The Devil's Excrement

-Chavez creates more Ministries. In 1998 when Chavez won his first election, he criticized the size of the State, reducing the number of Ministries from 21 to 15 by merging Interior with Justice, Health with Social Development, Education, Culture and Sports, Transport and Urban Development and Agriculture with Industry and Commerce. Since then, he has created six, including Housing (needed), Foodstuffs (what about Agriculture?), Social Economy (as opposed to what?), Culture, Higher Education Special Zones.

-Another Mirage crashed one more in a long series of Mirages and F16’s that have served as incredibly neat toys for the military, but unfortunately too many have crashed. At $15,000 per hour in fuel, maybe it’s for the better, the fewer there are the less they will spend. There are 13 left…Maybe it is time to buy more to defend ourselves from whatever! So glad the three submarines have not sunk beyond their established parameters (thanks Ed!)!

-The Prosecutor devoted to political vendettas Danilo Anderson is investigating the people that went to the Presidential Palace on April 12^th. to see if they are charged with rebellion. So, the Generals were exonerated from rebellion by the Supreme Court so that now they will go after the civilians. I certainly hope they call General Lucas Rincon, the highest ranking General in the military to testify as to why he said Chavez had resigned on April 11^th. Rincon was in Chavez’ Cabinet until August 18^th. and remains the most mysterious link as to the supposed “coup” in April 2004, since it was his appearance that evening that led to all of the events in the next three days.

–Venezuela will sell US$ 1.5 billion in US dollar denominated bonds abroad in the next two weeks. Apparently $44 per barrel is insufficient to finance the revolution. Since Chavez said prices are on their way to $100 per barrel, the revolution should be safe.

-The People’s Ombudsman came out to request that the Bank Superintendence eliminate the SICRIT. This is the database that banks share to establish credit for people. The Ombudsman says this is a violation of their rights. Watch out TRW! Watch out consumers, you will no longer be able to get credit if this is approved!

-Still waiting to give my opinion on the latest Carter Center report. I will wait for Hausmann and Rigobon to give their oopinion. So far, it seems to me to be so silly, I don’t dare say more than that. They proved the votes and their signatures had a high correlation. Seems obvious to me, but….They also showed the random number generator works. The one in Excel in my PC does too, but that has nothing to say about what happened on the CNE computer. Better shut up and don’t start talking like a Venezuelan expert: Find ten Venezuelans, preferably men, ask them a question, eight out of ten will be experts on the subject)

-Chavez creates more Ministries. In 1998 when Chavez won his first election, he criticized the size of the State, reducing the number of Ministries from 21 to 15 by merging Interior with Justice, Health with Social Development, Education, Culture and Sports, Transport and Urban Development and Agriculture with Industry and Commerce. Since then, he has created six, including Housing (needed), Foodstuffs (what about Agriculture?), Social Economy (as opposed to what?), Culture, Higher Education Special Zones.

-Another Mirage crashed one more in a long series of Mirages and F16’s that have served as incredibly neat toys for the military, but unfortunately too many have crashed. At $15,000 per hour in fuel, maybe it’s for the better, the fewer there are the less they will spend. There are 13 left…Maybe it is time to buy more to defend ourselves from whatever! So glad the three submarines have not sunk beyond their established parameters (thanks Ed!)!

-The Prosecutor devoted to political vendettas Danilo Anderson is investigating the people that went to the Presidential Palace on April 12^th. to see if they are charged with rebellion. So, the Generals were exonerated from rebellion by the Supreme Court so that now they will go after the civilians. I certainly hope they call General Lucas Rincon, the highest ranking General in the military to testify as to why he said Chavez had resigned on April 11^th. Rincon was in Chavez’ Cabinet until August 18^th. and remains the most mysterious link as to the supposed “coup” in April 2004, since it was his appearance that evening that led to all of the events in the next three days.

–Venezuela will sell US$ 1.5 billion in US dollar denominated bonds abroad in the next two weeks. Apparently $44 per barrel is insufficient to finance the revolution. Since Chavez said prices are on their way to $100 per barrel, the revolution should be safe.

-The People’s Ombudsman came out to request that the Bank Superintendence eliminate the SICRIT. This is the database that banks share to establish credit for people. The Ombudsman says this is a violation of their rights. Watch out TRW! Watch out consumers, you will no longer be able to get credit if this is approved!

-Still waiting to give my opinion on the latest Carter Center report. I will wait for Hausmann and Rigobon to give their oopinion. So far, it seems to me to be so silly, I don’t dare say more than that. They proved the votes and their signatures had a high correlation. Seems obvious to me, but….They also showed the random number generator works. The one in Excel in my PC does too, but that has nothing to say about what happened on the CNE computer. Better shut up and don’t start talking like a Venezuelan expert: Find ten Venezuelans, preferably men, ask them a question, eight out of ten will be experts on the subject)

I have been in computer hell ever since my laptop decided two weeks ago not to charge properly. Then I got a new charger and it’s the connector in the motherboard, so it may die again. Apparently the only solution may be to get a new motherboard from the States. When I finally got it to work it gave me an error, called Microsoft who said reinstall Windows, I did. Unfortunately, after installing Windows I could not get the Wireless network to even give me the right menu. Called Dell and had my first experience with a call center in India, very efficient, polite and knowledgeable and I am back on the air for the time being with my laptop.

Lots to post, for now, someone in the comments asked/said how come Benford’s Law had not been applied to the Exit polls, so I did it. Now, understand that all I did was plot the fraction ocurrenecs for a first digit for the exit polls for both the Si’s and the No’s and got the following histogram:

This seems to be textbook Benford’s Law for the data from the 325 centers polled by Proyecto Venezuela. I don’t know if mathematicians do other tests to evaluate how “good” or “bad” it fits with Benford’s law. If anyone knows, let me know.

Good article by Andrew Morse in Tech Central Station comparing the fake Rather documents and the rush to judgment by CBS to Carter’s rush to judgement in the Venezuelan recall. I love this sentence:

“The deficiencies exhibited by CBS and the Carter Center are problematic not only for big media and elite NGOs. Left unaddressed, they are problems that will eventually feed back into the blogosphere. The rise of the blogosphere has been predicated on the existence of a reliable, common base of information that people can discuss — a base of information that full-timers are still in the best position to provide. The blogosphere is most robust when it can draw upon the resources of media organizations with global reach that honestly vet sources and conduct comprehensive follow-up reporting. It depends on the boots on the ground that a Carter Center can provide to monitor elections in faraway lands. Without the work of an organization like the Carter Center, there might not be detailed election data from Venezuela to examine in the first place. “

For those that don’t know about the Dan Rather affair, you can read all about it at Instapundit, but basically somebody gave CBS fake documents that questioned President Bush’ National Guard service and the type of treatment he received while there. These documents were quickly debunked and found to be fake by bloggers in less than 24 hours. The giveaway? Easy, the documents were supposed to be from before the era of PC’s but were printed using one, which one could tell by the quality of the spacing and font!. More here too.

For those in Caracas the second seminar sponsored by USB and UCV will take place next Thursday at Simon Bolivar University at 11 AM at the Centro de Auditorios.

There will be three talks (Moderator Ricardo Rios(UCV)):

-Luis Raul Perichi (USB): Statistical Methods to verify the non-inetrvention of an election.

-Rafael Torrealba (Universidad Centro Occidental Lisandro Alvarado): Numerical coincidences or correlations in the August 15th referéndum.

-Isbelia Martin (USB): The Presidential recall referendum analized as a natural binomial process: A physical perspective.