You can tell you’re a political science geek when you get all gushy about a review copy of a political science textbook…

Steven Taylor has apparently decided his life isn’t complicated enough, so he’s decided to rile up the legions of Confederate apologists in the blogosphere, using that whole “logic” and “documentary evidence” thing to prove—quelle horreur—that the Civil War, was in fact, about slavery, and there’s no way to explain it otherwise. Start here, then go to the front page, because there’s a zone-flood in progress.

Commencement was hot and icky… think of sitting and standing for two hours in a solid black, winter-weight cap and gown. Gov. Haley Barbour’s address was a tad more political in spots than I might have liked, but I think his message—“believe in God, believe your country and your state, and believe in yourself”—was a good one. (I half expected entire departments to walk out when, at one point in the speech, he categorically rejected moral relativism.) People who study rhetoric would have had a field day with his speech. I can definitely see how he does well on the stump—Ronnie Musgrove never struck me as much of an orator, and that alone may have made the difference between them in the last gubernatorial race.

In other news, it looks like a neighborhood cat has adopted me, and I haven’t the faintest clue why. My original working hypothesis was that it’s one of my friend Alfie’s cats, and it recognizes me from having visited his place, but I don’t think this is one of them. If it’s still here tomorrow, I’ll have to figure out something to do with it—I’m shocked the neighborhood pack of dogs hasn’t killed it, though.

Well, that was something. Somehow, though, the rental service managed to give me the wrong color hood (white instead of dark blue)... a problem rectified after the ceremony by swapping hoods with someone who didn’t plan on attending the commencement exercises in the morning.

Plus, I got to catch up with a couple of people I’d met in other departments along the way who finished this past year. And, I learned that Brock missed out on getting the coolest looking regalia on display by far ☺.

Josh Chafetz asks the $64,000 question in American public opinion polling:

[W]hat, exactly, is the point of continually doing nationwide polls when all that matters are the states? I mean, I know nationwide polls are a lot cheaper, but just making up the results would be cheaper still, and only marginally more relevant.

Well, I don’t know that nationwide polling is truly irrelevant; the state-level poll results would be close to a simple linear function of the national polling number, although the effects of campaign advertising—concentrated in the “battleground states”—will cause divergence from linearity.

But due to statistical theory, and the closeness of presidential elections, you’d have to survey a lot more people to get accurate state-level data… realistically, a sample less than 500 per state is useless, which means polling 25,500 people (including D.C.) per survey—and you’re still getting a sampling error of ±4.5% per state. So the best that you can do is pretty much what’s done in practice—you do national surveys augmented by state-level surveys in states that are a priori believed to be close.

Stephen Karlson has the latest missive from Shelby Thames to his faculty, staff, and students at Southern Miss. With any luck, maybe the four new members of the IHL board will decide this stooge is far more hassle than he’s worth.

Michael Jennings watches a lot of movies aimed at the teen set in the hopes of spotting future stars—or at least, that’s his excuse. Like Michael, I am perplexed at the lack of success Alicia Silverstone has had in her career—of course, I thought Blast from the Past was one of the best romantic comedies in recent years (enhanced by Dave Foley’s role as Alicia’s “queer eye for the straight gal” roommate), and was probably one of a dozen people to actually see the film, so that may be the problem.

Xrlq is the latest blogger to bemoan the continued decline of Reason magazine under Nick Gillespie’s tutelage.

BCITS made me an offer today. I nearly drove off the road.

I think I’m home tonight. I may even get to stay in the same place for more than two days. The Big Hooding in less than 48 hrs.

Had a very nice visit at “the best college in [the state]” today* as my undergrad student escort proclaimed it, and had no reason to disagree with her assessment. Nice faculty (even if I’d be half the department), nice salary, nice teaching load (3–3), nice location (the prospect of a Rebel season ticket renewal is a definite plus), good students (whose idol-worship compares favorably with some ex-colleagues’ acolytes, and who didn’t even require a plaintive “Bueller?”), BMOC status, travel money, Division III competition against one of the alma maters. What more could a political scientist want?

Oh, yeah, tenure (the one thing the job doesn’t come with a shot at, at least not unless I were to get the tenure-track position when it is advertised in the fall)… which at TBCITS might actually mean something, contra the inactions of Mississippi’s illustrious IHL. (I mean, as long as the kids are getting their learn on, who cares about the faculty?)

Hopefully in a couple of weeks I will have time to deal with the bloody R&R and the damned impeachment paper and the thrice-cursed Hillary (Clinton, not Duff) piece. Then I’ll be stoked for Year II of “Chris on the Market.”

Will Baude, at the prompting of Jacob T. Levy, ponders the Three-Fifths Compromise. I don’t have a better theory than Will’s; I always just figured that’s the offer the southern delegates proffered after a few rounds and that’s what stuck.

I suppose another possibility is that it reflected the assumed ratios of voting populations around 1787—so as to balance voting between relatively free North with the more populous but part-slave South—but I don’t have the numbers in front of me to prove it.

I’m off for an interview in two hours. But, in the meantime, check out Dan Drezner’s post on the impending takeover of Newsworld International by Al Gore. Because what CBC’s “National” needed to be a rip-roaring success south of the border was the one-two excitement punch of Peter Mansbridge and Al Gore. (Of course, it might also help if they didn’t talk about Canada for 90% of the show…)

Also, a data point for you: on the way here (a state capital within a leisurely drive of Memphis, Tenn.), I passed not one, but two, hotels prominently featuring high-speed Internet access on their billboards—at the same exit. Pretty amazing considering almost nobody would have thought high-speed Internet was a needed hotel amenity even three years ago (and I still visit major hotels that have no high-speed access in most rooms—or, rather, pass them up in favor of other hotels, as the case may be).

No substantive comments for now… I have to work on a job talk for tomorrow. Gotta love short-notice campus interviews.

James Joyner is perplexed by the current Israeli political situation:

Matt Yglesias points to Shinui Party chairman and minister of justice, Yosef Lapid’s threats to leave the coalition and force new elections if Sharon doesn’t come up with a new plan and notes, “If the Likud insists that the plan be halted and Shinui insists that it be implemented, then there’s going to have to be new elections which, presumably, Likud will lose.” I haven’t seen any Israeli opinion polls and it may well be that they’re sufficiently fed up with Sharon as to want to dump him. Still, a Labor victory seems unlikely to me.

The Sharon plan was rejected because it wasn’t far enough to the right, seeming to give too much away in exchange for nothing. Labour is much more conciliatory. So, if anything, I would predict that Likud would drop Sharon in favor of a more hard-line leader. Likud would likely win fewer seats in the Knesset than it has now with extreme right fringe parties picking up more support. Lukud would then form a coalition which would be drawn even further to the right.

There are a few different dynamics going on: for one, the Sharon plan was only voted on by members of the Likud party (and a small fraction thereof—on the order of 10% of the membership)—it has not faced a popular referendum, which probably would be much more supportive. After all, Likud was essentially founded as an aggressively Zionist, “greater Israel” party that basically rejected the idea of “land for peace.” For another, the plan got less support than one might otherwise expect due to a terrorist attack on Gaza settlers on the eve of the vote.

The big questions are:

1. Whether the parliamentary Likud can continue to support the Sharon plan, despite its repudiation by the Likud base. If Likud stays behind Sharon, he can take the plan to the voters and, if necessary, swap the religious parties in the coalition for Labor—who do support the plan—or carry on as a minority coalition for a while, scraping together votes as needed. If Likud doesn’t stay the course, then the party will probably fragment and either the Sharonists will join with Labor and Shinui in a coalition, or new elections will be called.
2. How the parties would fare in a new election. If Likud dumps Sharon (who has legal troubles, in addition to the Gaza plan, as a handicap), it is doubtful that they will pick up nearly as much support as they now have, which opens the door for a Labor-led coalition under Shimon Peres, most likely with the left-wing Meretz and Shinui on board—a coalition that is likely to go even further than the Sharon pullout, but probably would continue the security fence. On the other hand, if Sharon sticks around, the Likud will probably do better—but will have a tough time articulating a position on the Sharon plan, which may lead to the fragmentation anticipated above.
3. Whether Sharon’s domestic legal troubles will force a change at the top for reasons orthogonal to the pull-out plan.

Contra Yglesias, it looks like the Likud rank-and-file don’t seem to “get” it: by sabotaging the Sharon plan, despite its overwhelming public support, they have pretty much opened the door for either a Labor-led coalition that will go even further or an irreconcilable split within their own party between the “land for peace” wing represented (ironically) by Sharon and the Netanayu rejectionist wing. This suggests poor long-term thinking on the part of Likud voters.

Nor do I quite understand the cheap shot that Yglesias takes at the Bush administration, except on the domestic politics “hammer-nail” theory. There’s only so much mucking around in Israel’s internal politics that an administration can do before it backfires, and the current push for the Sharon plan has been rapidly approaching that line as it is.

Oh, so now everyone wants to interview me. Where were all these folks in February?

Ah well, the more interviews I have before the two week clock starts, the better. Having options is nice.

Brian J. Noggle is displeased that the St. Louis city fathers are now attributing the town’s failure to be “cool” to a “lack of gays and bohemians,” instead of the common-sense perspective of attributing it to the fact that it’s freaking St. Louis.

What I want to know is: since when have Czechs been cool?

Unlike those TV shows you like that get yanked from the air, the one-and-only PoliBlog Toast-O-Meter is back, in time for the annual worldwide commemorations of the Struggles of the Proletariat. Appropriately enough, the trials and tribulations of the presidential campaign of wealthy “consumer activist” proletarian hero Ralph Nader are prominently featured.

Congratulations to Will Baude on his decision to turn to the Dark Side slightly improve the labor market for graduating Ph.D.s in 2009 or so accept an offer to attend Yale Law School this coming fall.

And—no matter what Brian Leiter tells you—they ALL suck are really good scholarly communities.

Len Cleavlin has a classic example (albeit probably apocryphal) of the dangers of the arithmetic mean:

There’s an old joke that the Geography Department at the University of North Carolina would tell prospective majors the average salary of graduates with a bachelor’s degree in geography from UNC, without telling them that UNC alumnus and NBA star Michael Jordan received his bachelor’s in geography….

Ole Miss’ criminal justice department might consider employing this trick, as New Orleans Saint Deuce McAllister was a CJ major (though I’m damned if I know whether or not he actually graduated); even given the number of CJ majors who’ve matriculated, Deuce’s NFL salary would probably bump up the mean by a few grand.

David Adesnik has an odd standard for courage among political scientists:

It takes guts for a political scientist to actually predict something. That’s because all that political scientists really have are their reputations, and they can’t afford to put those on the line. So here’s a shout out to Larry Sabato, who isn’t afraid to put his money where his mouth is.

Other than referring David to my post on explanation and prediction, I’d only warn readers that what really takes guts is to get between Larry Sabato and a camera.

Well, the settlement between Thames and Glamser and Stringer is out (full text here) and I find it completely baffling, and borderline inexplicable. HNN’s update from yesterday seemed to anticipate—as most would have, given Thames’ pathetic performance at the hearing on Wednesday—a settlement much more favorable to Glamser and Stringer.

Update: More from Robert Campbell. Time to drop the hammer on that letter to USM withdrawing my application for employment…

First it was Movable Type doing it… now, WordPress generates differently but equally-broken XML for its inline trackback RDF discovery. Here’s an example:

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" 
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:trackback="http://madskills.com/public/xml/rss/module/trackback/">
<rdf:Description
    rdf:about="http://xrlq.com/archives/2004/04/30/1475/hat-of-the-day-chip-frederick/"
    dc:identifier="http://xrlq.com/archives/2004/04/30/1475/hat-of-the-day-chip-frederick/"
    dc:title="\'Hat of the Day:  Chip Frederick"
    trackback:ping="http://xrlq.com/wp-trackback.php/1475" />
</rdf:RDF>

Backslashes don’t escape anything in XML…

Update: Per the trackback below, WordPress fixed it! So, the current score is: WP 1, MT 0. (So, my message to all you WordPress bloggers over there on the sidebar: get thee to an update.)

David Pinto doesn’t think much of ESPN’s continued plugging of its “productive outs” statistic, and in particular Buster Olney’s justification thereof, as summarized by Pinto:

The basic argument is: here’s a stat, this team is good at it, this team won, so it must be important to be good at that stat.

I’m all for inductive reasoning, but inductive reasoning from a single case is, generally speaking, not a very smart idea…

In other baseball news, Ole Miss finally got off the schnide with a 2–1 victory over Murray State on Wednesday (snapping a six-game losing streak); let’s hope they can stay on track this weekend at South Carolina.

Gary Farber and John Cole (also here) rightly characterize as “appalling” reports that Army soldiers tortured and abused Iraqi prisoners, possibly with the connivance of higher-ups. A special fisking is in order for the lawyer for one of the accused soldiers, as quoted by the New York Times:

“This case involves a monumental failure of leadership, where lower-level enlisted people are being scapegoated,” Mr. Myers said. “The real story is not in these six young enlisted people. The real story is the manner in which the intelligence community forced them into this position.”

No, the real story is that Mr. Myers’ client (allegedly) obeyed an illegal order, violated the Geneva Conventions, and deserves to spend every single minute he gets in Leavenworth—right along side the officers whose orders he obeyed. “I was only following orders” is a chickenshit excuse, especially for an E-6.

Update: More from Xrlq and Steven Taylor, who labels the soldiers “sadistic morons” and catches another soldier pleading “we didn’t know any better,” as well as news that British troops are also accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners.

Will Baude of Crescat Sententia is enjoying Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness; it has become one of my favorite literary works, although I didn’t appreciate it quite as much as I do now when my high school AP English teacher was cramming it down my throat. (I strongly recommend the Norton Critical Edition, linked above.)

Of course, it helps that Conrad’s book has reached archetypical status in contemporary culture, due in large part to its serving as the basis for Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam film, Apocalypse Now.

Update: Will Baude says “the movie that really best translates Heart of Darkness to the screen is Chinatown,” at least according to Ted Cohen. Perhaps at an archetypical level, but the plots are miles apart—most notably: I don’t remember an incest subplot in HoD.

Another Update: Dave Kozyr has a response to Will Baude as well. Furthermore, the documentary about the filming of Apocalypse Now is entitled… Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. I rest my case.