The slides for tomorrow’s presentation of my paper with Frequent Commenter Scott are now available online—not that they will make much sense without my allegedly-engaging patter attached.

My paper with Frequent Commenter Scott™ entitled “Can We Really Have a Conversation about Race? Investigating Race-of-Interviewer Effects in the Contemporary South” is now online for your perusal at the usual place.

I am finally on the return leg of the grand roadtrip—I have one more day in Memphis before I finally get back home to butt-numbingly cold St. Louis. I enjoyed my visit to New Orleans. Both of my SPSA panels went well, although they were, alas, lightly attended; I am certainly more confident about the publication prospects for the paper, although now it needs a blog nickname—perhaps “the damn measurement paper” will suffice.

I also enjoyed catching up with Steven, Dieter (the rock upon whom ICPSR is built), Andrew (all too briefly), and Kelly.

Steven Taylor and I had lunch today at Mother’s Restaurant, self-declared home of the “world’s best baked ham.” I have to say that the ham and cheese po-boy was excellent, if on the pricey side ($9!).

In other SPSA conference news, my morning panel at the Hotel Intercontinental was relegated to a tiny conference room with a hand-printed sign adjacent to a service elevator. You’d think the public opinion section would get more respect from the conference powers that be…

The SPSA paper is here for the morbidly or otherwise curious.

The power outage at least had one silver lining for me: it forced me to spend some time in my office with minimal distractions, which allowed me to wrap up most of the textual revisions of the strategic voting paper.

I also am continuing to fiddle with the data analysis; I’m still not happy about the 2000 results, and I’m not sure there’s anything to be done about that (beyond getting a time machine, increasing the NES sample size, and figuring out some way to get more people to fess up to voting for Nader), but the 1996 results turn out to be stronger with the IRT measure of sophistication than they were with the interviewer evaluation. Plus I got the multiple imputation stuff to work.

So hopefully during the black hole between now and student paper grading time I can get this thing polished and ready for submission to a decent journal… and have time to spare to hack together about 8 bits of my dissertation and my job talk into a SPSA paper.

In other “I actually get work done, believe it or not” business in recent days, I took care of a paper review for a journal… I wish I could say it was punctual, but in fairness the first time they sent me the paper for review it got bounced from my SLU account because I was either over my mail quota or the mail system was mid-meltdown. I also wrote two recommendation letters.

All but one of my discussant assignments at SPSA have apparently disappeared without any notice to me—which is just as well, since that allows me to postpone my arrival in downtown New Orleans until January 4th… garnering about a 50% reduction in hotel rates, since now I can stay at the Hilton Garden Inn I stayed at a couple of weeks ago for $99/night and get free breakfast due to my HHonors perks, instead of the conference hotel at the significantly above-market $155/night rate; one fewer night to pay for; and avoiding the crush of the Nokia Allstate Sugar Bowl to boot.

Before my panel Saturday, I had a nice breakfast (at IHOP, no less) with personable fellow political scientist/blogger Michelle Dion, who receives only minor demerits for being a Tar Heel.

I’ve decided to head home Saturday afternoon once my panel wraps up at 12:45; after spending three weeks on the road, I’m ready to get back to Durham and a TiVo full of shows to catch up on while I finish up preparations for the semester—editing syllabi, futzing around in Blackboard, and putting together slides for 138 while I can still find my notes from last semester. And meandering back to Rock Bottom Brewery tomorrow night in the cold isn’t worth blowing $200 on the room, even if the waitstaff is cute.

I’m safe and sound in the Hotel Intercontinental Buckhead, which may be the first conference hotel I’ve ever been at that’s actually worth what I’m paying for the room (you’re paying for the lobby at the Palmer House in Chicago; the rooms aren’t anything special).

As is the nature of the small universe that political scientists inhabit, the first person I saw in the lobby, other than the receptionist, was Bill Jacoby.

Now I’ll be incommunicado while watching the Rose Bowl. If it’s anything like the other BCS games have been, this will be a real barnburner.

I’m still alive.

I had a nice Christmas here in Memphis, and now I’m getting ready to head down to Florida for New Year’s. I’ve made a bit of progress on a few projects; the main fun will be wrapping up my SPSA papers over the next few days.

For those following the SPSA saga who are not on the association’s mailing list: an update has been posted, indicating that the conference will meet in January in Atlanta at the Hotel Intercontinental in Buckhead.

Your SPSA non-update update of the day. Quoth the SPSA website, as of this posting:

On Monday, we expect to announce the signing of a contract with the new host of our January 2006 conference.

Perhaps SPSA is using a different value of “Monday” than the rest of us. I thought it was over nearly 17 hours ago, myself…

The meat of the latest update from the Southern Political Science Association website:

Intercontinental North America has excused us from the 2006 commitment without penalty. They have also asked their other properties in the South to try to step up and host our 2006 meeting under the same contract terms that we would have enjoyed in New Orleans. Detailed discussions are underway today (Friday, September 9th) with three beautiful Intercontinental properties. On Monday, we expect to announce the signing of a contract with the new host of our January 2006 conference. You can help in this process by honoring your commitments as we honor those that the association has made. Those of you who have attended The Southern since Savannah 2002 know that attendees will have a fabulous time and an excellent conference. You risk nothing by standing by the association while we stand by our corporate colleagues.

The candidate properties would appear to be three of the following four: Buckhead (Atlanta), Dallas, Houston, and Miami.

Given the givens (geography, air and road access, and the location of the association offices), Atlanta seems to be the most likely prospect, and perhaps the allure of Buckhead to potential attendees will be higher than that of the relatively uninteresting neighborhood surrounding the Sheraton that has been the site for several past SPSA meetings. With reports of attendees already bailing, SPSA had better have the situation resolved soon.

Following up on yesterday’s post, David Bernstein of the Volokh Conspiracy reports:

The head of the New Orleans convention bureau told NPR today that he is canceling all conventions scheduled to be held in New Orleans through March 2006.

The CVB site claims that this cancellation only applies to large conventions or those using the convention center space, but realistically if the Crescent City won’t be in good enough condition to host a large convention in April it probably won’t in good enough condition for any convention in January.

Via PoliBlog: the Southern Political Science Association thinks it will hold its annual convention in three months in New Orleans. Steven Taylor is unconvinced:

I certainly would not want the association to make a move that would take money out of the city, if, in fact, the meetings can take palce in January. However, I really don’t see that happening. The hotel, given its location and pictures I have seen is probably largely fine. However, what about the electrical grid, the phones, the water system, the roads, the police, the general support struture for tourists (restaurants, other hotels, etc.)? I just don’t see the city being able to host any events by the first week or so of January.

Considering that all that’s likely to be close to functional in New Orleans in three months (and, more than likely, for the forseeable future; the SPSA can only be delayed so long before it becomes moot) are the higher parts of the Jefferson Parish suburbs and some of the downtown area—bear in mind the Hotel Intercontinental, while on high ground, is only a few blocks from areas that are still flooded around the Superdome—I am forced to echo Steven’s skepticism.

A conference the size of SPSA should have no trouble finding suitable convention space elsewhere in the southeast, but these decisions need to be made sooner rather than later.

Well, I suppose that city was nice enough while it lasted. Here’s my photos from my last visit, back in March; there’s a very good chance that my next visit, scheduled for January, won’t be happening if this bulletin is to be believed.