Jeff Jacoby has a moderately interesting column in today's Boston Globe about reforming the redistricting process, citing Iowa's use of an independent commission to set constituency boundaries--a practice that is also followed in Commonwealth countries like Britain and Canada. Needless...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 6:09 pm CDT)

Pieter of Peaktalk is the latest person I've seen who notes an incredibly small "undecided" share of the electorate. It seems to me that this flies in the face of everything political scientists believe about presidential elections; while the default...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 1:49 pm CDT)

Via Abiola Lapite, I learned that this pathetic racist piece of shit is running for the Republican Congressional nomination in Tennessee's 8th district, which includes part of Shelby County (although not Memphis). Unfortunately, he's the only one on the ballot....

(Posted by Brock Sides @ 6:55 pm CDT)

My first thought on seeing the headline Recreational Use of Viagra on the Increase was, "What other sort of use is there?" On second thought, however, there are some people who use it professionally, or so I've been told.

(Posted by Brock Sides @ 6:27 pm CDT)

I somewhat agree with both Glenn Reynolds and Lorie Byrd that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad (link only works in Internet Explorer) is "devastating"--mind you, leaving aside the truth of the charges it makes against John Kerry. And...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 5:35 pm CDT)

For some odd reason, the ntp server on my laptop refuses to keep sync with any servers on the Internet; instead, it's decided to just go off and run several minutes slow, for some odd reason I can't quite understand....

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 8:19 pm CDT)

Stephen Bainbridge (via Glenn Reynolds) isn't impressed with the use of NOMINATE scores to cast John Kerry as more of a centrist; nor is he particularly thrilled with methods like NOMINATE to begin with: Personally, I find the interest group...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 7:58 pm CDT)

Michael Totten has the scoop on the latest idiocy from the Memphis city council, this time perpetrated by city council chairman Joe Brown, who barred a group of visiting Iraqi officials from city hall, apparently out of concern that they...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 5:55 pm CDT)

One of the little ways us wanna-be professors make a little side money (a couple hundred bucks a pop) is by reviewing textbooks for publishers. At the moment, I'm reviewing an American government textbook for its n+1th edition, which is...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 5:40 pm CDT)

Michael Jennings has been taking a crash course in R and S-PLUS programming. I'd still have to say my R is quite weak, for largely the same reasons my Perl is pretty weak--there's too much overlap with C, which leads...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 6:32 pm CDT)

Since arriving in Ann Arbor last week, I've had something of a curious reaction to the revelation that I have a job. The near-uniform reaction, after hearing the details of the position, is that it's a "heavy" load--which, given that...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 9:05 pm CDT)

The CDC's Division of Parasitic Diseases has reported that many Americans are getting sick each summer from diseases spread in public pools. One of the largest pool-related outbreaks in the country happened last August in Lawrence, Kansas, when as many...

(Posted by Brock Sides @ 8:19 pm CDT)

Digital Camera Shopper magazine reports that most digital camera memory cards are virtually indestructible: They were dipped into cola, put through a washing machine, dunked in coffee, trampled by a skateboard, run over by a child's toy car and given...

(Posted by Brock Sides @ 8:06 pm CDT)

Glenn Reynolds links a USA Today report on its post-convention poll: Last week's Democratic convention boosted voters' impressions of John Kerry but failed to give him the expected bump in the head-to-head race against President Bush, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 11:52 pm CDT)

I went to the 11:10 pm show of Dodgeball last night, and found it hysterically funny. Ben Stiller as fitness magnate/doofus White Goodman is clearly the central comedic character (and parry to Vince Vaughn's slacker straight man character), but I...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 8:55 pm CDT)

I've posted a review of Reiner Knizia's game Modern Art at Settling Catan.

(Posted by Brock Sides @ 5:52 pm CDT)

As James Joyner notes, Nomar Garciaparra was traded from the Red Sox to the Cubs in a 4-team deal that would seem to put the Cubs in a pretty good position, but which looks to David Pinto like something of...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 8:22 pm CDT)

Nick Troester (apparently, it rhymes with "toaster") is under the impression that last evening's events fall under the Chatham House Rules. My personal perspective is that it'd be hard to enforce those rules, considering that all activities took place in...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 7:44 pm CDT)

Prof. Bryan Caplan revels in his nerdiness at Marginal Revolution. In case you haven't guessed, yes, I consider myself a nerd. I'm such a nerd that I worry that my sons will fail to embrace their nerd heritage. The best...

(Posted by Brock Sides @ 9:46 pm CDT)

Chip Taylor solicits comment from political scientists on last weekend's New York Times Magazine piece on the efforts to create a Democratic-leaning interest group infrastructure to rival the similar arrangements on the right. He writes: That made me think about...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 7:18 pm CDT)

I think Bryan Caplan has really stepped in one here: Larry Bartels has gotten national attention for his work on Bush's income tax cut, inheritance tax cut, and public opinion. (Here is the full article; here is the digest version;...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 5:59 pm CDT)

Tyler Cowen calls on Dan Drezner to self-assign p values to his fence-sitting. My gut feeling is that this approach would be ineffective; based on the cognitive psychology literature, I'd have to conclude that Dan is probably not the best...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 5:45 pm CDT)

Here's my lame-ass election prediction: Kerry wins. And you can take that to the bank. At least, you can take it to the bank that you took my "Dean will be the nominee and Osama (not to be confused with...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 5:09 pm CDT)

Eugene Volokh, defending the legal profession from charges that the This song is your song controversy is all the lawyers' fault, writes: But at most what we have here is a few special lawyers-by-training -- many of whom are no...

(Posted by Brock Sides @ 4:28 pm CDT)