Nate Silver, former analyst for Baseball Prospectus, has begun an innovative electoral projection site, called FiveThirtyEight.com. You might be wondering, why five-thirty-eight? Well, as he explains in the site’s FAQ, 538 is the number of electors in the electoral college. The mission of the site, as described by Nate Silver himself, is most broadly, to accumulate and analyze polling and political data in a way that is informed, accurate and attractive, and most narrowly, to give you the best possible objective assessment of the likely outcome of upcoming elections. Silver’s site provides a gripping display of combined polls from around the media. It includes an immense amount of information, shown upon numerous types of graphs, meters, and such. The data displayed on the site is generally updated once a day, in order to refresh the polls. Silver claims the projections on his site are not biased toward his preferred candidate, Barack Obama, but also has said his non-partisan approach to the polling is for you to judge. An interesting tidbit I stumbled upon on the site was when Silver was asked “Why do you run ads for [insert name of candidate you don't like]?” he responded, “I believe in the right of free speech. Blogging is one form of free speech, and political advertising is another. If I believe an ad is particularly misleading, I will seek to block it, but otherwise, this site takes a non-partisan position toward which advertising it accepts. Ads for John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have each appeared on this website at various times.”

So please, check out FiveThirtyEight.com and leave a comment here to say what you think!

Feeling quite shocked, I am writing this post after viewing a short video that informed me about the ideology behind Google. I had known before that immense amounts of data can be collected from the internet, but I had not known the slightly sinister scheme that some major website administrations have. Now I realize just how hopeless the battle against excessive internet data collection is. Although it will take very much time and effort, our identities–you, your person–can be rescued from the clutches of this virtual evil.

Although some company’s practices for data collection are intruding and unlawful, it can be for a good cause, although not entirely. Facebook is known to send peoples profile data to businesses, allowing them to adjust their sales methods by targeting certain types of people. The data that these companies now have access to will allow them to pin point customers that they almost know will be interested in their product. This boosts business, but exposes our identities. Another instance of good natured data collection is when it is used to fight crime. Police and government agencies–and, unfortunately, bad guys, too–have access to information that could potentially save lives. Using computers, police officers can track the exact location of almost any criminal. If you feel insecure and unsafe now, you should begin to practice internet safety measures. These won’t do very much, but slightly reduce data collections effect. For more information on how to do this, either leave a comment here, email me, or find references through a search engine.