Comments on: Important, some scary, comparisons across data 4 ur amusement

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:45:23 +0000

bobvh: All the data here is from RCB (Nate Silver’s site). I don’t think he does polling; he uses other people’s polls and usually leaves off the press’s spin.

By: bobh

bobh — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 16:11:31 +0000

On the election, the only polling worth looking at is Nate Silver’s at the NYTimes. He aggregates over all polls and uses monte carlo to estimate the future. He was right on in 2008 with both presidential and senate. Yes since 7 Oct Obama has lost ground but Silver still has him winning electoral college with a probability of ~63%

By: F

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:52:47 +0000

Every seven months someone reports that Voyager has or will have left the solar system, maybe, according to one definition or another. The data is more interesting than the interpretations.

By: Petri J

Petri J — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 10:09:40 +0000

If the instrument failed, why did it report a couple of particles per second anyway?

Just because I hope it really did find the end of the solar system… exiting.

By: sailor

sailor — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:05:59 +0000

Boy, I mangled the English language in that post!

By: sailor

sailor — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:04:36 +0000

On the election. Basically the republicans made it their strategy to FKUP the electorate and use all their power to stop anything Obama did being a success. In part this is because many of them owe their primary allegiance to Norquist and his taxes pledge, and only a secondary on to their electorate. This resulted in among other things, a stimulus that was too small, the fiscal cliff and the resultant lowering of the US bond rating which cost the taxpayer dearly. This cliff comes up in January. Should Romney win I predict that cliff with disappear into thin air, which in the short term will be good for the economy, though in the medium term, depending on which Romney we get, it is going to be bad. In the long term rewarding republicans for obstructionism rather than cooperation will be disaster. The only solution to is vote in a large democratic majority and I cannot see that happening. As always the electorate will get the government most if deserves, and to make up its collective mind on their emotional reaction to a single debate rather than a serious consideration of the issues, says much.
I also predict that Romney will be much worse than Obama for the deficit, especially if he goes to war wit Iran. But the deficit, once the republicans stop using it to flay the democrats will be a minor to non-issue.

By: Marnie

Marnie — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:19:18 +0000

Maybe Noah’s ark was a TARDIS.

By: Eric Lund

Eric Lund — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:18:43 +0000

Re: the Voyager 1 graph

I have heard that NASA is waiting for confirmation from another instrument (the magnetometer) before announcing this, just in case the effect is as you describe it. But it is normal for spacecraft crossing analogous boundaries in the solar system to make multiple close approaches, or even crossings, during a single pass. Fluctuations in the solar wind pressure will naturally cause the heliopause to move slightly inward or outward. And we know very little about short-term fluctuations in the interstellar medium pressure (the only instrument we have to monitor such things is IBEX, which takes six months to produce a full sky map), which would have the same effect on the boundary location.