I am not a huge fan of hard science. It has its goods, but it also has its bads, and has become, within the last couple centuries, a religion of its own, where people swear by it. The scientific method has become a paradigm which discounts things which cannot be quantifiable, for example, thoughts, feelings and opinions. It has made people seek to present their opinions as if they were fact (just so they can appear to others to be considered “legitimate”), rather than allowing them to remain merely opinion, and allowing their readers to read them as such. And this is problematic, when people try to play a game for which they are not fit, or more likely, which is not fit for what they are trying to do. Empiricism defeats metaphysics, and this taken out to its extreme is problematic for a complex organism like a human, who can question, but more importantly, doubt.

But, that said, allow me to present a small obituary of a great scientist, one of the few that have existed in my lifetime. The man’s name was Albert Hoffman. An article about his death from the AP can be found by following this link. He was a Swiss scientist who died at 102. He worked for European pharmaceutical giant Sandoz. And by the way, he was also the inventor of LSD. Read the rest of this entry »

Today is the contest in the state of Pennsylvania. It is therefore apropos that the Wizard of S make a comment on it.

First the prediction: Clinton by 6 points, give or take 3.

What is behind the prediction? Well, let’s just call it a gut feeling. Clinton has been doing well in the state, though not as well today as a month ago. Obama has not been able to erode her support in the state to the point where he can win, so he will have to accept a single digit loss there. The cities are important for Obama, but the majority of the state is not city, and those areas tend to vote for Hillary. The “scandals” have not hurt Obama, but they also haven’t helped Clinton. So Clinton wins, as expected, and if I am wrong, I will issue a retraction.

Now to the accompanying analysis. Long have the political junkies in this country waited for another contest. SIX WEEKS! Over this time, we have seen the slugfest on television, but the one thing we haven’t seen is the effects that the hard campaign has had on the attitudes among not only the people in Pennsylvania, but also in the country. About a week or so ago, news reports began talking about Obama in terms of “When” not “if” he takes on McCain in the fall. Now Pundits say things like “What is Clinton doing?”, as if she had no reason to continue the process, and should have dropped out.

But these last few weeks demonstrate clearly why she stayed in the race after March. She has been able to continue promoting her agenda, even though she now faces an overwhelming tide of support for Obama in the country, on the television, and in people’s mind. She is now running the classic protest campaign, and I say good for her. The Socialist Party would do well to take at least this lesson from her: when you know you aren’t going to win, you stop trying to win and start saying what you really mean. She is in a position to put her real agenda out there, because it is very unlikely that she will have to implement any of it, OR defend it for very long. She knows she will probably not get the nomination, nor will she be considered for VP, so she has the latitude that Obama does not have, and that is the freedom to use the “kitchen sink” and whatnot.

Some seem to think that Clinton’s continued participation in the primaries is damaging the Democratic Party. Many television commentators discuss this ad infinitum. I think that Obama accurately stated it on the Daily Show last night when he said that by October, this will be old news, but not for the reason he said. He said that eventually voters will see that there is a real difference between what McCain proposes and what generic Democrat, probably Obama proposes, and they will forget the bickering. Yeah, but this is not why they will vote Democrat.

First consider this Hypothetical Distribution of votes in the US electorate this year. This is on the standard left-right spectrum, and everything is clearly labeled. Read the rest of this entry »

Friends and Allies, as you have noticed, I have updated my site. It looks a little more parchment like, which is a nice change. The destruction of Alderan is still the symbol we have adopted for the mascot. It is the closest image, I think, which exists to visually describe what the Page is about. I’ve been tweaking the site for a while now, especially the sidebar, which has given me a bit of gray hairs, but I think I finally am able to read enough code to know how, if I want to change it again in the future, to switch things around and do them up right. That’s the pain of migrating: you have to rechange everything back to the way you liked it.

Supernova Earth is continuing it’s excellent, though sporadic blogging. It is also serving as a front site for the Eternal Order of the Philosophers, which you may ask me about, but chances are you probably won’t ever be able to join, so ask only if you are interested in being frustrated, or let down. The Vulgar Seal, which you may eventually see around the interweb is
This seal is the boiled down essential parts of the Seal containing no information about the secrets of the Order nor the Degreed secrets.

Feel free to use the Guest book, as always, and if your comments include spam, they will be deleted. Many apologies, but it is just intollerable.

Welcome to the updated, WordPress2.5 version of supernovaearth.org

Serenely,
Doc

Here I sit, on Tuesday March 4, 2008, waiting for the election results to come in. I got a whole day to wait, perhaps 10 hours. So I figure I will do as I do and make some predictions.

The main race is on the Democrat side. It is doubtful there will be too much big news on the GOP side. In either Ohio or Texas, McCain, in true winner take all fashion, could clinch the nomination. One thing I think would be fairly interesting is if Huckabee, disregarding conventional wisdom all together, decided to stay in the race, or… and here’s an idea that might be interesting to discuss, what if he pulled a Lieberman, and withdrew from the GOP race to go on the ballot as an independent? We all know that Christian conservatives hate McCain because he is a person who is not in line with their reactionary cultural agenda, and when he makes overtures to their side, they sound insincere at best. We all know McCain, the inheritor of the Barry Goldwater seat, is a National Security type of Republican. He hasn’t made too much mention about gay marriage, abortion, or stem-cell research. But Huckabee is their man in this department. A good southern Baptist minister, he is truly a man of God, and therefore a good candidate for office for folks on the social-fascist side of the spectrum (in fact, nothing recommends him higher for the job: he need have zero foreign policy experience, for example. He only needs to throw God into every other sentence, profess Jesus as his own personal savior [which apparently doesn’t take anything away from the millions of other dupes who profess the same thing] and he is fit to be anointed the second coming of King David.) Read the rest of this entry »

It has been appropriately referred to as a mania: The tendency of supporters of Senator Barack Obama to WILDLY and illogically support their candidate, the tendency for his rallies to turn into something like religious experiences, where the people who witness his speeches experience a sort of ecstasy, and the tendency for people to measure their support for him in terms of charisma rather than his positions on policy. You hear it in the news, you see it on Saturday Night Live, you read about it in a million idiotic blogs written by Democrats in our country. And yet, few seem to know what he actually believes. Without wasting my time finding a citation, this has been one of the many criticisms leveled at the Senator by those who have apparently been able to resist the mania, usually because they support one of his opponents, or nobody at all.

And of course the criticism is fair. Only recently, Obama shifted from talking less like an inspirational speaker and more like a politician seeking nomination for the Presidency. Perhaps he finally got the message. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not going to say much about the Republican results. To be honest, I don’t really care too much who they nominate, it’s not like they will be any different than the same old garbage which has inhabited the White House over the course of my life. It is suprising that McCain has come back from the dead and now it looks like, unless he really screws up, he will get the nomination of their Party. So good for him, bad for the social conservatives. Too bad, so sad, they lose after just a few short bright happy years, and they get sent back to the hole in the ground from whence they were dragged. Huckabee is in a position to become a VP candidate, Romney may as well hang it up.

As for the Dems, this is where the race is interesting: Obama and Clinton basically split the votes, with Clinton grabbing California, New York, Jersey, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Arizona, while Obama got Illinois, Georgia, Delaware, Alabama, Missouri, Minnesota, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, NoDak, Connecticut, Idaho, and a mighty win in Alaska. New Mexico is still out, as usual (for some reason the people in that state like to turn in their results a week after the fact, but it is literally WAY too close to call: at the time of this post, there are precisely 71 votes separating Obama from his next nearest challenger, Clinton, though Edwards got 2000 votes…)

So what does it all mean? Well, let me give you my semi-expert analysis: First, depending on who you look at, you tend to get different numbers. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, the big news today, after the South Carolina Blow out and the Florida Dog and Pony Show is that Edwards drops out of the race is that Edwards is dropping out of the race. As I write this, the message that he WILL drop out is out there but he hasn’t made the speech yet. So I have a little time to put on my Wizard of S hat and make some prognostications.

I hear on TV that there is a question about where Edwards’ supporters go. They are still playing the racial spin about SC’s vote, how Obama won a huge number of black voters, while the white vote was split between Clinton and Edwards (and the extension, that this is the reason that Obama won.) Race has become an issue, and in this sense, I agree with both Obama AND Bill Clinton, that it is a media-created issue. They want a story, and they are going to push it until it actually becomes the perceptions of those who are exposed to it.

But there is one aspect that isn’t really being covered in the media which I think is perhaps more important: A vote for Edwards may have been a vote against Clinton. It is very possible that a lot of southern whites, who attend church at a higher rate than northern whites may have voted for Edwards because they didn’t want to vote for the OTHER white candidate. Church goers, who tend to be more socially conservative, generally hate Hillary Clinton and the Clinton’s in general. God could come down and say that Hillary was its daughter, and maybe then, these people would vote for Hillary, but anything short of that, I have a real doubt.

That means, of course, that there is the possibility that no matter who is running, these folks will NEVER vote for Clinton. Clinton represents that old establishment, which New Hampshire can get behind (because let’s face it, how radical are they in New Hampshire?) and the machinery (Harry Reid) in NV can get behind. But the anti-establishment vote, which is brewing in this country, the vote of those who want anyone but Clinton will NEVER vote for her. If race plays ANY role in future votes, it will serve to keep many of the racists who won’t vote for Obama from even going to the polls. It doesn’t mean they will go to Clinton.

I can’t see in my crystal ball whether Edwards will endorse anyone, but I think if he did, he will endorse Obama, because as he has repeatedly said “Obama and I are change agents, Clinton is status quo.” His speech after Iowa was that the voters have rejected the status quo, by which he meant Clinton. Etc etc etc. He was setting himself up, even at that point to be a possible VP candidate, if he is interested, but I really doubt that he would want to be the VP of Clinton (that would be 2004 all over again for him.) If he is setting himself up as a VP candidate, it will be for Obama, and so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he not only dropped out, but if he endorsed Obama at the same time.

One more thing to consider that leads me to say the above: If he doesn’t take a spot in the government, his hopes of being president, of working for the working people of the country, etc etc… that’s all over. He will be labeled a two time loser, and will never really have another chance to be a viable candidate. He will become a footnote in History, the fellow who twice ran for President, once for Vice President, and lost all three times. But then again, if he endorsed Obama and told all the economic populists to go vote for Obama on Feb 5, that will be a huge boost for Obama, whose campaign has been inspiring and wildly popular among the youth, but lacking a bit of substance with the Dem Base. And then, that would be a HUGE political favor which would require repayment. He would make a great addition to the Obama campaign, not so big an addition to Clinton (who has her own economic message, which is actually just more of Clintonomics that gave our economy 6 years of prosperity, a budget surplus and etc…) I would NOT be suprised if he took the opportunity of this huge decisions, which will essentially end his political career, to make the endorsement which will pretty much guarantee him the VP spot and another opportunity to run again in 8 years. If he is interested in remaining a politician, it is something he HAS to do.

You heard it here first. History, don’t let the Wizard of S down!

W Doc Stodden

Well, so much for my title. I was right about the GOP win in New Hampshire, but unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few days, you will know that I missed the Dem Party’s prediction, not by a little, but by a long shot. I am happy to report, however, that I was not the only one. It seems that everyone was wrong, even the campaigns themselves, both who predicted a big Obama victory.

I believe that everyone was surprised, and as a result, I can claim that the New Hampshire Dem Party primary was anomalous. There were a number of factors that went in to the polls being wrong. First and foremost, everyone believed the hype. This is the primary problem. Not only the pundits on the television and in the news paper, but the candidates, the bloggers and the voters. There was a special sort of aura that surrounds a recent winner, especially is he or she doesn’t look like other winners. That aura was attached to Obama after Iowa.

But somewhere between the time he won in Iowa and the time Clinton won in New Hampshire, a good portion of the population in that strange state didn’t get the memo. Instead, they acted like they were supposed to act and voted for Hillary Clinton. Read the rest of this entry »

I can start out this post by refering to myself as the “Wizard of S,” (S being socialist). At the end of last year, on the Creepy Sleepy Show, Dan and I predicted Iowa’s winners (though I was more accurate). My prognostication, which I made before Iowa, for New Hampshire is about to be tested. These are just the first two contests. Over time, I will make more predictions and explain why I made those.

For New Hampshire, the writing is sort of all over the wall. Obama will win handily in New Hampshire for the Dems. On the Republican side, it’s a little closer, I predicted Romney would win, because I believed that he would do better than he did in Iowa, but now, it would appear that McCain is making a comeback, so I still have time to change my prediction. I want to say it will be a close win, but I think Romney’s campaign is showing signs of wear and independents will probably break pretty heavily for McCain, putting him over the top.

Nevada can go pretty handily for Obama, especially if he gets a double digit victory in New Hampshire, and this will lead to a victory for him in South Carolina. Hillary Clinton will be on life support then, but she can take a lot of delegates on Feb 5. Fred Thomspon still wins in South Cackalacky.

We’ll see how things go.

Doc
The Wizard of S