Search
Polling 101 – How People Answer Polls
on March 07, 2011
9 Comments
This is the first in a series GUEST POSTS by Matthew Knee, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University specializing in campaigns and elections, ethnic voting patterns, public opinion, and quantitative and experimental approaches to political science. ____________________ Analyzing polls with only what polling companies release is...
What Did Former Providence Mayor David Cicilline (D-RI) Know, And When Did He Know It?
on March 05, 2011
8 Comments
Democrat David Cicilline was Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, for 8 years, replacing the colorful and convicted Mayor Buddy Cianci. Cicilline was elected in November to Congress in Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District (my home district), for the open seat vacated by Patrick Kennedy. Cicilline is an openly gay...
The Half-Life Of A “Birther” Controversy Is Shrinking Rapidly
on March 02, 2011
19 Comments
As I have documented here many times, one does not need to question Barack Obama’s birthplace or citizenship to be called a “birther.” “Birther” simply is the new “racist,” an epithet thrown around at anyone who questions — or in the case of Mike Huckabee failed to accurately state —...
“Back in the USSR” Was Just a Song
on February 15, 2011
6 Comments
… “You don’t know how lucky you are, boy Back in the USSR, yeah” It was just a song. But to Brian Leiter, a law and philosophy professor at the University of Chicago who frequently takes swipes and swings at conservatives, it had a ring...
Cornell Researchers: Choices — Not Discrimination — Determine Women Scientists’ Success
on February 11, 2011
5 Comments
Two Cornell University researchers conducted a study to determine whether the significant underrepresentation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) was the result of sex discrimination. The results of the research are summarized in the Cornell Chronicle: “It’s an incendiary topic in academia —...
Trump Crashes CPAC
on February 10, 2011
5 Comments
K. McCaffrey — I am super jealous of everyone who will be at CPAC today. I have to wait until tomorrow to attend (a cost-benefit analysis of the cost of college per credit hour leaves me no choice), but those who are there today will...
Why Don’t We Just Stop Counting?
on February 10, 2011
17 Comments
The New York Times reports on the inconsistency of how various government agencies count the races: The federal Department of Education would categorize Michelle López-Mullins — a university student who is of Peruvian, Chinese, Irish, Shawnee and Cherokee descent — as “Hispanic.” But the National...
R.I.P. Christopher David Monson (aka snaggletoothie)
on February 09, 2011
3 Comments
Via And So It Goes In Shreveport comes news of the death of “snaggletoothie” and a link to a loving memory by his father, My son Christopher David Monson aka snaggletoothie: “Chris was born on April 1, 1948. He passed away on January 28, 2011....
Saturday Night Card Game (Lady Gaga Is A “Madonna-rip-offing, lyric-stealing, insincere-piano-playing racist”)
on February 05, 2011
15 Comments
This is the latest in a series on the use of the race card for political gain: One of great things about researching entries for the Saturday Night Card Game series is that it doesn’t require much work. Since My Dream has not yet come...
The Scam that Nobody Should Buy Into
on February 05, 2011
9 Comments
This article will save you money if you actually buy into the premises of a recent article in the Journal about college admissions that had me rolling my eyes. It is no secret that the children of certain families (and we all know who we...
Bubbles in the Quad
on January 25, 2011
15 Comments
Peter Thiel has been making a splash lately by calling higher education “the next bubble.” In a fairly recent Wall Street Journal article, he went as far as to say “Liberals […] blame our education system, but liberals are the last ones to fix it,...
Going After The Supremes
on January 24, 2011
12 Comments
Criticism of Supreme Court Justices is nothing new. We do it and they do it. But the latest tactic in going after two Supreme Court Justices, Scalia and Thomas, seems out of the ordinary. Since the first of this year we have seen three charges...
Tucson Shooting Victim Who Blamed Palin Arrested for Death Threat
on January 15, 2011
22 Comments
I posted yesterday about Eric Fuller, who blamed Sarah Palin and others for the Tucson shooting by Jared Loughner. Now Fuller has been arrested for making a death threat against a local tea party leader: The meeting room at St. Odilia’s Catholic Church on the...
An Apt Caricature of the Internet Generation
on January 12, 2011
6 Comments
There has been an article floating around the internet called “20 Ways to be Popular at an Expensive Liberal Arts School.” While I technically go to an expensive research university, not liberal arts school, I think it’s a pretty funny microcosm of the type of...
The Worlds of Jared Loughner and Palin Haters
on January 12, 2011
16 Comments
With each passing day, the evidence accumulates that Jared Loughner suffered from a mental illness completely disconnected from the political world, putting in context just how despicable the accusations were that a 10-month old electorcal map published on a Sarah Palin website contributed to the...
Bloomberg and the Third Term Curse
on January 07, 2011
2 Comments
There was a recent article in the NY Daily News covering the plummeting approval ratings due to the (lack of) blizzard response earlier this week. Things aren’t looking good for Bloomie, “Bloomberg admitted City Hall was in the dark about the extent of the crisis....
