Image via Wikipedia

The waters of internet linkitude are rising once again, and hopefully will keep everyone wet for the weekend.

• Since I am technically a mathematics graduate student, I should probably include good math links once in a while. For people who want to learn topology, Allen Hatcher’s homepage has full copies of his great texts on the field.
• Fun internet art time, Luke Chueh is a really spiffy artist. As is Thoma Doyle, and his art under glass. Mark Jenkins takes his art to the street.
• If you are ever in Calgary, remember to try out the tasty Mackay’s ice cream from Cochrane.
• values of β will give rise to dom!
• Marginal Revolution asks, which “great books” don’t deserve their title.
• Paul Kane clarifies the status of the primary: “[the superdelegates] are no longer looking at how Hillary Clinton fares in battleground states against McCain. This is very hard for Clinton supporters to hear, I’m sorry, but the super-delegates are not paying attention to your candidate anymore.”
• With that taken care of, now you can work on marketing the nominee to republican friends and family.
• The incorruptibles, dead people (mostly saints) who simply don’t compose even though no embalming has been done on them. Creepy and cool.
• The Sports Vii!
• Bohemian Revolution asks about composting in your apartment.
• Have you accidentally fried your iPhone or iPod Touch trying to jailbreak it? GameOver has some clean images for you.
• For those who haven’t seen it, Internet People. For those who have seen it, the 8-bit version.

So that should be a good solid soaking wet link flood.

1h

Image via Wikipedia

• In this time of Obamarama, Bill Cosby deals some tough love to the black situation in the States
• “Radical feminist” bloggers on Pandagon reviews summer blockbusters from the Hollywood patriarchy in lieu of saying anything meaningful now that Hillary’s both finished and racism
• In other asinine American news, the Ivy admissions game grows ever worse
• Do you want to be able to survive a nuclear blast?
• Or would you rather be flushed down the drain afterwards via a method used by serial killers and the US Government?
• If SETI doesn’t find greys, it might find God instead.

After watching last night, I decided my predictions were way off. Surprisingly in the direction that I wasn’t expecting them to be so far off.

1. Will this thing be over? My prediction from yesterday, probably not.

It is important to note that Clinton has cancelled all of her public appearances this morning. Also note though that she is attending a fundraiser tonight. So, it is hard to tell if it is over yet. Obviously, it is over officially when Clinton decides it is over. Statistically, the primary is more or less wrapped up at this point and there is not a clear path anymore to victory for Clinton. I think Hilary realizes this. At least I got that impression from her speech last night. It was a somewhat confusing speech, the first half was celebatory, but then quickly devolved into a blatant cry for donations, and ended on an almost conciliatory note (olive branch, as they say) to Obama.

2. Who will win what, by how much.

NC, my prediction O+6 to 8, actual O+14 . I was way off, as were most of the polls. Obama completely blew away my expectations here.

IN, my prediction C+4 to 6, actual C+<2 (margin currently is about 18k). Again, Obama blew away my expectations by coming within 18k of winning Indiana.

3. Will either concede. My prediction from yesterday, short a major blowout by Obama, no.

No one has conceded yet. To be honest, at this point I have no idea when/if Clinton will concede. However, the indicators show that she is going to keep on going as long as she can. Obama, obviously, has no reason to concede.

1h

Image by Barack Obama via Flickr

The first prediction, will this blasted thing end?

No, based on polls and previous performance, I’m expecting the primary not to end tonight unless there is a huge upset. Why do I say this? Well, the general media has a vested interest in keeping this primary going as long as possible. It provides them with easy to create crap to fill their 24-hour newschannels with. It’s stupidly easy to find political pundits/analysts/etc when two groups are trying to win a primary. Unless Obama sweeps both states convincingly, this primary will keep on going… and going… and going. Not because the primary isn’t more or less over, but because the 24-hour news channels need something to fill time with and Clinton is more than willing to oblige. I especially found it odd how much ABC is willing to bend over backwards for Clinton. That is, until I found out that Stephanopoulous was Bill Clinton’s communication director.

Second prediction, who will win what? and the overall winner?

NC will go to Obama with about a 6-8% margin giving Obama a good chunk of their 134 delegates, and Indiana will go to Clinton with a 4-6% margin giving her a solid chunk of their 84 delegates, but nowhere near enough to catch up to Obama. The overall winner tonight will be Obama by maintaining his lead and basically making it pretty much impossible for Clinton to catch up.

Will Clinton or Obama concede?

If NC and Indiana are both won by Obama with a convincing margin, Clinton may concede, but not tonight. Probably tomorrow if the superdelegates decide to move en masse to Obama. If NC and Indiana are both won by Clinton, Obama will not concede unless that margin is > 10% on each, or somehow Obama begins to bleed superdelegates like crazy.

So basically, I expect tonight to be just like the last primary. Both sides are going to spin like crazy and the voters are going to be nauseous from it again, and we can look forward to another month of primaries until June 3rd. All thanks to the 24-hour news network and their obsession with keeping a dead horse alive.

1h

Image via Wikipedia

I watched the results trickle in on CNN after the Pennsylvania primary, and throughout the entire time I was reminded of when I was a boy and played on a merry-go-round for too long. I got quite violently sick from being spun around and around. I’m sick of all of the spin, from both groups, but especially from the Clinton camp. The Clinton party has been spinning where the goalposts are sitting for 2 months now. So, no matter what the results are, somehow they are ahead in the game. Sometimes, it’s the number of delegates that matters, then it’s only certain states that matter, then it’s the fact that she won a state in the single digits even though she should have had a 2 figure lead. No matter what the results are, they are endlessly spun spun spun, lied about and spun some more.

At times it feels like I’m at a psycho hockey game where one team has a visible 5-6 point lead over the other team. Now normally, most supporters of the losing team realize that they have lost and go home. In this weird circumstance though, many of her supporters are determined to keep this race going as long as they can regardless of the improbability of winning. Their supporters keep on using different metrics to show they are winning: It’s because he’s unelectable, they claim without providing any real evidence to back it up. If you take this really weird measure of popular vote where you count some states but not others, she’s totally winning. We should ignore all of the previous results and only note that we got a bunch of points in the last period, even though they really fought hard.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the Obama camp has been spinning and spinning and spinning as well. However, unlike Clinton, they do have a solid point: By most sane metrics, they have won, this election is over. Looking at the numbers, Clinton would either need the superdelegates to go to Clinton > 70%, thus cause needless headaches for the party during the next election due to the fact that it is essentially overthrowing the will of the voters, or Clinton would need to win more than 64% of the remaining delegates to win this primary. Now, I’ve been reading a blog by an anonymous superdelegate known as “Mr. Super” in the hopes of cutting through the spin, and from what I can tell, short of a major loss in Indiana for Obama (>15%), the superdelegates are likely not going to go to Clinton in any significant fashion, and are simply waiting until that primary is over to start announcing en masse.Which, hopefully, will end the endless stream of low brow politics that we have been exposed to for the last 2 months, and allow the Democrats to pull together for November. As well as get McCain’s feet back to the fire instead of letting him rest while Obama and Clinton duke it out.

Now, I’m not only bashing Clinton here, I wish DailyKos, and the Obama supporters would stop spinning as much as MyDD and Clinton supporters have been. However, since PA, Clinton’s campaign has been even more aggressive with divisive attacks. If Obama was this far behind and the attacks were simply getting more and more destructive and divisive to the Democratic party I would say the same thing.

As posted on Pandagon:

That’s not Clinton-bashing. No one complained about the arcane system until it didn’t favor her. Trust me, if the positions were reversed, and Obama made this same claim it would be equally absurd. It’s the same issue as the positions Clinton and Obama have taken re: MI and FL — rules were in place and agreed to, and now they want the situation cleaned up in the way that best supports them.

Actually, if the positions were reversed in terms of delegates, popular vote and money pulled in, Obama would have been pressured and forced to drop out long ago.

It’s time for this 3 month long ride on the merry-go-round to end before we all get too sick to vote in November.

Update: If CCPS is correct and they have been 70% of the time, all that is needed is for the superdelegates to declare, and this race will be over.

1h