That sequence in particular traverses the array produced by looking at Abulsme(L,S) for all valid combinations of L and S starting with Abulsme(1,1); Abulsme(2,1); Abulsme(2,2); Abulsme(3,1); Abulsme(3,2); Abulsme(3,3); Abulsme(4,1); Abulsme(4,2); Abulsme(4,3); Abulsme(4,4); Abulsme(5,1); etc… In this way you get one infinite sequence with all values of the function.
Some other infinite sequences generated from the function by fixing S and increasing L (starting with L=S) have also been included.
The cases for S=1 and S=2 matched sequences already in the OEIS:
Only these have been added, although of course sequences can be generated with any positive integer S. These sequences do reach a limit with increasing S though, and the limit of the sequence has been added to the OEIS as well.
Woo! My mathematical masterpiece first documented when I was in 8th grade, and further expounded on from then until around my Freshman year of college, and basically untouched since then… which would be about 17 or 18 years now… is finally recognized. :-)
A certain person with the initials JPS once suggested that the Abulsme Function, when combined with 12 dimensional contour integration, could be used to go back and time and prevent the Space Shuttle Challenger from exploding.
Um… no.
But it is in the OEIS now.
Which is great.
Oh, and I should add, you can even listen to the sequence. I particularly like it when played by a marimba. It has now been added to my iTunes library. :-)
This is definitely now a trend in McCain’s direction. Obama’s lead in Michigan (in my last five poll average) now falls below 5%. This makes Michigan into a “Lean Obama” state rather than a “Weak Obama” state. This makes it a swing state, and one that could really easily go either way. Michigan has 17 electoral votes. More than any swing states other than Florida and Ohio. So this is very important. Michigan is a big deal.
Without Michigan, McCain had a whole raft of states that he HAD to win in order to get to the 270 mark. With Michigan in play, we now have only Florida as a MUST WIN for McCain. The others McCain can potentially lose and still win… if he can pull of Michigan.
Obama is still in a strong position, but without Michigan categorized as a “safe” state, it is looking a bit less strong than it was.
In the summary, McCain’s best case improves.
Current Summary:
McCain Best Case – McCain 298, Obama 240
Obama Best Case – Obama 381, McCain 157
If everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – Obama 306, McCain 232
We’ve been talking on Curmudgeon’s Corner for quite awhile now about how McCain needed to start actually showing up to play the game. Although he is still behind, I think McCain has now showed up and is starting to play. Mainly through negative ads that looked desperate to start with… but look like they might actually be having an effect in McCain’s favor in some critical states.
Of course we have both conventions coming up pretty soon. And there is more news of all sorts every day. This can still be very volatile. It will be interesting to see if McCain can build these handful of reversals into any real momentum, and if that momentum will be able to persist through the conventions.
It has been a full two weeks since there has been any state changing categories in my electoral college calculations. There have been plenty of polls, just not much movement. At least not movement that changed categories. Today brings movement though, and once again it is good news for McCain. This time Obama’s lead in Wisconsin drops to below 10%, moving that state from “Strong Obama” to “Weak Obama”.
Looking at the trend lines, it seems that the “bounce” Obama got after securing the nomination has indeed peaked. While some news has been mixed, for the most part since mid-July McCain has very gradually taken back some ground.
For the most part though, the race seems to be in the summer doldrums. Not much is changing. Things are just sort of slowly moving forward, with most polls just continuing to confirm that things are still at about the same place.
As we approach the conventions and the end of the summer, I expect we’ll start to see some more motion again. But for now, it seems things are relatively static, although moving a tad, just a bit, slowly, in McCain’s direction.
Since today’s change just moved a strong state to a weak, and didn’t change the inventory of leaning swing states at all, the summary remains the same:
Current Summary:
McCain Best Case – McCain 281, Obama 257
Obama Best Case – Obama 381, McCain 157
If everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) – Obama 306, McCain 232
As was announced earlier, on Wednesday Chris Weigant included a link to us on one of his Huffington Post columns. This site is indeed getting some extra traffic due to this. So for those new people, welcome.
It’s time once again to take a look at the Electoral College math from state-level polling. Nationwide polls are not completely meaningless, but they are pretty irrelevant — because that’s not how we elect a president. You have to win enough states to get more than half the electoral votes in the Electoral College. While many would like to change this system, it’s what we’ve got for the 2008 election, and so looking at the state-level polling is much more important to figure out where the race is right now, and what the trends are.
…
[Blatant website plug: ChrisWeigant.com has just added a new 2008 Electoral Graphics page with a constantly-updated electoral graph and electoral map. These are different graphs than the ones I use here, and are created by Samuel Minter of Abulsme.com. The data gathering and methodology he uses is superior to what I have used, as he averages the last five state polls for every state (which smoothes out the outlier poll numbers). I encourage you to check this page on a daily basis to see how the trendlines are moving, right up to the election.]
I don’t believe it is the same set of documents being talked about, but when reading today’s notes from Ron Suskind, I was reminded of my post “Follow the Forger” from October 2003. Well, Suskind claims to have found at least one forger of documents related to the Iraq/Niger/Yellowcake connection that was claimed but did not exist.
What just happened? Evidence. A secret that has been judiciously kept for five years just spilled out. All of what follows is new, never reported in any way:
The Iraq Intelligence Chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush — a man still carrying with $1 million reward for capture, the Jack of Diamonds in Bush’s famous deck of wanted men — has been America’s secret source on Iraq. Starting in January of 2003, with Blair and Bush watching, his secret reports began to flow to officials on both sides of the Atlantic, saying that there were no WMD and that Hussein was acting so odd because of fear that the Iranians would find out he was a toothless tiger. The U.S. deep-sixed the intelligence report in February, “resettled” Habbush to a safe house in Jordan during the invasion and then paid him $5 million in what could only be considered hush money.
In the fall of 2003, after the world learned there were no WMD — as Habbush had foretold — the White House ordered the CIA to carry out a deception. The mission: create a handwritten letter, dated July, 2001, from Habbush to Saddam saying that Atta trained in Iraq before the attacks and the Saddam was buying yellow cake for Niger with help from a “small team from the al Qaeda organization.”
The mission was carried out, the letter was created, popped up in Baghdad, and roiled the global newcycles in December, 2003 (conning even venerable journalists with Tom Brokaw). The mission is a statutory violation of the charter of CIA, and amendments added in 1991, prohibiting CIA from conduction disinformation campaigns on U.S. soil.
Mr Suskind is of course promoting a new book where he goes into these accusations in more detail I gather. I have not read it. I have no good way to evaluate if any of it is true.
But… If even 5% of all the things this administration has been accused of over the last 7+ years are even partially true, then the fact that there have not been full fledged impeachment proceedings is extremely shameful.
I wonder just how many preemptive pardons will be issued on January 19th. I am anticipating quite a few.
Not that I really think even a potential Obama administration would be interested in going after any of these jokers (including W). Instead they will look the other way and decide to worry about the future rather than the past, to not reopen old wounds, to “heal” etc. Blah Blah Blah.
Sorry, these folks need to be held to account. All the way up and down the command chain. Including W and Cheney.
Not this past weekend, but the weekend before that, we went to see the new X-Files movie. This was specifically prompted by Brandy, who REALLY wanted to see it, but both Amy and I wanted to see it too, so that was that.
I’ve seen a lot of reviews panning this movie for various reasons, but I’ll just say I liked it. I liked the X-files when it was on, and this was just like a giant episode. And not one of the “conspiracy” episodes either, but more like one of the one off episodes. I thought that was just fine though. I liked those kinds of episodes just fine when it was on TV.
And yes, it had more about Mulder and Scully and their relationship. Some people really hate that. I think it is just fine. And come on, given the whole history and all these two have been through, like they aren’t going to end up there? Geeze! :-) I like the two characters. I like exploring them as people. They don’t just have to run around doing the chasing aliens thing ALL the time. This was OK.
Anyway… as I said… basically just a long episode. If you liked the show, and you liked the non-arc episodes, then you should like this too.
If you didn’t like the show, or just didn’t care and never watched it, you are probably quite safe skipping this movie. You won’t miss a thing.
This is the follow on to Question 1 which I blogged about on Saturday. There are two possible initiatives to choose from. If Question 1 passes, then the winner in Question 2 will appear on the ballot.
Boiled down, the first option “Initiative 26” makes a number of local offices that have been partisan offices into non-partisan offices. The second option “Council-Proposed Alternative” does the same thing, but also provides for candidates to still identify their party preference on the ballot. (Although such identification would not imply the endorsement of the party.)
WTF?
The argument is that it is better to be open about a preference which will exist anyway than to hide it, and that putting the party preference on the ballot gives the voters more information in order to make a educated choice.
I frankly think that is bullshit, and is just an attempt to essentially keep the positions partisan, even while calling them non-partisan. It is an effort to maintain the status quo while pretending to do otherwise.
I generally am displeased with political parties and think that any effort to disrupt the influence of such organizations, and rather have people make decisions based not on party identification, but rather by evaluating the individuals involved and their specific views, is a positive development.
If candidates want to make known a party preference, then they can put it on their websites, they can talk about it, people can discuss it. But it should not be on the ballot. (Frankly, I think all elections should be that way.)
And honestly, I think that if an office is truly a non-partisan office, then close identification with any political party should be a major negative for any candidate. If it is a non-partisan office, then people running for those positions, or elected to those positions, should make a significant effort to NOT be tied to beholden to any political party.
In any case, as I’m sure is obvious by this point, my vote is for:
Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., told The Indianapolis Star today that Sen. Barack Obama has not asked him to be his running mate and that he’s not expecting Obama to announce his vice presidential pick when Obama is in Indiana Wednesday.
Asked if he will be Obama’s vice presidential choice, Bayh said; “I have no idea. You’d have to ask him.”
Bayh will be introducing Obama at Wednesday’s town hall meeting in Elkhart, but said he knows of no plans for a private meeting with Obama, even though both men are flying into northern Indiana tonight. The length of Obama’s visit here — he arrives at about 6:30 p.m. and isn’t scheduled to leave until about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday — had acceleratd already flying rumors that Bayh will be Obama’s choice.
But Bayh said he believed the campaign was trying to add another stop in Indiana, accounting for the length of the visit.
