Daniel Drezner notes that David Adesnik is digging himself into a hole of rather epic proportions. Quoth Adesnik:

The great flaw of modern political science is its desire to imitate microeconomists (and share in their prestige) by developing theorems that explain and predict the behavior of rational actors. Of course, that is exactly the wrong way to go about things. It is only when political scientists recognize that ideas and values are what drive politicians and voters that they will begin to produce something worthy of the name “science”.

Huh? To begin with, in general political scientists—with very few exceptions—don’t believe all actors are purely rational; in Herbert Simon’s terms, actors are boundedly rational. It isn’t just political scientists who believe this—contemporary psychologists and economists also use Simon’s conception of bounded rationality and satisficing (the idea that people don’t choose among all available options, but rather choose the first one that they encounter that is minimally satisfactory) to explain decison-making, as well as more modern ideas.

For another thing, political scientists recognize that “ideas” and “values” have utility to rational actors. Quantifying these things is hard, and perhaps sometimes it is simpler to retreat to the realm of relative capabilities and force projection ability (to name two favorite variables of my friends that study international relations using data from the Correlates of War project), but to blanket the entire discipline with a critique that perhaps only applies to the most hardcore CoW junkie (and doesn’t even discuss the contributions of the political behavior field to the understanding of how citizens in democratic societies make voting and other political decisions or elite decision-making processes—not all political science goes on in the halls of ISA) seems awfully, and dangerously, simplistic.

Josh Chafetz, one of David’s partners in crime at OxBlog, has some good points (partially in David’s defense and partially critical) and usefully distinguishes between rational choice theorists and empiricists. But, honestly I’m not sure there are that many “universalist” rat choicers out there; I know a few, and they mostly lurk on the edge between political science and economics. Perhaps that perception reflects my training in the behaviorist (Michigan) tradition, though. But in general the ones I’ve met aren’t hostile to empirical testing of their ideas; it’s just not what they personally find interesting.

As for Josh’s snarky aside, “when The Clash of Civilizations is widely mistaken for a good work of political culture analysis, the field is in trouble,” all I can say is: Heh.

Time for more shaming! The good news is, I can pick games that don't involve the AP Top 25. The bad news is… nobody cares about games that don't involve the Top 25. First the recap:

FLORIDA [2-1] 31, Tennessee [2-0] 21. [CBS]

Actual score: 10-24. Tennessee came to play, Florida didn't. Hence Tennessee is rewarded with sole possession of the SEC East lead and the first division head-to-head result in the league, putting Florida's SEC East hopes in serious jeopardy barring some self-destructive behavior on the part of the Vols.

Georgia [3-0/1-0] 24, LOUISIANA STATE [3-0] 17. [CBS]

10-17. A close game as expected, but LSU held off Georgia in the first half when Georgia had a good shot at making some scores. The legend of Death Valley lives!

Kentucky [1-2/0-1] 41, INDIANA [1-2] 10.

34-17. Well, Kentucky can win out-of-conference... let's see what happens this week.

ALABAMA [2-1/1-0] 35, Northern Illinois [2-0] 14.

16-19. For one thing, the team NIU beat was not Wisconsin. That was last year, except it wasn't, because Wisconsin won that one somehow. UNLV beat Wisconsin. NIU beat Maryland.

For another thing, Alabama is the Jeckyll and Hyde of the SEC. Actually, Jeckyll and Hyde seem to be operating on other teams as well (take Florida, who've demolished some of their opposition but can't hang with Big Six foes). Shula was supposed to win this one.

Turns out this one was on GamePlan. Woo hoo. (Some people in Alabama allegedly paid $30 to see this. They should demand a refund. For one thing, the clock was unreadable. For another, Tyler Watts was on color. He wasn't bad, but sheesh... you'd think Bama could do better for their home announce team than a 23-year-old kid fresh out of college.)

TEXAS CHRISTIAN [2-0] 35, Vanderbilt [1-2/0-2] 17.

30-14. This one was also on GamePlan. Dan Stricker was not on color. Vandy was again let down by their own miscues. The clock here was at least red, so it was semi-legible. CSS really needs to work on their graphics... the WAC game I saw between LaTech and Fresno had better overlays, and it was produced by an outfit I'd never heard of before.

SOUTH CAROLINA [2-1/0-1] 38, Alabama-Birmingham [1-2] 7.

42-10. They weren't booing, they were shouting "Lou".

HOUSTON [2-1] 38, Mississippi State [0-2] 31.

45-38. Sadly, I was right on this one, although State didn't blow the lead at least. (Yes, I am now feeling sorry for State. Don't worry, the emotion will pass.) Unfortunately, a TD-INT ratio of 3:5 will put you in a hole rather quickly.

NCAA Infractions Committee [∞-0] $12,000/player, AUBURN [1-2/1-0] 0.

No news is usually good news. Except in NCAA investigations.

OLE MISS [2-1/1-0]

No word yet on starting RB.

Texas Tech's game against NC State will be televised Saturday at 11 CDT on ESPN2. As NC State's offense is similar to that of Ole Miss, although perhaps even more pass-oriented, it may be a good preview of how the game in Oxford is likely to turn out.

NC State absolutely dominated Tech, despite an obscene 586 yards of passing by B.J. Symons. No more comments here... gotta wait for the Prognostication for the skinny!

Conference standings: UT's win over UF puts them in the SEC East lead, coupled with Georgia's loss. Everyone in the West is either 1-0 or 0-0 in conference at this point, with the first two divisional matchups coming this Saturday.

Time for the predictions. Thanks to my friends at the SEC office (who put this stuff on the web for anyone to read, including people like me), I have the actual, fact-filled "Week 5 Game Preview" in hand to help me predict the games. We'll see if this helps any. Surely at least I'll actually correctly name past opponents for teams.

As always, starting with JP's "heat death" game and working forward. Home team in CAPS, record [W-L/CW-CL], and TV...

KENTUCKY [2-2/0-1] 24, Florida [2-2/0-1] 17 [JP].

Florida comes into Commonwealth Stadium looking to get back on-track after imploding against UT. UK is 0-16 in the past 16 meetings between these squads, and if they were playing at the Swamp I'd probably give the edge to Zook's crew. But, to paraphrase Janet Jackson, they're not, so I can't. This same Kentucky squad has given Florida serious scares in its last two meetings, and "QB by committee" doesn't quite have the ring of "Rex Grossman." So, without the Swamp mystique, I have to go with the 'Cats.

Since I originally wrote this, Ron Zook has decided to go with Chris Leak as his sole starting QB. However, the prediction stands.

ALABAMA [2-2/1-0] 27, Arkansas [3-0/0-0] 14 [CBS].

You've got to figure CBS thought this game was much more attractive last Monday; now they'd probably want to swap with JP. Arkansas has looked pretty good, particularly in its win over Texas, but Bama probably isn't in the mood to be embarrassed at home for the third time in four games. Look for the Tide to stomp the Razorbacks in this one as they try to prove they are the rightful SEC West champions. [Aside: Am I the only one who finds Verne Lundquist and Todd Blackledge annoying?]

AUBURN [1-2/1-0] 35, Western Kentucky [3-0] 17.

The Tigers catch Western Kentucky looking ahead to their October 4 road date with I-AA powerhouse Western Illinois and pull off the upset.

Ok, maybe not. But I can't think of any other obvious reason why Auburn should win, since WKU has held its last three opponents to three points each and is ranked third in the I-AA rankings, and their kicker scored half of their points last week against EKU. Plus one of their players is obviously a military brat ("Heidelburg, Germany" is not your typical American high school), so I have to give them sentimental props. So what if they play in the "Gateway" conference (is this a new name for the OVC?). I have yet to figure out what Auburn's doing this season, but nonetheless I pick them to win simply because of SEC pride. Or something. But not-so-secretly I want the Hilltoppers to win.

Other interesting note: Tubby is a 1976 graduate of Southern Arkansas. If I didn't read the press release, I -would not know that- (spoken in Phil Hartman channeling Ed McMahon voice). Ok, enough silliness. Back to predictions.

OLE MISS…

Oh, we're saving that one for last. Never mind.

VANDERBILT [1-3/0-1] 17, Georgia Tech [1-3/0-2] 14 [PPV].

Yes, you read that right... PPV. Anyway, before I choke to death laughing hysterically, I guess I'd better justify why I'm picking Vanderbilt. Yes, Georgia Tech spanked Auburn, who in turn spanked Vanderbilt. And, as a firm believer in the transitive property, I should therefore believe that Georgia Tech will spank Vanderbilt. However, fundamentally I think Vandy is "due" and Ga Tech is probably looking forward to NC State.

TENNESSEE [3-0/1-0] 31, South Carolina [3-1/0-1] 17 [ESPN].

A UT win puts them in a pretty commanding position in the SEC East, all but eliminating USC from contention — in September. Ouch. Lou's done good work in Columbia, but ultimately the Gamecocks are no match for the Vols at home in Knoxcille.

Louisiana State [4-0/1-0] 45, MISSISSIPPI STATE [0-3/0-0] 7 [ESPN2].

Set your VCRs, folks, because this may be the last time you get to see Jackie Sherill on the sidelines of a football game on national television. This one could get ugly, particularly if the artificial noisemakers rule has to be enforced against State fans heckling their own team. And, last but not least…

OLE MISS [2-1/1-0] 38, Texas Tech [2-1] 21 [Webcast only].

The Red Raiders come into Oxford as the first Big XII foe to ever visit Vaught-Hemingway (which tells you something about Ole Miss's typical NonCon schedule). Despite piling up gaudy numbers, Tech's offense was quite ineffective last week against NC State's defense (and probably wasn't helped by absolutely horrible special teams play). On the other hand, Ole Miss's offense has shown signs of figuring out how to get the running game to work, and the defense has been more effective than in years past (despite some weakness in the secondary early on).

I'd definitely expect to see a shootout, perhaps reminicent of the Memphis game, with both Manning and Symons putting up obscene passing numbers. But Tech has a porus defense, giving up nearly 200 yards on the ground per game (and nearly 450 ypg total)--a weakness even the mediocre Ole Miss running backs can exploit, particularly when you consider Cutcliffe's penchant for the short passing game. That, home field, a team with essentially the same personnel motivated by its tough 42-28 loss in Lubbock last year, and the Rebels' quality special teams play (led by reliable PK Johnathan Nichols) should translate into a Rebel win. However, I also expect the Rebels to be lethargic early, which could open the doors for the Red Raiders to open a decent lead.

Robert Prather links to an opinion piece in the Mississippi State University Reflector by Edward Sanders about news media rivalries. All very interesting, as far as it goes… but try this quote on for size:

All Amanpour’s comments prove is that CNN and Fox News are engaged in a Mississippi State-Ole Miss style donnybrook.

Yes, but at least when Ole Miss and Mississippi State compete, it’s actually worth watching. I’m thinking this one’s more like Mississippi State-Houston, except that one might be a sore subject down in Starkvegas…

According to last Thursday’s DeSoto Times, officials studying the planned route of Interstate 69 through the Memphis area have decided that both the loop route and the through route are needed and will recommend the construction of both routes. More at I69Info.com, of course.

Incidentally, this means the DeSoto Times has scooped the Commercial Appeal by nearly a week. In case you were keeping score at home.

A measure of the APSA’s efforts to make its conference the global center of attention is the fact you can’t even get back from their conference before they start bombarding you with material for the next year’s conference—even though it’s eleven months away. At least it’s in Chicago next year, one of my favorite cities in North America.

Anyway, Dan Drezner is working on a paper on the political impact of blogging with Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber, as part of a roundtable on blogging he is planning to organize at the conference, and is blegging for help with a definition of a “blog” and some good sources.

Considering that I haven’t even thought about what I’m going to propose for the Midwest—the deadline for which is two weeks away, and which will also be held in Chicago (apparently the only city in America that can put up with two gatherings of several thousand political scientists in a year)—I should applaud Dan and Henry’s initiative.

In somewhat related (i.e. completely unrelated) news, I plan to finish my dissertation revisions today. Granted, I’ve been saying that every day since I got back from Philadelphia, but maybe blogging about it will light a fire under my proverbial ass.

David Adesnik apparently has been drinking the Perestroikans’ Kool Aid:

The secret to success in America’s political science departments is to invent statistics. If you can talk about regressions and r-squared and chi-squared and probit and logit, then you can persuade your colleagues that your work is as rigorous as that of a chemist, a physicist, or (at worst) an economist.

Funny, I just came back from spending a month with people who told me that the absolute worst way to get a job in political science is to “invent statistics.” If David means “understand and be able to utilize” by “invent,” that is. If he means something else, I can’t figure it out.

Still, it is absolutely impossible to explain the tactics of Al Qaeda or Hamas without reference to their perverse ideologies.

It is? Actually, it’s pretty easy to explain their tactics—historically, they’ve been quite effective. What’s (slightly) more difficult to explain is why Al Qaeda and Hamas engage in terrorism while the Sierra Club and Libertarian Party don’t.

The real problem is that [Robert] Pape, like so many political scientists, abandons all nuance in deriving policy programs from his work.

Fair enough. But what exactly does that have to do with the fact that Pape uses quantitative methods in his research? Adesnik claims:

As I see it, the cause of this unsubtle approach is political scientists’ obsession with statistics, a pursuit that dulls their sensitivity to the compexity of real-world political events. If numbers are your thing, you’re going to have a hard time explaining why Israelis and Palestinians have spent five decades fighting over narrow tracts of land.

So then, what is to be done? As you might of heard, many political science programs require training in statistics but not foreign languages. That trend has to be sharply reversed.

Great. Now we can have more social scientists who are completely incompetent at quantitative methods, but at least can express that incompetence in multiple languages. Where do I sign on to this initiative?

Look, I’m more than willing to concede that quantitative research doesn’t—and can’t—answer every interesting question in political science. But the rigorous study of politics can, and IMHO should, be scientific: founded on the scientific method, no matter whether the actual methods used are qualitative or quantitative.

And—irony of ironies—the APSR piece that Adesnik vents his wrath at is completely qualitative (at least in terms of its method of inference). Not a p-value, χ², or logit model in sight.

Anyway, you can read the piece yourself courtesy of Dan Drezner, at least until the APSR’s copyright goons come after him.

Why am I getting a weird feeling of dejà vu from reading the New York Times’ alleged sneak preview of Tuesday’s UN speech by George Bush?

According to the officials involved in drafting the speech, for an audience they know will range from the skeptical to the angry, Mr. Bush will acknowledge no mistakes in planning for postwar security and reconstruction in Iraq. ... In the speech, Mr. Bush will repeat his call for nations — including those that opposed the Iraq action — to contribute to rebuilding the country, but he will offer no concessions to French demands that the major authority for running the country be turned over immediately to Iraqis.

Wow. Maybe he’ll also storm out of the room in anger and call people in the audience names.

Steven Taylor of PoliBlog notes a Wall Street Journal editorial on Iraq’s al-Qaeda ties and the capture of Abu Abbas on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Meanwhile, my friend Scott Huffmon forwards a collection of quotes from administration officials that juxtapose 9/11 with Iraq (Scott therefore wins the longstanding Signifying Nothing “no-prize” for forwarding evidence of the adminstration linking Saddam and 9/11). Perhaps more interesting is the associated article discussing how the public’s belief in a 9/11-Saddam connection came about. Key graf:

A number of public-opinion experts agreed that the public automatically blamed Iraq, just as they would have blamed Libya if a similar attack had occurred in the 1980s. There is good evidence for this: On Sept. 13, 2001, a Time/CNN poll found that 78 percent suspected Hussein’s involvement—even though the administration had not made a connection. The belief remained consistent even as evidence to the contrary emerged.

Or, as I am fond of saying, when it comes to politics, it’s all heuristics.

I’m spending most of this afternoon slowly unravelling whatever went wrong with upgrading one of our boxes from Red Hat 7.3 to Red Hat 9. Main problem: none of Red Hat’s GUI administration tools work—they all die with segmentation faults. Neither did sendmail (which I promptly booted out in favor of postfix.)

In the process of straightening everything out, I installed apt-rpm. We’ll see if that makes the system slightly more administerable (is that a verb noun?).

The mystery deepens. Apparently, somehow the PyGNOME installation is hosed. However, it's only intermittently hosed; most of the Red Hat admin tools segfault, but some don't (they're just oddly buggy, like the Package tool that won't let you select things in the Details view). And Foomatic-GUI runs just fine (once wget is installed—no, don't ask me why). Damn strange.

After last night’s loss to Houston (by a score of 42-35), the Mississippi State Bulldogs appear to have blown their best chance for a road win this season, and fall to 0-3 for the season (and 3-13 in their past 16 games). There are some serious problems down in Starkville, made all the more plain by fired defensive coordinator Joe Lee Dunn’s level of success in Memphis this year with arguably lesser talent.

Working slightly in State’s favor is the fact that their next three games are at home. However, looking at their opponents, things may not be quite so simple:

• Next Saturday, Louisiana State rolls into Starkville fresh off the heels of a 4-0 start and a hard-fought victory over the defending SEC champion Georgia Bulldogs. The question isn’t whether LSU will win—it’s by how much?
• October 4, Bobby Johnson’s now 1-3 Vanderbilt squad comes to Starkville in search of its first SEC win during Johnson’s reign in Nashville. (They face Georgia Tech at home this weekend, which this season is a winnable game for the Commodores.)
• October 11 is Homecoming. More specifically, it’s homecoming for Joe Lee Dunn as Memphis (currently 2-1, and likely to be 4-1 by then) comes to town in search of a season sweep of the SEC.

Then come road tests at Auburn and Kentucky, a bye week, a home date with Alabama, two weeks in a row against current top-25 teams Tennessee and Arkansas on the road, and finally the Thanksgiving Egg Bowl match against Ole Miss. Given the current level of Mississippi State’s play, they’d be hard pressed to beat any of these teams.

Realistically, the home dates against Vanderbilt and Ole Miss are probably the most winnable, the former since Vanderbilt hasn’t exactly been tearing up the gridiron either and the latter due to the in-state rivalry. The current Sagarin ratings* only favor Mississippi State in its games against Vandy and Memphis, the latter only because the Bulldogs have home field advantage.

People used to call State the “Vandy of the West.” They’re not any more—State is almost certainly worse.

Colby Cosh doesn’t quite ask a question worth considering:

It’s clear enough that a majority of the Liberal caucus is opposed, right or wrong, to gay marriage in principle. The same could probably be said of the Opposition; yet we’re to have gay marriage in Canada all the same. It does make you wonder what the point of sending MPs to Ottawa is.

Or, for my non-comparatively-inclined friends, a hypothetical translation into the American political context:

It’s clear enough that a majority of Democrats are opposed, right or wrong, to gay marriage in principle. The same could probably be said of the Republicans; yet we’re to have gay marriage in the United States all the same. It does make you wonder what the point of sending Congressmen to Washington is.

Alec Saunders, on the other hand, doesn’t think gay marriage is a legitimate subject of political debate; the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada’s equivalent to the U.S. Bill of Rights (plus a healthy dollop of the 14th Amendment, minus those pesky 2nd and 3rd amendments that were at least partially motivated by anti-British sentiment), has spoken—or at least been interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada to speak in that way.

What’s interesting to me is that Alec’s a self-identified “traditional conservative” while Colby is generally libertarian in his outlook, yet they take the opposite sides on this issue to those you’d expect Americans with those political leanings to take. (Incidentally, my position is closer to Alec’s, simply because legislative bodies are at their worst when enacting social and economic regulation; the “Do Something” instinct too often prevails over common sense in these cases.)

In Colby’s case, I might explain his preference for legislative involvement as vestigial sentiment for the idea of parliamentary sovereignty—the idea that the final arbiter of the Law is the legislature, as is embodied in Westminster parliamentary tradition. But I find Alec’s position a bit more perplexing, although I can perhaps understand his disinterest in the use of this particular issue by the embryonic Alliance of Progressive Conservatives (or whatever the hell they decide to call themselves). God knows I cringe every time the Republicans pull the same stunts, although in Mississippi the Democrats usually join in the fun too, so here it’s essentially a wash.

Then again, the Smug Canadian reads Colby’s comments differently. So what do I know?

Glenn Reynolds throws up his hands at the latest round in the John Lott feud:

What I’d like is to see an authoritative look at this by a disinterested party. I’m not qualified to provide that. I’d like to see someone who is come forward and sort all of this out.

Anyone motivated enough to “come forward and sort all of this out” would, by definition, no longer be disinterested. The only thing I can think of: rename all the variables and give the dataset and the alternate specifications to an econometrician (or six)—preferably one who has lived under a rock the past ten years.

Anyway, rather than volunteering myself—not only because this whole debate is too political for anyone with my political leanings to be considered objective (despite my rather ambivalent personal attitudes towards guns), but also because I don’t personally find “public policy” questions that interesting to study and because, well, I do have a dissertation that I’m supposed to be finishing revisions on this weekend—I’ll just recommend reading this book on the politics of gun control (a research topic I find more interesting than simply the effects of gun ownership), because (a) it’s pretty good and (b) one of the members of my dissertation committee co-edited it.

TEXAS [1-0] 31, Arkansas [1-0] 17

Actual score: 28-38. Arkansas pulls off the major upset in Austin; although Texas is hampered with a one-dimensional offense, it was still quite unexpected. Arkansas could be the team to watch for in the SEC West, especially compared to its performance last season that saw the team basically luck its way into the championship game.

VANDERBILT 17 [1-1/0-1], Auburn [0-2] 16 [JP/GamePlan]

7-45. Vanderbilt reverted to form, and Auburn figured out how to score touchdowns again.

GEORGIA [2-0] 35, South Carolina [2-0] 24

31-7. USC got blown out between the hedges.

FLORIDA [1-1] 62, Florida A&M [1-1] 3

63-3 (ooh, so close!). FAMU did soundly win the halftime, though.

OLE MISS [1-1/1-0] 42, Louisiana-Lafayette [0-2] 7

59-14 (would have been 62-14, but Cutcliffe was feeling merciful). The news of the game was Jamal Pittman's solo 69-yard, 9-play touchdown drive. Oh, and Manning had an obscene QB rating.

ALABAMA [1-1] 31, Kentucky [1-1] 20

27-17, more or less as expected. The Pillsbury Throw Boy was no match for Mike Shula's team in his first Tuscaloosa win.

LOUISIANA STATE [2-0] 65, Western Illinois [2-0] 14 (revised)

35-7. Again, more or less as expected, although you might have expected LSU to put up more points. Maybe they're saving them for Georgia...

TULANE [1-1] 56, Mississippi State [0-1] 54 (6 OT)

31-28. Tulane, as expected, pulls off the "upset". MSU's skid is now at 8 weeks, and counting.

Conference standings: Georgia currently has sole posession of the SEC East lead, while Ole Miss and Auburn are tied for first in the West (with undefeated Alabama ineligible for postseason play). No teams are yet mathematically eliminated from a division title, but Vandy is trying very hard to be the first.

This week's games, highlighted by a CBS double-header. Fans of other teams will have to listen to the radio. You know the drill...

FLORIDA [2-1] 31, Tennessee [2-0] 21. [CBS]

The traditional SEC East powers line up for their first conference games of the season in Gainesville. UT has looked unimpressive in its two wins, so I go with Florida because of (a) home field and (b) playing Miami tough (but demerits for getting outscored 28-0).

Georgia [3-0/1-0] 24, LOUISIANA STATE [3-0] 17. [CBS]

LSU is somehow favored in this contest, mainly due to the legend of "Death Valley." However, they don't call it Death Valley when it's a 2:30 kickoff, and UGA looks unstoppable as of late.

Kentucky [1-2/0-1] 41, INDIANA [1-2] 10.

Kentucky takes out its frustrations on perennial Big Ten punching bag Indiana in Bloomington, where it's a fair bet that Wildcat fans will rule the stands.

ALABAMA [2-1/1-0] 35, Northern Illinois [2-0] 14.

Alabama isn't Wisconsin. Shula now has a winning record in Tuscaloosa.

TEXAS CHRISTIAN [2-0] 35, Vanderbilt [1-2/0-2] 17.

The Vandy team that lost to Auburn last week probably couldn't beat SMU, much less TCU.

SOUTH CAROLINA [2-1/0-1] 38, Alabama-Birmingham [1-2] 7.

Lou Holtz convinces his team they're actually facing Alabama-Tuscaloosa, so they go out and pulverize the opposition. (Lou's mistake last week: the team thought he said they were playing Georgia Tech.)

HOUSTON [2-1] 38, Mississippi State [0-2] 31.

The Bulldogs somehow find a way to blow a fourth-quarter lead for the second game in a row as they work through I-A trying to find a team they can beat. Unfortunately for State, Louisiana-Lafayette isn't on their schedule this year. Or should that be "unfortunately for ULL"?

Two teams have the week off:

NCAA Infractions Committee [∞-0] $12,000/player, AUBURN [1-2/1-0] 0.

Tommy Tuberville's gang spends the off week under a cloud as former coach Terry Bowden is on record saying that boosters paid signing bonuses to Auburn recruits in the 1980s and early 1990s. Apparently that's against the rules... go figure!

OLE MISS [2-1/1-0] spends the week preparing for pass-happy Texas Tech to come to Oxford for the team's second night game in a row, as there will be no TV for the game (ESPN2 is instead opting to show the humiliation of Mississippi State by LSU). Continued noises from the coaching staff suggest that sophomore RB Jamal Pittman, who accounted for a large chunk of Ole Miss's second-half yards against ULM, will be in the starting lineup.

Tech's game against NC State will be televised Saturday at 11 CDT on ESPN2. As NC State's offense is similar to that of Ole Miss, although perhaps even more pass-oriented, it may be a good preview of how the game in Oxford is likely to turn out.

Foomatic 0.6.3 is now available at both Savannah and here; it has also been uploaded to Debian unstable.

The main new feature in this release is the display of information from the LinuxPrinting.org printer database when in the printer make/model browser, using a GtkHTML2 widget. A screenshot of the new functionality is here.

Here's an updated screenshot of the current, more OS X-like main interface:

The revelations of five-figure cash payouts to Auburn players (more on the story here) have Pete Holiday at the SEC Fanblog speculating about what sort of penalties Auburn could face from the NCAA:

This, of course, raises an interesting question: If a team commits major violations while on probation, how does the punishment work? Death Penalty? Forfeiture of X seasons from the time of the violation? Bowl Ban / Scholarship cuts for upcoming seasons? My guess is that the NCAA has no idea how they’d handle it and would resort to whatever would be least-consistent with their previous rulings.

In the comments, an discussion has broken out: can the NCAA’s infractions committee impose meaningful sanctions on Auburn? Jeff Quinton of Backcountry Conservative thinks not:

Is the NCAA willing to invoke the death penalty now though? When the last round of Alabama investigations started those rumors it came out that the Death Penalty would be something the NCAA would avoid if at all possible because of the impact on revenue it would have on other schools in the SEC.

Kevin Donahue, however, says:

I don’t think the NCAA would think twice about handing out the death penalty to an SEC team. If they don’t crack the whip in this case, when could they ever?

Assuming the Auburn investigation amounts to something, and bearing in mind the continuing investigation of Alabama and inquiry targeting Mississippi State, it is quite possible that half of the SEC West will be on some form of probation in 2004. Clearly the existing penalties aren’t having sufficient deterrent effect on boosters and programs.

But the “death penalty“—the forced shutdown of the football program for at least two years—isn’t likely to happen. Now that big money has found NCAA football and basketball, college athletics is run like a business, particularly in the SEC, the most profitable league in the country.

Jeff is right that the death penalty would hurt revenue, even at the other SEC schools, due to the sharing of bowl, tournament and television receipts. But that’s not necessarily the NCAA’s motivation—the NCAA doesn’t see a dime of that money.

The NCAA’s fear is that the SEC and its member schools, faced with a “death penalty” situation and losing a significant chunk of their funds, would jump ship and encourage members of the rest of the Big Six conferences to form a new basketball-football semi-pro league beyond the influence of the NCAA. Combined with a number of schools from the Big 12, C-USA, and the ACC, a “super SEC” of 24 or so teams would have a lock on most of the talent with NFL and NBA potential in the southeast and a large market that is underserved by both pro leagues.

So for now the NCAA will try to muddle through. But soon an SEC school is going to be found to have done something so egregious that the NCAA has to impose the death penalty to maintain its credibility. And that day will be the last day of college sports as we know it in the southeast.

ESPN.com Page 2 writer Jim Caple was in Oxford for the ULM game. Shockingly, he had the same reaction to the evocation of Blind Jim Ivy as justification for retaining Colonel Reb that I did:

Plain, old-fashioned college student resentment against an administration making a decision over their heads is a significant part of this. But when [Brian] Ferguson talks about Colonel Reb being a tribute to an old black man named Blind Jim Ivy who sold peanuts around campus during the first half of the century (when blacks weren’t allowed to attend classes), he begins to lose me.

His conclusion:

Colonel Reb is offensive. He has to go.

If his supporters really appreciate the damage Colonel Reb brings to the school and state they love so dearly, they would welcome a new mascot, a mascot that all students can embrace, enjoy and look to with a sense of pride instead of embarrassment.

The California Recall has prompted a few questions about various polling techniques. As someone who’s put in his fair share of hours doing telephone survey research, and has heard a version of the “pitch” from Harris Interactive from one of their in-house statisticians*, I thought I’d try to clear up some confusion.

The “traditional” way of doing political polling these days is a system called “random digit dialing.” Basically, to get the number of respondents they need, professional pollsters call several thousand households from a list of residential numbers prepared by companies like Survey Sampling Inc.; if you’re feeling cheap, there are other alternatives that can be used (with a much higher non-response rate). (Before RDD, we did stuff like what Zogby did in Iraq recently; that sort of quasi-random “man on the street” interviewing is common in non-industrialized countries, and essentially the same as contemporary exit polling in the United States.)

RDD worked pretty well for polling until computers arrived on the scene in the mid-80s along with the hardcore telemarketing industry. In the past two decades, response rates have dropped off sharply, requiring more calls to get a valid sample for statistical inference. Coupled with answering machines and caller ID, the effectiveness of RDD for getting a truly random sample has been undermined.

The Internet allows a few new options. Internet survey delivery allows respondents to complete surveys at their own convenience, and also permits the delivery of non-verbal stimuli (like photographs, long blocks of text to be read, and drawings), which is useful for experimental designs. The drawback is that just sticking a survey on the Internet will result in a non-random sample, the most notorious instance of which is the abomination known as the “web poll.” Since respondents to web polls self-select, we have no idea how representative they are of the public at large.

Two groups in the U.S. have tried to tackle the non-random response issue from different directions. Knowledge Networks (KN) solves the representativeness problem by only offering the surveys to a randomly-selected sample of households. Rather than recruiting a new batch of respondents for each survey (like in a traditional phone survey), KN has a rolling panel of several thousand households that participate in studies. They are provided with free WebTV service for the duration of their panel membership, and in exchange must participate in a certain number of surveys. The surveys are delivered via WebTV to the household. (This approach is basically the same as that employed by the Neilsens for television ratings.) As in a traditional phone survey, some weighting is done to adjust the sample to account for stratification and clustering effects. KN’s co-founders are Stanford University professors Norman Nie and Douglas Rivers; Stanford apparently has an arrangement for reduced-cost surveys with KN due to this relationship (at least judging from the number of Stanford professors and graduate students I see at conferences using KN-based experimental and survey data).

The other approach, employed by Harris Interactive, is to do post-hoc adjustments through a technique called “propensity weighting.” Harris has a truly Internet-based panel with a larger membership than KN’s panel (some of the difference in membership size is due to Harris also doing survey work outside the United States; however, they also use bigger samples for each survey for other reasons which I’ll get to shortly). Surveys are administered via the user’s web browser in response to invitations, and participants receive points for participating in surveys and also get entries in regular drawings for cash prizes. Instead of ensuring that participants are representative of the population at large, Harris uses propensity weighting to reweigh respondents based on their demographic and behavioral characteristics and the frequency of those characteristics in the population at large (weighting schemes for other survey techniques are generally based on the design of the sampling procedure). It is important to emphasize that Harris’ technique is not based on random samples. However, propensity weighting is designed to make the sample behave “as if” it was selected randomly.

Which technique is better? All of them have flaws, particularly if trying to reach certain subpopulations like the homeless and indigent (Harris’s technique might find the occasional homeless guy who checks his email at the library; KN and RDD would never catch him). For voting research, however, all of the techniques would probably fare better. Generally speaking participation is correlated with the variables that would be associated with having a telephone, a stable household, and Internet access. To the extent that some population groups are less likely to be online, propensity weighting should adjust for that (in the case of Harris).

Earlier this year, Political Analysis had an article that compared all three techniques, which found that generally RDD, KN, and Harris provided estimates of population parameters within the reported margin of error, with a few notable exceptions. For inferential statistics (trying to figure out the relationships among variables), which is generally what political scientists are interested in, the sampling issues are relatively unimportant, but for the descriptive statistics (trying to figure out what the population-at-large is like) pollsters and the media care about, there may be more important issues that weren’t addressed in the PA piece.

But generally both KN and Harris appear to have credible techniques that have been backed up with actual election results, so their conclusions are as likely to be correct as those of traditional surveys like the Field Poll and L.A. Times.

Today’s winner: the Toronto Star (in fairness, they were only picked on because they were in Google News; I wasn’t planning on continuing the north-of-the-border focus):

WASHINGTON—U.S. President George W. Bush conceded for the first time yesterday that the United States had no evidence indicating Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

In related news, I concede for the first time today that I have no evidence that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez plan to get married. Or that they don’t plan to get married. Or that they ever had sex, for that matter.

Vocabulary tip of the day: concession requires the retraction of a previously-held position. For example, Andrew “008” Gilligan conceded that he “sexed up” his own reporting about the alleged “sexing up” of the British government’s mojo-riffic weapons dossier. Bill Clinton conceded that he did have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky (although not in quite so few words, or at least not without employing unusual definitions of “is”, “alone”, and “sex”). The United States conceded its claim to British Columbia. Richard Nixon conceded that the United States was no longer interested in defending South Vietnam.

Show me evidence of George Bush claiming that “Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the Sept. 11 terror attacks,” and then you can use the verb concede. Until then, you can use other language, like “reiterated” and “smacked down Dick Cheney for saying stupid things on Meet the Press.”

Then again, this is the country that gave us Alanis Morissette’s definition of “irony,” loosely translated as “anything that sucks ass.” So perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that “concede” is Canadian for “says something that contradicts something we imagined that the speaker said earlier because it would be consistent with our political belief system.”

My copy of Virginia Postrel’s new book, The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness, had shown up in a box on my chair by the time I got to work this morning. I’ve only gotten through the Preface, but it’s been a good read so far. (I would have sat down at one of those nice new tables they have on the rear porch of Weir Hall and read some more, but a half-dozen other people had the same idea I had. They weren’t reading Virginia’s book, though.)

I also watched a bit of the CBC news on Newsworld International this morning—a rerun of last night’s National, with Peter Mansbridge looking appropriately dour, as always. Apparently the Alliance and Progressive Conservatives, Canada’s two main parties of the right, are making another run at a merged organization, tentatively to be named the Conservative Party. I’m not sure that it will fly. The PCs seem to me like warmed over British “one nation” Tories, while the Alliance seem more like the Texas GOP minus the libertarian instincts. More importantly, the Liberals are positioned to capture the median voter in Ontario and Quebec, which is where the votes are anyway under Canada’s system of not-quite-proportional allocation of seats in Parliament. So even if they pull off the grand alliance, I’m not sure it solves much in the long run. (Then again, I’ve been half-expecting Canada to collapse due to its own internal contradictions for the past decade. Of course, states with even less reason to exist, like Belgium, have persisted as well. Blame the Treaty of Westphalia.)

I also learned that a tenth dwarf was added to the presidential race on the Democratic side down here, some guy from Arkansas who apparently is a lot like Howard Dean but spends more time hanging out with war criminals (the latter part I learned from Matthew; Peter didn’t mention that part).

But that story got less play than news that (a) everyone in the media and Parliament is now treating Paul Martin like he’s the prime minister, instead of Jean Chrétien, and (b) Canada’s opening seven more consulates in the United States next year. Amazingly they’ve just gotten around to adding Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States. Apparently they’re also opening up in a place called “Raleigh-Durham,” which I was under the impression were actually two distinct cities. Then again, so once were Buda and Pest. Or, for that matter, Toronto and Etobicoke.

Mike Hollihan had running coverage of the hostage situation at Dyersburg State Community College yesterday. Nice job, Mike!

By the way, the current scoring is: Hollihan 1, GoMemphis Blogs 0 (forfeit, they didn’t show up for the event).

Kevin Drum has posted his interview with Paul Krugman. But the best example of Krugman’s worldview is actually from his new book, the Great Unraveling:

In fact, there’s ample evidence that key elements of the coalition that now runs the country believe that some long-established American political and social institutions should not, in principle, exist….Consider, for example….New Deal programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance, Great Society programs like Medicare….Or consider foreign policy….separation of church and state….The goal would seem to be something like this: a country that basically has no social safety net at home, which relies mainly on military force to enforce its will abroad, in which schools don’t teach evolution but do teach religion and — possibly — in which elections are only a formality….

Needless to say, the revelation in the interview that he regularly reads Atrios won’t come as much of a shock after that paragraph.

Daniel Drezner has more.

Glenn Reynolds unearths some good old-fashioned media manipulation. Of course, is it truly manipulation if the media outnumbers the subject (and manipulator) ten-to-one?

Samizdata reports that the people of Sweden have voted 56-41% against joining the single European currency, with turnout in the 80-85% range.

Try this drive on for size, from the fourth quarter of last night’s Ole Miss-ULM game:

               Kuecker, Tyler kickoff 58 yards to the UM7, Mike Espy return 24 yards to the
               UM31 (Richard, Damien;Payne, Gerard).
      M 1-10 M31   OLE MISS drive start at 09:38 (4th).
      M 1-10 M31   Jamal Pittman rush for 7 yards to the UM38 (Williams, S.).
      M 2-3  M38   Jamal Pittman rush for 16 yards to the ULM46, 1ST DOWN UM
                   (Hardman, T.;Shine, Nico).
      M 1-10 L46   Jamal Pittman rush for 5 yards to the ULM41 (Moore, Travin).
      M 2-5  L41   Jamal Pittman rush for 2 yards to the ULM39 (James, Chad).
      M 3-3  L39   Jamal Pittman rush for 2 yards to the ULM37.
      M 4-1  L37   Jamal Pittman rush for 18 yards to the ULM19, 1ST DOWN UM
                   (Williams, S.).
      M 1-10 L19   Jamal Pittman rush for 11 yards to the ULM8, 1ST DOWN UM
                   (Williams, S.).
      M 1-G  L08   Timeout Louisiana-Monroe, clock 05:50.
      M 1-G  L08   Jamal Pittman rush for 7 yards to the ULM1 (Robinson, L.).
      M 2-G  L01   Jamal Pittman rush for 1 yard to the ULM0, TOUCHDOWN, clock 05:01.
                   J. Nichols kick attempt good.

                                ================================
                                LOUISIANA-MONROE 14, OLE MISS 59
                                ================================

--------------- 9 plays, 69 yards, TOP 04:37 ---------------

Paul Krugman, in an apparent effort to rehabilitate his image in the blogosphere prior to the publication of his interview with Kevin Drum, had his research assistants write pens a ten page NYT Magazine article on tax policy. Robert Prather and Matthew Stinson have reactions, while Markus has a roundup of other reactions too. I think Prather is on to something when he writes:

That’s why I’m not bothered by the current “starve the beast” phenomenon; I know we will raise taxes in the future and am not bothered by it as long as it is accompanied by reform. The current system puts a $200 billion burden on the U.S. economy and is itself debilitating.

Matthew’s reaction concentrates on Krugman’s attempt to compare the U.S. tax situation with Alabama’s (a specious comparison at best; by all accounts, Alabama’s tax system is even more regressive than that non-income tax states like Florida and Texas, resembling Mississippi’s in its apparent progressivity coupled with absurdly generous deductions for itemizers), and notes that national conservatives’ meddling in Alabama will be counterproductive in the long run:

National conservatives attacked Riley and his tax referendum hoping this would become another Prop 13 moment of anti-tax consensus. This was wrong-headed and dare-I-say destructive to the Republican cause over the long term in Alabama. Think about it: the middle class people who voted down the tax increase, who, inexplicably, were going to have their taxes lowered by the referendum, are the same people who demand the kinds of government services that the tax increase was designed to pay for—education, law enforcement, and infrastructure. When Gov. Riley has to make cuts in these essential services, the fickle voters (Are there any other kinds?—ed. No.) will turn against Republicans in favor of moderate Democrats who will promise to restore funding.

That being said, one possible reason for Riley’s plan’s failure was that the new tax system proposed in the referendum wasn’t constrained with an effective check on the legislature’s ability to increase taxes at its whim in the future. If the root cause of a lot of middle class discontent with the plan was a (probably well-earned) distrust of the Alabama legislature, the failure to include a Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights or some other device to check tax increases was a major oversight in the plan.