As we enter the last phase of the general election most of you are probably thinking “please make it stop” but there is a series of events we think everyone should watch: The Presidential Debates.

There are four debates in all with three featuring the President and Mitt Romney and one for the VP candidates.

The debates can be pivotal events of the campaign. The debates were critical to Reagan beating Carter and Kennedy defeating Nixon. 

So, with so much at stake, you would think both campaigns would be hyping the opening debate as much as possible right? Wrong. There is a kind of twisted math that goes into debate strategy called the Expectations Game.

As there is no declared winner at the end of the each debate,  people just have to make up their own minds. That decision is informed largely by how they thought a candidate was expected to do. If, for example Mitt Romney promises a crushing victory and delivers, well, Touchdown. But if he only kind of beats Obama it is the same as a loss because he failed to live up to expectations. 

Strategically, President Obama has little to gain from the debates; he has been up in the polls pretty consistently riding some post convention momentum. So it’s not surprising to hear his senior campaign advisor, Robert Gibbs say this:

Mitt Romney, I think, has an advantage, because he’s been through 20 of these debates in the primaries over the last year. He even bragged that he was declared the winner in 16 of those debates. So I think, in that sense, having been through this much more recently than President Obama, I think he starts with an advantage.

And a Romney Surrogate say this:

We’re going to be ready — very ready to face the president and we’re going to win,

The Romney campaign is gambling (oops) that by hyping the debate and delivering sparkling victory, the candidate will be able to demonstrate a clear edge over Obama. Anything short of that is a win for the President. 

Thoughts?

SNL spoofs those Americans who every four years just cannot seem to make up their minds. The election, and the future of our nation is in their hands. Anyone else think wer’re all doomed?

Can’t view the video? Go here.

CSEE Colloquium

Geometric Modeling and Visualization for Science

Dr. Liz Marai
Associate Professor of Computer Science
University of Pittsburgh

3:00pm Wednesday 3 October 2012, ITE325b

The incredible array of measurement technologies available to the scientific community is changing fundamentally our understanding of physical and biological processes. However, scientific data acquisition marks only the first step. To turn numbers into insight, computer graphics and visualization help us model complex systems, make predictions about their behavior, and finally harness the immense power of the human visual perception system to make insights into complex processes possible. In this talk I will present several novel geometric representations, computational modeling, and visual analysis tools to facilitate the simulation and analysis of such complex scientific phenomena. These representations and tools were developed at the Pitt Interdisciplinary Visualization Research lab I direct, and have applications in domains as diverse as neuroimaging, astronomy, biology, turbulent combustion, or machine translation.

Liz Marai is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh, with joint and adjunct appointments in the Pitt Department of Computational Biology and at the CMU Robotics Institute. She is the Director of the Interdisciplinary Visualization Research lab at Pitt, featuring interdisciplinary research in computational modeling, data visualization, and computer graphics. She is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award, of a recent Best Paper Award at BioVis 2011, and of multiple teaching awards for courses that blend research and teaching.

Host: Dr. Jian Chen, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

More information and directions

King's Dominion Bus Trip

(seb)

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Bus departs The Commons Circle @ 11:00am

All Guests = $35

Ticket #: SOLD OUT!

Renaissance Festival Bus Trip

(seb)

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Bus departs The Commons Circle @ 10:30am 

All Guests = $20

Ticket #: 16 of 49

Homecoming Comedy Show: BJ Novak

(seb)

Saturday, October 13, 2012

8:00pm

RAC

All Guests = $10

Ticket #: 220 of 2000

Ira Glass Lecture

Saturday, October 13, 2012

10:30am

University Center, Ballroom

UMBC ID = $5.00 (limit 1/ID)

Ticket #: 40 of 70

Midnight Premiere: Paranormal Activity 4

(seb)

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Bus departs The Commons Circle @ 11:00pm

All Guests = $5

Ticket #: 1 of 260

Hershey Park Bus Trip

(seb)

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Bus departs The Commons Circle @ 12:00pm

All Guests = $35

Ticket #: 8 of 48

Psalm 24 (NIV)

⁷ Open up, ancient gates!
Open up, ancient doors,
and let the King of glory enter.
⁸ Who is the King of glory?
The Lord, strong and mighty;
the Lord, invincible in battle.
⁹ Open up, ancient gates!
Open up, ancient doors,
and let the King of glory enter.
¹⁰ Who is the King of glory?
The Lord of Heaven’s Armies—
he is the King of glory.

Reflection

King David proclaims God’s kingship over all and celebrates that the King of Glory is our God. He declares that He is the Creator-God, the holy God, and the Divine Warrior. God invites us to live in His holy presence, and only those with clean hands and a pure heart may enter in. How is this possible? It is possible because it is not about appearances but about the condition of our hearts and lives, and God Himself has made our hands clean and our hearts pure through Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior. We can have single and loyal devotion to the Lord and seek to live in line with His heart and desires because the Divine Warrior, the Lord Almighty, the King of Glory is with us.

Response

Let’s trust in the grace and power of the glorious King who makes us His and enables us to worship Him with loyal devotion. Let’s draw near to Him, offering to Him our hearts, our hands, our lives in worship of Him.

Tender Loving Calls is an innovative, interactive and easy to use subscription telephone messaging service, designed to improve the quality of life for aging seniors and help families take better care of their aging loved ones from a distance.
    
    The associated web site TLC-Connect is to be for the family caregivers and is to be a dual-purpose social learning networking and marketing site. Recent research has shown that family caregivers are very active users of the internet, particularly social networks, both on and offline. They are keen to connect with others to discuss and learn from each others experiences. There are many web sites devoted to providing information on all aspects of aging and caregiving, however very few (if any) encourage communication and collaboration between their visitors. My aim is not just to provide information but to encourage users to share their experiences, using the blogging, forum systems and specialist groups within the TLC site, with the notion that ‘a problem shared is a problem solved’. 
    
    We have an interim web site at http://www.tenderlovingcalls.com and are currently building a full scale social learning network to take its place. We are looking for Interns who are interested in working to help develop an active and engaged community of users. In the process they will explore a different application of social networking that goes way beyond the world of Facebook and Twitter. Running a large scale focused social network is very much like being the producer of a live daily TV program. They will work directly with me to learn and master techniques which encourage active and sustained engagement within this community. They will have the opportunity to develop and explore their own ideas pertinent to  creating an engaging online environment designed to serve people (especially family caregivers) who are deeply concerned about providing care for our aging community.
    
    If you have any interest you can see some of my past projects at http://www.digitalslate.com.

IF INTERESTED, apply via UMBCworks or send your resume to Christine Routzahn at the Shriver Center (routzahn@umbc.edu)