The movie “Milk” opened last weekend. It tells the story of Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay politicians in the United States. Although I have not seen the movie, without a doubt the story of Harvey Milk is a tragedy of epic proportions. He fought prejudice, and overcame tremendous odds to get elected. Ten months later he was gunned down, along with the Mayor of San Francisco, by a former colleague. The murderer was Dan White, an ex-policeman who admitted to shooting both men in cold blood, and was subsequently given a light sentence in the infamous twinkie defense. White served five years, and within a couple of years of being released from prison committed suicide. As if all this were insufficiently “Hollywood”, the events are strangely intertwined with the mass suicide at Jonestown (the second largest loss of civilian American lives, after 9/11).

We are tempted to think of all of this as ancient history, and irrelevant to our more enlightened times. But here we are 30 years later, and in the very state where Milk lived and died a (slight) majority of voters have gone out of their way to inscribe into the state constitution a measure explicitly depriving gays of civil rights. This is known as Proposition 8, and Sean has a nice post on why it’s an appropriate issue for a science blog.

As it happens, one of the largest individual donations to support Proposition 8 came from John Templeton. Of course, Cosmic Variance readers are familiar with the Templeton Foundation, as my esteemed co-blogger Sean has tangled with them previously. Templeton, when he’s not spending his money taking away the rights of his fellow citizens, has a predilection for spending money on scientists. Historically I’ve been uncomfortable with the Templeton Foundation because of their attempts to conflate religion and science. However, their Foundational Questions Institute appears to be a genuine effort to generate cutting edge science. Although I’m sure there is much I would disagree with in a conversation with Templeton, his support of basic science is to be applauded. Arguably the United States has been immeasurably strengthened by both the separation of church and state and the separation of church and science (the latter is not to be taken for granted; think of Galileo, or Bush’s incursions into stem cell lines and global warming). That even Templeton recognizes that science works best when it is unfettered, as much as possible, by external preconceptions is an encouraging sign. We can only hope that he spends more money on science, and less on politics. We thus wish Sean the best of luck in winning the $10,000 jackpot, a prize he will no doubt share with his co-bloggers.

the internets will miss you so!

I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday — I got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the internet commercially… They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

– Soon to be former Senator Ted Stevens, June 2006

Many have been asking: who won our famous Presidential Prediction Contest? The task, you will remember, was to predict how the popular vote would be distributed between the two major candidates, throwing away third-party votes and ignoring the electoral college altogether, expressed as a percentage of votes for Obama. So if the total number of votes for Obama is V_O , and the total number for McCain is V_M , the number you were predicting is

We’ve been delaying the announcement of the results, as the entries were tightly bunched and it takes time for votes to trickle in. Indeed, Alaska still seems to be problematic, but patience is thin and it’s time to declare a winner! Visit here to be reminded of who had staked out which bits of territory. Here are the vote totals as of today:

Barack Obama: 66,679,600

John McCain: 58,227,508

which implies

f = 53.38.

The relevant entries, courtesy of wqz, are

( 52.81689, 53.10869): Tim
( 53.10869, 53.32282): Elliot
( 53.32282, 53.47922): Anonymous Snowoboarder
( 53.47922, 53.74739): Gabe
( 53.74739, 53.78569): joulesm

And so the winner is:

Anonymous Snowoboarder!

Who, I am guessing, may have mistyped their name. But when you have mad prediction skills like that, who cares about typographical irregularities?

Here were the distribution of predictions near the right value:

It’s interesting to note that the contest was announced in late June, just when Obama was hitting his summer peak of popularity (which was not as pronounced as his fall peak of popularity). I wonder how the predictions would have gone had we done the contest in September?

Obama.

What a day. History being made.

After voting, I celebrated with a bacon-wrapped hot dog from a local street vendor. Mustard and onions. America, baby.

Let’s take this country for a spin and see what it can do!

Get out and vote.

Vote for a sensible science policy. Vote for restoring America’s credibility in the world. Vote for opportunity for all Americans. Vote for restoring America’s respect for her own constitution. Vote for hope over fear. Vote for change.

Get out and vote.

Every four years we have the Olympic Games, and we have a U.S. Presidential Election. And I think we can all agree on one thing: they both make for great TV. So after those of you in the U.S. have gone out and voted, then fidgeted through the rest of the working day, we can settle down to watch what happens.

Here is a finding chart (made using the tool at RealClearPolitics) to help keep track of the important action.

Let me stress that this is not a prediction; it’s a guide for interpreting the results as they come in. Blue states are ones that Obama will almost certainly win, red states are ones that McCain almost certainly needs to win if he is to have a shot. If, as is perfectly plausible, Obama wins North Carolina or even Georgia, the rout is on, and we can settle down to the glorious task of nationalizing the means of production, collectivizing the farms, and redistributing the wealth.

But let’s imagine that we find McCain winning all of these red states. Note that the blue states add up to 243 electoral votes, while 270 are needed to secure victory, meaning that Obama needs to score 27 or more electoral votes from the gray states. Three plausible ways that could play out:

1. Florida. That’s 27 electoral votes right there, and the election would be over. However, voting in Florida rarely seems to go smoothly, and the race there is very tight.
2. Two states from Pennsylvania/Virginia/Ohio. Obama is way ahead in Pennsylvania and Virginia, so this is the most likely way for things to unfold tonight. If he wins any two of these three states, it’s over.
3. One state from Pennsylvania/Virginia/Ohio , and one or more smaller states to the West. This is the only real nail-biter scenario; note that it presumes that McCain wins Florida and all the red states. Overall not probable, but possible.

There are other possibilities — Obama loses all of PA/VA/OH/FL, but wins Indiana + Missouri + Colorado? — but those are not the way to bet. If PA/VA/OH/FL all go for McCain, gloom and doom will be the order of the day. (It’s worth emphasizing: not bloody likely.)

Poll closing times are listed here, so you can plan the evening’s festivities. Figure most results will be announced within an hour of poll closing. Florida is mixed, closing in some places at 7:00 Eastern time and in others at 8:00 Eastern, but nobody will be surprised if there are delays. So the most relevant times are Virginia (7:00 Eastern), Ohio (7:30 Eastern), and Pennsylvania (8:00 Eastern). The thing could be over early for us Left Coasters.

Recommended reading while the hour approaches: canvassing for Obama, vs. rallying for McCain. Recommended viewing: Girls 4 Obama at Shakesville.

The arena at Politico.com has an interesting Q&A today. The question is “What, for you, was the most memorable moment of this long race for the presidency.” The responses run from the obvious (Obama’s now famous race speech) to the very personal (`my 6-yr old daughter didn’t realize that a woman had never been president of the US’). Anyway, I invite you all to go have a look, provided you enjoy year-end lists.

And, I’d thought it would be great to hear from the ultra-intelligent, ultra-interesting, avid CV readers what their response is to this question. So, please, write a comment and let us know, “What, for you, was the most memorable moment of this long race for the presidency.”

I’ll start! For me, the most memorable moment happened last Saturday. I had just returned from China and called my parents to let them know I was home. The conversation turned to politics, inevitable this time of year. Usually we step on eggshells whenever this subject arises (my parents are die-hard Republicans, but I love them anyway), but this time we were all speechless. In awe of my Uncle Chuck.

Uncle Chuck is my favorite uncle – we are the scientists in the family. He came home after serving in the Navy in the South Pacific during WWII and went to school on the GI bill. Ended up with a master’s in mathematics. Worked at Oak Ridge National Lab on the very first computer systems. Went on to NASA and was one of the folks in charge of the computer program rewrites to get the Apollo 13 astronauts safely back home. He has done tremendous things and is very smart. But, he’s lived most of his life in the deep South and has somehow developed a deep racial prejudice that most of the family can’t understand. We have cringed for years whenever he has espoused on the virtues of the Bell Curve in regards to race. I could go on, but think I’ll hold back and just say he is the most racially bigoted person I know. I can’t fathom some of the things I have heard him say.

On Saturday, I learned that Uncle Chuck cast his early ballot for Senator Barack Obama for President of the USA. Nothing could have surprised me more! No matter what happens with the election tomorrow, Obama has already stirred deep, positive change in our society.

As has been discussed on CV before, Californians have an opportunity to vote on a ballot initiative to invalidate gay marriage in the state. While we’re being all endorse-y today, I’m throwing my two cents in with a link to a piece by a friend of mine:

We used to joke about it, or sort of joke, whenever we drove up to Vancouver to visit friends. “We’re married now!” We’d cry, after crossing through Customs and handing over all our papers and the Mermaid Girl’s birth certificate with both our names on it. And then, on the way home, as we passed the Peace Arch: “Not married any more! Hey, girlfriend!”

It wasn’t that funny, though, to tell the truth.

Read the whole thing, and then come back and tell me how giving this family legal protection has damaged the fabric of Canadian society.

I’m sure our blog audience includes a wide swath of undecided voters, a/k/a “Joe the Reader of Blogs.” (Okay, perhaps not.) So, to help along the decision-making process, here are some endorsements from respected sources.

If you are a reader of sciencey blogs, you have undoubtedly heard that Seed has endorsed Barack Obama. This is consistent with newspapers across the country, who have gone for Obama at the rate of 234 to 105 — a healthy difference with 2004, when Kerry squeaked by Bush, 213 to 205. The Economist has endorsed Obama; we’ve already mentioned the Financial Times. Even prominent conservative Stephen Colbert, not wanting to feel left out, has endorsed Obama. When McCain’s “supporters” offer up helpful testimony like this, who is to blame him?

Most interesting to me is that Nature has endorsed Obama for President. (Thanks to Alex Witze.) It’s interesting because Nature has been around a long time as one of the world’s premier scientific journals, and has never before endorsed a candidate for the U.S. Presidency. And their reasons sound pretty similar to mine:

But science is bound by, and committed to, a set of normative values — values that have application to political questions. Placing a disinterested view of the world as it is ahead of our views of how it should be; recognizing that ideas should be tested in as systematic a way as possible; appreciating that there are experts whose views and criticisms need to be taken seriously: these are all attributes of good science that can be usefully applied when making decisions about the world of which science is but a part. Writ larger, the core values of science are those of open debate within a free society that have come down to us from the Enlightenment in many forms, not the least of which is the constitution of the United States.

On a range of topics, science included, Obama has surrounded himself with a wider and more able cadre of advisers than McCain. This is not a panacea. Some of the policies Obama supports — continued subsidies for corn ethanol, for example — seem misguided. The advice of experts is all the more valuable when it is diverse: ‘groupthink’ is a problem in any job. Obama seems to understands this. He tends to seek a range of opinions and analyses to ensure that his own opinion, when reached, has been well considered and exposed to alternatives. He also exhibits pragmatism — for example in his proposals for health-care reform — that suggests a keen sense for the tests reality can bring to bear on policy.

Obama is very far away from being an infallible political savior, and if he wins I’m sure there will be times when he does the wrong thing. But, to reiterate something I said at American Airspace, he thinks like an academic in the best sense of the word. He listens, and considers what he hears critically and analytically, and then comes to a conclusion and deals with the consequences. Even if I don’t always agree with the conclusions, it will be an unambiguous blessing to at long last have a President with that cast of mind.

We can close with some words from the guy who invented quarks.