Blogs / Reality Base

• Get in touch with your inner polar bear—and kick some climate change a$$.

• Attention: Cruddy voting machines = cruddy news for voters.

• The Economist smacks down pretty much the entire science journalism establishment. Don’t worry, we won’t mention how you weren’t exactly first in line to predict the financial crisis.

• We love voter databases (even if they don’t love us). Unfortunately, Ohio’s might not even make it through a single fraud check. Ask us how shocked we are.

• Man v. the Internet: Did the Web hinder (or help) the financial crisis?

• Obama’s groundbreaking Web campaign: “Controlled chaos” (that looks like it’ll work).

• And if you’re looking for last minute Halloween costume ideas, look no further.

With less than a week before showtime, the polls are already jam packed. But the real stars of the eleventh hour are the undecided voters, who still (incredibly, miraculously) haven’t made up their minds. And apparently they’re more numerous than one might think, with one in seven voters saying they might go either way, according to a recent poll.

But are these vacillating voters really still deciding? Or could their minds have already formulated a choice, without their even realizing it? University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek suspects the latter is true, and has partnered with colleagues at Harvard and the University of Washington to test whether humans form mental associations that differ from what their conscious recognizes.

To do this, the researchers used the Implicit Association Test, which has been up and running for a decade now and has logged around 7 million responses. Since the 2008 presidential race began, the team has tested more than 25,000 voters on their implicit preferences concerning the two candidates. Of that group, around 4,000 (15 percent) declared themselves undecided. But the test results for a significant number of these so-called undecideds showed a clear implicit preference for Obama or McCain. Here’s how the team summarized their results:

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Just how likely is it that McCain will die of cancer in the next few years? Do a little Web surfing, and you’ll find around a gazillion (and that’s a low estimate) different answers, very few of which rely on clear, unbiased fact. To cut through the jargon and get the real picture, check out my feature story on the truth about the Arizona Senator’s melanoma risk. (Spoiler: It’s low.)

It’s worth noting that not every member of the medical establishment was willing to discuss the Republican nominee’s health. In particular, the communications director of a prominent cancer foundation informed us that if the word “McCain” would be mentioned anywhere in the piece, not a single physician or expert would agree to comment. When pressed, she said that if she set up any interviews for a piece on McCain, even just to talk about melanoma on background without answering specific questions about the Senator’s condition, she would “definitely be terminated.”

So much for the freedom of medicine from political influence (not that we ever really thought it existed).

Related:
RB: The Truth About McCain’s Melanoma: He Faces a Very Low Risk

One week left ’til Election Day 2008, and voter turnout is expected to obliterate records. Of course, whether those record numbers of voters turn into record numbers of counted votes remains to be seen. In addition to the smorgasbord of disasters that could befall your vote before it gets tallied, the first hurdle will be voter registration, creating a gatekeeper you’ll have to pass just to get in the door.

Chances are, your voter registration information has been entered into a computer database run by your state. And chances also are that it’s been entered wrong—no, seriously, it has. As a result of all this error and confusion, just about everyone is worried that legions of voters could be turned away at the polls. Even the Association for Computing Machinery is getting in the act, stating the following in press release:

Experts from ACM’s U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM) will be monitoring and analyzing the reliability of registration records and voting equipment around the nation as Election Day approaches.

ACM’s report on VRDs [voter registration databases] includes 99 high-level recommendations to help states establish best practices for computerized statewide electronic databases…For example, the ACM report recommends that when driver registration databases are used for eligibility checks, they should apply only to screening voters, not to automatically enrolling or de-enrolling them.

Yes, great idea! Call us when it’s implemented in 2012.

Of course, in the irony of all ironies, NASA is making sure that any Americans currently in orbit are able to vote from space, courtesy of a secure electronic ballot uplinked by the Johnson Space Center. This year, two men aboard the International Space Station plan to cast their ballots from 220 miles above the Earth. Let’s just hope they’ve been reading the news.

Related:
RB: Voting in America: Let the Pre-Game Mess Begin!
RB: Lose Your House, Lose Your Vote, Lose Your Self-Esteem
RB: Advocacy Group May Have Registered Phony “Voters.” But Does It Matter?
RB: Be Very Afraid: Online Voting Systems Fail Even for Political Bloggers

Here at Reality Base, we’ve taken great pleasure in covering the irreligionist arguments of anti-theist writer Christopher Hitchens. We’ve also delved into the world of GOP VP nominee Sarah Palin, whose ruminations on science have been most…interesting. So when we saw that the former had taken on the latter today in Slate, on the subject of none other than science, we were about as thrilled as anyone with a 401K could be these days.

Hitchens takes the well-heeled (literally) candidate to task for recently denouncing fruit-fly research as a wasteful and unnecessary—not to mention “un-American,” since some of the research took place in France—expense. Fruit flies, or Drosophila, will likely ring a bell for most readers—as they should, since they’re one of the great laboratories of all genetics research. As Hitchens points out, the fly can be easily grown in a lab and is a valuable research tool because it lives for a very short time, breeds vigorously, and displays plenty of genetic mutation in each generation. He writes:

[S]ince Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature “issue” of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent.

He then goes on to lambast Palin’s reported belief in creationism:

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If you’ve picked up a newspaper, watched a TV, or checked your 401K in the past few months, there’s a near-perfect chance that you’ve experienced the full miasma of fear, anxiety, and helplessness that accompany loss of control. We hate that feeling—it’s a trait embedded in the human condition. And we’ll go to any lengths—including “developing” the ability to talk with the dead, see invisible patterns, and read the stars—in order to avoid it.

Sharon Begley at Newsweek writes that a whopping 90 percent of Americans either think they’ve experienced a paranormal event, or believe that they can happen. And when occurrences—like oh, say, worldwide financial crises—remind us just how futile our desire for order and control really are, our “ability” to see the future in tea leaves by no coincidence begins to rise. As Begley puts it:

Historically, such times have been marked by a surge in belief in astrology, ESP and other paranormal phenomena, spurred in part by a desperate yearning to feel a sense of control in a world spinning out of control.

There’s also the study in this month’s issue of Science finding that lack of control directly increases our “invisible pattern-seeing” ability (or perception of one). People primed with a sense of powerlessness saw more images in static, found more conspiracies in written stories, and imagined more patterns in financial markets than those who were left alone.

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• Check your state’s voter-machine-hackability rating (chances are, it’s high).

• It was only a matter of time: The official “Palinisms” video game launches.

• More on the “What exactly is a ‘green job’ anyway?” question.

• For that matter, why not throw in a “Green New Deal” to save the economy (and the planet, while we’re at it)?

• While we’re on the subject of good news—aka the planet and the economy—it’s worth asking: Does the rise of one necessarily mean the fall of the other?

• A rundown of autism myths—though at this point, there are almost too many to count.

Voting and technology have nothing resembling a smooth relationship. And as Nov. 4th fast approaches with its expected record voter turnouts, there’s a pretty good (translation: 99.999 percent) chance that the computers and scanners we rely on to register our identities, store our personal information, and correctly record our votes will fail us—in fact, screw-ups are already being reported, and it’s not even the October home stretch.

Given this heartening news, the question is not “Will voting technology break down during this election?” but rather “How can I keep the cyberworld from chewing up and spitting out my vote before I’ve even cast it?” Thankfully, while voter databases and e-voting machines are apt—perhaps even destined—to crash and burn, voters have an ally in the Internet, which offers a means of keeping an eye on details like whether you’re registered correctly (or at all).

So how likely is it that your local voter database has already made an error? Well, to test the system we decided check our registration status in New York, RB’s home state. And while RB endeavors (ahem) to remain non-partisan, we were very not at all surprised to find the following error:

To avoid suffering the same fate, we suggest you check your registration status online (all voters in New York can use this link). Find any errors in your home state’s database? Let us know in the comments!

Related:

Wired: The Interactive Voting Problems Map

DISCOVER: Protect Your Vote with Invisible Ink
RB: Voting in America: Let the Pre-Game Mess Begin!
RB: Sarah Palin Still Butchering Science, Redux
RB: Rumors Aside, Sarah Palin Is Still Butchering Science
RB: Don’t Know Much About Technology: McCain Tackles ScienceDebate Questions

There’s a lot of talk about “green jobs” in this election. But for all the questions raised by the phrase—just how many jobs will be generated, where will they come from, how fast will they get here—so far we’ve had few definite answers.

Which is why it’s helpful to have at least one state paving the way as an example of how to incorporate energy efficiency and “greening” into the economic scheme, and save money and create jobs in the process. The state in question is California, and according to a new study out of U.C. Berkeley, its planned investments in fighting global warming and improving energy efficiency will create as many as 403,000 jobs and jack up household incomes by $48 billion in the next 12 years. These results are a big jump even from the state’s own estimates, which were around 100,000 new jobs and $14 billion in personal income.

The key to the mystical “green job,” according to the Berkeley study, is reallocation: When people use less energy, they spend less on energy bills, and thus have more cash to spend on other things, like consumer products. Cue economic growth and job creation.

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In the final stretch before Nov. 4th, both the Obama and McCain camps have been hurling their efforts—not to mention cash—at key battleground states like Ohio, Colorado, and Florida. Most of the money has gone towards a near-nonstop rotation of TV and other ads, many of which consist of shoveling as much BS on your opponent’s head as possible in 30 seconds.

The ad game is all part of the conventional election wisdom, which goes something like, “Drown out the other guy’s messages with your own, and you’ll snag the voters.” But as it turns out, the barrage of competing ads may actually be having the opposite effect: A new study found that the more bombarded people are with different political messages, the more confused and ambivalent they become. In other words, all those clogged airwaves in Michigan and Ohio may be upping the chances that voters stay home on election day.

The study’s data consisted of surveys from the American National Election Study in 2000—which, as you’ll likely recall, was a particularly messy/disastrous/laughable example of politics in action. That year, the University of Michigan ran the survey, which included interviews with over 1,800 voters.

Study authors (and swing state voters) Luke Keele of Ohio State University and Jennifer Wolak of the University of Colorado, Boulder compared the survey results of voters in battleground versus sure-thing states, measuring levels of ambivalence based on the number of positive and/or negative items that the respondents listed about both Bush and Gore. The idea was that if a voter thought the two candidates were equally good/bad, it was a sign of that voter’s ambivalence. Keele and Wolak then cross-checked their results against the amount of TV each voter watched.

And the results?

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Seeing as global warming is a defining issue of our time and all, it’s not a shock that museums would want to feature exhibits on the subject. But given that climate change is still (somewhat, on a dwindling basis) a politically-charged and controversial topic, what stance should a museum show take on the principal point of contention—specifically, whether or not the cause is mostly (or only) human activity?

That’s the dilemma that New York’s famed American Museum of Natural History is flirting with in its new show, “Climate Change: The Threat to Life and A New Energy Future.” The exhibition takes the definitive stance that human activities are primarily responsible for climate change. Museum curator Edmond Mathez, who first proposed the show several years ago, said the man-made direction was a deliberate move to educate the public on the real scientific consensus about climate change. Of course, it’s unlikely Mathez could have foreseen that the show would open during a presidential election in which one side’s VP nominee stomps on the very consensus the exhibit was built to promote—but then, all the more reason for an injection of fact into the public discourse.

So what does the show look like?

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• Expert tells Texas voting officials: You’re Screwed.

• And if you do find yourself given the disenfranchisement middle finger on Nov. 4, be sure to report it on Wired’s interactive voting booth map!

• The one place where the economy is still strong and credit flows like rivers: Second Life.

• Sure, we’ve got Joe the Plumber slapped on every headline these days, but how about “Joe the Solar Guy“?

• Your complete guide to claiming green tax credits in 2008—perhaps the only money you’ll squeeze from the government this year.

• Pfizer settles all those pesky class actions over Celebrex and Bextra, to the tune of $894 million.

• Like tuna tartare? Better get it while it lasts (hint: won’t be long now).

Even with all the melee over hockey moms and plumbers and fake registration cards, technology has been a dominating story in this campaign. The candidates have used it, and benefited from it, in varying degrees (campaign ads in video games may take the cake), and the Web has taken its place as a major game changer in American politics. But there was always the lingering downside: Just as the Internet can build you up, so can it rip you down.

Now, CNN has a report on the measures the candidates are taking to mop up the rumors, attacks, and lies that bubble like oil through the airwaves—and yes, there’s a lot of them.

In fact, this campaign has seen the highest number of Internet smears in history—hardly surprising given the continually-increasing reach and scope of the medium. So how do these intrepid (and extremely overworked) political staffers manage to scour the reaches of the Internet and counter all the garbage thrown at their candidates?

A source inside Obama’s campaign spoke to DISCOVER, and explained the Democratic team’s strategy as follows:

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Voter fraud can happen more easily than we think (along with just about every other form of election fraud). In the past few weeks, the McCain camp has been hammering away at the voter fraud issue, specifically targeting the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a nationwide advocacy group that has made recent headlines for its vigorous campaign to register new voters—the vast majority of which happen to be poor or working class, and Democrats.

For the $16 million ACORN has poured into the 2008 campaign, the agency has achieved some impressive results: The tallies indicate that it added 1.3 million new voters to the rolls. Of course, whether those 1.3 million registrations actually correspond to 1.3 million human beings is under investigation. In Las Vegas, investigators raided an ACORN office and seized documents based on claims of registration fraud, and authorities in other states are also taking a closer look at the agency’s practices. Allegations are flying around that ACORN employees filled out hundreds, or possibly even thousands of registration cards with fake names, or the names of prison inmates. One man is facing questioning for allegedly registering to vote 10 to 15 times through ACORN (though assuming all the registrations were for himself, and he only votes once, his actions are hardly a crime).

Cue the self-righteous blustering about the perilous state of democracy, which have been countered with charges that the investigations are really just a means of disenfranchising minority voters.

Meanwhile, ACORN is rushing to restore its reputation with a PR blitz including a press release that states the following:

According to [voting rights] experts, spreading fears of fraudulent voting—which happens less often in the U.S. than death by lightning—is done to discredit voter registration efforts and justify restrictive laws that place additional barriers to full participation for all Americans.

For the record, around 90 people per year are killed by lightning in the U.S. Investigators are looking into at least 2,100 possible bogus voter applications in Indiana alone—not to mention thousands more in Ohio, Michigan, and Nevada. So there goes that theory.

But how often does voter fraud [as opposed to the alleged registration fraud] really occur? And if ACORN did in fact fudge registrations, what are their chances of actually getting away with casting fraudulent votes?

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By now, word has gotten out that the mortgage crisis could have a detrimental effect on voting: In losing their home addresses, subprime victims may become ineligible to vote under certain state laws if they fail to update their voter registration information. If this happens, says University of Missouri law professor S. David Mitchell, the psychological impact on those who were, essentially, administratively disenfranchised could be severe.

Mitchell, who has studied the effects of disenfranchisement on felons and minorities, found that stripping people of their voting rights “undermines citizenship and relegates individuals to second-class status.” Whether or not someone planned to vote or has ever voted doesn’t matter—it’s the right to vote that glues together the “social contract” we implicitly make by agreeing to live under society’s laws. Remove that glue, and you wind up eroding not only the person’s psychological status, but also the health and stability of his or her community.

So there you have it: Administrative fine print is leading to the erosion of society. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could figure out how to solve all this with a mouse click?