Jacob T. Levy on his introduction of photos at his eponymous blog:

I hear that the interwebs are now capable of handling things that aren’t even text. (In my day, we browsed the interwebs on lynx in UNIX and read e-mail on Pine and we liked it!)

Heh; while my first exposure to true Internet access (in the summer of 1992, before the invention of the img tag and widespread use of the web) was rather more slick due to the wonders of NeXTSTEP, the ancient ancestor of Mac OS X, even that was an incredibly texty experience by today’s standards. Over the intervening years, I’ve certainly spent my fair share of time with lynx and Pine and their more modern siblings (elinks and mutt).

Via Dale Franks, the only political commentary that will be appearing on my office door this election season:

Steven Taylor is considering going dual-boot. For better or worse, I think Ubuntu is probably the best choice for a newbie these days, although my last lenny install was surprisingly painless (except for the whole “MacBooks have very funky partitioning” issue which I’ve never really been able to resolve to my satisfaction).

Matthew Yglesias demonstrates innumeracy in action:

We got an interesting experiment this weekend as Bill Maher’s anti-religious screed Religulous and David Zucker’s right-wing satire An American Carol both opened. The two films were about tied in terms of total revenue but Carol was on three times as many screens, so basically Religulous was far more successful.

I think this mostly reflects something I wrote about a couple of years ago — the moviegoing audience is very demographically similar to the Democratic Party voting audience. It’s disproportionately young, disproportionately childless, and tilted toward residents of big cities and away from residents of rural communities. Conversely, the audience for television news is demographically very conservative (older, white, and a bit more prosperous than average) which is one major reason TV news coverage tilts right. The big screen audience for what looks like a witless screed against God is just a lot bigger than the big screen audience for what looks like a witless screed against Michael Moore.

Actually, since total revenue for both movies was about the same, it would appear that the “big screen audience” for crappy polemical Bill Maher movies is about the same as the “big screen audience” for crappy polemical David Zucker movies. Further, since I’d guess Carol probably played in theaters with lower ticket prices on average than Religulous, the former probably did a little better in terms of the total audience.

Yglesias also makes the rather faulty assumption that the per-screen average revenue would remain flat as screens increased. This result only obtains if moviegoers don’t select theaters based on what movies are playing at them or if screens are very distant from each other geographically; while surely there are some people who just go to the movies to see something without deciding beforehand which movie to see, I doubt there are enough of these people to ensure Maher’s movie would gain a substantially larger audience, except in the relatively uncommon cases where the film just isn’t on at any theater in a metropolitan area and there is a substantial number of people who want to see it.

Besides, all the discerning moviegoers were at Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist this weekend anyway.

Daniel Drezner on the indeterminate future universe problem in politics:

[N]o one gets credit for stopping a meltdown if it doesn’t happen… [I]t was only after 9/11 that the American public was ready to take the actions that would have prevented 9/11.

A commenter at InsideHigherEd suggests a new system for ranking colleges:

One index of quality might be a compilation where college professors send their own children to college. These parents know what goes on inside a campus that affects students.

College instructors are the last people who would rely on U.S. News for information in where to send their own children. The high prestige universities are great places to get a graduate degree, but professors often see that the best undergraduate education lies elsewhere.

Of course, professors also know that at least in academic hiring (probably to a greater extent than most areas, except medicine and law), institutional prestige is a major factor in the decisionmaking process, so they may emphasize prestige more than is warranted. But the general principle is sound: be wary of an institution that a professor wouldn’t send their own kids to.

Fresh off contributing exactly nothing to the bailout debate in Washington, John McCain has decided to grace us with his presence at the first presidential debate tonight in Oxford. In case he hasn’t run his campaign enough into the ground this week, may I suggest that his handlers arrange a lengthy photo-op at the Cavalier Shoppe on his way to or from Oxford just to put the finishing touches on his apparent efforts to outdo Mondale and McGovern as a presidential loser.

So does this news mean I can kiss two of my credit card bills goodbye? (Sadly, no.) WaMu, we hardly knew ye.

Via Lee Sigelman, a ranking of the best cities for singles with Atlanta at the top. Laredo, no doubt to everyone’s shock and amazement, is unranked.

Via Ars Technica, yet another social networking site, this time for academics with extensive support for classifying yourself down to the most microscopic of subfields. So far it seems a little less sterile than LinkedIn, which is probably a good thing.

My profile is here, if you haven’t been blasted by an invite from me already.

Jim Henley reacts about the same way I did to becoming a proud stockholder of A-I-G.

I’m all for responsiveness to reasonable student feedback but this student complaint seems somewhat beyond the pale.

While Evo Morales attempts to hold onto power in Bolivia by defining genocide down, in Australia both the Labor prime minister and the new leader of the Liberal-National (right-wing) opposition support ending the monarchy and in Britain the slow-motion coup against Gordon Brown continues apace.

Hilzoy wonders why more people think Barack Obama will raise their taxes than think John McCain will, despite fancy graphs indicating that neither will raise most peoples’ taxes. Three broad hypotheses spring to mind:

1. Voters do not believe Democrats (and Obama in particular) are credible on promising tax cuts or holding the line on taxes. Obama’s vote for a budget resolution that contemplated raising taxes (even if, in of itself, it did not raise them) does not help his credibility on this score. The inscrutability of how Washington works to the average voter strikes again—a similar procedural-versus-substantive vote issue, after all, was the basis for John Kerry’s “for it before he was against it” problem.
2. Voters do not believe that the promises on the campaign trail regarding taxes reflect the situation that both candidates will face after the election. Presidents do not decide fiscal policy in a vacuum; instead, both will face a left-of-center Congress committed to both the appearance of fiscal responsibility and more progressive tax rates. For example, a “solidarity” tax increase on a greater portion of the “middle class” than anticipated by Obama (however “middle class” is defined) to fund programs like universal health care is not unlikely.
3. It’s all heuristics. Voters have no actual knowledge of either candidates’ tax plans (rationally or irrationally—I’d argue rationally, due in part to point 2) and are relying on a schematic conception of politics in which Democrats are seen as more likely to raise taxes than Republicans.

Notice in the full report of the poll results the graph labeled “Economic Groups Perceived to Benefit Most in an Obama or McCain Presidency,” in which the heuristic perceptions of the public comport to a greater degree to the promised tax plans, in large part because both candidates are promising plans that—in their effects on various subsets of the population—are more consistent with what we’d expect Republican and Democratic fiscal policies to emphasize.

Incidentally, none of these explanations require voters to even be aware of the campaign spin regarding Obama’s tax positions; one suspects most voters aren’t.

Welcome to TAMIU, officially the last place on all of Planet Earth to get a Starbucks.

I’ve always thought cooperative federalism was something of a misnomer, that whole “national drinking age” thing being just the tip of the coercive dimension of that state “cooperation”; now, via Jacob Levy, comes word of an SSRN article on uncooperative federalism.

Via Marvin King and Dad comes word that a minor blow-up is happening in Mississippi over the placement of the Musgrove-Wicker Senate contest on the state’s ballot, after Gov. Haley Barbour approved a sample ballot issued by Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann (both Republicans) placing that election at the bottom of the ballot, in apparent contradiction of a state law that requires federal contests to be listed at the top of the ballot. Following my general rule not to attribute to malice what may simply reflect ignorance or an honestly-held, different interpretation of the law, I won’t leap to the conclusion that Hosemann, who drafted the ballot and is relatively new to the job, is engaged in partisan shenanigans. But Hosemann and Barbour should nonetheless fix the sample ballot forthwith and save the state’s taxpayers the cost of litigation. (I have no particular dog in this fight; both Wicker and Musgrove are, in my opinion, unworthy of election to any high office beyond that of class dunce, given their track records in office.)

Over the longer term, while I am not fully convinced that “independent” electoral arrangements are in practice much more fair than partisan ones, the state legislature should at the very least modify the election code to ensure the full board of election commissioners—which also includes the state Attorney General—reviews the ballot before it is issued.

One of the more annoying experiences of my high school career was my AP American History course—and not just because I scored a 5 (the maximum score) on the AP exam and was the senior class award winner in social studies, yet somehow only earned a B in the course. The annoying-before-I-saw-my-grade aspect was that often it seemed like we were learning the textbook authors’ pet names for certain events in American history, or overly cute quotations, in lieu of whatever substantive event was being described. (AP history being 15 years in my past, I can’t remember any specific examples alas.)

Which gets me to the mini-brou-ha-ha about Sarah Palin’s interview with Charlie Gibson. Without wasting my time watching it, I’ll gladly concede the point that she is almost certainly as clueless about domestic and international politics as approximately 98.9% of the American public—which, if we were auditioning her for a slot on “Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?” would probably be less alarming than her current public audition to serve on the National Security Council.

That said, I can’t get too worked up about Palin’s apparent failure to recognize the term “Bush doctrine.” Indeed, most of the instances of the term a cursory Google search of whitehouse.gov uncovers come in questions from the media, mostly “gotcha” questions of the form “Is such-and-such an action consistent with the Bush doctrine?” By all means it is reasonable to inquire into Palin’s thoughts on how to combat al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, but a failure to recognize a cutesy inside-the-beltway label for a particular policy strikes me as rather less damning that whatever lack of substantive knowledge was displayed (again, given that I’m not going to waste any of my life watching the interview or reading the transcript).

Update: This argument is bolstered by the fact that Gibson apparently doesn’t know what the “Bush doctrine” is either. Oops.

Like Megan, I have to say that even though expected policy under McCain-Palin is better (= closer to both my preferences and general economic sanity) than under Obama-Biden, I still can’t bring myself to vote for the GOP ticket.* Perhaps I’m just taking solace in the fact that the Democrats can’t even govern as Democrats under unified government, much less divided government (see 1993–94).

* No doubt to the infinite surprise of my readers, I have never voted for a Republican presidential candidate, although I have voted for a Democrat for president.

Via Brendan Loy, word that Hurricane Ike is probably going to ruin your day if you live anywhere near landfall:

I expect Ike will generate a 10–15 foot storm surge along a 100-mile stretch of Texas coast from the eye landfall location, northwards. I urge Texas residents to take this storm very seriously and heed any evacuation orders given. Most of you living along the coast have never experienced a major hurricane, and Ike is capable of causing high loss of life in storm surge-prone areas. Tropical storm force winds will spread over the Texas coast beginning Friday afternoon, and evacuations must be completed by Friday morning. All airports in eastern Texas will be forced to close Friday night, and will probably remain closed most of Saturday. Ike had a good chance of becoming the most destructive hurricane in Texas history—though not the most powerful.

Words to live by… literally.

Is it November 5th yet?

AVSForum user DigaDo describes a high-tech new antenna technology for digital television. This advanced device, however, is not recommended for use outdoors or in damp environments.

A few bits and pieces I’ve learned or been told over the years:

• Create a word processor file each year. As you do things that need to go in your annual report (here it’s called PP&E), put things in it, so when you write the actual report you don’t have to remember what you were doing last September.
• Type up all your lecture notes and save them on your computer and as many thumb drives as you can find. If you already have handwritten notes, either scan them in and archive, or type them up. You never know when you’ll have to teach that “one time only” class again.
• “Face time” counts. Even though you will probably be at your least productive 8–5 weekdays in your office, being present and visible at least some of that time is a good thing. Also, try to get an office were your presence is difficult to overlook, even if you would rather hide in the corner suite.

Update: Another helpful hint from Michelle: “solicit advice and guidance from both junior and senior colleagues (they often like to give it and it will give you insights into dept politics, issues, and what they really care about for tenure).”

So, we’re now two games into the Houston Nutt era at Ole Miss and the record stands… exactly the same (1–1) as it did after two games of the Ed Orgeron era.

The similarities, though, seem to end there: instead of barely edging Memphis and losing by eight to Vandy the Rebels thumped the Tigers (admittedly, at home, and admittedly a Tiger team that this weekend just got beat by Rice, of all teams) and came within an arguably bogus pass interference call of a road victory against what appears to be the best team in the ACC this year (admittedly, not saying much considering the sorry state of the contemporary ACC), with the team missing two of the team’s key defensive starters for most of both contests (Peria Jerry played limited time against Wake, while Greg Hardy remains out).

I don’t know that Jevan Snead is going to make anyone in Oxford forget Eli Manning (call me back when Snead goes 28–28 in his first 28 pass attempts in a game), but he’s already helped me wash away the memory of the likes of Micheal Spurlock and Ethan Flatt. And, for better or worse Nutt has brought back the high drama of Rebel offensive playcalling in a way not seen since the traitorous Riverboat Gambler was roaming the sidelines at Vaught-Hemingway.

Is this the year the Rebels get back to a bowl for the first time since the Second Coming of Manning? The schedule looks favorable, although I only see one likely road win for the Rebels at this point (at sputtering Arkansas). But with Jerry back and Hardy on the mend, the Rebels will be tough to beat at home and might even be able to steal a second win on the road to move up beyond the Poulan Weed-Eater bowl-of-last-resort level.

* Yes, I know the Poulan Weed-Eater Bowl no longer exists, but it’s fun to type and represents the sort of crappy bowl game, usually held in Shreveport, the Rebels regularly attend.

Via Tom Vanderbilt, Time reports on the burgeoning roundabout craze in the U.S. Money quote:

[I]n seven years, Carmel[, Indiana] has seen a 78% drop in accidents involving injuries, not to mention a savings of some 24,000 gal. of gas per year per roundabout because of less car idling. “As our population densities become more like Europe’s,” says Mayor Jim Brainard, who received a climate-protection award this year from the U.S. Conference of Mayors, “roundabouts will become more popular.”

Alas, Laredo drivers will need to master driving in straight lines (much less going in circles) before roundabouts can succeed here. On the other hand, it’s impossible to run a red roundabout, so maybe there would be an improvement here after all.