Buy Obama!

I noticed today that Electoral-Vote.com's composite of national polling is giving Obama a 338 to 185 lead in electoral votes.  The interesting thing about this is that Intrade's state-by-state prediction markets have been giving him roughly the same margin for several days, maybe a week -- i.e. the prediction markets have been leading the polls.  …

My favorite Obama quote

The thing I think people should feel confident in is that I'm going to make these judgments not based on some fierce ideological pre-disposition but based on what makes sense. I'm a big believer in evidence. I'm a big believer in fact. You know, if somebody shows me we can do something better through a …

Following the election in the prediction markets

One of the most interesting aspects of this election has been the advent of prediction markets such as Intrade and the Iowa Electronic Market as a means of measuring the current trends and positions of the candidates. These markets have been accurate in predicting a lot of events.It's worth noting that prices in these markets …

Obama vs Clinton and the Service Economy

I had to laugh at yesterday's email of the day, at The Stump (the New Republic's election blog). It describes one Clinton's supporter's experience trying find her local poling place by calling the Clinton and Obama campaign HQs, respectively. When she called Clinton HQ, A very nice elderly lady answered the phone and I asked …

Lawrence Lessig: “Why I am 4Barack”

Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law prof and geek hero for his positions on cyberlaw and copyright has a video out: 20 minutes or so on why I am 4Barack Lessig Blog It has nothing to do with cyberlaw or copyright.  You should watch it.

More Backwards Economic Thinking in Allegheny County

So after a 9-day conference odyssey to both coasts, I returned to a near-empty Pittsburgh airport, and the news that the county plans to raise gate fees in response to US Airways service cuts. Is it just me, or is there an epidemic of backward thinking around here? First, officials spend a ridiculous amount of …

Screw USAirways, PIT should woo JetBlue

Over lunch I was reading the latest in the saga of USAirways slow pullout from Pittsburgh International Airport. Apparently, the CEO of USAirways wrote letters to Senators Spector and Casey after Spector made some harsh comments about USAirways on a recent visit here. Yawn. USAirways is obviously leaving. It's time to move on. The article …

George Lakoff Speaking in Austin

Austin Moving Forward, a progressive political group I've never heard of has cognitive scientist George Lakoff as keynote speaker at what I assume is an organizational meeting at St. Edwards University on Saturday, June 25. I've mentioned Lakoff here before. He is an expert on the cognition of language, and a Rockridge Institute fellow studying …

Check out electoral-vote.com

Practically every news organization is running polls on the presidential election, but the vast majority are nationwide polls that basically estimate the popular vote. But we all know that it's the electoral vote that counts. Electoral-vote.com is a very cool dynamic site that attempts to estimate the electoral vote by aggregating state-by-state polls. It's fascinating. …

Paul Graham on hacker attitude and being American

Paul Graham has released a new essay, Good Bad Attitude, on the virtues of hackers' anti-authoritarianism and its relationship to American ingenuity and inventiveness. In the middle is a nice piece of technocratic thinking on civil liberties as a cause for economic growth: Let me put the case in terms a government official would appreciate. …