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Interesting review of different cooking pans that gets deep into the science.
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Interesting flap–a McCain campaign rep from Buchanan County, Virginia wrote a newspaper column claiming Obama wanted to paint the WHite House black, change the national anthem to the “black national anthem,” require teaching “black liberation theology in all churches,” and replacing the flag with a “star and crescent logo.” Apparently he’s stepped down, and about time too.
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Amazing archive of images from the NY Public Library, including some interesting images from UVA. Still looking for licensing info–can the images be used on Wikipedia?
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Making Obama out to be a foreigner who “we don’t really know” is pandering to the deepest darkest fears of xenophobic voters. He’s looking pretty ugly on the way down.
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The McCain campaign is looking more and more like it remembers Goldwater.
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Amazing photos of jazz players during the late flowering of straight jazz. Via David Weinberger.
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Speaking of shivers down the spine, Palin’s campaign appearances sound like rallies of a very different kind.
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Interesting speculation about Apple’s “brick,” which helps to explain why they were up $1.07 on Ski Slope Monday.
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Google launches Mail Goggles to save you from yourself | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone – CNETIt isn’t April Fools, is it? “Mail Goggles” is the funniest idea I’ve heard in a long time. Um, and it should be available on Facebook too. Just sayin’.
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The nice thing about Obama’s continued strength in the polls is that it’s drawing out all the crazies into the light, where hopefully they’ll shrivel up and die.
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“Palin’s problem isn’t too much filter–it’s not enough signal.” Nice.
Day: October 7, 2008
Lost in the library: The New York Public Library Digital Gallery
A tip from Jonathan Hoefler led me to the NYPL Digital Gallery, now fully searchable and browsable, with low resolution images free for non-profit use (including personal blogs, though not Wikipedia). Some really fascinating stuff, including a number of University of Virginia related items: detailed close-up shots of the pediments of East Lawn, the post-1895 Rotunda, the serpentine walls, two different views of the famous pre-1895 engraving showing the Lawn from the West with the Rotunda annex, a view of the full map of Virginia from which the 1826 engraving of the Lawn is drawn and a separate close-up of that engraving, other early engravings likely not drawn from life (since they don’t show the terraces on the Lawn) but including the pediment around Pavilion X, the exterior and interior of Edgar Allan Poe’s room on West Range following one of the Raven Society restorations of the room, and my personal favorite, pictures from a visit that Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas made to the University in 1935, including a shot with faculty and students, the pair in front of a pavilion, and this nifty shot of Stein in front of the Rotunda.
I’m pretty sure you could kill hours just looking through this site–for me, the old photos from Newport News are just about as fascinating as the UVA material.
What are they betting on?
My friend and undergrad classmate Erik Simpson has been following an interesting trend on Intrade, the prediction market that allows predictive “bets” on realworld events. Specifically, Intrade’s prediction results were diverging from other predictive models, specifically those of fivethirtyeight.com. More research dug up the interesting fact that Intrade doesn’t agree with other predictive markets either. Yesterday Erik followed up these posts with the logical question: why not simply arbitrage the difference? If Intrade and the Iowa Electronic Markets are really efficient markets, there should be no persistent price spread, but since there is a price spread there’s an opportunity to make risk free money by selling on IEM and buying on Intrade, then reversing the trades after the election, when the outcome is locked. (As of this writing, Intrade has a 70% probability of Obama winning, vs. a 74.9% chance on IEM.)
The persistent difference in value can be explained by one of two market frictions: either there are one or more irrational actors who are making trades based on something other than rational economic decisions, or there is information asymmetry: the trader knows something that we don’t about the outcome of the election. I’m inclined to think it’s the former. But I don’t rule out the latter, for the reason that the GOP and its followers are starting to scare the hell out of me (anyone else wonder why someone shouting “Kill him” at a GOP rally wasn’t immediately brought in for questioning by the Secret Service?).
It’s not hard to see why the GOP might be frustrated at this point. The Democrats have done a superb job of keeping their powder dry, waiting until McCain really stepped up the smears to point out that he has deep roots in banking and real estate corruption through his membership in the Keating Five. This campaign has refused to roll over and play dead while smears and attacks were directed at them, and while they’ve played hard in return, it’s been to point out how McCain and Palin have specific unsuitabilities to deal with the issues in front of the country right now.
The downside of this campaign–one of the few really well contested matches we’ve seen in recent years–is that it doesn’t leave much room for discourse on the issues. I’d love to see Obama clear enough of the smoke to start talking about how we get out of this mess, but I think he’s going to be facing enough crap for the next few weeks that we won’t hear substantive proposals for a while.