Mindless Philosopher

• My facebook-recorded prediction was 43-29-28 (D-Mc-Mo), which turned out to be off by a bit, but not embarrassing. The final numbers will probably be 49-27-24. Hey, at least I got the tens digit correct.
• Nate says McAuliffe's numbers look like Dean's from Iowa 2004. I disagree -- they look more like Clinton's from Iowa 2008. Clinton actually had a lead in that race (as did McAuliffe) -- Dean never had a solid Iowa lead.
• Ed Kilgore thinks the results spell trouble for McDonnell and I'm inclined to agree. If Deeds can beat Moran in Arlington County, he clearly can develop broad-based support.
• I disagree with Ed that the WaPo endorsement wasn't everything -- it was. Check out the polls before and after the day of the endorsement (May 22). That endorsement allowed Deeds to corral the momentum and the anti-McAuliffe vote. For voters who wanted an experienced state legislator running Richmond instead of a fat cat outsider, WaPo forcefully directed them toward Deeds.
• Well done VA Board of Elections for getting 60% of the vote in within the first hour after polls closed!
• Turnout (probably just shy of over 300,000) decimated predictions and the 2006 primary turnout of 155K. Go VA Dems!

[This blog post is adopted from an email conversation with Chicklet. Coincidentally, one of Google Wave's features is to convert an email to a blog post with just a couple clicks. Disclaimer: I'm not a Google employee so I know nothing about Wave but what's in the media; however, I am currently working as an independent contractor on a Google project.]

I mentioned to Chicklet that I thought Google Wave looked cool, and certainly others agree. She responded that she might find it appealing if she knew what Wave actually was. So after watching (some of) the Google I/O video, here's my attempt at explaing Wave briefly:

Wave is basically one step closer to bringing the whiteboard to virtual communication. Think of it as shared docs in email/IM. Here's an example of what it does well: at Woody Woo, when they bring speakers they post a blank list with 15 slots for students to sign up for a discussion with the speaker. First 15 to sign up get into the seminar. Email can't replace this functionality because (for one thing) you can't know how many slots are left (without manually counting reply-all emails). Also, if you don't have conversation threading, people's inboxes flood.

Wave solves this by combining email and shared docs. Basically the admin would send out an editable email with 15 slots and the recipients would be able to edit it. (It tracks changes so you could tell if Doug erased Amy's signup.) And of course all the edits are in one "wave" so no inbox flooding.

The challenge for Google, I think, will be interoperability. What happens when only 5% of your social/business network uses Google wave. Does each edit of a wave with MS Outlook user flood the inboxes of the outside users? Is Wave worthless to you if only you use it?

Google appears to be trying to solve the adoption problem by having Wave appear on public sites like blogs where comments become wave-y. That should help non-adopters see the benefits of wave without changing their behavior. I also think people who (like me) have their gmail window open all day will quickly adopt wave as their inbox and gradually utilize its more advanced features.

Of course, all this assumes that Wave lives up to its hype.

You can read Enjanerd's take on the 2009 WaPo Hunt here: great fun had by all. Yesterday, Chu and yours truly extended one puzzle's theme. We conversed over supper (at Jaleo) sans the second banned letter of Gene's Donny Sobel essay. The largest challenge was our confabs to the servers, where we were usually unsuccessful. (You try to order food and use only four [and a half] vowels in your vocabulary!) When we engaged each other, however, our speech generally followed the rules of our game. (Proper names were also troublesome.) Perhaps others around us observed our sentences' odd rhythms, but we hardly cared. Truly a cool endeavor, but one we probably won't repeat often.

Before I leave for Jordan/Egypt tomorrow, I better post the pics from my last adventure: the Obama Inauguration! Here's my story:

The night before the big day, Chu and I attend a party where the subject of "how to get on the Mall" comes up. Anne mentions that given the location of Chu's apartment (north of Pennsylvania Ave) crossing the parade route might be tricky. But we look at WaPo's map and see that there's a "pedestrian crossover" right my Archives-Memorial. So no problem; but, just in case we decide to wake up earlier...

...at the nearly-inhuman hour of 5:15am. CNN already shows people streaming onto the mall. We head out by 5:50, and are at the 7th and D checkpoint by 6:10am. Supposedly, the checkpoints open at 8am and while there is a massive crowd ahead of us, it's not too bad. Well, 8am comes and goes and nothing happens. We get news that a water main break had delayed our entrance. (Thanks, DC government!) At 9am, the gates finally open, to much cheering, but people quickly realize that there just aren't enough guards to check people! Imagine 2,000 people trying to go through 4 airport-security lines. It takes a while. And we're getting word from Anne, who woke up much later but smartly avoided Pennsylvania avenue, that she's on the mall no problem, without even being searched by security! It's pretty clear that despite all of these people waiting at 7th and D to get on the Mall that this is really a parade checkpoint (a distinction no one seems to have deemed worthy to tell us citizens). So at about 9:20 we bail...or try to. By this point, we're packed in like sardines, and even exiting to the west is really difficult. People have gotten so frustrated that they think that we're trying to cut them even though we're moving away from the front of the line. I can only imagine how much trouble there would have been if it had actually been cold instead of the balmy 35 degrees. Anyway, we finally get out and start heading north (away from the mall), then west (parallel to the mall) as quickly as possible.

Avoiding the white house mess, we start heading south at 19th street. And now that I can actually start to enjoy the day, I start taking pictures. We get on the mall with relative ease, and stop on the hill on the Capitol side of the Washington monument. Yes, this is far away from the action, but we wanted to be able to exit the Mall easily as well. And we had a nice view of a jumbotron. We arrived on the Mall around 10am, as they were wrapping up a replay of the Lincolm Memorial concert.

We were all ready for the inauguration ceremony to begin...but then, nothing happened. The procession of elected (and unelected, and formerly elected, and appointed) officials took forever. They didn't start speaking until around 11:45pm, which made me wonder how they were going to swear Obama in at noon?! The actual inauguration program was incredibly short, so pretty soon we had...

President Obama!

We got home so smoothly that we had turned on the TV to see that Obama's congressional lunch hadn't even started yet. (They were quite behind schedule!) After a relaxing afternoon, we got all dolled up for two unofficial galas: the Pennsylvania State Society Gala and the Google party. On our way to the parties, we took the Metro -- I always love seeing the tuxes and evening gowns on mass transit:

The Pennsylvania Gala, at the Ritz Carlton was fairly fancy. Senator Spector gave a standard speech, and then Sharon Stone stepped up to the podium for the highlight of the evening. She gave one of the most incoherent and slightly drunken speeches I've ever heard. When the audience started snickering out her, she literally "Shhh"ed the crowd (multiple times!) and said "Don't make me come out there!"

The Google party was much "hipper". The dance floor was packed. They had cool exhibits on the walls. Celebritties were plentiful (though we didn't attempt to speak to any of them): Meryl Streep, Sen. Kerry, Ben Affleck. The best part was Wii Bowling! Although Chu and I were beaten my two more experienced young ladies, the Wii served as a great way to meet people without forced mingling. Oh, how I love Google.

And that was it! Hope around 12:30am, January 21, i.e., the first day of the new administration!

Seventh graders who pay attention in civics class know the difference between "impeachment" and "removal from office." The Washington Post had a bit of trouble on that front today. The Grey Lady did much better:

It's difficult to imagine now, with Bush's approval rating at 22%, but back in 2003, the contenders for the Democratic nomination were scared to challenge Bush. All of them except Howard Dean. And although he's being snubbed by the incoming administration, no one can take away the legacy he leaves behind. I think it's best viewed in red-blue pictures.

The change in the House (colored by majority of state delegation) is especially stark: everything east of the Mississippi except for the deep south is blue.

Tomorrow is all about Obama and rightfully so (I'll post pics asap), but tonight I just want to make sure Governor Dean is not forgotten.

Joe the Plumber for U.S. Senate in Ohio in 2010.

Sometimes the universe freaks me out a bit. Monday I guest taught "Ms. Stollwerk's" world history class in the South Bronx. I volunteered to teach the scientific revolution since I took an excellent class (from the inimitable Prof. Manning) on that period of history at MIT. In the course of one of my lectures to these high schoolers, we talked about gravity and why objects fall toward the Earth (i.e., why doesn't gravity pull us upwards?). And I explained that everything has a gravitational pull, but that small objects, such as this marker or that sticky-note pad, have tiny, tiny gravitational effects that are way too small too feel. Only massive objects, such as the Earth, tug at us with enough force that they affect our lives. And, lamely attempting to connect to the students, I followed up this statement with "I'm sure there's a Yo Mama joke in there somewhere..."

Yes, okay, I'm at least a year too late with the joke. And yes, okay, no one laughed. But, I get home from NYC and check my RSS feeds and what is the XKCD comic for the day?



Freaky.

I think it's ridiculous that a bare majority of voters can amend a state constitution, but that's not the question at issue today in California. Instead, Prop 8 opponents (i.e., the side of justice and equality) have filed suit saying that Prop 8 is a "revision" to the constituion rather than an "amendment." And since I figure you all are just as ignorant as I am about the distinction, here's a good primer.

<b>Update</b>: After mulling this over for a day, I'm against this lawsuit. I think the appropriate action is to put the issue on the ballot in 2010 (either in the primary or general, whichever one gay rights activists think will be better). And in that case, we would want to argue that striking down Prop 8 would be an "amendment" and not a "revision" (so that we wouldn't have to garner support from 2/3rds of the legislature). Filing this suit undercuts that claim and also undermines the credible of the movement with the voters. Convincing 52% of Californian's to support gay marriage in 2010 will be a lot easier if we don't attempt to throw out their votes with a lawsuit today.

For the better part of a year I worked for Google but couldn't tell people the details of my work because of an NDA. Over the past few months the details of the project have emerged and this weekend the true promise of the project came to fruition. So, let me introduce you to the Voting Information project.

The goal of the Voting Information Project (VIP) is to free election data from the confines of state and county databases. This pursuit fits nicely with Google's mission statement of "organizing the world's information" and the project is a partnership of the search company, Pew, and JEHT. We started in early 2007 with the long-term goal of creating an open format that states could use to publish their election geographic and ballot information, and that organizations like the League of Women Voters could layer candidate questionnaire responses over.

For this election, we focused on election geography, specifically informing citizens where their polling location is. Past attempts at a nationwide polling place locater had failed because not all states or counties were willing to share information. However, with the advent of nationwide voter files, one step of the process was complete: every registered voter in the U.S. could be matched to a precinct. Google devoted many resources this summer filling in the second piece of the puzzle: matching precincts to polling location. Now, every registered voter should be able to find his or her poll location here. (The Obama campaign also used this strategy.)

But, what about new registrants (or even same day registrants)? If they live at an address without another registered voter, Google's strategy will fail. That's where VIP comes in. Participating states and counties, distribute their street segment infomation (in a common format), which matches all addresses in the state to a precinct and then a polling location. These street segments are exactly how registrars themselves determine the precinct of new registrants, so they are very reliable.

I'm happy to announce that this past weekend, Google combined these two strategies at maps.google.com/vote. Test it out! One of my Princeton colleagues hadn't realized that her polling location had moved until she tried the application, You can even put the app on your own website as a gadget. Also, the website got some press play from the NYTimes and Te The Today Show <video>. So that's what I've been up to.

Also, go vote!