I sometimes wonder what our students would think of us if they knew what their professors did at parties.

Then again, it would probably just reinforce their stereotype of us as nerds who sit around and talk a lot, even considering the presence of a margarita machine (which, alas, I did not partake of, since I drove to the party) and various incredibly obscene discussions.

There’s been some discussion of late of Ray Fair’s model, and particularly its prediction that George Bush will walk away with 57.5% of the two-party vote in November. Bill Hobbs and Don Sensing find this to be interesting—and, at some level, I suppose it is. But I have to mention a couple of caveats:

1. I seriously doubt either major-party candidate will get 57.5% of the two-party vote. A few numbers for comparison: Ronald Reagan’s landslide in 1984 against Walter Mondale netted 59.2% of the two-party vote, while Bill Clinton’s pounding of Bob Dole got 54.7% of the two-party vote. I’d frankly be surprised if Fair’s forecast is even correct within his stated margin of error (±2.4%). To be gracious to Fair on this point, he does candidly acknowledge that there could be specification issues that would inflate the forecast.
2. I think forecasting models do a poor job of explaining the causal mechanisms that take place. The national economy doesn’t vote—rather, about a hundred million Americans do, and the effects of the national economy on individuals are for the most part weak (but, admittedly, can be quite strong for voters in particular industries and regions).

Of course, a third caveat is that forecasting the national vote-share is (in my opinion) a misspecification of the institutional conditions under which the election takes place; there are 51 elections (in the 50 states and District of Columbia) that allocate representation in the electoral college, and I generally think that understanding those 51 elections is much more important than forecasting the headline figure, which only has a tenuous relationship with the substantively meaningful outcome (who wins the election).

Also (potentially) of interest: back in my slightly-more-prolific days, I posted a brief exposition of my distaste for (and disinterest in) election forecasting models.

From CNN:

Researchers have found high concentrations of platinum in women who got silicone breast implants....

I have five Gmail invites up for grabs, and I can’t think of anyone offhand who’d want one (that probably doesn’t have one already). Drop me an email (lordsutch@gmail.com) if you want one.

Kids are funny, and Sheila O’Malley’s nephew is no exception. Even without visual aids, it’s a great story.

William Sjostrom detects a hint of bias in the speaker selection for the upcoming APSA conference. Dan Drezner, while acknowledging the potential bias, also points out that the speakers’ appearances will be lightly attended, largely because political scientists have better things to do. He also manages to summarize part of my research methods class last night:

[T]here’s a difference between political science and politics. Most of the presentations and papers given at APSA do not address normative debates about the way politics should be. Instead, they are more detatched analyses of why things are the way they are. Sometimes the answers can be ideological, but most political scientists just care about whether their answer is correct—or more precisely, whether someone else can demonstrate that their preferred answer is wrong.

That said, something I didn’t mention last night is that many scholars’ normative beliefs drive their scholastic inquiry; witness the cottage industry of campaign finance scholarship, the whole “peace science” coterie, or most inquiry into racial and ethnic politics in America. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

Update: Meanwhile, Nick Troester notes that people disagree what “political theory” means. Most often, I see it used as a synonym for normative theory, rather than formal theory, which I gather is Nick’s conception of the term—the latter is sometimes referred to as “formal modeling” to reduce potential confusion, and occassionally (erroneously, in my opinion) as “positive” theory.

Flying back from Long Island today, the security guy at MacArthur airport (I’m not sure whether he was with the TSA or not) checked the expiration date on my Tennessee driver’s license. He told me that it had expired. I pointed out the extension sticker on the back, and he let me through. He told me that if the license had actually been expired, I would have had to go back to the counter, presumably to present further proof that I was indeed the person I claimed to be.

God forbid that someone fly with an expired driver’s license.

Our long national nightmare, the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson saga, may finally be nearing an end. The Kerry front organizations left wing of the blogosphere claims there’s an indictment of “Scooter” Libby on the way, while the Bush stooges InstaPundit (and the Washington Post) reports that Libby is cooperating with investigators by waiving his right of confidentiality in dealings with Time reporter Matthew Cooper.

I once described (off-handedly) Bill Clinton as the first postmodern president—and I think that was a pretty valid description, considering he managed to create public debate over the actual definitions of such straightforward words as “sex,” “is,” and “alone.” Today, Steve at Begging to Differ makes a pretty convincing case that postmodernism has pretty much taken over political discourse.

Conrad is busily planning a takeover of the Philippines. As someone who’s taken a mild interest in Philippine politics over the years, I can authoritatively say he’s probably got a better plan to solve the country’s problems than the extant administration.

Having said that, I’m less willing to blame the voters than some commentators—Philippine politics somehow manages to combine the worst traits of Huey Long, Richard Daley, and E.H. Crump without producing any of the benefits one typically finds in a machine-politics regime, and until that is sorted out I’m not sure the voters will make that much difference.

Alex Knapp, Steven Taylor and Ted Barlow all agree that President Bush’s apparent call for regulation of all political speech is idiotic, although John Fund argues (somewhat, but not completely convincingly) that it’s the inevitable result of McCain-Feingold, while James Joyner notes that it’s not like the Bush campaign has changed its position on the 527 phenomenon lately.

I get the feeling my intro class is going to have a fun debate over campaign finance regulation and the first amendment; I just wonder what side I’m going to have to play devil’s advocate for.

James Joyner and N.Z. Bear both ponder an alternative universe in which John Kerry has a campaign message that doesn’t revolve around what he did (or didn’t do) in the Mekong Delta before I was born. Left unpondered is whether or not “parallel Kerry” has one of those cool-looking goatees like Spock did in “Mirror, Mirror.”

Also worth reading, linked from the same InstaPundit post, is Stanford political scientist Larry Diamond’s devastating critique of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy, including its hamhanded handling by the former Coalition Provisional Authority, from the most recent edition of Foreign Affairs.

Alex Knapp ponders the assumptions underlying Dahlia Lithwick’s op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times calling on Democrats to act like George W. Bush is an adult—not so much because Bush isn’t an imbecile, but because such talk alienates swing voters. Alex writes:

Of course, swing voters (like myself) probably don’t take kindly to discussions about how best to manipulate them (I know I don’t).

With that in mind, there seem to be two unspoken assumptions in this article.

1. That most Kerry supporters really do see Bush as an idiotic, bumbling child.
2. That swing voters don’t read New York Times op-eds—Kerry supporters do.

Alex doesn’t think either of these assumptions are necessarily true. Certainly statement 1 need not be true; notably, even a small minority of Kerry supporters could damage his cause. For example, one suspects most Kerry supporters aren’t sending their hard-earned cash to prop up 527s like ACT and MoveOn.org, instead free-riding on George Soros’ pocketbook.

But I think statement 2 is true; swing voters, by and large, don’t read the Times. Most politically-aware people (essentially, the Times’ audience) are partisans of varying degrees of strength; politically sophisticated fence-sitters like Alex Knapp and Dan Drezner are relative exceptions.* To the extent the Times influences mass opinion, it does so as an elite signaling mechanism for writers at the newspapers and wire services that swing voters do read. If the Times chooses to bury the Swift Vets as partisan hacks instead of leading with the fact the group has already caught Kerry in a lie about his presence in Cambodia, it gives the “all-clear” signal for the Commercial Appeal or Clarion-Ledger to do the same. Thus, if Lithwick (and, by extension, the Times) can influence some Kerry supporters to alter their rhetoric, their “team” will probably come out ahead, even if a few fence-sitters have their noses tweaked in the process.

Because we considered Signifying Nothing‘s pages insufficiently cluttered, we have added the manual trackback link to individual post and daymode pages, as requested by James Joyner.

And, before you ask, no, we wouldn’t jump off a cliff if he asked us to.

Sorry, I’ve been busy with this stuff for the past few days, plus I have a parent in town. More blogging this weekend, hopefully.

Lee Iacocca is leading an effort to raise 11 million dollars to fund human clinical trials of a potential cure for type I (juvenile) diabetes. Mr. Iacocca has already given a million of his own money to the cause: one million down, ten million to go. So go donate some money.

Have faith, Will! One day, men’s hats will come back in style, and you and I will be ahead of the fashion curve.

The blog revolution has apparently reached this corner of academe; one of the topics of discussion at lunch (not raised by me, mind you) among our group of incoming faculty members was whether or not faculty members could set up class blogs on the college server.

That said, I’m still leaning against using blogs for any of my classes, although I do think it would be a good way to help fufill the whole “writing across the curriculum” thing that the college is pushing in some courses.

Well, half of orientation is over. I think I’m starting to recover my enthusiasm for the job (see here and here), in no small part because of the warm welcome I have received from my new colleagues. My fellow new faculty members (numbering seven total, including me) are a pretty interesting and diverse group. So far I’ve been invited to dinner, been interviewed via email by the editor of the campus newspaper, and gotten a new computer for my office (replacing the steam-driven Gateway monstrosity that was there before), in addition to various and sundry activities.

The only real irritant so far is the heavily Microsoftized campus computing environment—I am quickly learning to despise Outlook with a passion, and I suspect my laptop will be getting a lot of use for getting actual work done.

Anyway, I probably should be off to bed so I don’t doze off during Day 2.

Last month, I wrote the following:

Not to start a big brou-ha-ha like the recently-raging conflict over the relative “hotness” of libertarian women, but I‘ll put any five randomly selected young Mississippi women (18–35) against a comparably-selected slate of native Michiganders any day.

A couple of minor clarifications are in order. In general, the above statement is empirically valid, but one should not make the ecologically-fallacious assumption that all young native Michiganders are less attractive than all young native Mississippians, a statement that would be quite untrue. The second clarification is that, ceteris peribus, Michigan girls have somewhat cuter accents (in this gentleman’s opinion, at least), which may or may not be “hot” in your particular book.

Tyler Cowen, remarking on an NYT article on charging prison inmates for room and board, says

I'm not comfortable with this notion, since I don't think government prisons should move toward becoming profit centers.

That’s an understatement. If one is of a libertarian bent (as I am) with regard to victimless crimes such as drug use and prostitution, the problem would seem to be that imprisoning people doesn’t cost the government nearly enough. After all, the marginal prisoner is a lot more like Tommy Chong than Charles Manson.

From an economic point of view, the problem is that a huge portion of the cost of incarceration is borne by the person being incarcerated: which, of course, is the intent, for otherwise the threat of imprisonment wouldn’t have a disincentive effect on behaviors the state has prohibited. But since the full cost of imprisonment is not borne by the state, economics suggests that there will be too much of it.

Here’s my not-entirely-facetious* suggestion for getting government incentives right with regard to imprisonment. For each person the state imprisons, the state should hire, at whatever price the free market will bear, an innocent person who will be imprisoned under the same conditions for the same amount of time. (It need not be one single person for the full duration of the sentence. Presumably this job would have very high turnover.)

This way, the government will imprison someone only if the benefit to the government (which will be aligned to some degree with that of the public in a democracy) is greater than the cost, as determined by the free market, to the person being imprisoned.

Of course, there are other costs of imprisonment the state bears, such as maintaining buildings and hiring prison guards, so we would might end up with too little imprisonment under a such a one-for -one scheme. So perhaps the state should hire four innocents to be imprisoned for every five actual prisoners, or two for every three.

At any rate, the government would be a lot less cavalier about locking people up left and right under if it followed such a plan.

Comments on blogs are a mixed bag. Sometimes they’re excellent, as those at Crooked Timber almost always are, and sometimes they’re uniformly awful despite the quality of the blog, like those at Political Animal.

Sometimes you stumble on a real gem buried in blog comments, like this bit by Charlotte Pressler, professor of philosophy and English at South Florida Community College, at Matthew Yglesias’s blog:

I teach an introductory philosophy course in rural South Florida and so might be able to contribute some analysis (quickly, before Hurricane Charley gets here). Almost all my students are evangelical and/or charismatic Christians who believe in the literal truth of the Bible, and almost all believe that truth is relative. I found this contradiction interesting, and looked into it further.

It appears to have two sources. First, my students apply the word “truth” to all of the statements they believe, and don’t distinguish between claims of fact and claims of value. They are not encouraged to make such a distinction by the local culture; the local authorities frequently describe obvious value claims as “facts,” adding that “you can’t argue with facts.” “Truth,” in my students’ dialect, thus winds up meaning something like “my basic orientation to the world, the way I see things, my perspective”—which would be correctly described as personal, individual, and “relative.”

I might add that an article in the journal Teaching Philosophy (apologies to the author, whose name I can’t remember) argued that the beginning philosophy students who claim that “truth is relative” are really trying to say something like this: “I don’t agree with Mom & Dad any more about a whole lot of things, and I love them, so I don’t want to say they’re wrong, but I don’t want to give up my own point of view either.”

The second reason my students believe that truth is relative, however, strikes me as much more pernicious. They have grown up in small, tribal, tightly-knit, highly conformist communities that (needless to say) did not encourage free discussion or debate. In college, they meet for the first time people who do not share their presuppositions, and they begin to get an inkling that the wider world contains many more. They have never been asked to defend their own belief systems before, and, in all honesty, some of their beliefs are quite indefensible. When students in this position say that truth is relative, they are trying to exempt their own belief system from the requirement of rationality. They want to be able to go on believing whatever their local community has decided to believe, even though both argument and evidence are against them. Again, they are encouraged in this by the local authorities, who teach them to devalue reason and (especially) “book learning.”

The fact is that my students will be ostracized by their local communities (it’s called “disfellowshipping”) if they disagree in any point with their community’s creed. It is a public, brutal shaming, and any human who could avoid it, would. If this sheds any light on the “relativism” of the American public (or, perhaps, the persistence of “creation science” and other follies), I would be glad.

(Reproduced with permission from the author.)

Prof. Pressler really should be blogging.

This will probably be my last post from Ann Arbor; the hovel doesn’t have Internet access (or any other communication facilities), and Sprint gets annoyed when I use my cell phone to connect to the Internet. I think I’ll have Internet access in the motel tomorrow night, so I’ll probably have something to say tomorrow night.