Never drink or cook with hot tap water straight from the tap.
Read about it here.
Month: January 2008
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I definitely lean towards Barack Obama amongst the current crop of presidential candidates, and I
think his larger-than-expected
landslide win in
South Carolina is obviously a huge story (with Caroline Kennedy's
endorsement a huge symbolic lift as well). But the second story has to
be that John Edwards may have won the white vote in South Carolina (at least according to exit polls, where he appeared to have a slight edge over Clinton). It was a
dynamic very similar to that in Iowa in 2004 -- the two leading
candidates attacked each other, voters (or white voters, in SC) got
turned off and looked for an alternative candidate. One difference is
that race was also injected into the primary, both by the campaigns and
by the media, and that may have further polarized the race. (Given such
circumstances, getting 24% of the white vote for Obama wasn't bad,
although it wasn't great either. Nevertheless it allowed him a
landslide victory.)John Edwards can't talk about winning the white vote
publicly in such stark terms, but I am sure his campaign sees winning the white vote as a
kind of pseudo-victory, and a harbinger of how they might succeed in
states with
large majorities of white voters. He has to hope that the Clinton and Obama campaigns
get stuck in the mud,
and that the media continues to fail to scrutinize the Edwards
campaign, while he
continues to look good in debates, and that voters (particularly white
voters) turned off by the
mud (regardless of whether it is one-sided or not) will turn to
Edwards. Even if he isn't the front runner, if he can make it a
three-way race going to the convention, with no one with a majority of
delegates, he might actually have a chance at the nomination if he is
close enough or even slightly ahead of one or two of the others. At the
very least he would be a serious player in the convention, perhaps as 'kingmaker,' and he could
ensure himself of a prominent place in Democratic party politics now
and in the future.I
would suspect that the Clinton campaign has taken note of this, and
will back off their attacks on Obama. If attacking Obama simply drives
both Clinton and Obama votes towards Edwards, even if Clinton comes out
slightly ahead of Obama that ultimately could hurt Hillary Clinton if
her overall delegate count goes down. That is, unless she feels she can
work out a deal with John Edwards at the convention (which may explain
why she approached him to talk after one of the recent debates). -
I am really anxious to see how the so-called white vote in the South Carolina primary turns
out. One of the latest polls has Senator Obama as low as 10% among whites there. (Hillary Clinton and Senator Edwards essentially split most of the rest.) To me, this would be
a sad state of affairs, if it happens. It would indicate how much latent racism still
exists in this country, or at least in certain parts of this country. And I would bet a huge chunk of that 90% or so not voting
for Obama will insist that it wasn't for reasons of race, and that they
'don't see color.'
What many well-meaning people don't understand is that while
people may not be intentionally racist, subtle racial biases can
still exist without one even being aware of it. In this case, the
obstinate belief that one is not at all racist actually makes one more
likely to be subtly unconsciously biased. The only way one can truly be unbiased is to at least acknowledge the possibility of bias, coupled with a strong sense of self-awareness and honesty in confronting one's own biases, however subtle. -
Unfortunately, there was no "popular vote" recorded in the Nevada
caucuses, although this has been misrepresented by most news
reports I've seen. The 51%-45% result in the Democratic primary is the percentage
of precinct caucus delegates won by either candidate. The actual
percentage of the popular vote is not clearly represented by this
figure, as the number of precinct caucus delegates are pre-assigned based on the number of democratic registered voters in each precinct
(except for the at-large caucus sites, which are calculated by a
complex formula).Thus
the point the Obama campaign is making about the 13-12 state delegate
tally is not a trivial one. The 51%-45% "victory" by the Clinton
campaign does not represent the popular vote. Therefore, why should it
have more legitimacy that the 13-12 state delegate tally?(I
would personally like all caucus delegate math changed so that caucus
delegates for each precinct are assigned based on the number of caucus
attendees (while retaining the viability rule, perhaps reduced to 10%) but
that's a different topic.) -
This link is for a 49 minute discussion between Barack Obama and the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board. It is vastly more in-depth than the typical shallow coverage one sees on television. I think it is a must-see for evaluating the type of presidency Barack Obama is offering in his candidacy.
The full video also clarifies what Senator Obama really meant in some of his remarks that were later taken out of context, such as his remark about not being the best COO (he notes that he is still a good manager, as evidenced by building a campaign machine from scratch), and his remarks about Ronald Reagan successfully moving the country in a new direction (he also includes JFK as another example).
A similar 42 minute discussion with Hillary Clinton is also featured.
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I joined Facebook this week.
Facebook is excellent at facilitating social connections between people, albeit at a predominantly surface level. Nevertheless, it's quite engaging.
In some ways its ease and low "buy-in" is part of its appeal. You
can set up and maintain a page with minimal effort, and keep in contact with a lot other people without having to spend a whole lot of time reading and writing long blog entries, which would be difficult with a large number of contacts. It's mostly short wall posts, pictures, video, with the occasional longer message. The interconnectivy provided by the newsfeed is a nice feature.There's an excellent Newsweek article about Facebook here.
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Solar activity -- another good reason to keep a landline. Solar activity can disrupt cell phones, GPS, and even power grids. A typical solar magnetic storm can disrupt 7 percent of cell phone calls, with stronger storms potentially affecting an even greater percentage. Sunspots occur in 11 year cycles, and recent sunspots indicate the beginning of a current solar activity cycle that will peak in 2011-2012.
See article here.
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HiFi
In the rush to digital music formats such as mp3 and wma that utilize compression technology, one thing that is being lost is the high fidelity offered by CDs. Unlike video, where the quality continues to increase, audio has seen the reverse. My guess is that a lot of folks don't even realize this. There was a brief time when SACD and DVD-A were seen as the next step in audio quality, but the mp3 craze has limited that market to a narrow hi-fi niche.
I'm not too worried about this in the long term, though, because as storage capacity increases, and compression technologies improve (or are unnecessary), we will be able to store high fidelity recordings in pure digital format. The concern in the short term is that the proliferation of mp3s is changing how people record music. (More on that in the link to a Rolling Stone article, below.)
Another perhaps greater concern is the loudness war that has seen the dynamic range of audio limited in both new recordings and remasters of original recordings. (BTW dynamic range compression is different from audio compression. The former refers to limiting the range of volume for different components of audio; the latter refers to using less memory to store data.)
Here's an article from EE Times that includes a video demonstrating the effects of attempts to increase mere loudness at the expense of dynamic range. That article references a more in-depth piece in Rolling Stone (single page or multiple page view).
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