Premature Celebration In Hillary Camp?

When Jen and I were watching the NH results at the gym yesterday, the Hillary camp was effusively ecstatic over their upset (at least versus the polling predictions of the leading 2-3 days). Sure, they were supposed to lose (potentially double digit, even accompanied by rumors of exit strategies), and so they do have something to cheer about.

However, she only won by 2 points. The issue is that the polls (taken with a grain of salt, given their failure to foresee her win last night) show that Edwards voters would overwhelmingly end up in the Obama camp if Edwards were to drop out. Edwards had 17 points last night. Had it been a pure Hillary/Obama head to head, this would suggest that Obama would have walloped her.

Iowa showed that not all women are blindly lining up behind Hillary (Obama beat her among women in Iowa). Absent that giant guaranteed block, Hillary would be in deep trouble if Edwards realizes the futility of his populist crusade (however inauthentic).

Reality Check on 'Change'

Robert Samuelson has a piece today that is very pertinent for anyone who watched the corny, additional-mandate-laden acceptance (Hillary) and concession (Obama) speeches out of NH yesterday. All Democratic candidates and a few of the Republican ones (Huckabee and Romney, in particular) have taken to overusing the word 'change' (followed by calls for it, and assertions that they will spearhead the charge for change). The article's early lead in drops cold water all over this:

"We will do whatever it takes to make America a better country, to give our kids a better future," says Mike Huckabee, winner of the Republican Iowa caucuses.

"We will deliver for our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren," claims Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic winner.

"We're going to reclaim the future for our children," says Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Actually, these are throwaway lines, completely disconnected from reality.

Our children face a future of rising taxes, squeezed -- and perhaps falling -- public services, and aging -- perhaps deteriorating -- public infrastructure (roads, sewers, transit systems). Today's young workers and children are about to be engulfed by a massive income transfer from young to old that will perversely make it harder for them to afford their own children.

No major candidate of either party proposes to do much about this, even though the facts are well-known.

Elaboration follows in the article.

True On A Few Levels

Many of the lemmings above (not all that dissimilar to the Dean equivalents in '04 in some ways) probably haven't seen some darker things from Paul's past, like this.

Unfortunate Hopkins Linkage

I felt compelled to post just now, as my customized streaming music station on Yahoo Music just served up the namesake song for this URL.

I'm glad that National Journal published this exhaustive discussion of the pretty far fetched Lancet study from 2006 (the one claiming > 650k civilian casualties from coalition bombs up to that point; this was over an order of magnitude higher than the several existing estimates). Unfortunately, it also reminded me that the study that appeared in The Lancet was produced by a group of authors primarily based out of Hopkins SPH. Their motives do not look to have been too far beyond reproach..

The Contest

It's a bit late to mention the contest (as it started in early December), but we are currently still much closer to the start than the finish. The Contest is a weight war shootout between myself, Jen, and my sister.

The span: 12/1/07 - 3/31/08
The metric: percentage of body weight dropped from 12/1/07
The prize: it varies (see below)

If Jen wins, I have to take her on a weekend trip to a city of her choosing (she says it would likely be a city she hasn't yet been to). While we are there, our nicest/most expensive meal will be billed to Laura.

If Laura wins, then Jen and I share the cost of flying her down for an Austin weekend trip.

If I win, then Jen and Laura go together to get some as-of-yet-undetermined thing for my house (art, some small furniture item, a room painted, whatever; something of comparable cost to the weekend trips above).

Laura is maintaining the spreadsheet tracking progress. Weigh in is each Monday morning, with each of us emailing her to report our percentage delta from the initial weigh in.

I have a long way to go (although am actually in the lead, at -1.95%), but didn't backslide nearly as much as expected from all of the holiday eating.

12/1: 195.4 lbs
12/8: 193.1
12/17: 191.2 (my birthday, and also the day we switched to Monday weigh ins; the last day of the competition is a Monday)
12/24: we all decided to skip the Christmas week!
12/31: 191.6 (only +0.4 lbs over the holiday!)

I asserted to Jen that I thought the winner of the competition would be 'at least in the upper single digits.' We'll see. If I were down 8%, for example, that's would leave me almost exactly at 180, which is still pretty heavy by historical standards (but then again, March is not too far away, and -15 lbs is not anything to sneeze at!). Too soon to be picking out the house item just yet...

Bzzzkills Might Actually Work

I did this year's LIVESTRONG Challenge Austin on Sunday. Rather than a century ride as in the past, this year's was shorted to 90 (actually about 88, by my bike computer) "due to the organization's standards for road safety" (I guess the roads were crappy enough in places that there wasn't a good way to make a 100 mile route in the area). Instead of taking place NE of Austin (it used to leave from the Travis County Expo Center) and going through terrain that is mostly rolling hills and largely cotton fields (albeit with some tough winds), this year's route was moved to be SW of town. It left out of Dripping Springs HS, and spent most of the time on rural roads in Dripping Springs and Wimberley. I knew this area would certainly be a lot hillier than the old route, but it turns out that the roads were also rougher, and the winds were definitely a bitch once again.

The organization posted the route map, as well as the elevation profile, and even a longer description of the route. The route was definitely pretty (large portions running parallel to rivers), and the out of towners were probably pretty excited to see plenty of real longhorns (I even saw a guy get off his bike and take pictures the first time we hit a pasture full of them). I rode solo in past years, but had Jane and Roman keeping me company for the first 40 miles -- that definitely makes the miles go by a bit more easily. Even still, this 90 mile ride was easily the hardest organized ride I've done. It was definitely more challenging than any of the past true centuries (including the old routes of the same ride).

It took 6 hours of rolling time (almost to the second), which is s-l-o-w: 14-15 mph average. Compare that to the 20.1 mph average for a past 100 mile Hotter N Hell Hundred ride, and that gives an idea of how much more difficult this one was (I'm sure I am saddled with a few extra pounds as well!).

The last HH 100 ride left me with partially numb fingers (also known as handlebar palsy or by its true name, ulnar neuropathy) for probably 2 weeks. I'm not sure if some of that was due to switching to new gloves. They felt a bit less padded than my old gloves, but that might mostly be in my head (as both are Pearl Izumi Gel-Lites). Nick pointed me at the Bontrager Bzzzkill harmonic dampers. They come in aluminum and brass (more effective, but heavier) versions. I ordered a pair of the aluminum ones for $10 online and gave them a try, starting with this ride. I also switched back to my old gloves. Despite this being roughly as long of a ride as the HH 100, but with poorer quality roads, I ended up with only very very minor numbness. So, maybe it was due to the dampers, maybe not...but at $10, it's hard to go too wrong.

Oh -- and my ride managed to raise $500 for cancer efforts! Thanks to all you donated. That was also conveniently the level needed to get a free hat, so I got some swag out of it.

The Nobel Committee Cements Its Political Bent

I guess there can't be much claim that the Nobel Peace Prize is apolitical. When Arafat won in 1994, you could chalk it up as a fluke (perhaps saying that to award it to Perez and Rabin but not Top Dog Terrorist would make the prize look overly Israeli-friendly, that it takes both sides to move the peace process). When the Carter won in 2002, you could say coincidence. With Gore winning this year for a movie version of a hyperbole-laden Powerpoint slide deck...you'd have to say 3 data points makes a trend. I'm not sure what this does to merit the Peace Price. I can clearly see the case for past recipients -- Schweitzer worked for decades before getting it, and Mandela (despite his bad points) is an easy case to make as well. Heck, Mother Theresa would be another easy example. Those were all major efforts, sustained over long periods of time, often with great personal hardship or risk. Today, it's being awarded for the redemption of a failed politician for a really sweet (and blurry on the details, by his own admission) slide deck with movie distribution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/us/12cnd-gore.html