quote from the email Lee Hartwell -- president and director of the Hutch (also a Nobel Laureate, and a perennial cook at the company picnic) -- sent out today:

I am thrilled to announce that Dr. Linda Buck, a member of our Basic Sciences Division, has won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her groundbreaking work on odorant receptors and the organization of the olfactory system-the network responsible for our sense of smell.

She shares the prize with Dr. Richard Axel of Columbia University. Their work is the first to define one of our sensory systems in the most detailed manner possible by defining the genes and proteins that control this remarkably complex response. This is a landmark achievement in the study of the nervous system.

The basic principles for recognizing and remembering about 10,000 different odors have long been a mystery. In a series of pioneering studies as a postdoctoral fellow with Axel, Linda clarified how our olfactory system works. She discovered a large gene family, made up of some 1,000 different genes that give rise to an equivalent number of olfactory receptor types. These receptors are located on the olfactory receptor cells, which occupy a small area in the upper part of the lining of the nose and detect the inhaled odorant molecules.

Linda and Richard showed that every single olfactory receptor cell produces one and only one of the odorant receptor genes. Thus, there are as many types of olfactory receptor cells as there are odorant receptors. Most odors are composed of multiple odorant molecules, and each odorant molecule activates several odorant receptors. This leads to a combinatorial code forming an "odorant pattern" - somewhat like the colors in a patchwork quilt or in a mosaic. This is the basis for our ability to recognize and form memories of approximately 10,000 different odors. To read more about Linda's work, visit the Nobel Web site at http://nobelprize.org.

Linda joined the center in 2002 after 11 years as a faculty member at Harvard Medical School. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the recipient of the Gairdner Award, the Unilever Science Award, the Louis Vuitton-Moet Hennessy Science for Art Prize, the R. H. Wright Award in olfactory research and the Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for work in basic medical research.

Cool!  ¶ 4:12 PM 0 Comments

  Polls, Polls, Polls DATA: More data are coming in on Thursday's debate. Here's a poll of 14 states and several urban areas. (pdf warning) Out of 14 states polled, 2 found Bush to be the winner. They are -- surprise -- Texas and Oklahoma. Interestingly, Bush was seen as the winner in Texas by only a 2% lead over Kerry. The margin of error is ±4.9%.

Oklahoma is the only state that was clearly impressed by Bush, with 5% more respondents crowning him the winner over Kerry. But again, the margin of error is ±4.9%. Hardly a resounding victory.



Colorado is a dead heat; Kentucky (like Texas for Bush) only showed a slight victory for Kerry. But beyond that, the 10 other states polled found Kerry to be the clear winner. Most importantly, Florida, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and New Jersey are all on that list.

This is good news for Kerry, but will it effect votes? Here's John Zogby's opinion, written before the debate.

Historically, these televised presidential debates have had a significant impact on the final outcome of several elections. In 1960, a polished and articulate Massachusetts Senator named John F. Kennedy showed that he could compete with a more experienced and older sitting Vice-President, Richard Nixon.

  ¶ 10:57 AM 0 Comments

  Cookies INTERFACES: I love firefox.



Not very helpful, but cute. This is cute too.  ¶ 11:23 AM 1 Comments

  Tied Polls, Ties, Poles (as in Poland) DATA: The American Research Group has posted two polls about the debate performances yesterday, and Kerry wins in both by at least 10%.

But putting aside the partisans and focusing in on just the independent voters, Kerry won by 16% and 19% in the two polls. Nice.

But even here I suspect there are some freepers (and of course the equivalent on the democratic side) that are just trying to bump the numbers. If you read the methodology of the polls you see that the data are far from empirical.

Both panels are opt-in Internet panels with responses received between 10:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. on September 30.

Hrmn, yes, opt-in internet panels. I wouldn't put too much into these polls. We'll just have to wait a few days to find out the real reaction to the debates. I don't see how anyone could have been impressed with Bush's performance.

On a lighter note, while chatting with my friend about Bush's and Kerry's ties (which were the wrong colors, Electoral-Vote points out: blue on Bush, Red on Kerry) I ran across this light and interesting article in the Chicago Sun-Times about the new power pink tie.

Ronald Reagan was famous for his red power tie. George W. Bush usually chooses a blue tie -- the better to offset his eyes.

And John Kerry? He's in the pink. [...]

These days, pink equals power.

"It's the tie of the moment," [says JoAnn Young, trend correspondent for Marshall Field's], and it seems to be so. No less a financial force than Donald Trump has picked pink ties, in hues varying from silvery salmon to fuchsia. Even Bill Clinton showed up for his talk with Oprah Winfrey in a pink tie that coordinated with his hostess.

I've had a pink and blue striped tie for a while. Not because it's the "tie of the moment" but because it looks great on us pale white boys.

(Oh gosh, I forgot to talk about Poland in this post. HOW COULD I FORGET POLAND?)  ¶ 10:30 AM 0 Comments

  Mount St. Helens INFO VISUALIZATION: Good friend Andy points us to a few interesting visualizations of recent Mount St. Helens geological activity.



You can also check out the Mount Saint Helens webcam while you wait for the money shot.  ¶ 10:16 AM 0 Comments