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icon representing user "neuronexmachina"

About me

I'm a neuroscience grad student with a side-interest in prediction markets and futarchy (government by prediction markets)
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neuronexmachina has 13 friends

neuronexmachina

Net worth: H$24,880

Predictions made: 461

male, from Pasadena, United States. Member since Tue 29th Jul

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neuronexmachina left these comments.

Isn't the title potentially somewhat inaccurate? People were killed, but it's not clear that it was murder:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackwater_Baghdad_shootings
Woo, go Spirit!
posted 1 week ago on Will NASA hear from Spirit?
Related question, covering the entire first term, as well as if the FCC reenacts it without a bill being introduced/passed: http://www.hubdub.com/m21490/Will_the_Fairness_Doctrine_be_reimposed_during_Obamas_first_term
@emmag: You seem to be inserting words into valornhonor's mouth.
Hm... rumor seems to be that she'll be picked as US Ambassador to the UN.
> I want GE seeds BANNED from this country.

Down with scientific progress!
posted 2 weeks ago
There's rumors going around about Fred Thompson as RNC Chair. I think that would be a good start.
posted 2 weeks ago
> The article must, as its main point, state/argue that Global Climate Change is not the result of mankind

I'm still not sure about how objective this criterion is. For example, what if it states that Global Climate Change is, say, 50% the result of mankind, 50% the cause of natural cycles? 90%? 10%?
I think this is a good general idea for a question, but there really needs to be some sort of concrete settlement criterion.
If we work out the settlement details for a complicated contract, is it better to submit it as a settlement request, a comment, or both?

Thanks for all the effort!
posted 3 weeks ago
> ah, as soon as the population has no arms, the government is tyrannical?

No, but a disarmed populace is typically necessary for a tyrannical government to survive for long. I'm reminded of the old quote, "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the ammo box."

soap box: We guarantee freedom of speech even if people say bad or stupid things, because it ensures that people can speak out against a tyrannical government.

ballot box: We guarantee the right to vote even if people are stupid, because limiting access to voting in the past is often used as a way to repress segments of the populace.

jury box: Jurors sometimes make dumb decisions, but a trial by jury when used to try government officials helps prevent situations where government officials just let each other off the hook (as sometimes happens in certain countries).

ammo box: Even though there's ~1 murders per 20,000 people annually using firearms, it's considered a small price to pay for the deterrence an armed populace serves against a tyrannical government.
> the freeedom to use stuff which is designed to kill other people. I wouldn't like to miss that.

That's what one's first instinct often is, but there's a reason that one of the first actions of just about every tyrannical government is to disarm the populace. Of course, the US's government is immune to ever becoming tyrannical.
Clarification request: Will this question be based on Gallup's traditional model or expanded model poll results?
This would have to be a federal law, correct?
Haha, that video was awesome.

"If you’re gonna put lipstick on a pig, make sure that it matches her skin tone"

"Trade in the cabinet... for a walk-in closet!"
As an aside, isn't Nov. 30 kind of an early deadline for this? I imagine they might be a little preoccupied with other things right after the election.
Hm... I sent a settlement request a few hours ago, but no update yet... Armadillo Aerospace just won the level 1 challenge:

http://www.livescience.com/blogs/2008/10/24/lunar-lander-challenge-go-for-flight/
http://www.hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=9124

They're trying for the level 2 challenge tomorrow. Maybe I should make a hubdub question for it.
Oh hah, thanks!
posted 4 weeks ago
There's only one first-place winner.
The title for this is actually misleading. According to the article the teacher didn't bring in the snake, a couple of students did.
Ok, I think I misread it initially. I am in favor of giving people the option to have certain types of questions hidden from them, but I don't think they should be removed from the default view.
posted 4 weeks ago
http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=9012

"In a posting on the aRocket forum yesterday, John Carmack reports that despite only getting their FAA permit a week and half ago (it was held up over the issue of tethered tests near an airport facility), they have managed to cram in most of the testing they need for the NG-LLC. They burned over 10k pounds of propellant in a series of tests that included several full duration tethered flights of both the Mod and Pixel vehicles. They have not had an opportunity to do full rehearsals of the pad-to-pad flights but both vehicles have done such flights in the past. He notes, though, that Pixel has not done a 180 second Level 2 flight, which would involve twice the propellant load as the 90 second flights that it has done.

He went on to list several items that indicated things "aren't perfect" such as some uncertainty in the positional control for Pixel when it is near the end of a 180 second burn. There have been some miscellaneous hardware glitches that they think they have fixed.

In general, he seems optimistic about their chances. In case Murphy is in action again, they are bringing spare engines for the vehicles and plenty of spare parts ."
Although I've created a number of these sorts of questions myself, I think giving users the option to hide them is an excellent idea. Would there be a single category though for both sex-related and violence-related controversial questions?
posted 4 weeks ago
It looks like she's had a press conference of sorts, although it doesn't say if ABC, FOX, and NBC were there:

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10/20/politics/fromtheroad/entry4531447.shtml
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/10/17/politics/fromtheroad/entry4530307.shtml

"For the first time since becoming a candidate for the vice presidency in late August, Sarah Palin held an on-camera press conference with her full travelling press corps on the short flight from Ohio to Indiana this afternoon.

"Though the media availability lasted only about seven minutes, Palin touched on a range of subjects from Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright (“He sat in the pews for 20 years and heard Reverend Wright say some things that most people would find a bit concerning.”) to whether she’s going to vote in Alaska on Election Day (“We don’t know what the plan will be yet.”)"
> If it's me, and I'm getting to be a real prude: SOMEBODY kick me in the butt and tell me.

Um... I think it's mostly just you. I've been a big Palin fan since early this year, and although I consider the film itself inappropriate I think this is a good question.

> First it was physical assasination on Obama, followed by retaliation on McCain...

We had discussed this a bit in the other thread, but those questions potentially provide valuable information to the voting public.
Do the two components of the settlement details have to occur simultaneously? For example, Google is already (Oct. '08) at less than half its previous lifetime high. What happens if it goes back above this, but then the WSJ or NYT describes Google as being in crisis?
Also, SpaceX will be performing a number of unmanned demonstration launches for NASA of their Dragon capsule (the capsule they plan to also use for manned launches) starting in 2009: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Dragon
> I would like to see Hubdub ban all death pools.

I heartily disagree. Prediction markets like HubDub are some of the best tools we have for predicting future events, and potential deaths are some of the most important events to try to predict (and hopefully help avert).
For reference, here's a full listing of previous Persons of the Year: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Person_of_the_Year#Persons_of_the_Year
http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=8867

"John Carmack reported on the aRocket forum that they carried out over the weekend three tethered flights with the Mod vehicle each greater than 90 seconds, which is the duration required for Level 1. (As mentioned here earlier, Armadillo go its FAA permit last week.) In the remaining time before the NG-LLC they will test Pixel for the Level 2 flights of 180 seconds and also prepare backup plans for the sort of problems they had last year. Here is a video of a tethered flight on Sunday."
For reference, the first manned flight of NASA's Ares is currently scheduled for 2014: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Constellation_missions
Although I think this is an interesting question in general, it seems rather overstepping to necessarily call the discrepancy between polls and the final result as being due to a race/Bradley effect. In general Democrats running for President, regardless of race, tend to do better in the final polls than they do in the actual election. Just look at the past two elections. Depending on who you ask this can be explained by a variety of factors, e.g. poor youth vote turnout, electoral fraud, poll over/undersampling, tactical use of ballot initiative (e.g. gay marriage), etc.
> Palin is intelligent, but whether she is a game changer or a joke is yet to be seen I think.
> We will know in a month.

IMHO, we'll know 4 years from now when she runs for President against Obama or Hillary.
posted 5 weeks ago
Also, does "closes up" mean it closes higher than it opened, or higher than it closed the previous day?
posted 6 weeks ago on When will the Dow next close up?
Very interesting question, but yes, should be redone with more realistic percentages.
posted 6 weeks ago on When will the Dow next close up?
If something like that were permitted, I'd suggest it only be created by admins/super-users.
posted 6 weeks ago
> Oh yeah...The pic...The answer is yes.

No!
Perhaps it might be better if it were sorted using the new method but still within-category. The number of entries in each category could be determined by the popularity of each category.
posted 6 weeks ago
Hm... somehow I doubt that Oktar actually has the ability to pay the claim...
Wait a second, what if it's made out of two bricks, e.g. one for the top lid and one for the bottom? It seems like it'd be physically impossible to have it just be a single brick. ;)
Btw, by "claim" do you mean somebody will claim to have the evidence, or that Oktar will award that person?
Kind of reminds me of the joke...

Creationist: Show me an intermediate fossil that fills in this gap in the fossil record!
:: Palentologist shows intermediate fossil ::
Creationist: Aha! Now you have -two- gaps in the fossil record!
> Sometimes CNN does not like to call an election early because it affects voter turnout at the polls, especially in the Pacific Time Zones.

Unless of course one of the candidates concedes first.

Actually, anyone want to create a similar question for when the concession announcement will occur?
andrewdb, for your next question you may want to even consider drafting it here first and getting some comments before posting it. We'd be glad to offer advice.
posted 6 weeks ago
@mork: I still haven't seen any evidence that Palin used her Yahoo account for government business. Keep in mind that government business != political business, and it's actually unethical/illegal to use government resources for political business.
trynreadme, you may wish to read the FAQ before creating questions: http://www.hubdub.com/public/help

HubDub is not intended for the creation of opinion polls, but is rather intended for prediction markets. If you'd like to create an opinion poll, there are several other good websites for that.
What about having the delay period dependent on how established a question-creator is?
posted 6 weeks ago
> Martin Luther King was a community organizer. Jesus Christ was a community organizer. John the Baptist was a community organizer. Cesar Chavez was a community organizer. Labor unions are the result of community organization. The NRA is the result of community organization.

Sure, but nobody proclaims those people/groups as being special simply because they were community organizers, but rather because of what they did. What great things did Barack Obama accomplish while working with Ayers with the Chicago Annenberg Foundation?
Does it have to be intelligent alien life? For example, what if we just found some single-celled alien organisms on Mars or some-such?
For those picking "Someone else," could you post in comments if you have a particular person(s) in mind?
There's apparently some rumors of Lego Harry Potter, although I have no idea if that'd come out in time.
Just to be clear "mainstream news source" doesn't include editorials, right?
Ok, even though it doesn't seem to be mentioned in the CNN article, pollingreport.com says the following:

http://pollingreport.com/wh08.htm

"Per CNN: "Survey respondents were first interviewed as part of a random national sample on September 30 through October 1, 2008. In those interviews, respondents indicated they planned to watch tonight's debate and were willing to be re-interviewed after the debate. . . . 31% of the respondents who participated in tonight's survey identified themselves as Republicans, 37% identified themselves as Democrats, and 31% identified themselves as independents."."
Thanks, I think I may have just been confused about what was referred to by "in-play" markets.
posted 6 weeks ago
Created the first one, for Obama's Secretary of Defense: http://www.hubdub.com/m18336/If_Barack_Obama_is_elected_who_will_be_his_Secretary_of_Defense
posted 6 weeks ago
Actually, just totally ignore my last two comments...
posted 6 weeks ago
Oops, even more recent version, from Sep. 30. ;)

http://www.politicalbase.com/profile/Mark%20Nickolas/blog/&blogId=4462
posted 6 weeks ago
Updated version of one of the above links, with predictions for Obama's entire cabinet: http://www.politicalbase.com/profile/Mark%20Nickolas/blog/&blogId=2402
posted 6 weeks ago
Hm... so I just realized that there's (quite understandably) a limit of 10 possible choices. Any suggestions on which 9 (+1 catch-all) I should have as the options for Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State for Obama/McCain?
posted 6 weeks ago
What about election-conditional financial questions, such as "If Obama is elected, what will be the closing price of the DJIA after his first 100 days in office?"
posted 6 weeks ago
Plenty more options from some Daily Kos polls in March:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/1/41051/20179/636/506865 (Secretary of Defense)

Rep. Neil Abercrombie (HI) - member of the House Armed Services Committee, member of the Out of Iraq Caucus, voted against Iraq War resolution
Louis Caldera - West Point graduate, fmr. Sec. of the Army
Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY) - member of the Senate Armed Services Committee
Richard Danzig - fmr. Sec. of the Navy
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) - Vietnam War Veteran, member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Lawrence Korb - fmr. Asst. Sec. of Defense, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
Sen. Carl Levin (MI) - Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, voted against Iraq War resolution
fmr. Sen. Sam Nunn (GA) - fmr. Chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee
Gen. Colin Powell - fmr. National Security Advisor, fmr. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fmr. Sec. of State
Sen. Jack Reed (RI) - West Point graduate, member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, voted against Iraq War resolution
fmr. Sen. Chuck Robb (VA) - fmr. member of the Senate Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Intelligence Committees, fmr. Chair of the Iraq Intelligence Committee
Rep. Loretta Sanchez (CA) - member of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees, voted against Iraq War resolution
Sarah Sewall - fmr. first Deputy Asst. Sec. for Peacekeeping, Dir. of the Carr Center (Harvard), Obama advisor
Sen. Jim Webb (VA) - fmr. Sec. of the Navy, member of the Senate Armed Services, Foreign Relations and Veterans Affairs Committees
Togo West - fmr. Sec. of the Army, fmr. Sec. of Veterans Affairs

(Anthony Zinni and Wesley Clark left off due to the "must be retired from military for 10 years" law)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/27/95534/5353/131/504295 (Secretary of State)

Sen. Joe Biden (DE), Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA), member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Ret. Gen. Wesley Clark (AK), former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of Nato
Sen. Hillary Clinton (NY)
fmr. Sen. William Cohen (R-ME), former Sec. of Defense
Sen. Chris Dodd (CT), member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Amb. Richard Holbrooke, former Amb. to the UN
Sen. John Kerry (MA), member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Anthony Lake, former National Security Advisor
Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
fmr. Sen. Sam Nunn (GA)
Susan Rice, fmr. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
Amb. David Scheffer, fmr. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues
Strobe Talbott, fmr. Deputy Secretary of State
posted 6 weeks ago
Thanks carnac, I'll add him as an option.

Anyone else have suggestions?
posted 6 weeks ago
I've created a question on whether or not McCain will win any of Maine's electoral votes (Maine has a split vote): http://www.hubdub.com/m18196/Will_McCain_win_any_of_Maines_electoral_votes
She's an awesome Heinleinian libertarian, and if she were at the top of the ticket I'd seriously consider voting for Palin-McCain instead of Obama-Biden.
posted 7 weeks ago
Some options for Obama's Secretary of State:

John Kerry, Joe Biden (article is slightly dated ;), Chris Dodd (doubtful after Fannie/Freddie mess): http://www.newsweek.com/id/141512

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, Susan Rice, Richard Danzig, Anthony Zinni, Greg Craig, Samantha Power, Sarah Sewall: http://www.washingtonian.com/blogarticles/people/capitalcomment/7641.html

State: Bill Richardson, Richard Lugar, Greg Craig, John Kerry, Sam Nunn: http://www.politicalbase.com/profile/Mark%20Nickolas/blog/&blogId=4462

Defense (from above article): Chuck Hagel (Republican, but Iraq War opponent), Robert Gates, Jack Reed, Richard Danzig

Other SoD options I've seen are Wesley Clark and Hillary Clinton
posted 7 weeks ago
@notablenotices: I personally doubt this is likely, but apparently Congress can pass a special congressional waiver to allow Marshall to serve:

http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/marshall.htm

"Marshall's appointment as secretary of defense required a special congressional waiver because the National Security Act prohibited a commissioned military officer on active duty within the previous 10 years from holding the post. Although the Senate approved quickly, questions did surface about a military leader holding a position clearly intended for a civilian. With the Johnson-Acheson competition in mind, some senators queried Marshall about his views on State-Defense relationships and service unification. Marshall noted that he had "suffered from the lack of unification throughout the war" and also that he had initiated several Army unification studies during the war period."
Should the question creator push back the settlement date? For the Obama question I pushed it back to the inauguration date.
Poll results released, but it doesn't seem to say the percentage of Democrats and Republicans (yet):

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/03/biden.palin.analysis/
@mork, yeah, something like support for Google's chart visualization might be cool:

http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery/annotatedtimeline.html

I'll post about it in the forums...
The issue with the 'zoom in' though is that it only has a sample point or two during the debate itself. As I updated the page during the debate though, there were some pretty wild fluctuations which don't show up on that. Might even be cool to show the fluctuations next to a topic timeline...
It'd be neat if there was a way we could see the zig-zags of the graph during the two hours of the debate...
> "On board" means inside the spacecraft, not clinging to the outside.

What if he's standing on top of the spacecraft, or riding it Dr. Strangelove-style?
oops, I guess I misread the initial post... trading in is also interesting
posted 7 weeks ago
If HubDub goes the prize route, it'd be nice to make it probabilistic (more probable if more H$) instead of going to whoever's on top, so that everyone feels like they have a chance at it.
posted 7 weeks ago
I've also created a related question on whether more Republicans or Democrats will watch the VP debate, according to CNN polling:

http://www.hubdub.com/m17724/According_to_CNNs_postdebate_poll_will_more_Democrats_or_Republicans_watch_the_VP_debate
How will this question be settled if there's an attempted boarding (with small arms shots fired) instead of direct naval fire?
Alternatively, what about just removing the practice forum topics from the "Latest topic" listing?
posted 7 weeks ago
Yeah theonecalledmichael, I'd considered creating a Mars question a while back, but I think I'm already pushing the long-term aspect pretty far with this one. I think there'd need to be some sort of mechanism in place first for making it so that placing extremely long-term bids has a useful return, but I'm not sure yet what sort of mechanism that might be.
Thanks, theonecalledmichael. I'd sort of assumed that there would be basically zero chance of both parties contributing exactly the same amount, but I guess it's possible if their terms are specified with that in mind, so that one can't claim to be more responsible for the landing than the other.
Hm.. even though I'm one of those who'd probably benefit considerably from awarding H$ to question-creators, I'm uncertain that it's a good idea. People who write good questions aren't necessarily also people who make good predictions, and I'm worried that awarding H$ to question-creators may potentially lead to a degradation in prediction quality.

Something as simple as rankings based on how much activity there has been on questions you've created might be cool, though. I'd be interested to see how I rank on a question-makers leaderboard. ;)
posted 7 weeks ago
In case anyone else was wondering about the big jump, SpaceX just announced that the launch is on for later today:

http://spacex.com/updates.php

"Falcon 1 is currently cleared for liftoff sometime between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. (California time) tomorrow, Sunday September 28th. Of course, if we see anything that requires investigation, the launch will be postponed, but we’ll let you know as soon as we know. As with prior flights, you can access the webcast from the SpaceX site: www.spacex.com"
> Please note this question will remain open until 1030PM EDT, the scheduled end of the debate, so you will be able to make/change bets during the debate itself.

Thanks for doing this! It'll be really interesting to see how the predictions fluctuate over the course of the debate itself.
Cool, I was about to create this question, and was pleased to see that someone else had already gone through the effort.

It should be noted though that the debate results tend to be skewed based on which party is tuning in to a particular debate more. For example, CNN's first debate poll had 50% more respondents identify themselves as Democrats then Republicans (41% vs 27%)..
@jenniandboys: Actually, according to the wikipedia link I provided Russia is scheduled to launch their Luna-Glob lander in 2009, although keeping track of the Russian announcements is sort of confusing... (they've shifted around the year a few times)
Also, just to be clear, but would another incident like last week's attack on the US embassy in Yemen qualify?

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/09/18/US_student_killed_in_embassy_attack/UPI-57951221782140/
@draongfangxl: I'm sorry, but even if you think it's retarded it doesn't change the fact that prediction markets on average are better predictors than just about any other forecasting mechanism out there.
How far does the attempt need to progress to settle this question as a "yes"? For example, what if something like this occurred? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_July_2005_London_bombings
Oh woops, yeah, I probably should've checked it in another browser first. ;) It's working fine in firefox.
posted 7 weeks ago
I added the boston.com link for the debate schedule because the top google hit (youdecide2008.com) wasn't working, but I just noticed that it doesn't include the VP debate. Here's a schedule which includes the VP debate: http://debates.org/pages/news_092108.html

--

First presidential debate: foreign policy and national security, moderated by Jim Lehrer
Friday, September 26, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Miss.
-Two-minute answers, followed by five-minute discussion for each question.

Vice presidential debate: all topics, moderated by Gwen Ifill
Thursday, October 2, Washington University in St. Louis, Mo.
-Ninety-second answers, followed by two-minute discussion for each question. Two-minute closing statements.

Second presidential debate: all topics in town meeting format, moderated by Tom Brokaw
Tuesday, October 7, Belmont University, Nashville, TN
-Two-minute answers, followed by one-minute discussion for each question.

Third presidential debate: the economy and domestic policy, moderated by Bob Schieffer
Wednesday, October 15, Hofstra University, Hempstead, N.Y.
-Two-minute answers, followed by five-minute discussion for each question. Two-minute closing statements.
Question created! Thank you for all the helpful input.

http://www.hubdub.com/m17463/Which_PresidentialVP_debate_will_have_the_most_television_viewers
posted 7 weeks ago
That's kind of bizarre... I've been trying to create the question in time for the first debate, but whenever I get to step 4 of question creation it blanks out both the question and the background. I've been trying this in both Firefox and Google Chrome on Windows without any luck...
posted 8 weeks ago
@destry: thanks for the explanation
It seems that it passed the suspend date, but I think the question is nowhere actually resolved yet... could a mod push back the settlement time until tomorrow?
Hmm... so I'd like to try to include as many stations as possible. Do the Nielsen ratings include PBS?
posted 8 weeks ago
How would this be settled if they debate via teleconference?
I could be mistaken, but I believe the intent for the forums isn't for general discussion, but specifically discussion aimed towards helping new users, possible ideas and suggestions for the site, etc.
posted 8 weeks ago
dragonfangxl, I don't think there's very much overlap between comments and the forum. As far as I can tell, the forum isn't for discussion related to existing questions, but rather for discussion which doesn't fit into a specific question.
posted 8 weeks ago
It's a pity SpaceX pushed their launch back to Sept. 28 at the earliest, otherwise there could potentially be 4 on one day. ;) In any case, it looks like it'll be a busy weekend for spaceflight.
Hm... how will this be settled if Obama hypothetically ends up debating Palin on Friday?
Another update: http://spacex.com/updates.php

(received via email, so not yet on their site)
---
The static fire took place on Saturday [20 Sep 2008, CA time], as expected, and no major issues came up. However, after a detailed analysis of data, we decided to replace a component in the 2nd stage engine LOX supply line. There is a good chance we would be ok flying as is, but we are being extremely cautious.

This adds a few extra days to the schedule, so the updated launch window estimate is now Sept 28th through Oct 1st [CA time].
@forbichoff: I'm quite sorry if you find the question distasteful, but I still think that this sort of question is potentially quite informative and experimentally useful. If one were to get decent predictions from these sorts of questions, one could then use them to hypothetically guide decisions and ultimately save more lives.
@nicfulton: Good question. The FBI periodically issues reports on terrorism which includes fatality counts:

http://www.fbi.gov/publications/terror/terrorism2002_2005.htm

Besides 9/11, their count from the past few years includes the anthrax deaths and the LAX shooting.
> are we looking at deaths outside of iraq?

Yes, the question description only includes deaths within the US, not deaths of US citizens in other countries or US embassies.
By the way, I'd like to also encourage people to bid on the corresponding prediction I created for McCain: http://www.hubdub.com/m16630/If_McCain_is_elected_how_many_in_the_US_will_die_in_terrorist_attacks_during_his_first_term

The McCain question has been getting about an order of magnitude less activity than the Obama question so far. If both questions get a lot of activity then it should make it easier to compare the predicted result of each being elected President.
Actually, now that you mention it, I find it curious that a number of the accounts which have bid "less than 10 deaths" for Obama have only joined in the past one or two days, and have bid largely on stakes which are favorable towards Obama.
New update:

http://spacex.com/updates.php

Posted September 19, 2008

As mentioned in my update last month, we do expect to conduct a launch countdown in late September — as scheduled.

Having said that, it is still possible that we encounter an issue that needs to be investigated, which would delay launch until the next available window in late October. If preparations go smoothly, we will conduct a static fire on Saturday and launch sometime between Tuesday and Thursday (California time).

The SpaceX team worked hard to make this launch window, but we also took the time to review data from Flight 3 in detail. In addition to us reviewing the data, we had several outside experts check the data and conclusions. No flight critical problems were found apart from the thrust transient issue.

Flight 5 production is well underway with an expected January completion date, Flight 6 parts are on order and Flight 7 production will begin early next year. We are now in steady state production of Falcon 1 at a rate of one vehicle every four months, which we will probably step up to one vehicle every two to three months in 2010.

--Elon--
Will this question only count if there are fatalities from the attack? For example, what if there's an animal rights firebombing (as there's recently been near UCLA)?
Will this require a withdrawal of -all- US troops in Iraq, or just "combat troops"?
Also, what will count as an "attempt" for the purposes of this question? What if the rocket gets put on the pad but technical difficulties prevent launch?
http://spacefellowship.com/News/?p=6653

"SpaceX is preparing for their next test flight of their Falcon 1 rocket from Kwajalein in the Pacific. This flight was added to the launch manifest after the failure of flight 3 back in August. Diane Murphy, SpaceX’ Vice President for Marketing and Communications stated „We will actually be launching that [Falcon 1] for the fourth time probably within two weeks“ during AIAA Space 2008 Conference in San Diego from September 9-11. The fourth rocket was delivered to Kwajalein in early September."
http://www.ksbw.com/news/17502631/detail.html

"Federal investigators said the engineer aboard a Metrolink commuter train that crashed near Los Angeles last week was sending text messages while on duty the day of the collision.
The National Transportation Safety Board looked at cell phone records belonging to the engineer. Sending text messages while on duty is a violation of Metrolink policy, but it's not illegal.
The board isn't saying when the engineer sent the messages or whether it thinks text messaging played a role in the collision that killed 25 people"
I should also add that having Palin play any character associated with Tina Fey on SNL (except for Palin herself, of course) woud qualify.
This question seems to be based on this article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article742757.ece

As far as I can tell, that article is the only news piece I can find indicating that NASA has current plans to establish a base on the far side of the Moon -- my suspicion is that whoever wrote the article was mistaken or misunderstood something. From what I've read so far, 2020 is only the planned date for crewed exploration. Although permanent bases are in the plans, that's more of a long-term goal.

It should also be mentioned that the far side has the downside of making both emergency and routine communications with Earth drastically more difficult and is only useful for setting up a radio astronomy facility, which is more of a long-term goal.
Oops, never mind, misread the question.
No Larry King Live?
What will the judgment be if the rocket launches before that date?
Even though it's ending 4 years from now, the values will still fluctuate based on circumstances (e.g. who is elected President, health conditions of justices, etc.) and they would be able to cash in before then.
If Osama Bin Laden is killed or confirmed already dead, would this settle as a "yes" or "no"?
As an addendum, here's an article about women in NCAA basketball who kept on playing until the 8th month of their pregnancy because their coaches didn't realize they were pregnant:

http://www.sptimes.com/2008/02/24/Sports/For_pregnant_athletes.shtml

Sarah Palin is generally considered to be quite athletic, and (supposedly) gave birth in the 8th month of her pregnancy.
There's apparently some rumors of effectively canceling the convention and replacing it with a service volunteering program to help hurricane victims. What would the final verdict be in this circumstance?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/08302008/news/nationalnews/gops_rnc_cane_plan_126772.htm
From their update posted yesterday:

http://spacex.com/updates.php

"It looks like we may have flight four on the launch pad as soon as next month. The long gap between flight two and three was mainly due to the Merlin 1C regen engine development, but there are no technology upgrades between flight three and four. "
For the purposes of this prediction, what counts as a flight? What if SpaceShipTwo is just carried as a payload and not released? What if it's a drop test without its own propulsion?