gregladen | April 14, 2016A while back Vox produced a tax modeler that would tell you how your taxes would change with Sanders plan. It raised most people's taxes by a few thousand dollars. But the modeling was misleading because the same plan would probably reduce health care costs for those same individuals.
I pointed that out back at the time but most of the response to me pointed out was the ridiculous recitation of completely wrong information (from both sides of the debate) so I dropped it because it really doesn't matter. President Sanders or President Clinton would not produce any tax plans. Not their job.…
gregladen | April 13, 2016Only kidding! Here's the argument for disdaining, or at least, laughing at, Ted Cruz:
gregladen | April 13, 2016According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, there are 143 species of bovids. The Animal Diversity Web is a bit less precise, indicating that there are "more than 140 extant and 300 extinct species." That second number is highly questionable because today there exist sister species that are so similar I doubt they could be told apart from fossils alone. If you check around the internet, this ~140 number comes up again and again, and Wikipedia says 143.
Research published in 2011 and later by Colin Groves, Peter Grubb, and David Leslie, which has been tagged as controversial by some but…
gregladen | April 13, 2016Everybody loves Joe Biden, and the main thing you've got to love about him is that he has stuff in his head and then says it out loud, like a normal person.
And here is one of those moments.
And, as you can see, some of Joe has rubbed off on Barack.
gregladen | April 13, 2016... and why we never got the Equal Rights Amendment.
Donald Trump is a very good Republican candidate. In terms of both style and substance, Trump does a good job of representing that part of the Republican Party that has been in charge of that party for several years, the Tea Party. The Republican Party has built itself up to become, effectively, the majority party in the US by pandering to this part of the base, along with gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression. So, really, there is no reason that Republicans running for office around the country should be upset with the…
gregladen | April 12, 2016There is some discussion about Bernie Sanders' strategy for winning the nomination despite being significantly behind in the pledged delegate count. Most of this discussion is nearly worthless because those engaged in it (talking and listening) are, or seem, poorly informed about how the system actually works. So I thought this would be a good time to look at some of the numbers.
First, some context.
The primary process is not Constitutionally democratic. There is no legal requirement that a party nominate someone based on any sort of voting process. But, over the last several decades this…
gregladen | April 11, 2016The important thing first.
I predicted who would win the Wisconsin primary, although my prediction suggested that Sanders would do better than he did. (He underperformed.) I predicted the outcome of the Wyoming primary exactly.
These are the most recent two in a long series of mostly correct predictions of which Democratic candidate will win each of the contests in this long presidential primary season. My predictions of which candidate would win have been mostly accurate, but also, fairly accurate with respect to how many delegates each candidate would pick up.
Several primaries back, for…
gregladen | April 9, 2016Calling U.S. K-12 Science Education Professionals!
GHF Online science instructor Madeline Goodwin is doing her Master’s thesis research on climate science in the classroom, and she needs your help! She is doing a survey of science education professionals to find the answer to the following question:
What are the most important climate science concepts for students to ProfessionalPictureunderstand by the time they graduate high school?
If you are a K-12 science education professional in the United States, Madeline invites you to take her survey.
CLICK HERE
gregladen | April 6, 2016There is a new study out in Nature that is liable to be misinterpreted, or that may be flawed in a way that lends itself to misuse, in the context of climate science driven policy.
The study is "Northern Hemisphere hydroclimate variability over the past twelve centuries" by Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, Paul J. Krusic, Hanna S. Sundqvist, Eduardo Zorita, Gudrun Brattström & David Frank
I'll make just a few comments here, but mainly, I want to point you to comments by climate scientist Michael Mann (author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines and…
gregladen | April 5, 2016I'll post the results when they are available, after 8 or 9 PM central, below.
Meanwhile, as of 6PM Central time, early info from Wisconsin suggests that Sanders will do very well in today's primary.
The good news for Sanders: My prediction of 55 delegates for Sanders and 31 delegates for Clinton appears to be on track.
Bad news for Sanders: The same model that predicts that still says 2096 committed delegates for Clinton and 1747 for Sanders by the end of the primary season.
The Wyoming primary, this Saturday, should be about even for the two candidates.
In the New York primary, which is…
gregladen | April 4, 2016I just got my new Semogue 1305 Superior Boar Bristle Shaving Brush. It is the one on the left.
I like it. I prefer boar because I don't want to kill badgers and because the bristles are stiff and it basically works better.
I got the old one decades ago, and it was decades old when I got it. I should note that I wasn't actually using it (much) when there were so few bristles. That is what it looked like after I ran it through the dishwasher to see how clean it could get. I think a few bristles fell out.
Anyway, I shopped around, picked the Semogue 1305 Superior Boar Bristle Shaving Brush, and…
gregladen | April 4, 2016Photographer Jesse Cancelmo was struck by the general lack of understanding of the sea life and ecology of the Gulf of Mexico that became apparent with the big oil spill in 2010, and this inspired him to carry out a major photographic project in the Gulf.
He felt many had written off the Gulf as a post-environmental disaster dead zone. While environmental effects in the Gulf are certainly very important, it is still a living, thriving ecosystem, the product of Candelmo's work, Glorious Gulf of Mexico: Life Below the Blue, attests to this.
This is a stunning coffee table type book (but…
gregladen | April 3, 2016President Barack Obama said Donald Trump "doesn't know much about foreign policy...or the world generally" in response to Trump saying Japan and South Korea should obtain nuclear weapons.
gregladen | April 2, 2016We are in the Primary Doldrums. For the last several days and the next several days, there is not too much happening, big gaps between the action. Wisconsin is important, and it is Tuesday, Then Wyoming by itself, then New York by itself, then a sort of Super Tuesday with several states.
As you know I've created a multivariable model that has a good record of predicting primary and caucus outcomes in the contests between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. For the rest of the primary season, this is what it looks like.
I used yellow highlighting to indicate who is expected to win the…
gregladen | March 29, 2016A new poll (March 24th) by Monmouth University says, "Among Democrats who support Bernie Sanders for their party’s nomination, 78% say they would vote for Clinton over Trump in November, while 12% would actually vote for Trump and 7% would not vote at all."
The Republicans have a similar problem, where "two-thirds (68%) of voters who back Ted Cruz for the GOP nomination say they would vote for Trump in November, while 13% would vote for Clinton and 10% would not vote. Among Republicans who back John Kasich, just 50% would vote for Trump and 19% would vote for Clinton, with 22% saying they…
gregladen | March 26, 2016You all know this happened.
But there is some controversy over what kind of bird it is.
There is no doubt whatsoever that the bird was a finch. However, what kind? Most likely a house finch, because they are common, and the most likely to live in a big auditorium thingie and not be fearful of people.
A pic of the bird is above. Here is another:
What do you think it is?
gregladen | March 26, 2016This discussion is a little ambiguous about "winning the nomination" vs. "winning the general election" but it is fun to see Keith Olbermann again. He states here that he is coming out of retirement.
Olbermann correctly points out something I think a lot of people don't know or understand. A political party is an independent private entity (though there are some regulations and they must operate within the law). One of the first things they will do at the convention is to vote on rules. At that point, they can make any rule they want, pretty much. The rule could be "no nomination for…
gregladen | March 26, 2016Everybody knows about the little bird, a House Finch, I believe, that flew up to Bernie Sanders at a recent event.
However, the YouTube Video that is circulating has lousy sound quality and cuts off some of the context.
So, here I give you a better version.
gregladen | March 26, 2016Today and tomorrow we have the Alaska, Hawaii, and Washington Democratic primaries.
According to the model I developed prior to the last primary, which predicts future primaries using information about primaries to date (which I've not updated from last Tuesday), Sanders will win all three primaries. That model suggests that the delegate spread by the end of the day will look like this:
However, I also developed an alternate model which assumes that Sanders' over performance (in relation to the afore mentioned model) requires an adjustment. That alternative model suggests that this will…