There were a bunch of interesting points passed along by the various speakers, too many to cover, but here are some highlights:

• From Tom Lange, the director of Modeling and Simulation R&D at Proctor and Gamble, we learned about the challenges of creating computer models of the flow and absorption of non-newtonian fluids on a porous substrate, and why that’s important to the design of Pampers.  P&G apparently funds research at Los Alamos and Argonne national labs, among others.
• From Sebastian Thrun, a scientist at Stanford and Google, we saw videos of automated cars negotiating Lombard Street in San Francisco and one-and-a-half-lane mountain roads with oncoming trucks.  He says that in 250,000 miles logged on California roads, they have had only one accident, when the car was rear-ended as it stopped at a red light.
• From Kevin Knight, a researcher at USC, we heard about the limits of machine translation and how statistical language analysis can make increasingly good translations of text from one language to another even if it still can’t tell you what the text was about.

These were all fun, but there were two big points made that have to be passed along, too.  One is the phenomenal return we’ve seen on government investment in this science (and many others, but the conference wasn’t about them).  Samuel Morse’s development of the telegraph was supported by government funding, and so was virtually every aspect of the internet, computers, mobile devices, and communication technologies that have changed all of our lives over the past 20 years.

We take the internet for granted, but there is no sensible reason to do so.  The people who made the decisions to make it possible were not corporate buccaneers or rich investors.  The necessary investments to make it possible were too risky and too large for the private sector to take on.  So the government did.  They managed to find private partners to manage important parts of the result, but to imagine it would have happened without government is to live in a fantasy world.  Fortunately, your government hadn’t yet been so defanged in 1991 that it couldn’t envision something ambitious (and equally fortunately, George Bush Sr. was persuaded to support it).  One speaker said, after accounting for the economic impact of NITRD, “not bad for a bunch of faceless government bureaucrats,” and everyone laughed.

There’s a train station opening up near my house soon.  Driving by it recently, I thought about how much I am looking forward to its opening and how seldom I get a chance to express some pride in the workings of our government.  The people who imagine that government can do no good have had the upper hand in our politics for the past 30 years.  Even when Democrats hold office, discussions of what government can do is dominated by the limitations in resources imposed by the starvation resulting from decades of tax cuts to rich people.  Our ambition to use government to improve our lives has been squeezed out of public discussion.  But here it is in 2012, you are reading this text electronically.  While you thank one of those faceless government bureaucrats for that improvement in your life, you might also wonder what equally astonishing innovations have been squeezed out of your future by the fashionable austerity that rules our days in 2012.

What’s the other important point to make?  Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn were at the conference, too.  Together, they invented TCP/IP, the communication protocol that makes all this internetworking possible, and not a few other communication innovations along the way.  Cerf introduced Al Gore, who gave the keynote address after lunch, and pointed out three or four different ways the internet might not have happened at all without intervention, support, and initiative from the geeky Congressman and then Senator from Tennessee.  Aside from the Gore Bill itself, Cerf recounted a hearing in 1986 about the national supercomputing centers, then a half-dozen or so universities and research institutions around the country with supercomputing facilities.  At the hearing Senator Gore asked, “Would it be a good idea to link the supercomputing facilities with a fiber-optic network?”  According to Cerf, the question took everyone by surprise, but it resulted in a three-day meeting in California six months later where they decided the answer was “yes.”  So that’s the other point: the next time you hear an Al Gore joke about the internet, know that you’re listening to someone who was taken in by press malfeasance in 2000.

How did that joke really happen?  It sounds ridiculous, but this is how: Gore made a completely accurate claim in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN and a few days later, Michelle Mittelstadt of the Associated Press restated it for him, exaggerating his meaning.  The restatement was restated again by Lou Dobbs on CNN, with some flourishes stolen from a press release by Jim Nicholson, the Republican National Committee chair.  That was repeated and further embroidered by the press many zillion times, sometimes mindlessly and sometimes maliciously, and the result was that Al Gore lost that election — the imagination reels — and I have a joke that can make you click on this post.  Isn’t history fascinating?

For President, the state has been becoming increasingly blue with each successive election and 2012 should not be any different. This state will go for Obama and probably by the same margin as in 2008. Most of the growth in population occurred in the Albuquerque area and like most western states, it has a growing Hispanic population- two demographics that generally favor Democrats.

For the Democratic nomination to succeed Bingaman, Martin Heinrich will vacate the Albuquerque-based 1st District. With former Lt. Governor Diane Denish and Rep. Ben Lujan pulling out early, the race becomes Heinrich’s to lose. He will have to go through a primary that features state auditor Hector Balderas and social activist Andres Valdez. Originally, ex-Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez declared his candidacy, but pulled out to run not against Heinrich, but for his House seat. On the Republican side are businessman Bill English, Lt. Governor John Sanchez and ex-Representative Heather Wilson. Wilson formerly represented the Democratic-leaning 1st District and won her races in 2000 and 2004 by comfortable margins despite it also voting for Gore and Kerry. Hence, one would have to surmise that this race will pit two fairly well-known and liked candidates in Heinrich versus Wilson. The fact Wilson can win in a Democratic leaning district and by comfortable margins (her closest call came in 2006) gives her a leg up here. Given the stakes (like the balance of the Senate), this could be an expensive race with lots of outside money. While many Republicans are drooling over Nebraska, North Dakota and possibly Florida for Senatorial pick ups, they would be remiss in their duties if they overlook New Mexico.

New Mexico has three House seats currently 2-1 for the Democrats. There is no drama in the 2nd where Republican Steve Pearce should win nor in the 3rd where Democrat Ben Lujan should win. That leaves the vacant 1st District. This is an interesting, compact district where one would expect Democrats to actually perform better. However, Heinrich is the first Democrat to win the district in 2008 after Wilson left to run for Senate against Tom Udall. In 2008, he won by 12 points only to see that support dissipate to 4 points two years later. The first Democrat to enter the race was state senator Eric Griego who came out blasting Washington Republicans. Because certain “blue dog Democrats” were considering a run, progressive groups early jumped behind Griego with money and vocal support. However, he will have stiff competition against an old rival in the ex-Mayor of Albuquerque, Martin Chavez. In fact, Griego ran to the left of Chavez for Mayor in 2005 and lost by over 20 points after being outspent by Chavez 4-1. Chavez eventually lost the mayor’s job over incumbent fatigue and a small scandal over favoring city contracts, an issue which should resurface in the course of a primary or general election campaign.

They have already had spats. Chavez has been described by New Mexico Democratic operatives as the perfect fit for this moderate district. Hence, he is a moderate. One of his first mailings was to blast Republicans for insisting on the possibility of Social Security and Medicare cuts as part of the debt ceiling deal. This leftist rhetoric, including the “Republicans are for the rich and I am for the middle class and poor” stump lines, caught the attention of Griego who released a bitter and sarcastic response to Chavez’s suddenly more liberal stances. He insinuated that Chavez was trying to repaint himself as more liberal than what he really has shown in the past. Compounding matters is the fact that Bernalillo County commissioner Michele Lujan Grisham has entered the race. This will be a bruising primary battle that can only help the Republicans.

For Republicans, they believe they have a 50/50 shot at the seat, although the odds are more like 35-45%. One time Albuquerque City Councilman Dan Lewis entered the race and raised over $100,000 in the first quarter of his run. And former state representative Janice Arnold-Jones has also entered the race. One should not count out the possibility that Jon Barela, who lost by 4 points to Heinrich in 2010, may enter this race. He currently is secretary of the state’s Economic Development Department and an endorsement from Hispanic Republican and fairly popular New Mexico Governor Sue Martinez would go a long way here. Although it should be an interesting and close race, I believe the Democrats will eventually prevail in a very close race and keep the delegation 2-1 in their favor.

In conclusion, Obama takes their five electoral votes while Heather Wilson wins a hard-fought, somewhat expensive and eventually close race against Martin Heinrich while a Democrat will hold the 1st District for another two years thus leaving no pick ups for the GOP in this state.

Running totals thus far:

• Obama with 83 electoral votes to 36 for the GOP nominee;
• Net gain of two Governors;
• Net gain of one Senate seat, and;
• Net loss of 4 Republican House seats