This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter).
Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon
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As a warning for those listening to this week’s podcast in the section about Al Gore there were some numbers pulled out of our asses that had no relation to reality. Things about numbers of delegates that Al Gore would have to get to force a second ballot. I apologize, because I hadn’t spent much time thinking about it before hand, but the way I was talking about it was of course complete BS. I was just making crap up. I did start to allude to the right answer in the podcast, but never actually articulated it. So I will do so here.
So, OK, here is the deal. And this should actually be obvious, and I was a dumbass when we were recording. It is all about denying whoever is ahead their majority. This could take many delegates, this could take just a few. And “how many are needed” all depends on how close it really is. What is the “Gap” between the candidates.
Assuming Obama is in the lead, to force a second ballot you need:
Clinton + Edwards + Gore > Obama
(and of course Clinton still not getting a majority herself)
Doing a little algebra:
Gore > Obama – Clinton – Edwards
The Obama/Clinton gap right now is 139 delegates. (So Obama-Clinton=139). Edwards has 18.
So if that gap did not change at all, and the Edwards delegates stay Edwards delegates, Gore would have to get more than 121 delegates to force a second ballot.
At this very moment there are 340 superdelgates who have not yet declared a preference. So Al Gore (or whoever) would need to get 36% of these remaining unpledged delegates to make this happen.
Of course, between the remaining primaries and superdelegates changing hands, that number *will* change.
The more Clinton manages to narrow the gap, the fewer people have to go for a third candidate to force a second ballot. If Obama manages to increase the gap, then it becomes harder, and more people would have to go for a third candidate.
It is directly linear with the delegate gap between the candidates. Basically, the number of delegates who vote for “someone else” has to be more than the delegate gap between the two leading candidates.
It is that simple.
The end.
(Given all this, I’ll reduce the 15% chance of this happening that I mentioned in the podcast down to 2%. I really don’t see this happening unless both Obama and Clinton completely self-destruct.)
Sam and Ivan talk about:
- Welcome Lufthansa (Abbreviated)
- Tax Preparation (Take Two)
- HUD Secretary
- Hillary in Bosnia
- Changes in News Media
- Gorementum
- Where is McCain?
- General Election Talk
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A group from the Seattle Children’s Chorus (including Amy) sang today at a ceremony welcoming the first ever Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Seattle. Woo!
I did some camera phone video of some of the songs too, but the audio quality on the cell phone video was horrible, so I won’t post it.
New Poll in Virginia. It moves my “last 5 poll average” such that Virginia goes from “Leaning McCain” to “Weak McCain”. This means we now only have 13 states and 154 electoral votes in the “up for grabs” leaning categories as Virginia is now more solidly in the McCain camp.
If everybody gets their leaning states, and Obama gets DC, then McCain would win 283 to 255.
But allowing for the full possible swing of the leaning votes… and generously thinking that DC could go either way since we have no polls (even though we all know DC will go Dem) this gives us:
McCain best case: McCain 330, Obama 208
Obama best case: Obama 362, McCain 176
Obama and Clinton pick up one pledged delegate each from the finalization of delegate counts. (CNN’s Delegate Page does not make it clear which states these 2 delegates are from.) In addition Obama picks up two more superdelegates. Net result, Obama further expands his lead by 2 delegates.
The day before Clinton’s “big wins in Ohio and Texas” Obama was ahead by 102 delegates. Obama is now ahead by 139.
Oops.
Right now Clinton needs 58.6% of the remaining 918 delegates to win. Obama only needs 43.5% of them.
She will close the delegate gap somewhat in Pennsylvania. But it is unclear if she will actually be able to win by a big enough margin to be on the 58.6% pace she needs to actually win. If she gets less than 58.6% of the delegates in PA, then after PA she’ll actually have a harder road to the nomination than before, not an easier one.
When you are behind, running faster is not good enough. You have to run fast enough to catch up.
(Let alone running slower, which is of course what she has done so far.)
Great tidbit from the past:
The Internet? Bah!
(Clifford Stoll, Newsweek, 27 Feb 1995)
Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.
Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.
Consider today’s online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophany more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harrasment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it’s an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can’t tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.
…
Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.
(via Paleo-Future)
A few months ago I discovered there is a nifty little connection between myself and Ewoks. Can any of my readers tell me what that connection might be?
And no, it does not involve furries. But it does involve a popular book.
I am very loyal to Garmin. I think by far they make the best GPS units. The main thing that makes them good is the interface. And I just generally like how it all comes together. And this new Dash is very deficient in many areas… and it looks like the interface sucks a bit. But some of the new features are absolutely killer features. Garmin needs to come out with their version of this ASAP, because this is the future of these things:
Dash Express GPS Full Drive Review: Total Traffic Terminator
(Wilson Rothman, Gizmodo)
• Live real-time traffic – It’s the biggest and most powerful of the four keys, mainly because of how badly GPS traffic reporting has sucked in the past. Dash builds a teamwork system not unlike the original Napster—you got data I want, I got data you want, and that central server will make sure the sharing happens in a fast and orderly manner. As you drive, you not only help others out, but you add useful data to the historical record, so that the plan for your own commute or Friday getaway could grow smarter. As we’ve said before, once each metro area is seeded with a few hundred Dash units, the traffic reporting becomes exponentially better. The funny thing is, what we’ve already seen, with just a handful of units on the road, was already better than anything to date thanks to the historical data which runs in 15 minute increments, and therefore knows the difference between weekends and rush hour. If you’re wondering who is working on the traffic modeling, it’s a couple of eggheaded PhDs in Traffic.
• Live search – Most navis have search features, but they only query a POI database of an average of 5 million or so. Dash only has 1 Million built-in points of interest, but its better 99% of the time. That’s because it uses its GPRS cellular connection to ping Yahoo Local search for stuff, delivering better information in the exact same amount of time. You can save search terms you like as favorites, alongside addresses and, yes, standard POI categories. Oh, Yahoo local searches are returned by relevance, not sorted by proximity, but most things can be resorted and gas can even be resorted by price.
• MyDash web interface including Send2Car, GeoRSS and other features – With a quick browser plug-in, you can highlight any address and right-click, selecting the option “Send To Car.” You can even highlight name and address, but for now you need to leave off the phone number. Within a second or two, the address pops up on the Dash, which could be at your side, or miles away. Blam found that entering addresses on the web interface was actually more effective than typing them on the Express, since the server can do a better job of fuzzy-matching the data you type. There are plug-ins to allow you to send any text to the Dash unit by right clicking text and selecting “Send to Car.”
In MyDash, you can browse “saved searches” for dynamically updating data—a POI-like request (“CVS” or “Sushi”) gives you a Yahoo Local search criteria that you can send to the Express. But you can also copy GeoRSS and KML feed URLs from around the net at sites like Yelp.com and Chowhound, containing more exotic and time-dependent stuff—”Nationwide Airport Delays” and “California Surf Report.” For the most part, everything we tried worked, save a Craigslist RSS of Seattle real estate. (But GeoRSS feeds are kind of tricky to find in the wild.)
• Over-the-air updates – The Express uses any open Wi-Fi network it can to pull chunks of update down as you drive around. You can teach it your SSIDs and passwords for best Wi-Fi, but it’s not necessary. Dash will deliver a few different kinds of update that we’ll cover below; the important thing is to think about the last time you updated your Garmin or TomTom. Your answer is most likely “never.” If you have, you probably paid a lot to do it. Dash of courses charges $10 to $13 per month subscription, but promises a constantly evolving platform in return.
-Traffic data will be updated monthly, using historical data from Dash drivers. That means that the first one will be a good ‘un, as the first crop of users starts putting on the mileage.
-Big map updates will come every six months or so, about the same time Tele Atlas will release to other vendors.
-The first major software updates with bug fixes and new features (see below) will come this summer, and then every three months or so.
-MyDash servers can be updated on a weekly basis, so new web features could be appearing all the time—not that they will.
I want a Garmin version, but this still excites me. And the traffic is NOT just on major highways, but on side roads too once the system starts getting enough users to have data on those roads. Very very cool.
 Big huge snowflakes falling from the sky. Some of the biggest I’ve ever seen. Somebody needs to let somebody know that it is March 27th, and it is too late for this stuff. Time to stop. K?
It is just supposed to be raining, not snowing, but there ya go.
The picture is my hamster Snowball. I had Snowball when I was a kid. We got Snowball at the petstore. A few days later she had a bunch of babies.
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