Perusing the shelves at Wal-Mart this weekend I picked up Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Next Level, which is a very long-winded title for something relatively simple: a three-episode preview of the upcoming Blu-Ray transfers of the series. Unlike TOS, where they took the original film and replaced...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 10:46 pm CST)

A public service announcement, in absolutely no way inspired by the current debate over Komen's funding of Planned Parenthood, follows: If you are comparing your contemporary domestic political opponents (say, pro-choicers or pro-lifers) to the Viet Cong, the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, or the Taliban, it seems to me...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 11:43 am CST)

This NYT article on Pomona College dismissing 15 workers who were unable to present evidence of their legal presence and right to work had me mildly sympathetic to the various workers' plight, until the second-to-last paragraph rolled around and I had a "WTF?" moment: Still, it does little to reassure...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 3:27 pm CST)

Mike Munger catches the government doing what government does, rather oafishly: in this case, fining companies for their failure to use enough cellulose-based ethanol, a product that is not even commercially available. The mind boggles. On the other hand, imagine the possibilities of such an "incentive" program. Fine Boeing a...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 10:49 pm CST)

The folks at Reason have been keeping a rather keen eye on the escalation of the Obama administration's war on medical marijuana; the latest salvo is apparently going to involve aggressive prosecutions of those advertising dispensaries, along with targeting landlords and other property owners whose tenants are dispensing pot, regardless...

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

When you read a blog post about the dollar coin and realize that the reason the author--who is a presumably intelligent mainstream Republican who was instrumental in reviving the dollar coin in the first place--only is arguing against any aggressive effort to replace the dollar bill with the dollar coin...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 7:25 pm CDT)

If my Facebook feed is anything to judge by, this interview with political science professor Benjamin Ginsburg on the growth of administrative bloat in American universities has struck a bit of a nerve. Ginsburg advances his thesis in a new book, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 5:05 pm CDT)

Paul Burka at Texas Monthly connects all the dots in Rick Perry's plan to remold Texas' two flagship higher education systems. At some level, though, I can't blame Perry as much as the allegedly-well-meaning liberals down the food chain who spend a lot of time before faculty distancing themselves from...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 6:10 pm CDT)

A few parting comments as I "virtually" turn out the lights: First and foremost, there's no immediate reason to worry about me. There's no specific reason for my decision; nobody's come to me and said "X would have happened if you didn't have a blog." Nor am I embarking on...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 5:03 am CDT)

In what some have said is an "end of an era" and others have suggested is an event 4-6 years overdue, Signifying Nothing will be signing off--if not permanently, certainly for the foreseeable future--by the end of June. I still plan to contribute to Outside the Beltway (perhaps even on...

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

My sixth year of full-time teaching is now at an end. Overall I think it went well, although I missed my target grade distributions in both of my upper division classes (too tough in Congress & The Presidency; too easy in Political System of the USA). One of these decades...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 10:23 pm CDT)

The Liberal Democrats' two choices: Door #1 (aka Nick-and-Dave, kissing-in-a-tree): at least two years in government, at worst a referendum on the alternative vote, most of your fiscal agenda (where you and the Tories agree) enacted into law, and probably some of the blame for the next year or so,...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 10:39 pm CDT)

Contra Simon Jackman, the single transferable vote is a form of proportional representation, albeit one with a very high effective electoral threshold (the share of the vote a party needs to gain representation)--in the worst case, something on the order of (but not quite) 100 percent divided by the average...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 4:20 pm CDT)

P.J. O'Rourke once said that giving money and power to politicians was akin to "giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." But that pales in comparison to the effects of giving an anonymous forum to mentally-teenaged political science graduate students and their hangers-on. There was a point a few...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 12:25 am CDT)

This morning I unleash my inner comparativist and take to the pages of OTB to discuss today's British elections in excruciating detail for an American audience.

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 3:56 am CDT)

I'm not particularly inclined to do any long-form blogging at the moment (here or at OTB), but here are a few random thoughts on issues of the day: I can't think of any good reason to object to a merger between United and Continental; it's probably a long shot, but...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 9:06 pm CDT)

You can now download a copy of my upcoming conference paper with Scott Huffmon and Adolphus Belk, "The Truth is Never Black and White: An Examination of Race-Related Interviewer Effects in the Contemporary South," at the usual place. Both Scott's and Adolphus' contributions immensely improved this version over the previous...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 2:07 am CDT)

I finally have packaged up a very rough port of my epcp routine from Stata to R as part of a package unimaginatively called cnlmisc; you can download it here. In addition to the diagnostics that the Stata routine provides, the glm method includes a bunch of R-square-like measures from...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 2:23 pm CDT)

Dr. Crazy on research at regional state universities: [T]he way in which that often plays out at my institution (and I suspect at many other institutions) is that research is this unspeakable thing which is nevertheless "required." And since it is unspeakable - i.e., that professors even within the same...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 9:01 pm CDT)

In a rare appearance at OTB, I discuss the recycled Schumer-Graham immigration bill. It's like a Hot Tub Time Machine back to 2006, when another president was heading into midterm elections facing an overseas military quagmire, own-party lawmakers in marginal districts who were distancing themselves from his policies, and deteriorating...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 6:36 pm CDT)

A mildly bemusing job ad that came across the wire today: The Department of Government and Sociology invites applications as Course Redesign Coordinator. This is a non-tenure track, limited term, faculty position with the rank of Lecturer. The term is for a period of two years subject to re-approval and...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 12:26 am CDT)

Fresh on the heels of promises to adopt changes to elections to the Commons, Labour is now promising to finish its reforms to the House of Lords with some concrete proposals coming "shortly." The outline of Labour's proposal suggest: A third of the members would be elected at each general...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 1:00 am CDT)

Mike Allison and Greg Weeks are discussing the value (or lack thereof) of discussants on panels. Given that one of my major problems with the rising challenge to panels in our discipline, the similarly-poorly-attended poster session, is the lack of discussants, I can't really concur in whole with Greg's position...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 2:06 pm CST)

The brain trust that runs ESPN into the ground has decided to suspend Tony Kornheiser for two weeks from his PTI co-hosting duties for his criticism of ESPN SportsCenter anchor Hannah Storm's recent attempts to up her MILF factor with age-inappropriate wardrobe choices. The irony that they are punishing their...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 9:16 pm CST)

The sequel to Mass Effect has arrived and after about 10 days with the game I can honestly say that on virtually every dimension, ME2 is superior to its predecessor. Combat has been made a lot better; the decryption and electronics "mini-games" are much more engaging than playing Simon with...

(Posted by Chris Lawrence @ 2:45 am CST)