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Welcome to YASBC: Wired Science Blogs

Yet another science blogging community: Wired Science Blogs. From Meet the New Wired Science All-Star Bloggers: At Wired Science we are always looking for new ways to deliver you more science and more awesome. Starting today, we are bringing on a group of hand-picked, superstar science bloggers to help us do just that. *snip* We hope Wired will give these bloggers the platform and attention they deserve and help bring quality science blogging to the forefront of science discussion across the web. In recent weeks, several science blogging networks have sprung up, including PLoS blogs,…

WHAT HAPPENED TO MY HARRY POTTER BOOK???

tags: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, books I woke up bright and early this morning, full of joy and anticipation (for the first time in years), took care of my parrots and got ready to leave my apartment to pick up my copy of the Harry Potter book from my post office box. How exciting! I have been waiting for this day for forever, it seemed. I planned to spend the day in my favorite watering hole, reading reading reading. Then, my fantasy was oh so rudely shattered by a phone call. UPS (United Parcel Service) was calling to say that they have my Harry Potter book and that they don't…

Update: Planning My London Visit and ScienceBlogging Conference Appearance

I just had to let you know a few details about my London visit. First, my renewed passport arrived in snailmail, with no problems at all! The new passport is quite fancy, by the way, with all sorts of aphorisms about democracy and how wonderful it is printed at the top of each page. Too bad they didn't include anything about the lack of health insurance, the housing crisis and the absolutely crappy employment situation for people with "too much education". So here's the plan so far: I arrive at Heathrow at 730 am on the 28th of August and depart in the afternoon on the 7th of September.…

Hugs for China's Pandas Shaken Up by Earthquake

tags: giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, Beijing Zoo, WoLong Panda reserve, mammals, image of the day A giant panda, Ailuropoda melanoleuca, plays at Beijing Zoo on 2 June 2008 in Beijing, China. Eight giant pandas were relocated to Beijing zoo, after their WoLong nature reserve was damaged by the earthquake on May 24, 2008. They will spend the next six months at the zoo on a special Olympics visit. Image: Cai Daizheng (ChinaFotoPress & Getty Images) [larger view]. China's panda keepers are using an unusual method of intervention to help their charges -- eight two-year-old giant…

Biological pareidolia

Jesus in a pita, Madonna in bird poop, gods speaking through the arrangement of viscera…we're used to ridiculous religious pattern seeking. A reader, Mike Barnes, wrote in to tell me about a scientist who has been playing the same game: Francis Collins sees DNA in stained glass windows. Collins showed two images--a stained-glass rose window often seen in Christian churches, and an eerily similar graphic that he described as "looking down the barrel" of DNA's double helix. "I'm not trying to say that there's something inherently religious" in the DNA image, Collins emphasized. "But, I think…

Ken Miller on Collins

Sam Harris wrote an op-ed criticizing Francis Collins' nomination to head the NIH titled "Science is in the details". Now Ken Miller has written a short letter in reply, and I think he would have done well to have heeded that title. Dr. Collins's sin, despite credentials Mr. Harris calls "impeccable," is that he is a Christian. Mr. Harris is not alone in holding this view. A leading science blogger, also attacking Dr. Collins, demonstrated his own commitment to reasoned dialogue by calling the scientist a "clown" and a "flaming idjit." When reason has such defenders, Heaven help us. No, that…

Mystery Bird: Streak-backed Oriole, Icterus pustulatus microstictus

tags: Streak-backed Oriole, Icterus pustulatus microstictus, birds, mystery bird, bird ID quiz [Mystery bird] Streak-backed Oriole, Icterus pustulatus microstictus, photographed at the Water Ranch in Gilbert, Arizona. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Richard Ditch, 15 December 2006 [larger view]. Please name at least one field mark that supports your identification. Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes: Any doubt that this is an oriole? Good. Confused about just what an oriole is? Better. The English word was first applied, naturally…

Hotel workers at Hyatt struggle for justice, Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization supports workers' cause

Planning a conference is a pain in the neck.  There are loads of details to attend to and the only time you get a little relief is when you can cross tasks off that long, long to-do list.  Now imagine learning that clergy, women's groups, labor organizations, immigrants' rights networks and others are urging individuals to boycott the venue where your conference is scheduled.  You signed that hotel contract ages ago, paid that hefty deposit and crossed that item off your list.  What a dilemma.  It's the exact one faced in the last few weeks by the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO…

OSHA action on worker safety standards during Presidential election years

I'll be the first to admit I've criticized the Obama Administration's OSHA for failing to issue or even propose many new worker safety and health standards.   As I wrote earlier this month, under President Obama and Secretary Solis, OSHA has only issued three new worker safety rules, two of which were safety standards affecting discrete industries and the third, a rule broadly endorsed by big business.  Some colleagues and commentators attribute this mediocre record to regulatory resistance in the White House, pressure from Republicans on Capitol Hill, too few staff in the OSHA standards…

Occupational Health News Roundup

North Carolina's News & Observer has published a terrific in-depth series on “ghost policies” – inadequate workers’ compensation policies that save employers money but leave injured workers without the safety net they’re supposed to have. North Carolina requires employers with three or more employees to have workers’ compensation coverage, and general contractors often require coverage even for smaller firms. But a News & Observer investigation found that more than 30,000 businesses in the state lack the required coverage. Mandy Locke writes about one injured worker whose employer’s…

The good karma of Judge Louis H. Pollak (1922 - 2012)

by Dick Clapp Judge Louis H. Pollak, who died on May 8, has been revered for his role as a civil rights lawyer, a volunteer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, dean of two law schools, and respected jurist. As my colleague Sheldon Krimsky, PhD of Tufts University observed, Pollak was one of those practical idealists who understood the role of law for public purpose. In his place we find new libertarian jurists who see the law for private purpose. In addition to these well-deserved accolades, I wanted to add a personal recollection of him that took place in the course of our work on the Project…

What's so big about the US government?

As debt-ceiling negotiations continue and members of both parties express a desire for "leaner" government, James Kwak at The Atlantic offers an important reminder: Measuring the size of the US government by how much money it spends can be misleading. Social Security and Medicare, both of which are extremely popular, account for a huge chunk of federal expenditures; this Center for Budget and Policy Priorities big-picture breakdown shows that roughly 20% of FY 2010 federal expenditures went to Social Security, and another approximately 21% to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health…

Behind the kitchen door: low wages, few benefits for many U.S. restaurant workers

Annual sales revenue in the nation's restaurant industry tops $515 billion, but few of the 10.3 million workers in the industry earn a living wage. Those are the findings released today of comprehensive surveys of working conditions for 1,700 restaurant workers employed in Washington DC, Miami and Los Angeles. To date, more than 4,300 workers have been interviewed in eight cities in a project coordinated by Restaurant Opportunities Center United. In Miami and Los Angeles, 75% and 71% of the restaurant workers surveyed, respectively, have no health insurance; the figure was 48% for…

Scientific Integrity Act: Protecting the government science that protects all of us

Government scientists play essential roles in our country's top public health achievements. From food-safety improvements to tobacco cessation, we rely on them to warn us of health risks, identify solutions, and create standards that promote public health. The Trump administration puts our health at risk when it instructs science-based agencies to halt communications; requires political-appointee review of EPA science; gives attention to people who make dangerous and uniformed statements about vaccines; and selects an EPA administrator who ignores decades of evidence on climate change.…

The effect of porn on male fertility

Once again, I bravely plunge into the fascinating world of kinky sex research in humans. This time, we learn something incredibly useful. Gentleman, would you like to know how to improve the potency of your semen? Do you need a good excuse to give your significant other when she catches you browsing porn sites? Do you want another excuse to sneer at those pompous business types who flaunt their fancy cell phones? Here's the study for you. There's a vested interest in bettering male sperm quality at fertility clinics, obviously. There are multiple ways to measure the potency of a semen sample…

CDC: Current, former smokers biggest users of electronic cigarettes

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released the first nationally representative estimates of electronic cigarette use among U.S. adults, finding that more than 12 percent had ever tried the aerosol nicotine products in 2014. So, as is the unfortunate case with many emerging and potential public health threats, it seems like e-cigarette use is outpacing the ability of regulatory bodies to protect the public’s health and educate consumers about possible risks. The new data is from CDC’s National Health Interview Survey, which first began collecting data on e-cigarette use…

Labor Day yearbook highlights worker safety at the state and local levels

Paid sick leave, new rights for temp workers, and extending OSHA protections to public sector employees were among the many victories that unfolded at the state and local levels in the last 12 months and that we highlight in this year’s edition of “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety.” In California, a number of new worker safety laws went into effect. Among them, a new law that holds companies responsible if they contract with staffing agencies that engage in wage theft and fail to maintain workers’ compensation insurance. California health care workers gained new protections…

HPV vaccine study highlights how health reform is driving patients toward prevention

In a perfect example of how the Affordable Care Act is broadening access to relatively low-cost and potentially life-saving interventions, a new study finds that the health reform law likely led more than 1 million young women to seek out the human papillomavirus vaccine and protect themselves against cervical cancer. In a study published this month in Health Affairs, researchers studied the impact of two ACA provisions: one requiring insurance providers to extend dependent coverage through age 26 and another that required insurers to offer a range of preventive services, such as…

Child poverty remains high, with nearly 32 million American kids living in low-income families

Rarely do poverty and optimal health go together. In fact, income is consistently tapped as a major factor underpinning a person’s opportunity to live a long and healthy life. And children don’t fare much better, with low-income children facing increased risks of poor health and development. So, just how many American children face this challenge today? Four out of every 10. This month, researchers at the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health released their annual “Basic Facts about Low-Income Children” fact sheet, which reports that 44…

Say no to Brexit

[Update: and the answer was: leave. Oh dear.] This indecision's bugging me (Esta indecision me molesta) If you don't want me set me free (Si no quieres librame) Exactly who I'm supposed to be (Digame que tengo ser) Don't you know witch clothes even fits me? (Sabes bruja ropa me queda) Come on and let me know (Me tienes que decir) Should I cool it or should I blow? (Me debo ir o quedarme) I thought the mixed-in Spanish verse was a nice touch for a post about Europe. This post is largely for me to record my own opinion, so that in later years I can read it and realise how foolish I was. Or…

Tropical trends

The issue of reconciling tropical temperature trends at the sfc and in the troposphere rumbles on, although in a not very serious way: its a good subject for research, but it doesn't seem to be a major septic playing point, probably because the issue is too complex to get much traction. A brief recap: once upon a time the satellites said the trop, globally, wasn't warming. That disappeared ages ago. We're now looking only at the tropics, which are warming too, and the remaining issue is whether the trop warming is compatible with the surface warming. Models and (we believe) basic physics says…

Wacky baccy pipes

Not a very good title I fear. I'm referring to Lovelock and Rapley propose cure for global warming wherein James "we're all doooomed I tell 'ee" Lovelock and Chris "used-to-be-my-director" Rapley propose a load of floating pipes to haul up nutrient rich water to cause blooms to lock up CO2. Its rather short on numbers (how many of these things would you need?) or that wave action via a flap valve will do the pumping required (I presume it must, because they can't have got that bit wrong, can they?). A diagram might help. Ah, the BBC has one but I'm still not sure. Maybe I need a video :-).…

In which I concede that some scientists are evil and stupid

The name Satoshi Kanazawa wasn't familiar to me until I read Cosma Shalizi's lovely needlework on the guy, but then I remembered … I have his book, Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, on my shelf. It has a wonderfully provocative title, so I even skimmed a couple of chapters, which sent multiple wtf signals bouncing around in my brain — the premise of the title is the product of statistical shenanigans, and I don't think the authors would recognize a mechanism if it advanced menacingly on them and threatened them with physical dismantlement — so I set it aside and allowed it gather dust…

Creche Compromise Possible in Michigan

In Berkley, Michigan the city has erected a creche on the grounds of city hall for the past 65 years. Last year, the ACLU started making noise about a possible lawsuit, since the city pays for it and puts it up and does not allow any other religious displays, and now the city council is considering what to do about it. The Detroit News reports: Since then, a city ad hoc committee has been studying the issue and recently narrowed its list of options down to three: move the creche to a nearby business property, establish a free-speech zone where religious groups can display their symbols, or…

The K-Fed Chronicles

Okay, I know most of my readers aren't gonna care at all about this, but as an inveterate watcher of pop culture disasters, something has to be said about the performance of Kevin Federline on the Teen Choice awards (yes, I actually wrote myself a note to turn it on for the last 10 minutes - even interrupting a poker game - so I wouldn't miss this trainwreck as it happened). Anyone who really watches pop culture knew the moment that Britney Spears married Federline that this was going to be a long series of disasters with an inevitable bad ending. He's Tom Arnold 2.0, a talentless hack…

WSOP Final Table Set

Warning: This post contains spoilers The final table of the WSOP main event is now set. The only American pro left in the field is Allen Cunningham, who is now second in chips with nearly 18 million in chips. Jamie Gold continues to lead, with nearly 26 million, or about 30% of all the chips in the tournament. This should be a really interesting final table. Cunningham is not a household name like a lot of other pros. He doesn't really promote himself the way most of them do, and his quiet and reserved nature means the cameras don't exactly follow him around. But make no mistake, this guy can…

Warren Moon and Martin Luther King's Dream

I watched part of the NFL Hall of Fame induction ceremony today and was particularly interested in the induction of Warren Moon. Moon is the first black quarterback in the modern era to be inducted into the hall of fame, but he surely won't be the last. He helped pave the way for guys like Daunte Culpepper, Donovan McNabb, Steve McNair and Vince Young. And the story of how he came to the hall of fame helps illuminate one of the most important lessons that history could possibly teach us. When he graduated from the University of Washington in 1978, having won the Rose Bowl and been an all-…

Hudson and Originalism

I have not yet addressed the Supreme Court's ruling in Hudson v Michigan, where the court essentially reversed itself on the question of no-knock warrants. It's a very odd decision in light of their previous rulings, particularly Wilson v Arkansas, which established that the requirement that police must announce themselves and identify themselves as police officers prior to serving a warrant is part of the 4th amendment's criteria for determining whether a search is reasonable or not. That was a unanimous ruling, written by the most conservative and the most consistently originalist member of…

Farm Price Supports Redux

There's quite an argument going on in the comments after my post yesterday about government crop quotas. Here's what I think those who disagree with me are missing: the government is doing what would be illegal if corporations did it. If oil companies got together and decided to all limit their production to keep the price propped up, that would be collusion and it would be against the law. Why? Because it screws the consumers. It destroys competition that helps keep prices down and results in higher prices than a free market would allow. But this is exactly what price supports do in the…

Top 25 Answers

Twelve of the Top 25 Most Played songs were correctly identified over the weekend. Given the obscurity of some of these, that's pretty impressive. I think there's only one that should've been obvious that didn't get guessed. Full answers are below the fold. (Edited to add: If you enjoy this sort of thing, here's another list of lyrics to identify.) "Holiday In NY," The Ike Reilly Assassination. I have no idea how this is the most-played song in my library. "Roots Radicals," Rancid. When in doubt, rip off the Clash. "Valentine," Bobby Bare Jr.. A twisted little pop gem, via KEXP. "So It Goes…

True Lab Stories: Maybe You Should Ask a Rocket Scientist

It's been a while since I did a True Lab Story, and it seems like an appropriate sort of topic for a rainy Friday when I have grades to finish. I'm running out of really good personal anecdotes, but there are still a few left before I have to move entirely to hearsay. And who knows, maybe I'll break something in spectacular fashion between now and then... Anyway, lab safety offices are a rich source of True Lab Stories. Not just because they have to clean up from the really spectacular disasters, but also because their desire to prevent disasters sometimes leads to inflexible applications of…

Greatest Science Book?

Over at the new Seed blog, here on ScienceBlogs, Katherine Sharpe asks about the best science books ever (a topic that was also discussed at Cosmic Variance some time back. I've been sort of swamped this week, but that's only part of the reason why I haven't responded. The main reason is a shameful secret: (Below the fold... Isn't this suspenseful?) The fact is, I don't read many pop-science books, and I never really have. I'm not sure why that was in the past, but these days, it just seems too much like work. Not "work" in the sense of being difficult, but "work" in the sense of "this is how…

Temporary position in genetics at UMM

The University of Minnesota, Morris is hiring! We need someone to teach an undergraduate course in classical transmission genetics for the spring semester — I know, it's short notice, and this is only a temporary position, but it would be ideal for someone who wants to pick up some teaching experience at a highly regarded liberal arts university while applying for permanent positions. This is the course I teach in alternate years (2008 is not my year!), and I will be available to help whoever takes the job — at least, I'll share my syllabi and exams and lab notes. It's also an opportunity to…

You Can't Get There From Here

Buried beneath some unseemly but justified squee-ing, Scalzi links to an article about "counterfactal computation", an experiment in which the group of Paul Kwiat group at Illinois managed to find the results of a quantum computation without running the computer at all. Really, there's not much to say to that other than "Whoa." The article describing the experiment is slated to be published in Nature, so I don't have access to it yet, but I'll try to put together an explanation when I get a copy. The experiment involves a phenomenon know as the "Quantum Zeno Effect," though, which deserves a…

CFP: Least Favorite Misconceptions

I should probably stick to doing only one audience-participation thing at a time (there are more Top Eleven posts on the way), but it's a busy week for me at work, and I'm not really going to have time to post a lot of long articles, so there will be a few "talk among yourselves" entries over the next few days, in hopes of generating some interesting content without a whole lot of typing on my part. Back when I posted my request for "Great Experiments" in other sciences, Kate remarked that another good topic would be something along the lines of "Most annoying misconception about your field…

Justice and Injustice

There is a remark somewhere in Popper - but of course I forget where, and since I'm only struggling to remember this as an intro or lead-in I may even have made it up - to the effect that deep inquiry into the meaning of words is largely fruitless. And this is in the context of his attack on Plato, so my forward-reference to Plato spending an entire book trying to define Justice is apt. The kind of thing I mean is Plato's Concept Of Justice: An Analysis which just happened to be the top google hit, and now I've propelled it higher. Plato doesn't really mean Justice, to be fair. He means a…

Solar panels

We've finally got round to having solar PV panels installed. As you can see form the picture above. The price of solar has been coming down, but still it isn't economically viable without subsidy for us. However, the subsidy makes it clearly economically beneficial (to us) so combined with a guess that the ecological payback, which is far less clear, might be acceptable too, we went ahead. What finally tipped us into doing something was (a) the government announcing the end of the fat subsidy regime (of which more anon) and (b) a local group organising an installation firm for the village.…

Porkies from Woy

One issue about the infamous Spencer and Braswell (incidentally, who is Braswell? Everyone is ignoring him, is he a nonentity? ) is, of course, who were the referees? The suspicion voiced in various places is that Spencer managed to wangle skeptics in as his referees; indeed, Wagner in his resignation letter says "The managing editor of Remote Sensing selected three senior scientists from renowned US universities... the editorial team unintentionally selected three reviewers who probably share some climate sceptic notions of the authors" (note the slight contradiction in there: first off,…

Does anyone care about Theon?

Nowadays I seem to rely on wikipedia for my news stories. Not necessarily for the truth, but that something has occurred. So this little thread at global warming piqued my interest (note, BTW, how the poor dear septics don't even bother trying to edit the page any more, having been crushed so often by the Mailed Fist): I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss says The Register. Working in an office full of software engineers (not to mention the odd visiting hardware bod) I see lots of people reading El Reg (very briefly of course, in their very short lunch breaks, did I say lunch break, I…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Chapter 15

The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor Chapter 14 Table of Contents Chapter 16 Chapter 15 The Great Work, September 7, 2055 In the top centre drawer of the big desk in dad's library, I found an unmarked envelope containing this document. The Great Work, March 2040 My time is getting short and I don't know what more I can do. I am getting old and I don't have time for bullshit. I don't want for anything. There is no profit -- economic, moral or spiritual -- in recording my thoughts, yet I persist. I have raised the boys as best I could since Joan died. They are good, strong lads. I only…

Advice to the Past

Over at Scientific American, Amanda Baker has a story about what scientists say they would tell their younger selves. I reached out to eight of my colleagues who are currently in STEM fields and asked them a series of questions about their childhood interests in science, school experiences, and roadblocks that they faced on their path from elementary school to their current positions. [...] Their feedback covered not only what drew them to science, but also what had almost pushed them away. Below I have consolidated the feedback into five main points, including the advice they would give…

Bright Lights and Up-Tempo Tracks

The folks on the Hold Steady fan board arranged a Mix CD exchange recently, and I agreed to take part, putting together a playlist of stuff and sending off a bunch of electronic files a couple of weeks ago (I don't know if the drive on my desktop can even burn CD's any more, even if I had blank CD's on which to burn songs). As there's basically zero overlap between there and here, it's probably safe to share the track list. The title I used for it was "Bright Lights and Up-Tempo Tracks," a reference to this Hold Steady song: (Including this on the actual playlist would be a little too…

A less sexist approach to addressing climate change

Men and women are different, on average, in a number of ways. It all probably starts with who has the physiology to have babies and who doesn't, and the differences spread out from there, affecting both the body and the mind. Decades of research show us that many of the body differences (but not all) are determined by developmental processes while many of the mind differences (but maybe not all) are determined by culture, but culture still has men and women as being different, so those differences tend to be persistent and predictable, on average. One of the differences which seems to…

Bernie Sanders' Essay

Bernie Sanders' famous essay is below. I will reserve comment but I'd like your opinion on it. I will say that the press is handling this rather badly, at least at present, taking quotes with zero context, not addressing the meaning of the essay as a whole. Sanders says it was poorly written. Is it? Man and Woman by Bernie Sanders Mid-February, 1972 A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused. A woman enjoys intercourse with her man – as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously. The man and woman get dressed up on…

Heat And Death In India: Global Warming's Direct Effect

The Earth is warming because of what humans have been doing to the atmosphere. Global Warming has a lot of effects many of which we've discussed here, but the most obvious one is, well, it gets warmer. At present, India is experiencing record breaking heat and people are dying. It is very difficult to say how many people die from the heat in any region. We can use a standard approach used by epidemiologists to estimate this number. This involves simply looking at mortality rates as they change over time to try to detect a signal, an increase, associated with the variable in question. If…

Should you install Ubuntu Mate?

With Ubuntu's release a few weeks ago of Ubuntu 14.10, Mate has now become an official flavor of Ubuntu. There are two pieces of bad news that relate to this that we'll get out of the way. First Ubuntu's default distribution, which uses the Unity Desktop by default, broke a key Linux feature. If you install Ubuntu with Unity, you can't easily change your desktop. Or, if you try, you'll break your system. Ubuntu seems to want you to use Unity no matter what. Second, while at one time all flavors of Ubuntu were treated more or less alike (though the "Default" was gnome) now, the non-Unity…

Two Ways Hollywood and Literature Have Confused The Ebola Problem

According to popular literature (some fiction, some not) and movies, Ebola can cause havoc, infecting thousands of people, killing over half of them, and threatening an entire nation if it were to become airborne. Turns out that's not true. Ebola can do all those things without becoming airborne. In several nations. The confusion caused by this misconception is further enhanced in a more subtle way. Since the Hollywood version of Ebola (or some other similar disease) indicates that it is dangerous because it becomes airborne, we see constant claims today on the Internet that Ebola must be…

About that disease outbreak in the US #Enterovirus #EV-D68

This is the time of year parents start scanning their facebook feeds and other sources of information for what to expect our children to get sick with, how badly, and when. For a couple of years in a row, a few years ago, we were getting hit with a norovirus, causing diarrhea, vomiting, and a lot of lost daycare or school days. This year we are seeing reports of an outbreak of the scary-sounding "Enterovirus EV-D68." Hundreds of kids are sick enough to get treatment in several states, currently Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Illinois, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky…

Fixing The Super Delegate Problem

Super Delegates exist for good reasons. In order for them to do their job, which hopefully is never, they need to have two characteristics. These are: 1) The capacity for thoughtful and well informed decision making at the convention, in case something untoward has happened to require this. 2) Independence with respect to whom to vote for ... in other words, being unpledged. A big downside of Super Delegates is that they tend to endorse a candidate early in the process. This is their right as Americans and it may be seen by some of them as their duty as politicians or party officials (which…

Super Tuesday: What does it mean for the Democratic Primary?

As you know, I developed a simple model for projecting future primary outcomes in the Democratic party. This model is based on the ethnic mix in each state, among Democratic Party voters. The model attributes a likely voting choice to theoretical primary goers or causers based on previous behavior by ethnicity. Originally I made two models, one using numbers that the Clinton campaign was banking on, and one using numbers that the Sanders campaign was banking on. The results of the Super Tuesday primaries demonstrated that the Sanders-favoring model does not predict primary outcomes.…