March 17, 2010 – 11:19 am
I held up the picture of Obama. The scouts reacted as though Medusa herself stood before them.
Boy Scouts are supposed to love their country, not hate it. So when I visited a group of 11-year-old scouts recently, I was more than a little surprised to find the opposite.
As one of their requirements, scouts are supposed to discuss their “rights and duties as a citizen” with a community leader or teacher. Since I’m a political science professor, I apparently fit the bill. I was invited in to have this chat with a dozen or so 11-year-olds–who, as it turns out, already have a surprising ability to hate. Read More »
September 25, 2009 – 1:17 pm
Some state legislators have law degrees; others didn’t finish high school. Some are in their 20s; others have a foot in the grave.
Over 7,000 Americans serve as state legislators. Some state legislators have law degrees; others didn’t finish high school. Some are in their 20s; others have a foot in the grave.
The largest state legislative chamber is New Hampshire’s House of Representatives. Its 399 representatives represent an average of only 3,298 constituents. The smallest chambers have only 20 or 21 members–although California’s Senate, with 40 members, has the largest districts. Each of California’s 40 senators represents 918,917 people.
Ever wanted to know how educated (or not) typical state legislators are? Ever wanted to know how many women serve in government? Ever wanted to know how old state lawmakers are?
Behold: The state legislator database. Enjoy.
Aggregating across all 9 conference sessions being analyzed here, the Articles of Faith is definitely the most cited book.
Here’s a post that won’t appeal much to non-LDS (Mormon) readers. But for the Mormons out there…
The Bible’s a big book, so Christians have their work cut out them. My copy is 1,590 pages long. (Of course, it would be much shorter if it didn’t also have a bunch of footnotes.)
But Latter-day Saints (Mormons) 
also treat the Book of Mormon (531 pages), the Doctrine and Covenants (294 pages), and the Pearl of Great Price (61 pages) as scriptural. That’s a lot to read. Some Mormons try to read them all, some focus on a small chunk, some give up and don’t bother.
Lately I got to wondering: Of all these books to choose from, what do the church’s general authorities read? (“General authority” is what LDS call those who lead the church globally, as opposed to local authorities like Bishops.) It occurred to me today that there was an easy way to find out.
The answer is below the jump… Read More »
As a follow up to the previous post, I suppose I should entice you to go check out Abstract Politics by telling you a little about what you’ll find there.
The most recent post reviews “Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment ,” an article from APSR by Gerber, Green, and Larimer. I don’t know how they got this past their human subjects review, but somehow they got permission to send postcards to a bunch of Michigan voters listing the names of all their neighbors, as well as whether each neighbor had bothered to vote in the previous two elections. At the end, there was an ominous note that they’d be sending an updated after the upcoming election, so all the recipient’s neighbors would know whether the recipient had voted.
Turns out this sort of social shaming works. Read More »
Check out Abstract Politics , a new site dedicated to reviewing the latest in political science research. Dozens of new articles are published in every issue of the top journals. It’s hard to keep up with them. The creators of Abstract Politics intend to write brief summaries (and critical reviews) of each new article.
This has the potential to be very cool. These summaries can help us decide whether reading a particular article in its entirety is worthwhile. They can also provide a forum to debate the merits of each article (via each summary’s comment form).
You may already be familiar with WikiSummary . WikiSummary is similar, but it is no longer accepting new submissions–these days, it’s merely an archive of old summaries. The creators of Abstract Politics are the same folks that were behind WikiSummary, but with a new approach and a new look.
Full disclosure: I happen to be a major player in running both WikiSummary and Abstract Politics. But that should only encourage your further to bother checking out (and contributing to) Abstract Politics .
I’ve been thinking lately about what thinking people know. After all, I regularly read comments on various websites to the effect that “thinking people know” this or that.
There’s a problem. I rarely agree with what the commenter claims “thinking people know.” I am forced to the only logical conclusion: I am not a thinking person.
To fill the gaps in my knowledge, I thought it might be worthwhile to scour the internet to learn what I would know if I were a thinking person. So I did a google search for the phrase “thinking people know.” Here’s a sampling of what I found in the first forty or fifty results. I’ve included all but a handful of uninteresting facts.
Read More »
By Adam
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Posted in Politics
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tagged barack obama, campaign spending, climate change, elections, george bush, google, gun control, morality, san diego padres, secularism, thinking people know, torture
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Okay boys and girls, the word of the day is conclusory. Say it together: conclusory.
Now, conclusory is a funny word. These days, most people use it when what they really mean is “conclusive.” That’s not the meaning I’m attaching to the word. I’m using the meaning given in Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Law:
Conclusory: consisting of or relating to a conclusion or assertion for which no supporting evidence is offered.
Right now I’m grading a big stack of final exams. Many students do excellent work. These grade-A students know that merely asserting something does not make it true; they understand that they also need to argue the point. These students get good grades. But students who write conclusory answers do not.
Incidentally, Google returns no hits for “conclusoritis,” the title of this post. Remember that I coined it when it becomes the new trendy word of 2008.
Hmm, something isn’t quite right. I taped an interview with Hillary on CNN, and while watching a segment frame-by-frame, I noticed that Hillary’s face completely changed for 1/100 second, then it changed again, and again, for a total of four flash changes. These are the screen captures:
Read More »
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