President Obama’s address was solid and to the point. He pulled no punches about the problems ahead. Three quotes from led to outbursts of applause in our group. All speak to the sharp break with the last eight years:

“We will restore science to its rightful place.”

“As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake.”

“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.”

And at the end there was the Reverend Lowery, who in his closing benediction stole the show:

“Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around — (laughter) — when yellow will be mellow — (laughter) — when the red man can get ahead, man — (laughter) — and when white will embrace what is right.

Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.”

AUDIENCE: Amen!

REV. LOWERY: Say amen –

AUDIENCE: Amen!

REV. LOWERY: — and amen.

AUDIENCE: Amen! (Cheers, applause.)

The state polls used by the Meta-Analysis for Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania were all conducted in the last week (see our data source at Pollster.com). Indeed, our rule of “last three polls and all polls in the last seven days of polling” is well justified by the proliferation of polls: 6 in Ohio and 8 in Florida!

Considering that national polls have an error of at least one percentage point, at this point you are better off following the Meta-Analysis, whose effective error is much smaller. The tradeoff between speed (national) and accuracy (Meta-Analysis) is gone. At this site you now get both.

At this point I am not expecting the outcome to move more than about 15 EV from the current median. What I’m really watching for is some fresh Senate polling data, especially in Mississippi and Kentucky.

My posting will be fairly light for a day or so. I have a few pressing projects: giving a midterm exam, hosting a Supreme Court Justice, some pressing data analysis, and writing on the neuroscience of being undecided. But I’m still around, and the Meta-Analysis will continue to be updated.

The Chemistry prize is in an area that touches my research…One of the winners, Osamu Shimomura, did his work in what is now my lab space here at Princeton. The prize was given for the discovery and exploitation of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP), which comes from jellyfish and is now a universal tool in biology. Another winner, Roger Tsien of UCSD, is a pioneer in the design of fluorescent molecules that help us spy on cellular events in the laboratory. His achievements, not just with GFP but other synthetic probes as well, make possible the work of several laboratories here at Princeton, including my own. I’ve known Roger for several decades and admired him tremendously. Congratulations, Roger!

Flynn is the discoverer of the eponymous Flynn effect, the phenomenon that in developed countries, standardized IQ test scores have gone up by several points per decade for the last century. Such a rate of change is too fast for natural selection to occur, and therefore is due to some kind of environmental change. The next logical question is whether we can learn enough to control and shape these factors. In my view this finding has deep significance for how we understand how our achievements are shaped by the world we grow up in.

Flynn himself is a fascinating character. Unlike some people who research environment, race, and intelligence, he’s very much an egalitarian. Flynn was active in the Civil Rights era, chairing a local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Decades ago, his activism got him fired from an academic position in Kentucky. Now he lives in New Zealand. He is quite unafraid of pursuing ideas where they may lead. Peter Singer and I have been trading off hosting duties, a pleasure.

For those of you near campus, Flynn will give a public lecture tonight at 7:30 pm in McCosh 10. His topic is Black IQ: Environmental Influences. He will draw upon a recent book, What Is Intelligence? Beyond The Flynn Effect.

For those of you farther away, it will be on local cable access and (eventually) available as a webcast.

Update: Here’s another local event, happening next Tuesday: a panel on the reliability of state polls featuring both pollsters and academics, including Andrew Gelman, author of Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State. I hear the panel will be webcast. If so I’ll post a link.