Science Addiction

A dormant blog by Devanshu Mehta

Tag: Politics

October 8, 2008

Let’s Not Insult Hackers

Let’s get one thing clear: The kid who broke in to vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account was not a hacker.

I’m not even talking about the debate over the use of the word hacker as a pejorative. At a fundamental level, all this guy did was click on “Forgot Password”, answered “password questions” about Palin and reset her password. I’ll be charitable and call it clever, but let’s not call it hacking.

Unfortunately, any time someone does something remotely reproachable with a computer, the traditional media calls it hacking.

P.S. Make sure the answers to your own “Forgot Password” questions are sufficiently absurd.

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October 7, 2008

Obama Gets a Thank You from NASA

Obama Gets a Thank You from NASA – [NYTimes.com]

It’s not every day that the head of a federal agency in a Republican administration during an election year writes a glowing thank-you note to the Democratic candidate for president. But Michael D. Griffin, the administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, wrote a letter to Senator Barack Obama on Oct. 2 stating that that he was “deeply grateful to you, personally” for his work in getting Congress to approve a critically important measure for the space program.

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September 26, 2008

Our Senate can Tweet

Y2K testedEarlier this summer, I participated in the Sunlight Foundation ran the “Let our Congress Tweet” campaign (here is my possibly meaningless contribution). Members of congress were prohibited from embedding a YouTube video or Flickr album (or Tweet). Well, that has partly changed. As of last week, Senators have the discretion to use whatever third-party Web site they want, as long as it follows the Senate’s Internet Services Usage Rules and Policies.

I, for one, would like to welcome the U.S. Senate in to the 21st century. The House, on the other hand, is partying like it’s 1999.

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September 25, 2008

Rate the Debates

The conventional wisdom in the media about Presidential debate performances forms fairly quickly- within minutes of the debate having ended. Usually this is fed by only one measure- expectations.

For example, the media expectations for this Friday’s debate (if McCain un-suspends his campaign) are that Obama is not a strong debater and McCain does well. If these expectations are met or exceeded, it’s a win for McCain. If Obama is okay, it’s a win for him. Obama only needs to beat expectations, not actually be the better debater. The bar is higher for McCain.

The public has no way to affect the discourse on the debate. While the public are still gathering their thoughts after the debate, the cable news media starts pounding them with opinions and the conventional wisdom is formed by a few loud news analysts.

Rate the DebatesFreePress– a national, non-partisan, non-profit working to reform the media- has started RateTheDebates.org:

Sign up to Rate the Debates yourself and return here (www.freepress.net/debates) when they air to begin rating. We’ll tally your response along with thousands of others and inject our people-powered feedback into the news cycle – before the mainstream media pundits and spin doctors (mis)interpret the event.

Technology has given us the opportunity  to immediately insert ourselves in to the national discourse- but, for now, we need numbers to be taken seriously.

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September 25, 2008

Political Polls Without “Cell-Phone Only”s

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Mark Blumenthal of Pollster.com summarizes a recent Pew study:

Today they released a new must-read report summarizing findings from “three major election surveys [conducted] with both cell phone and landline samples since the conclusion of the primaries.” The verdict? “Pew’s surveys this year suggest at least the possibility of a small bias in landline surveys.”

Skeptics don’t think that missing “cell-phone only” voters is a big deal for a variety of reasons. Weighting a poll by age demographics should already account for any missed voters, but that assumes that those with landlines vote similarly to those without. The average “cell-phone only” user tends to be younger and hence- presumably- an Obama voter.

A few days ago Nate Silver at the awesome FiveThirtyEight.com compared results from pollsters that include cell phones with a control group that does not and observed an approximately 2% bias against Obama in polls that did not include cell phones. The Pew study finds a similar effect.

Many people had predicted a similar effect in the 2004 election, but Bush’s margins over Kerry in the polls proved to be correct. Of course, there are many more people sans landlines in 2008 than there were four years ago.

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September 23, 2008

Bailout Should Include 4 Conditions (no, 5!)

Obama Says Bailout Should Include 4 Conditions – The Caucus Blog – NYTimes.com

Adding some specificity to proposals he has already made, Mr. Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, called for a payback plan for taxpayers if the bailout succeeds; a bipartisan board to oversee the bailout; limits on any federal money going to compensate Wall Street executives; and aid to homeowners who are struggling to pay their mortgages.

I like it- I’m not an economist, I don’t play one TV and I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night. But specificity from the candidates is good. Will look for McCain’s specifics.

UPDATE: And McCain, not to be outdone, wants five conditions on the bailout:

McCain insisted on greater accountability, a way for taxpayers to recoup the cash fed into the fund, total transparency in the review and implementation of the legislation, and no profits for Wall Street execs.

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August 5, 2008

Advani Plans to Go the Obama Way

Advani, in the footsteps of Obama.

Drawing inspiration from the Illinois senator, the BJP wants to target the youth vote in a big way using technology. Therefore, like Obama, a website is being designed for Advani where his speeches will be uploaded right away and like Obama, text messages on cellphones will be a big weapon to get the attention of young voters.
[From NDTV.com: Now, Advani plans to go Obama way]

For the uninitiated, Advani has almost been Prime Minister a few times over the past 20 years, but has proven a tad too right-wing for the right-wing Bharatiya Janta Party in India to nominate as their PM. And he’s embracing the Obama model. Oh, and he’s older than McCain.

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July 23, 2008

Campaigning to Lose Votes

A few months ago, I was at a popular local ice cream place, digging in to a much-too-large-to-be-kiddie-sized cup of ice cream when I noticed a prominent local politician approach other ice cream eaters around me.

“Ooh, cool,” this political junkie thought to himself. “One day when this person is nationally important, I’ll be able to say to blog that I shook them by the hand.”

Except, I didn’t.

This local politician of some renown walked up to the people on the bench in front of me and talked with them for a while. Then to the bench next to me. Then behind me. And then to every other bench in the area except mine. And then they- politician+entourage- left.

I may not fit any ‘demographic’ that the campaign was trying to target. And I may not even look like a citizen to the narrow-minded suburban. But even if the potential upside of shaking my hand was negligible, the potential downside is significant. I was turned from a voter indifferent to a voter scorned. More importantly, a blogger scorned.

And dictatorships hath no fury like a blogger scorned.

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July 17, 2008

Obama, Montana and Jones

So, what’s hot this summer, asks AllPosters.com?
whatshot.jpg

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February 29, 2008

Slate’s Delegate Calculator

This is very addictive: Slate’s Delegate Calculator. I could hypothesize for hours…

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