Monthly Archives: October 2016

The real meaning of Trump’s Al Smith fiasco

October 21, 2016UncategorizedAl Smith Dinner, Clinton, Election 2016, Election 2016, TrumpGreg Laden

A presidential election season involves a series of debates. After the last debate, a day or a few days after, the main candidates attend and speak at a charity dinner run by the Archdiocese of New York, to raise money for Catholic Charities. It is the last event at which the candidates will appear together, and the format is that of a roast.

That is more or less the tradition.

Last night, Secretary Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were at the Al Smith dinner. Here is are the salient facts:

Trump spoke first. He had two or three pretty funny jokes, but the one that I think will go down in history as the funniest required that he throw a woman (who did not know the joke was going to be told) under the bus for his own benefit. Figures.

His other “jokes” were almost entirely taken from his stump and debate speeches; and they were offensive. He didn’t use the term “crooked Hillary” but almost. People in the room booed him and yelled out insults to him. The people sitting behind him looked like they had just swallowed live baby porcupines.

I assume both candidates were given the same amount of time to talk. Trump’s time on the podium, however, was very short. It appears that he was, essentially, booed off the stage.

Secretary Clinton spoke second. She was very funny. She was gracious. The roast parts of her speech … and here is the important part … were just as effective as anything Trump said as jabs against one’s opponent, even more so. If you took at face value all the bad things Trump implied in his awkward statements about Clinton, and all the bad things Clinton implied in her very entertaining routine about Trump, Trump would end up with a truly deplorable resumé, while Clinton would look just a tad shady, well within the normal range for a politician.

After Secretary Clinton finished the roast part of her monologue, she talked about other things, larger things, important things, eloquently and effectively.

Trump had everyone booing him and squirming. Secretary Clinton had everyone in stitches, then a bit weepy-eyed.

The final score: Clinton 9, Trump -2. The difference in performance between the two at this event was double the difference between them during the most differentiating of the debates.

So, what is the real significance?

There has always been the suggestion that Trump’s intention, from the beginning of the primary process, was to increase his brand’s value, maybe sell a book, increase his speaker fee, etc., and not really run for President. I never believed that, I said so at the time, and everyone else was wrong. But, the idea that ultimately he would use this entire run for the presidency as brand enhancement, win or lose, was clearly correct. That would be correct for anyone running for president, and especially for a professional entertainer, which is what Trump is.

(Actually, he is something else. Not an entertainer and not a business person. See the graphic at the top of this post for a hint as to what he is.)

Here’s the thing. Last night, two people got to get up in front of a fairly tough audience, including major members of the press, major east coast politicians, and the mucky-mucks of the Catholic Church, and be entertainers for a few minutes. Hillary Clinton, not known to be an Obama-level speaker (either Obama) and often seen as a bit dry, killed it. Donald Trump, the great entertainer, totally screwed the proverbial pooch.

So, now, imagine yourself as a network executive, or a potential investor in the entertainment industry. You are presented with a proposal to develop Trump TV or some other Trumpy project. But you were at the Al Smith dinner, because you are rich and you happen to live in New York. Or maybe you just saw the video. And now you are going to decide whether or not to put substantial funds at risk. While you are thinking about it, you also realize that you would be putting your reputation at risk.

No, that won’t happen. Invest elsewhere.

Yes, Trump will be able to develop a post-election quasi network (on the Internet) that will fit in with the broad panoply of such projects, and it may have some value (fiscally, not morally or ethically). But Trump’s entertainment mojo as demonstrated in this campaign is negative. He doesn’t kill the room, he kills the mood. He was apparently suitable to play the asshole boss on a TV show or two, but his range is very limited, his basic talent non-existent, and his ability to develop in this area nil.

This campaign, rather than preparing him, and a large audience, for an entertainment coup, has proven that he is not up for it, lacks the talent, lacks the appeal. The Al Smith Dinner, which happened at the end of a long period of time during which Trump could have developed his talent, and his act, shows that there is nothing there worth looking at. Indeed, Trump’s performance at the Al Smith dinner was so bad, so cringeworthy, that a producer or investor in entertainment would gong the likes of him off the stage in record time.

Trump went bankrupt how many times? Failed in how many relationships? Is gong to lose the presidency by how much? Couldn’t even handle a roast at a charity dinner? It just might be that the man isn’t really good at anything.

Who killed Osama: Trump or Clinton?

October 20, 2016UncategorizedCelebrity Apprentice, Clinton, Election 2016, Election 2016, obama, Osama, TrumpGreg Laden

What really happened the night Osama Bin Laden was killed by Hillary Clinton and her SEAL Team?

Or, was it like this?

Check out this maximally LOL item at Slate for all the details.

UPDATED: Was there a Clinton Surge or not?

October 20, 2016UncategorizedClinton, Election 2016, Hayes, Maddow, MSNBC, Polling, presidential debate, TrumpGreg Laden

Updated to include polls through Oct 26th (AM, more polls later in the day on the 26th will be added at the next update):

Updated, 25 October AM

As I expected, and demonstrated much to the consternation of everyone, the ever widening double digit lead of Clinton over Trump in an increasing number of polls meme is a falsehood. Here is the latest graphic using the same approach as described below, but updated to reflect additional polls.

Rather than a widening, or even consistent, gap, or a gap that is double digit, we see Clinton continuing to lead, but pretty much in the same way that she has led since the conventions. In other words, the three presidential debates, the release of Trump’s tax records, the sexual assault tape, the confirmation of many actual groping cases, and the VEEP debate, may have had some short term effects on the polls, and if you look closely and squint, may have actually re-widened Clinton’s lead to post convention levels a bit, but for the most part, we are looking at a pretty steady relationship between the two candidates from the end of the convention period to the present.

When the general polls conform to expectations, they matter. When they don’t conform to expectations, say “yeah, but what really matters is the electoral college, and in the electoral college … bla bla bla.”

And yes, since we attempt to choose our president using the Electoral College (though that doesn’t always work) that is what matters, and it may be the case, though I can not independently confirm this at this exact moment in time (Tuesday AM), that Clinton is either taking or widening the lead in some of the swing states, and some red states are turing less red, as we speak. But, it turns out that we DO look at the general numbers for a number of reasons, including the fact that we expect general trends to conform to state wide trends, as a check on what we are seeing, and general trends may matter down ballot.

The original reason that I wrote this post is that I was concerned that a lot of commenters (and maybe voters) had come to the conclusion that Clinton’s lead was growing, nearing or in the double digit range, and that the Clinton campaign need not look back, and could start doing other things, but, my read on the polls was that the debate/scandal swing looked like earlier swings, and I had little faith that it was long lasting. I took a look at the data and saw preliminary information suggesting that this may be the case. And now, that is confirmed. I conclude for now that the three presidential debates, the release of Trump’s tax records, the sexual assault tape, the confirmation of many actual groping cases, and the VEEP debate, may have had some short term effects on the polls, and if you look closely and squint, may have actually re-widened Clinton’s lead to post convention levels a bit, but for the most part, we are looking at a pretty steady relationship between the two candidates from the end of the convention period to the present.

And yes, I said the part that the incredulous will ignore twice.

I may do another electoral projection to replace this one later today.

Original Post:
America. Democracy. Decency. Thoughtfulness. Everybody and every thing, it feels like.

Everyone is upset this morning about Trump’s comment that he will wait and see about the results before he accepts them. His comments are deplorable and astonishing, but I think they are also a distraction. If he ignores the results, it may be a bit messy but he will be ignored. A few militia groups will go and take over a Federal facility or two, but that will be managed. Unless the Congress gets on board with denying Clinton the presidency, nothing really bad will happen.

I’m more alarmed by all the comments he made in this debate, and perviously, about how he would handle wars, the military, the economy, the law, the Supreme Court, trade, ethnic/race relations, and his comments about women (which continued last night). Those are all problems that will ruin us as a country if he wins, and that have damaged us as a country already even if he walks away from this race right now. I’m not all that worried about him having a tantrum if he loses.

And, of course, it is maximally concerning that Trump wins the election, than it is that he loses and refuses to go quietly. This is because it is simply not the case that Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have this sewn up. Let me show you why.

This graph shows the daily averaged-out polls, all of them, as listed by RCP’s site, since July 1st (plotted on a y-axis of days before the election). There is a 3 day moving average imposed on this (a shorter moving average than usual, but this is an average of averages, and those averages are of polls taken over varying numbers of prior days, so we have plenty of helpful smoothosity on that curve).

Never mind the details for a moment. Notice first that over this time, which starts in the month of the conventions and goes up to the present, there is an overall pattern of oscillation. For much of the time all of the pols are within the margin of error, but Clinton’s polls are usually higher than Trumps, when averaged out. If you apply the FiveThirtyEight method, or use similar approaches, to combine the different polls into probability statements, one can be more definitive about Clinton’s overall and consistent lead since the conventions.

But, notice that about 50 days out, the two candidate’s polling became close before Clinton started to separate again, and also notice, that this cycle of Clinton pulling ahead and then drawing down again seems to be happening one more time. There was probably a lot of pressure separating Clinton and Trump, with Trump’s bizarre and generally poor performance in the debates, the revelation of the tape in which he seems to have no clue that sexual harassment is not OK, and the revelations seeming to confirm that he is a serial sexual molester, and the tax story from the NYT, and all of that. But the about 27 days out, that pressure relaxes, and all the numbers regress towards the mean again.

Let me put this another way, as a stark but supportable hypothesis. About 50% of the United States would vote for Trump, and about 50% would vote for Clinton. People talk about the 35% to 40% Trump base, and that’s real. And Clinton has a similar base. But the rest of the country, the 20% to 30% that are not part of those groups, are divided roughly in half, in terms of preference for either candidate, and their preference is soft.

If there are no more strong events pushing people away from Trump, the numbers will settle down to where they were between days 40 and 50. this will place trump within about one point of Clinton. And, one point is very very close.

The current widespread rhetoric that Clinton is going to win no matter what may be the exact cause of her losing. How many people will not bother to vote, when they otherwise might have, because they are confident that Clinton will win? If the two candidates are 1% apart, then only 1 in 200 voters have to do that to put Trump in the White House.

Let me note what may end up being the greatest situational irony of our times. MSNBC has lots of great commentators and reporters, like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes. They are providing the most thoughtful and coherent analyses of what is going on during this election cycle. But, they are also constantly repeating and supporting the rhetoric that Trump can’t win. And, their audience corresponds closely to that subset of people who are going to vote for Clinton.

Unless…

Unless MSNBC and other sources fail to shut up about how Clinton can’t possibly lose, and one in 200 otherwise-Clinton-voters stay home.

There are, of course, other possibilities. The apparent closing of the gap we see on the above chart could be an artifact of poling and disappear by itself over the next 48 hours, or it could be real, but reverses because of something Trump does. However, keep this in mind: Trump is being such a distraction from the race that a lot of information that could be used against Clinton (legitimately or not) is currently piling up and not coming into play. It is quite possible that forces that work to push Trump down on this graph could be weak, and forces that work to push Clinton down on this graph could be strong, and we might not be looking at a dangerously weak 1% lead by Clinton when the first week of November rolls around. We may be looking at a distinct Trump lead.

I should mention that today’s polls are not shown on this graph because they are mostly not available. Those that are available are in that subset that tends to favor Trump, but they are all showing a virtual dead heat.

Today, tomorrow, through Monday, we should be looking very closely at the polls. If they show narrowing, then my Hypothesis from Hell can’t be ruled out and the idea that the race is really about 50-50 between scandals needs to be taken seriously.

How have events shaped the Clinton-Trump race?

October 19, 2016UncategorizedClinton, Election 2016, Election 2016, Polls, TrumpGreg Laden

It is unfortunate that “all the pundits” are now saying that Clinton will now win no matter what, and that Trump will likely suffer more scandal before the end of the process.

This is unfortunate because a weak get out the vote effort is probably worth a couple of points on election day. It is unfortunate because some Trump scandals increase, rather than decrease, his numbers. He could suddenly gain a couple of points if he says or does just the wright/wrong things. It is unfortunate because, for whatever reason, Hillary “My Middle Name is Target” Clinton has turned into the Teflon Candidate for now, but that won’t stick, as it were, for more than a day or two. Then Wikileaks, weak as it is, or some other issue, will come into play and knock two points off of her numbers.

It is unfortunate because the difference between Clinton and Trump is now between about 5 and 7 points, and 2 + 2 + 2 = 6.

Do the math. This race is not over.

In order to give some idea of the magnitude of things like the post-sexual-assault-revelations Trump Slump, or the conventions, or a given debate, in relation to the overall shifts of numbers across this race, I mad this chart, using RCP’s national polling averages, and adding in some key moments from the campaign:

While Clinton has always been ahead, on average, she has not always been that far ahead, and was, in fact, father ahead at various points in the past than she is now. In other words, for all the talk about BusTapeGate and debate performances, Clinton has not pulled out ahead of Trump father than she has been in the past. If you look at this graph, you do not see a clear breakout. And, if you look at the MOST current version from RCP, as I write this, the blue line on top is dropping (those data came in while I was drawing this graphic, and I did not adjust). See that earlier peak in September for Clinton? The current peak is starting to look like that.

So, no, this is not over, and it is not wise to insist that it is.

How do insects walk on water?

October 19, 2016UncategorizedBiology, Insects, insects, Water walkingGreg Laden

A new study illuminates this shadowy question. First, the video:

And now, a press note from the American Chemical Society:

Water striders’ ability to walk and jump on the surfaces of ponds and lakes has long amazed curious observers — and inspired robot designers who want to mimic the bugs’ talent. Now, scientists have measured for the first time key parameters that allow them to walk on water — by studying their leg shadows. The findings, reported in the ACS journal Langmuir, could contribute to designs for water-skimming robots.

More than 2,000 years ago, Greek scientist Archimedes explained flotation, stating that the upward, floating force on an object in water equals the weight (or downward force) of the water displaced. The principle has informed the building of ships, submarines and other aquatic vehicles. But for tiny water striders, water isn’t displaced. It is expelled by the insect’s hairy legs. The updated Archimedes principle predicts that the weight of the expelled water should equal the floating force. But confirming this prediction experimentally is a challenge. Because water striders are so light, they are almost impossible to weigh using conventional techniques. So Yu Tian and colleagues used an unconventional method — analyzing the shadows cast by the insects’ legs.

The researchers placed a white sheet of paper at the bottom of a lab aquarium housing water striders and installed a light source above the water. The insects’ stick-straight legs cast shadows that were rounded, representing the curvature of the water and the expelled water volume from which the floating force and weight can be calculated, the researchers say. Also, from these measurements, the striders’ slightest shifts in weight and body angle could be detected for the first time.

The authors acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

The abstract from the original publication:

Forces acted on legs of water-walking arthropods with weights in dynes are of great interest for entomologist, physicists, and engineers. While their floating mechanism has been recognized, the in vivo leg forces stationary have not yet been simultaneously achieved. In this study, their elegant bright-edged leg shadows are used to make the tiny forces visible and measurable based on the updated Archimedes’ principle. The force was approximately proportional to the shadow area with a resolution from nanonewton to piconewton/pixel. The sum of leg forces agreed well with the body weight measured with an accurate electronic balance, which verified updated Archimedes’ principle at the arthropod level. The slight changes of vertical body weight focus position and the body pitch angle have also been revealed for the first time. The visualization of tiny force by shadow is cost-effective and very sensitive and could be used in many other applications.

Citation: Yelong Zheng, Hongyu Lu, Wei Yin, Dashuai Tao, Lichun Shi, and Yu Tian. 2016. Elegant Shadow Making Tiny Force Visible for Water-Walking Arthropods and Updated Archimedes’ Principle. Langmuir 2016 32 (41), 10522-10528. DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.6b02922

Enough Is Enough

October 18, 2016UncategorizedElection 2016, Election 2016, Steve Schmidt, TitanicGreg Laden

Steve Schmidt, bless his pointy Republican head, makes a very important point here.

And to underscore the point, let me ask you this: How do we go from having an “election” to having a “president elect”?

The process is actually a bit subtle and somewhat more complicated than one might think. Election day happens, but there is no “president elect” in any official, constitutional, way, for a very long time thereafter.

Though this can vary, the first possible date that we will have a “president elect” in the current election cycle is on January 6th, 2017. Not before.

Of course, what really happens, is that the country’s news agencies, in an uncoordinated yet organically coordinated way, decide which of the states, and thus their electoral votes, goes to each candidate, and if they become certain at some point that 270 or more electoral votes will go to one of the candidates, then they declare that person the winner.

But, what really really happens, as pointed out as Steve Schmidt, is that the loser apparent of the election becomes the first person to address, usually by a phone call, the winner apparent. John McCain called up Barack Obama and called him “Mr. President.” Al Gore called up George Bush and called him “Mr. President.”

Watch the video to see what a former Republican looks like, and to get some interesting perspective on Trump’s claims that the election is being rigged. More importantly, listen to what Schmidt says about the importance of the apparent fact that Donald Trump has no intention of ever calling Hillary Clinton “Madam President.”

And that could be a problem.

Watch the whole thing:

The founding fathers were unwilling or unable to do two things. One was to see centuries into the future, and thus avoid certain ambiguities, missing elements, or general silliness in their founding father’s document, the Constitution of the United States of America. The other was to tie up certain details so that procedure was set in stone, as opposed to followed by somewhat flexible agreed upon convention.

If the Congress is a GOP congress, and they continue to act as they have been acting with respect to the Supreme Court nomination, when January 6th comes around, Donald Trump may well become the president. Or at least, they could try that.

And there would be a Civil War.

The first Civil War was fought over slavery. The second Civil War will be fought over racism and misogyny.

A Tablet PC For $170

October 18, 2016UncategorizedJumper EZpad, magnetic stylus, Tablet PC, Tablet Review, technology, Technology, Windows TabletGreg Laden

I have another tablet review for you. (See the bottom of the post for some followup on my last review.) This is a “tablet PC” meaning a tablet that runs a full on PC operating system, as opposed to a tablet-oriented operating system.

With the keyboard (not supplied, buy separately).

The Jumper EZpad 5SE Tablet PC is a pretty high performance tablet with an exceptionally low cost, and worth a look especially if you are a Windows user. The tablet comes with Windows 10, and a most notably, a magic “magnetic stylus.”

The screen and stylus use electromagnetic technology. So, you can hold the stylus over the screen, and it still interacts magically with the device. The stylus has a button on it, so when you are doing this spooky and very cool action at a distance, you can click on something or produce some other result. The stylus can also be touched on the screen, and is pressure sensitive. Given all these attributes, you can use the stylus to draw in ways not previously seen before on a tablet or computer. By me. Maybe you have. This is like the Samsung S Pen, as far as I can tell. It is, as I say, very cool.

The tablet also comes with a built in stand (see photo above) which has two positions. This allows what is essentially a small highly portable Windows computer to work with a keyboard and mouse in a very convenient way.

(Of course, you don’t need a mouse because it has a touch screen, but many will be more comfortable using both a mouse and the touchscreen).

This tablet specs are very impressive, with a good processor and screen, lots of holes to plug things into, a rasonable amount of ram and storage, etc., including:

<li>Intel Cherry Trail X8300 Quad C ore 1.44 GH plus processor.  </li>


<a href="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/files/2016/10/Screen-Shot-2016-10-18-at-9.04.30-PM.png"><img src="http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/files/2016/10/Screen-Shot-2016-10-18-at-9.04.30-PM.png" alt="screen-shot-2016-10-18-at-9-04-30-pm" width="282" height="608" class="alignright size-full wp-image-23122" /></a><li>A 10.6 inch screen (IPS, 1920X1080). </li>

Note that the screen is very bright, clear, and provides excellent viewing from oblique angles.

<li>Intel HD graphics designed to save power and allow high end graphics use.</li>


<li>There are 4 GB of DDR3 Ram and 64GB of storage</li>

slot for a micro SC card.

<li>HDMI output </li>

front and read cameras

blue tooth and wireless.

<li>There are two standard USB outlets and a micro USB, aside from the HDMI </li>

<li>It is designed to work, optionally, with a keyboard, but unfortunately I did not test out the keyboard and they are currently out of stock at GearBest, where this device is most readily available.</li>

Also, the device is uncannily light, at least in my estimation. I will probably be watching Amazon Prime videos on it.

NOTE: I just got this info I’ll pass on to you. If you use this coupon code, the price of the device drops to 168.29. I’m not sure how long that is good for.

sesep

You can charge the device through one of the USB slots, but you can also use an external brick, not supplied but readily available (the kind with the extra small connector thingie).

GearBest actually has a pretty impressive set of other tablets and accessories and they are often on sale. Also, poke around on their site, you will find a “Today’s Deal” section with some pretty good prices such as this Arduino UNO starter kit that I would have bought except I already have all these parts. That deal was 18.99 (normal price closer to %50) but unless you saw this blog post soon after I wrote it, no UNO for you! GearBest ships the product via DHL and that works great to the US in my experience.

</aAnd now, on a different but related matter …

Earlier, I had reviewed the Teclast Tbook, but I hadn’t said much about the keyboard. I’ve since played around with the keyboard, and I have to say that,for the price, it is very much worth it. It turns the PC tablet into a small computers. This, among other things, lets you interact with your android world with a pretty OK Keyboard (comparable to, and similar to, the Mac keyboard). Why would you do that? As a writer, I am shocked that anyone would ask such a questions. Keyboards!

This is the link to the keyboard.

Dear Republican, time to make the change, because this is now you.

October 18, 2016UncategorizedArizona, Assassination of Bolles, Election 2016, Election 2016, Racism, Republican, Sexism, violenceGreg Laden

My current model (subject to change) puts Arizona in the Clinton Column. This is the prediction that has resulted in the most head scratching from those observing this, but it turns out that the Clinton Campaign seems to agree. Clinton surrogates, including Chelsea, Michele Obama, and Bernie Sanders will be in the state over the next few days.

Frankly, I worry about good people going to Arizona stumping for a Liberal Democrat. Perhaps that is because of my own experience living there for several weeks. During that time a local desperado was arrested and made a court appearance, and his family showed up, heavily armed, shot the judge, the DA, others, and took off with the accused to begin a days long chase ended by a shootout in the desert somewhere.

That visit was several years ago, a very short time after mobsters assassinated Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles because he was getting too close to something.

Some of my best friends are Arizonans. But among Arizonans are the usual deplorables who have no compunction against threatening to shoot children, blowing up reporters, and who knows what else. But, perhaps, the Arizonan version of this particular monster is somewhat better armed, has more ammo, or perhaps, a hair trigger.

Today, Arizona Republicans are threatening children, flashing guns at them, because those children have a vague (and, really, non existent) association with Clinton. And more.

Here, watch this:

Republicans need to realize that this is what they have become.

Individuals who still call themselves Republicans can no longer do the old “I’m one of the good ones” or “I’m a principled economic conservative but social bla bla bla” or “I’ve been a Republican since the old days when herp a derp a derp” and “Yadda yadda yadda my brains just melted through my sinuses and got all over my shirt because I’m so fucking stupid.” That sort of thing.

What Republicans need to realize now is that they are the people that threaten the children selling magazine subscriptions by flashing guns at them, they are the people that show up at opposing candidate’s rallies to harass the candidate for money, they are the people who cheer when the Republican candidate calls for the death of his opponent, and they are the people who condone sexual assault and racism.

It is not, dear Republicans true that YOUR PARTY does this, and you do not go along. Too much time has gone by without reform, without taking responsibility. You do this. This is you. You are this.

You are deplorable, even if you’ve not personally taken part.

You are the guy standing there in the locker room “going along” with the misogynist talk, maybe in a different context later that day, “going along” with the sexual assault itself. You are the guy out with his friends “going along” with racist talk. Maybe you are the guy who, later that night, watches silently when your friends carry out a hate crime. You are the guy “going along” when your candidate calls for the jailing or killing of his opponents, and you say nothing. Maybe later this week you will be the guy who says nothing as his political party produce and encourages the assassins who attack Chelsea Clinton, or Michelle Obama, or Bernie Sanders. If something like that happens this week in Arizona, that will be you, Republican. You.

Hopefully that won’t happen. But enough has happened already, and there is no way we can not expect more.

Threats were made against the staff of the Arizona Republic for asking their readers to vote for the most qualified candidate to ever run for the office of President of the United States. Threats are being made against the kids who sell that newspaper’s subscription door to door, or in grocery stores, and against others. The video above covers this, but there is more than mentioned there. The following is an extended excerpt from the comments of Mi Ai Parrish, president of the media company that owns The Arizona Republic:

…

What is the correct response to any of the vile threats against me? What is the correct response to the more disturbing actions and words directed against so many others?

I’ve thought about those responses a lot. Today, I offer you a few.

…

To the anonymous caller who invoked the name of Don Bolles … and threatened that more of our reporters would be blown up because of the endorsement, I give you Kimberly. She is the young woman who answered the phone when you called. She sat in my office and calmly told three Phoenix police detectives what you had said. She told them that later, she walked to church and prayed for you. Prayed for patience, for forgiveness. Kimberly knows free speech requires compassion.

To those who said we should be shut down, burned down, who said they hoped we would cease to exist under a new presidential administration, I give you Nicole. She is our editor who directs the news staff, independent of our endorsements. After your threats, Nicole put on her press badge and walked with her reporters and photographers into the latest Donald Trump rally in Prescott Valley, Ariz. She stood as Trump encouraged his followers to heckle and boo and bully journalists. Then she came back to the newsroom to ensure our coverage was fair. Nicole knows free speech requires an open debate.

To those of you who have said that someone who disagrees with you deserves to be punished, I give you Phil. Our editorial page editor is a lifelong Republican, a conservative and a patriot. He was an early voice of reason, arguing calmly that Donald Trump didn’t represent the values of the party he loves. Phil understands that free speech sometimes requires bravery.

To those of you who have spit on, threatened with violence, screamed at and bullied the young people going door-to-door selling subscriptions, I give you those dozens of young men and women themselves. Many sell subscriptions to work their way through school. Most were too frightened to share even their first names here. But they are still on the job. They know that free speech is part of a society that values hard work and equal opportunity.

To those of you who have called us hacks and losers with no purpose, and that we are un-American, I give you Dennis. He is the investigative reporter who first revealed the despicable mistreatment of our veterans at the VA hospital. His work triggered comprehensive debate and, one hopes, lasting change. He and others on his team have been hailed as heroes by veterans’ families across the country. Dennis knows that free speech is sometimes the only way to hold the powerful accountable.

To those of you who have invoked the name of longtime publisher Gene Pulliam, saying he is spinning in his grave, I give you his wife, Nina. After reporter Don Bolles was targeted by a bomber for doing his job, Nina Pulliam wept at his hospital bed. He died there slowly over 12 days. The Pulliams understood that free speech, and a free press, come at a cost.

Then, of course, there are the threats against the publisher today.

To those of you who have said Jesus will judge me, that you hope I burn in hell, that non-Christians should be kept out of our country, I give you my pastor grandfather. He was imprisoned and tortured for being a Christian, and suffered the murder of his best friend for also refusing to deny Christ. He taught all that freedom of religion is a fragile and precious thing.

Much as my grandfather taught, I also know there are a lot of things worth standing up for.

To those of you who said we should go live with the immigrants we love so much, and who threatened violence against people who look or speak a different way, I give you Jobe Couch.

He was the Army cultural attache and Alabama professor who sponsored my aunts and my mother when they arrived in America from Korea after World War II. There are dozens of descendants of his kindness. Citizens with college degrees, a dentist, lawyers, engineers, pastors, teachers, business owners, a Marine, a publisher and more. Uncle Jobe stood for the power of America as a melting pot. He taught me that one kind man can make a difference.

Dear Republican, this is you. Oh, and you are going to lose Arizona.

The Current Trump-Clinton Electoral Prediction

October 16, 2016Politics270 electoral votes, Clinton, Election 2016, Electoral College, Trump, UncategorizedGreg Laden

There are some interesting, and in some cases, potentially disturbing, things going on with the state by state numbers in the current election. Most of this has to do with third party candidates, and most of it with Gary Johnson.

First, I’ll note, that despite fears among liberals and progressives that a lot of Bernie Bots would flock to third party candidates and eschew Clinton, there is no strong evidence that Clinton is losing much to any third party candidates. However, in some states, especially those with libertarian tendencies, Gary Johnson is doing fairly well. And, this had been hurting Trump.

However, lately, there has been a shift backwards in at least one state, New Hampshire. Johnson supporters are abandoning Johnson and switching to Trump, as though they were trying to shore up his position there. This has brought the Trump-Clinton numbers to within the margin of error.

In other words, Libertarian White Males in the “Live Free or Die” state are flocking to Misogynist Racist Trump’s aid rather than “voting on principle” which is what, I assume, they were formally pretending to do. And, this could cost Clinton a couple of electoral votes if the trend continues.

Meanwhile, something like this may be happening in Virginia, but in the opposite direction, where Johnson appears to be getting a lot of Trump votes, maybe more as time goes on.

I don’t have time to do any of this right now, but when this is all over, it would be very interesting to look at the third party effects in this race.

OK, now on to the model. Let me explain the basic approach I take, which is different from other predictors (though 538 may have quietly adopted part of my approach for the general, as they’ve added something that looks a lot like my primary methods to their analysis).

Assume that all polls are good, and that all states are recently sampled with high quality polls with good methods and good samples.

OK, after you’ve stopped laughing, work with this assumption for a minutes. If this was the case, then you could use those polls to predict the electoral outcome, and unless the electoral outcome was really close, or something major went wrong, your prediction would be clear as two who won, and very close if not spot on as to how many electoral votes ultimately go to each candidate.

Now assume that we don’t have polls at all, but we have some numbers indicating how people in a given state are likely to vote (like, if they went for Romney, they are likely to go GOP) or numbers indicating how people will vote based on ethnicity (like, African Americans are not likely to vote for any of the candidates other than Clinton, or among whites there is a certain percentage of White Supremacists, so they’ll vote for Johnson or Trump, etc.) If these numbers are accurate, you can predict the state by state outcome.

We don’t have either of these, but we do have a little of each.

My method uses only a subset of polls, hopefully across a range of states (geographically, politically, etc.), that are taken by higher end polling agencies and recently. These are then combined with data on percentage of voters in that state that voted for Romney, and the classically defined ethnic breakdown for that state, to come up with a muliti-variable regression model. This model uses the percent of the vote that Trump gets out of Trump vs Clinton as the dependent variable, and a Romney number, and the ethnic breakdowns, as the independent variables.

I exclude some states that have recent data but that are beating to their own drums. In this case, Iowa is doing something different, and nobody understands it. Also, Virginia is doing something different and has not been analyses yet. So, even though I have recent data from those two states, they are excluded.

The polls need to be mostly or entirely after the famous “bus tape” and most are after the second presidential debate. These polls come from Utah, Wisconsin, Georgia, Missouri, Indiana, Texas, Alaska, Ohio, Colorado, New Hampshire, Florida, North Carolina, Nevada, Maine, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Michigan, and Washington.

So, good polls are assumed to be nearly perfect, and they show the relationship between available prior voting patterns and demographics and the likely outcome. Then, this model is applied to all states (even those with the good polls) to come up with a list of states and their corresponding “Trumposity”

The result of that analysis is this:

State	Trumposity
Utah	0.58063023
Wyoming	0.567768212
Oklahoma	0.549223043
Idaho	0.548614992
Alabama	0.546790641
West Virginia	0.541869467
Arkansas	0.541711727
Louisiana	0.539524138
Tennessee	0.536052614
Kentucky	0.53465294
Mississippi	0.532941927
Nebraska	0.529403232
Kansas	0.527964979
North Dakota	0.524771763
South Carolina	0.522670157
South Dakota	0.519464786
Georgia	0.517394808
Texas	0.513464342
Montana	0.51208424
Missouri	0.509752111
Indiana	0.509722982
Alaska	0.503877982
North Carolina	0.498999354
Arizona	0.494053798
Florida	0.486219535
Ohio	0.485026033
Virginia	0.48473854
Pennsylvania	0.477290142
Michigan	0.472823203
New Hampshire	0.472629126
Iowa	0.472420972
Wisconsin	0.470889284
Minnesota	0.470213444
Colorado	0.46956662
Nevada	0.465734145
Delaware	0.456986898
Oregon	0.454603152
Illinois	0.452734653
Maine	0.45123086
Connecticut	0.450282382
New Jersey	0.448700354
Washington	0.448170787
New Mexico	0.447855158
Maryland	0.445995181
Massachusetts	0.436816062
New York	0.429018521
Rhode Island	0.427783887
California	0.425306503
Vermont	0.411357768
Hawaii	0.371874288
District of Columbia	0.339691168

You can now split the table at the 50-50% mark to decide which states will break for Clinton and which will break for Trump.

(Note: Alaska will always break for Trump. It is located near the 50-50 line because Alaska is a special snowflake state. Ignore it, just keep it red on any map, and that will do.)

The first map I want to show you is the map of states that are in the Clinton Camp that are a) most Clinton leaning in this analysis, and b) sufficient to get Clinton to 270:

I added Virginia and colored it light blue. The reason I did this is that Iowa is a presumed-Clinton state in this mode, but is in fact, polling for Trump, because people in Iowa seem to have a new goal in life: Pissing off the parties and the electorate sufficiently that nobody cares about them any more, and the Iowa Caucus is no longer allowed to take the prominent role it has for all these year. I predict that if Iowa breaks for Trump, in four years, the first contest will not be the Iowa Caucus.

By adding Virginia and thus potentially starting early on the process of regarding Iowa as irrelevant to electoral politics, we have a list of states that is clearly Clinton and sufficient to put the former first lady back in the White House but with a different job.

Now, let’s do the same thing for Trump. What states are required to put him past the 270 line?

In this case, I’ve colored pink the states that my model puts in the Clinton column but that are on the Trump-end of that part of the list (see table above), that are required to give Trump the election.

Ohio is actually possible. My model shows Ohio going to Clinton, but recent polling shows that Ohioans are more white supremacist than we might have thought. So may be Trump gets Ohio, but I don’t think he’g soing to get all those other pink states, or even any of them, likely.

Putting this a slightly different way, the solid Trump states (in my model) plus Ohio is still under 200 electoral points.

The current most likely outcome according to this model is this:

That would be an electoral blowout.

What happens if some of the more suspect states go backwards and vote for Trump? Iowa is threatening its own irrelevance, New Hampshire is acting strange, Ohio is polling towards Trump, and North Carolina, Arizona and Florida are close to the mid point. Change all of those states to Trump, and we get this nailbiter:

The difference between these last two maps is clearly going to be the focus of interest over the next several days.

Colored here in red, for Danger, not for Trump/GOP, are the states that need to be watched closely, for which we eagerly await new polling, because they are either close, near the middle, or acting strange over recent days:

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Until at least Tuesday or so.

Go to 270 to win to make your own maps!

The Outdoor Science Lab for Kids

October 15, 2016UncategorizedBook review, books, Books, Outdoor science, Science book for kidsGreg Laden

The Outdoor Science Lab for Kids: 52 Family-Friendly Experiments for the Yard, Garden, Playground, and Park is a good guide to home science experiments for kids, usually with adult involvement, ranging across a fairly wide range of age but mainly, I’d say, middle school for unsupervised work, or pretty much any age if supervised.

All of the experiments can be done by adults with younger kids watching or being involved to varying degrees.

Most of he experiments cost little or nothing, depending on where you live (like, do you live near a pond?) and what the phrase “common household ingredients” means to you.

Many of the experiments involve things in nature, which is why it is the “outdoor” and not the “kitchen” or “bathroom” science lab.

Make a pitfall trap, find and observe inverts, conduct plant warfare using the principle of allelopathy.

For those in temperate zones, these are mainly spring-summer-fall experiments, so with 52 of them, this book is good for a few years.

Each spread (two pages) has one experiment, richly illustrated with photographs. There is a list of materials, safety tips, the protocol, and a side bar on the science itself, along with a “creative enrichment” idea such as making graphs, or testing the allelopathic properties of invasives.

The author, Liz Heinche, is a molecular biologist and mom, thus this book. From the publisher:

Outdoor Science Lab for Kids offers 52 fun science activities for families to do together. The experiments can be used as individual projects, for parties, or as educational activities for groups. Outdoor Science Lab for Kids will tempt families to learn about physics, chemistry and biology in their backyards. Learn scientific survival skills and even take some experiments to the playground! Many of the experiments are safe enough for toddlers and exciting enough for older kids, so families can discover the joy of science together.

I know of at least one pre-school that uses the book. I’m not a big fan of home schooling, but home schoolers will like this book. The book is not a substitute for middle school or high school science instruction in schools.

Also in the same series are Kitchen Science Lab for Kids (where you will find an excellent milk rainbow protocol) and Gardening Lab for Kids, which I’ve not looked at.

Fundy Christians: Shut the Fuck Up

October 14, 2016UncategorizedChristians, Election 2016, Hypocrites, sexual assault, The Harlot, TrumpGreg Laden

… until you have cleaned house and stopped embarrassing yourselves. And by clean house, I mean, take are of this deeply offensive bullshit your people are now spewing out.

You have turned a very bad situation into something ten times worse.

As background, this comes from a meeting of national level evangelical leaders who got together to decide what to do about Donald Trump. They decided to fully support Trump, and the woman in the video shown here is giving their arguments. I am not making this up.

Basic Standards of Human Decency vs. Donald Trump

October 13, 2016UncategorizedDonald Trump, Election 2016, Michele Obama Speech, New York Times, sexual assaultGreg Laden

First, Michele Obama’s full speech earlier today:

You know two news outlets have produced confirming evidence of actual sexual assault by Donald Trump. So, naturally, Trump intends to sue.

But, this from Media Matters:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s threats to The New York Times for reporting allegations that he committed sexual assault are legally far-fetched and provide a troubling portrait of how a Trump administration would handle the press, according to experts interviewed by Media Matters.

…

Several experts tell Media Matters his latest threats of legal action against the Times are further evidence of what would likely be a problematic relationship between the press and Trump if he were to be elected president.

“It just confirms how difficult he would be with the press and how he would view the press as an enemy,” George Freeman, Media Law Resource Center executive director and former New York Times assistant legal counsel, said about the latest attack. “It would be a very contentious relationship in all probability, particularly in that his whole character is built on beating up anyone who attacks him.”

…

Freeman of the Media Law Resource Center called the legal claim “a pure loser.”

“I think it’s all bluster,” he said. “But it’s not surprising given that he is always threatening litigation. As a presidential candidate, he would have to prove actual malice. … It seems to me it would be virtually impossible for Trump to even come close to showing the Times had serious doubts about the claims of groping when the women seem so credible and it was confirmed and substantiated by many other people they had spoken to.”

The Collapse Of Arctic Sea Ice

October 13, 2016UncategorizedArctic Sea Ice Volume, Climate Change, Global Warming, Linux, Linux, TechnologyGreg Laden

Andy Lee Robinson started the recent trend of making compelling graphics about climate change that move. He did a version of the Arctic Ice Death Spiral (a term coined by Joe Romm), which was highly acclaimed but that did not go as viral as it should have at the time. Then, a version with additive ribbon graphs about three years ago. He called that the “waterfall diagram” and it was picked up and used by the BBC at the time. Not long after, he came up with the disappearing block of ice motif. And now, Andy has an updated version, here:

This is ice VOLUME, not the oft cited surface area. Surface ice will always reform and melt in the Arctic, but long term there used to be a lot of thick ice that never melted during the summer. This long term thick ice would survive the summer melt, and allow new winter time surface ice to form more easily each year. As that ice disappears from various coastal areas in the high Arctic, new winter surface ice takes longer to get going.

The first version of this graphic, using ice blocks, was requested by Joe Romm, for Think Progress, in 2013, and appears here. Joe just wanted two ice cubes, side by side, and that is what Andy provided.

But Andy got thinking about the presentation of this very important climate change related metric. “After a while I thought it would be a nice challenge to try to animate it,” he told me. “To accomplish this, I started from the same camera angle, zooming in, following the line to the minimum and then returning to the original location. This required a way to create hundreds of script files to describe each frame.”

Andy told me that he is fluent in Perl, so he used that to calculate parameters for the objects he wanted to manipulate and substitute them in a povray script template. “At a resolution of 1920×1080, it takes between 15 minutes and 2 hours to make one, depending on what computer is working on it. I wrote spline and easing routines to calculate the smooth motions of the camera and cube sizing, and to interpolate the progression of the graph series.” The MySQL is a shared database that each server has access to, in order to check out a frame, render and return the results over NFS to a shared directory.

“The same perl program is run on each server and therefore knows which frame to render next, and after a few days the finished frames can be assembled together using ffmpeg with music, in a wav file.”

Andy, who is a gifted musician, composed the music himself.

“This uses 8 machines in total, including a linux laptop at 2 hours per frame! It was very painstaking work, writing all the code and parameters, but once done the images can be replicated automatically as new data appears. If only it would pay the rent!”

Trump Groped

October 13, 2016Uncategorized#TrumpGroped, Election 2016, Election 2016, Grope, Other Shoe, TrumpGreg Laden

Or so it is alleged. Rather credibly.

Trump talked about sexual assault in 2005, that was recorded on tape, those tapes released Friday. Trump denied that he actually ever sexually assaulted/groped anyone during the Sunday debate, just a couple of days later.

Meanwhile many Republicans running for Congress distanced themselves from Trump and condemned him.

Then, the rabid right wing Teabagging Republican Trump supporters warned those Republicans that they had to get in line and support Trump or else. So, of course, lacking courage of conviction or ethics or morals or, really, brains, those Republican candidates caved and went whimpering back to The Donald.

Then, this happened:

And even more here, just watch the whole thing, why don’t you?

Two women’s reports in the NYT. Palm Beach Post report from Florida. All credible, non anonymous, verifiable reports, and MSM is in the process of further verification as we speak.

Trump seems to have denied the allegations but it is hard to say because he was screaming so loudly.

Hurricane Nicole Leaving Bermuda Battered

October 12, 2016UncategorizedHurricane Nicole, Severe weatherGreg Laden

Update, MID PM Thursday

Nicole blew up to a category 4 storm by some reports, but I think was Category 3 at as it raked Bermuda.

As far as I can tell, Bermuda suffered 115+ mph winds,

The center of the storm was about 10 miles east of Bermuda (which is causing people to say, incorrectly, that the storm missed Bermuda by 10 miles, which is not true). Since the storm went to the right of the islands, things were not as bad as they could have been. But, Nicole is a very very powerful storm.

It will e a while before we get a bead on the damage there, but I’ve heard that power outages are widespread, and there is a lot of flooding and wind damage.

Original Post:

Hurricane Nicole became a named storm right around the time that Matthew emerged, and seemed to spend several days observing from the deep Atlantic. Now, The story has cycled through various levels of strength, but is now a major hurricane, a Category 3.

Nicole will probably directly affect Bermuda tomorrow. Bermuda gets a lot of hurricanes, and of all the island polities in the Atlantic, it seems most readily able to handle them. But, I don’t think there’s been a Category 3 hurricane center on or very near the island since Fabian in 2003. That was a very destructive storm with considerable damage and widespread inundation.

Nicole pushed the total accumulated cyclone energy for the Atlantic to a very high October level, passing the previous record of 1963.

From Climate Signals:

Hurricane Nicole intensified into Cat 3 Hurricane on the evening of Oct 12 and is currently bearing down on Bermuda. Nicole marked the 3rd major hurricane of the North Atlantic season, qualifying 2016 as an above average hurricane season, and marking the most major hurricanes in a season since 2011. On Oct 12, Nicole also pushed the Atlantic’s Accumulated Cyclone Energy for October up to the most for any October since 1963. Nicole’s tremendous power and sustained strength are consistent with the observed trends in the Atlantic since the 1970’s. There is a significant risk that this trend is driven by global warming.

I suspect sea surface temperatures are behind the extra punch Nicole seems to have developed, and possibly, the storm’s long lifespan.

After punching Bermuda, Nicole will head out to sea, probably.