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16. januar 2008
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Quick takes:
The EU rethinks biofuels over threats to rainforests and food prices.
Women get more drunk than men, but only at sexually-themed fancy dress parties. No, I have no idea why...
Solar power may be getting cheaper than coal. Great news, so I had to share this link, too, even if it's pretty old.
9:21:07 PM 
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The slide on the Norwegian stock exchange has turned into a rout.
The Oslo Stock Exchange's main index was down 2.9 percent, to 413 points, after just the first two hours of trading Wednesday.
It ended the day in the dumps, with the main index closing at 411.83, down 3.29 percent.[...]
Oslo’s major index has plunged more than 13 percent since the year began, That was reportedly among the worst fall-offs among all European exchanges.
Since the stock exchange top, in July 2007, the major index has fallen 98 points. This is the largest drop in the exchange’s history.
Of a total of 170 companies, 147 lost share value.
It doesn't help that the oil prices are sliding, though that is probably good news for the economy of many other countries.
The primary reason is word-of-the-year subprime. Bad lenders in the US default on their debts, and this causes ripples across the world.
So is this the start of a recession? The omens aren't particularly good, but they aren't disastrous either.
This will undoubtedly turn the attention of US voters more strongly towards the economy. Now, who will that benefit?
8:37:02 PM
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Following a very understandable drop in voter confidence in politicians, a rise in conspiracy theories will soon follow. The Bush presidency is full of them, but you may remember the Clinton years weren't exactly the pivotal point of sane politics, either. Now a science blogger points out that Clinton won a disproportionate number of votes from Diebold machines:
So I got a copy of the vote counts, and thanks to Brian London at BlackBoxVoting, the demographic information from each town (most notably, the % holding bachelor's degrees, the median household income, and the total town population). Now, Mike LaBonte at BlackBoxVoting has provided estimates of the mileage for each district, allowing for the calculation of population density.
To my complete (and continuing) amazement, the "diebold effect" on Hillary's votes remains after controlling for any and all of those demographic variables, with a p-value of <.001: that is, there are less than 1:1000 odds for this difference occurring through chance alone, and that's after adjusting for variability in Hillary's votes due to education, income, total population, and population density.
While this "diebold effect" varies in magnitude depending on the exact covariates used, it seems to center around an additional 5.2% of votes going for Clinton from Diebold machines. The same analysis shows a Diebold disadvantage for Obama of about -4.2%, significant with a p<.001, using the same covariates.
You obviously didn't miss the fact that Clinton received a far higher proportion of the votes than the opinion polls predicted, at a pretty unprecedented scale, and the pollsters are wondering why.
This appears far more serious than a naive analysis, but I will still assume that there is a hidden variable not accounted for that just happens to correlate with the placement of Diebold counting machines.
Voter confidence issues alone are sufficient reason to question the use of voting machines. Though, these machines did leave a paper trail, as Armed Liberal points out.
Kucinich is paying for a recount (the questionable machines were optical scanners, not DVR touchscreens - in which case no recount would be possible). If there were material discrepancies, the 'Vince Foster was murdered' crowd are going to have a field day, and the Democratic nominating process will be more fun than the first episode of the Sopranos.
No kidding.
8:22:38 PM
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Romney takes his home state:
In Michigan, with most precincts reporting, Romney had 39 percent of the vote, McCain had 30 percent and Huckabee 16 percent. No other Republican fared better than single digits.
In the Democratic primary, Hillary easily took Michigan, which doesn't say much as Obama had withdrawn after the state moved its primary forward. But the results have something to tell her:
According to CNN exit polling, 48 percent of voters ages 18-29 voted for "uncommitted." Thirty-nine percent supported Clinton and 9 percent voted for Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich.
Of voters ages 30-44, 48 percent also chose "uncommitted" and 46 percent went with Clinton, exit polls said.
The exit polls don't speak well for Hillary in South Carolina:
Even so, roughly 70 percent of Michigan’s African-American voters — a group that makes up a quarter of Michigan’s Democratic electorate — did not cast their votes for Clinton, choosing the “uncommitted” option instead. Yet these voters weren’t uncommitted at all: in fact, according to CNN exit polls, they overwhelmingly favored Barack Obama, whose name did not appear on the ballot.
Had Obama’s name been on the Michigan ballot, CNN exit polls show that he would have won an overwhelming 73 percent of the African-American vote, in contrast to 22 percent who say they would have voted for Clinton under those circumstances.
It is still wide open on both sides.
7:36:06 AM
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On this day, 28 years ago, an event which magnitude was greatly underestimated at the time occurred.
1979: Shah of Iran flees into exile
The Shah of Iran has fled the country following months of increasingly violent protests against his regime. [...]
Opposition to the Shah has become united behind the Muslim traditionalist movement led by Iran's main spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini, from exile in France.
The Shah was a brutal, classic third world despot. Nobody should be nostalgic about his removal. However, the theocratic extremist that replaced him should mean an end to the supremacy of nationalist movements in the entire Islamic world, and the rise of religious extremism, Shiah and Sunni, to take its place. Where nationalism is often petty and violent, religiously motivated extremism has a tendency for even greater megalomania and ruthlessness.
7:26:45 AM
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© Copyright 2008 Jan Haugland.
Last update: 01.02.2008; 22:14:39.
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