April Showers

(ok, it is photoshop, but it is funnier than all get-out) Larger here.

And the semester is quickly coming to its conclusion.

Workout notes Yoga, then a 10 mile walk (over the Michael Bridge, then back through Springdale and into Glen Oak park); roughly 2:14 worth. My two miles that I clocked (didn’t speed up nor slow down for) were 12:54 and 12:53; the latter was against a stiff wind toward the end.

The body seems to be responding to training at this time.

Politcs

Bill Clinton, please shut up. Listen to this…listen to the whole thing. Listen to the very faint part in the last few seconds when he thinks that the microphone is off.

Now to remind you, this is what he actually said:

Update: Now he denies what he said that was captured on the first video:

Sigh… this is getting embarrassing.

Yes, Hillary Clinton should win today’s election; I stand by my 56-44 call. But here are some things to remember for this evening.

And, here is a nice overview of the election in general.

Here is a bit of it:

Has Bill Clinton helped or hurt his wife’s candidacy?

4. As one strategist put it, if Clinton were just an extremely bright senator from New York whose husband had not been president, she probably wouldn’t even be in the race — and certainly would not have started out as the prohibitive front-runner. He helped with fundraising, with providing a political network and with giving his wife the experience of operating in the White House for eight years.

“So in the largest sense, Bill Clinton has been of enormous help,” the strategist wrote.

But increasingly there are those in the party who say Hillary Clinton has been weakened by the performance of her husband. “We all may have underestimated the depth of ‘Clinton fatigue’ in American,” wrote one Democrat, who added: “Every time he steps up to the plate to defend Senator Clinton, he weakens her.”

Some Republicans recognize the strength Bill Clinton has brought to his wife’s campaign, but as strategist Mike Murphy put it, “He’s yesterday in a change election and a distraction to her independent identity.”

What is the most important remaining contest after Pennsylvania?

5. Indiana. It is the place where Obama, almost regardless of what happens today in Pennsylvania, could bring the long Democratic contest to a close.

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman wryly noted that the most important upcoming contest is “the one that has an unexpected outcome.” In virtually all the other remaining states, either Obama or Clinton is clearly favored. Not so in the Hoosier State, whose primary is on May 6.

That same day, Obama is favored to win in North Carolina. If he manages to carry both states, the pressure on Clinton to quit the race, or certainly to signal that the competition is over, will be enormous. Of course, if Clinton were to win Indiana and pull off a victory in the Tar Heel State, then North Carolina would be seen as the state that changed the race.

My guess: Obama carries North Carolina big and wins narrowly in Indiana (it borders Illinois). Hence, two weeks after today, we’ll be roughly where we are right now, in terms of delegates; perhaps Obama might move slightly ahead from where he is now.

But today, expect HRC to narrow his 130-140 delegate gap by 10-15 delegates.

Some other stuff of interest:

Was Obama right when he made his bitterness remarks? Some think so, others disagree.

Frankly I am a bit suspicious of questions from polls. Example, if you asked “is separation of church an state a big issue to you” many of my friends would say yes, and perhaps some of those that Obama was talking about would say “no”. But if you asked “are you bothered by the “taking god out of school”" question, my guess is that many that Obama was talking about would say “yes”; they merely would NOT see it as a church-state issue.

Hence, we really have to pay attention to how the questions are asked.

Voting and mathematics PLF-15 at the Daily Kos is promising to write a diary series on this issue. I am looking forward to it.

Social Stuff from 3-Quarks Daily:

Two prominent scientists/mathematicians died recently; Edward Lorenz (chaos theory) and John Wheeler (physics/cosmology) Wheeler was at the University of Texas when I was a graduate student there.

About Professor Lorenz:

Using 12 equations, such as the relationship between air pressure and wind speed, he ran the model and found exactly what he sought. But taking a shortcut on the next run, he found that a tiny decimal point change led to a significant error.

Rather than ignore the response, which peers had considered an anomaly, Dr. Lorenz realized measurement is not perfect. If temperature, pressure or humidity measurements were off by a hundredth of a percent, the rainfall he expected in Las Vegas on Thursday could show up as a snowstorm in Beijing a week later. A computerized model of how the “butterfly effect” works can be found at the Exploratorium’s Web site.

“He had the ability to make important connections between atmospheric phenomena and simple theoretical models,” said Isaac Held, senior research scientist in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. “He taught us that complexity can follow from very simple underlying rules. His study of the limits to the predictability of weather initiated an entire new field of chaotic dynamics.” [...]

Dr. Lorenz was known as shy and humble. He enjoyed hiking and cross-country skiing and sought out mountain trails near every scientific meeting he attended, one of his daughters said.

Well, at least I have one thing in common with him!

Human Happiness How much is it tied to money? How much is it dependent on outside events?

International Community: are the rich countries destined to keep getting richer, whereas the poorer ones are destined to keep getting poorer?

Metabolic diversity: how our diet affects our metabolism.

“What our study really shows is how incredibly metabolically diverse people are around the world,” says Nicholson. “British and American [metabolomes] are nearly identical. Japanese and Chinese people are totally different metabolically even though they are nearly identical genetically.” People who lived in Hawaii had metabolomes equally similar to those of people on the mainland United States and in Japan. Interestingly, Nicholson says, the biggest difference between the 17 groups was between people from South China and everyone else. “They have a very different and much broader range of diet,” he says. “Very broadly speaking, the southern Chinese are the healthiest and the people in southern Texas are least healthy.”