Pictures of the California wildfires

California was covered in over 35,000 acres of wildfire last weekend. The Boston Globe has 35 amazing photos of the destruction.

Link: The Boston Globe

-Thanks to Bryan for sending in the link

Millions of dollars or a million dollar experience?

My friends will tell you I'm not much of a football fan. I can enjoy the occasional Sunday afternoon NFL game, but after growing up in Buffalo during the early 90s I had to tune out football for emotional reasons. That said, I'm now a fan of a player on the FSU team. Myron Rolle is a junior at FSU and is a safety on their football team. He's already decided to skip his senior year at the university and was expecting to go to the NFL draft next year. However, unlike many college ball players who make the same decision, Rolle has already completed his pre-med undergraduate degree (in 2.5 years no less) and is now taking graduate classes in public administration.

Recently, Rolle also found out he'd been selected as a finalist for a Rhodes scholarship. Saturday he's likely to miss a very important game for his school in order to attend a final interview for the scholarship. What impressed me the most about this story wasn't Rolle though, it was that his school seems to be supporting his decision to miss the game and try for the scholarship.

Link: Sports Illustrated

Foreclosures in Detroit

Scary video showing the number of foreclosure listings in a newspaper in Wayne county Michigan. For those of you who can't watch the two minute video, the paper has over 137 pages dedicated to foreclosures.

Imagine what will happen there if GM and Ford both go bankrupt.



Thanks to Bill for sending me the link!

Internet spam mail drops by 66%

A bit of muckrackingesque reporting done by computer security reporter Brian Krebs of the Washington Post has directly resulted in the amount of spam email dropping by 66% in the last week. That's about 130 billion fewer email being sent a day.

Krebs worked with others in his community to piece together evidence showing a single US firm, McColo Corporation, was responsible for sending the junk mail out. He contacted the multiple Internet Service Providers that McColo relied on to send this mail and asked them if they were aware of this company's dealings. Most of them weren't but immediately took steps to cut off their Internet access once they were.

The result was a dramatic, albeit temporary, drop in the amount of spam being sent across the Internet. Spam is likely to return to the previously seen numbers in the next few months as the people behind McColo create a new front and set up shop again but as long as they're sending massive amounts of mail from a single location it's likely they'll be shut down again.

Link:
Washington Post
LA Times

Abandoned offices become archaeology sites

I don't know who "Mr. Toledano" is, but he has some interesting photographs on his site. It looks like he began visiting abandoned offices around the country and took photos. They're interesting and somewhat creepy



Sadly, some of these photos show offices that look like my previous places of employment. (Helloooooo Global Crossing!)

Link: Mr. Toledano

Obama win causes obsessive supporters to realize how empty their lives are

Another great Onion news video:


Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Link: The Onion

A butler well served by this election

I've spoken to several people about the emotional aspects of this election in the last few days. Many of us seem to share this sense of happiness and wonder and feel like the world is already a slightly better place than it was on Monday but we are also having trouble accepting that this is real. We continue to expect we'll wake up at any moment to realize it's all been a dream.

I can feel acceptance slowly creeping into my consciousness and have had a few moments of emotional euphoria, especially when thinking about what this means for my unborn child, but a piece I read today from the Washington Post finally made me cry.

I imagine part of what I'm finally feeling is the result of timing and being at a place where I'm fully 'awake', but the article is wonderfully written with a touching story of a black man who worked in the White House for 34 years through 8 administrations. I hope you'll read it. If you do, make sure you stay with it to the last page.

Link: The Washington Post

Obama wins - Headlines from around the world

Someone put together a collection of many of the world newspapers' front pages on the day after Obama won the US election for president. It's worth taking a look.



There are way more there than I could fit in the image above.

Michael Crichton has died

According to a press release put out by his family, Michael Crichton has unexpectedly died today. In what was kept a quiet family matter he passed away of cancer.

Link: WSJ

Euphoria and withdrawl

After last night's historic election, I'm both elated and confused. The Sun seemed to be shining just a little brighter here in Seattle when I was waiting for the bus this morning. At the same time I didn't know quite what to do with myself. For the last 20 months I've fed my obsession by looking at polling data every time I had a free 10 seconds (access to the Internet on your cellphone is addictive.) This morning I still felt the compulsive urge to review statistics, but there were none to review.

My Dad shared this comic with me and I think it's dead on.



On a loftier note, the election still hasn't become 'real' to me yet. I think it will take Barack Obama being sworn in on January 20th for me to believe it. A conscious part of me is absorbing everything and other than Prop 8 being passed by the bigoted 52% of California, nothing really surprised me in the election. (Admittedly I was a bit too optimistic in predicting North Dakota and Montana would go for Obama)

My wife is pregnant with our first child and I'm so grateful that she/he will be raised in a country that is once again inspiring the rest of the world. This is going to be a difficult four years for President Obama, but when things get rough, I'll be able to remind myself of how much worse it could be.

Link: XKCD

Don't trust exit polls!

One more 538 post worth reading. They summarize why exit polls are worth as much as a McCain-Pailin yard sign on Nov. 5th.

Sorry for the short posts, I'm using my cellphone as we're traveling today. (Link fixed, thanks Jared!)

Link: 538.com - Exit polls can't be trusted

My predictions

I'll be on a plane most of tomorrow so you'll have to enjoy most of the election without me. Here are my optimistic predictions:

Obama:
Solid:
CA, CO, CT, DC, DE, HI, IL, NM, IA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NH, NJ, NY, OR, PA,=
RI, VT, WI, WA
Toss-ups:
FL, IN, VA, OH, NC, MO, PA, NV, MT


McCain:
Solid:
TX, AL, SC, LA, MS, TN, KY, OK, AR, WV, KS, NE, SD, UT, ID, WY, AK
Toss-ups:
GA, AZ

Nate Silver - What to watch for on election night

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has a great writeup of what to expect on election night on the Newsweek website.

Nate has been particluarly good at interpreting polling companies results through the primaries so I've been relying on him to get me through the last two months. We'll find out tomorrow how accurate he was. New York magazine had a great write up on him and his odd rise to geek fame as a statistical god. He makes his money writing the Baseball Prospectus and only dabbles in political statistics in his free time. (That garners him some serious geek cred in my opinion.)

Links:

Newsweek
New York Magazine

More politics from SNL

Saturday Night Live had two wonderful political spoofs in this weekends' show:

The intro was a blast:



The second piece will only be amusing to people who've watched MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:

The cellphone effect

If the Bradley Effect is a possible negative factor in polling for Obama to consider, then 'cellphone effect' is a positive factor in Obama's polling. Including cellphone numbers in polling data is difficult work. Cellphone numbers aren't sold by all wireless carriers and are expensive when they are, plus it's difficult to guarantee that someone included in a poll via a cell phone might not be included again via a land line phone.

For these reasons, and many more, many polling groups aren't even attempting to include cellphones in their polls. Ask yourself this question, how many people do you know who no longer own a land line? Now, of the handful of people you've just thought of, how many of them are under 35?

So given the overwhelming popularity Obama has with 18-35 year olds, how much might their not being included in polls affect the outcome of these polls? Well, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has an interesting graphic showing the difference between those polls that are including cellphones, and those that aren't:


The graph shows Obama's national lead for each polling company. The yellow results are from companies that include cellphone numbers. The gray results are from companies that don't. Notice the advantage companies that include cellphones are giving Obama?

This doesn't show anything definitive on its own. If the pollsters have done a good job extrapolating data from the 18-35 year olds they DO get on the phone then there may be nothing to this. But Nate's data seems to indicate some polls are under reporting the support for Obama in the election. If we see a landslide on Tuesday night in states like North Carolina, Missouri, Floriday... where the race is currently being shown as 50/50 toss-ups by pollsters, then the cellphone effect will certainly have to be considered as a factor.

And if the election isn't a blowout? I still think polling companies will need to deal with this issue before 2012 as the number of people who give up land lines is only going to continue to grow between now and then.

Link: FiveThirtyEight.com