James Joyner excerpts at length from the latest wisdom from on high produced by the great Oracle of our age, Dr. Larry Sabato, who James bylines (fairly appropriately) as “a TV talking head who sometimes teaches political science at UVA.”

I actually don’t really disagree with Sabato’s assessments (if North Carolina is in play, Bush is essentially fucked—by that point, any normal vote model tells you he’s already lost the swing states), but what’s with all this “we” crap, kemosabe?

Besides, I don’t think Edwards is on the Democratic ticket for regional considerations—he’s there because the base loves his stump abilities, which work just as well in Detroit as they do in Durham.

Lest I be seen as too hard on Matt Yglesias, Pejman Yousefzadeh provides the counterpoint. Surely he must recall the 2000 presidential campaign, during which our current president had less command of the names of foreign leaders than my then one-year-old cousin did.

Well, you’ve got to concede that at least Matthew Yglesias freely acknowledges his newfound status as a Democratic party hack:

Three, and most least importantly, I’d gone way out on a limb with the Gephardt-bashing and wasn’t looking forward to needing to defend him after all once he got the nomination.

Yes, heaven forbid that Yglesias actually not defend the indefensible. After all, there’s an election to be won, so who wants to be stuck with taking a stand on principle?

Update: Yglesias has updated his post to indicate he was joking on this point. I prefer to think of it as an inadvertently revealed preference, but since he went to Harvard and I didn’t, I shall give him the benefit of the doubt.

James Joyner echos my month-old hypothesis on weblog comments, writing in response to the decision to shut down comments at The Command Post:

Unfortunately, there seems to be a strange variation on the Gas Law with regard to blog comments: As blog readership expands, the quality of comments declines geometrically. When OTB had 500 readers a day, the vast majority of the comments—whether from people who agreed or disagreed with me—were quite good. With readership in the 5000–10,000 range, most comments are crap. Reading—let alone policing—the comments gets to be more trouble than it’s worth.

For my part, at least, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the lack of acrimony and vitriol since enabling comments here at Signifying Nothing, but—then again—our little corner of the blogosphere only attracts about 1/40th of James’ daily readership.

It appears that the Kerry Veepstakes will come to an end today. Will Collier is betting on Gephardt, both Dan Drezner (who thinks Edwards is the man) and Matt Yglesias think Gephardt would be a bad choice, and Robert Garcia Tagorda is, as they used to say, afk.

I really don’t care much either way (except that it’ll be a relief to go from the endless McCain speculation to the endless explanations of why the selectee is inferior to McCain), but I think the better choice—grudges and ego aside—is John Edwards. I suspect this election is largely going to revolve around motivating the base to turn out,* and Edwards is far better on the stump with Democratic constituencies than Gephardt—or, for that matter, Kerry—is. Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that Dick Cheney would wipe the floor with Gephardt in the veep debate, while I think Edwards could hold his own.

Chip Taylor notes the current congressional squabble over the distribution of highway trust fund money. He writes:

Of course, if every state got back exactly what its residents paid in, the main purpose of the federal tax and trust fund would be to allow the feds to dictate highway-related laws: drinking ages, BAC levels, open-container laws and the like. Come to think of it, that is likely the main purpose now.

Bingo.

Of course, now the sicko social scientist in me wants to construct an econometric model of state highway trust fund returns.

Ed Cone and OxBlogger David Adesnik are having a small tête-à-tête over Adesnik’s critique of a Onion piece entitled “American People Ruled Unfit to Govern.”†

Rather than wade into the animosity between Messrs. Cone and Adesnik, I think there’s an important corrective to be made to Adesnik’s unyielding “faith in the aggregate rationality of the American public.” Adesnik writes:

As I’ve explained before, the American public actually has a very strong record of rational decision-making:

Before the 1980s, it was taken for granted that the American public had volatile and incoherent opinions about politics, both foreign and domestic. By extension, this volatility and incoherence rendered Americans vulnerable to manipulation by both the media and the government.

In the 1980s, scholars began to discover that the premise of volatility and incoherence had led public opinion researchers to rely on methods that created an impression of volatility and incoherence even when there was none. In contrast, the United States had a rational public that derived its opinions on current events from a fixed set of values and updated its opinions when new information became available to it.

This conclusion reflects the research of America’s leading experts on public opinion, most importantly Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro.

I’m afraid Adesnik tells half the story; while a few of America’s leading experts on public opinion do agree on the existence of “aggregate rationality,” many others do not—including, ironically, the self-same Benjamin Page, whose more recent book Who Deliberates? argues that this aggregate rationality is skewed by the nature of public debate.

Perhaps the most promising effort to bolster the “responsible electorate” view is Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen’s work on affective intelligence, which largely rejects both aggregate rationality and the Michigan “normal vote” approach in favor of an explanation of politics based on emotional (or “affective”) reactions by voters.

That said, I generally agree with Adesnik’s view that the elitist perspective (captured by the Onion satire) of an American* public that is incompetent to manage its own affairs is inherently insulting; however, I’d argue that this is more the result of unrealistic expectations of a democratic public (fostered, ironically, in the writings of men like Thomas Jefferson and Alexis de Tocqueville, often viewed as keen observers of the common man) than it has to do with embittered elitism per se.

More of interest here.

To echo Steven Taylor: Happy Independence Day #228.

If your power goes out for 30 minutes, but for the first 20 minutes you only think it’s out in the context of a bizarre dream, as your brain hurriedly tries to establish some in-dream reason why you suddenly feel like you are on a visit to the swamps of Southeast Asia (which is basically what summer feels like in Mississippi), does that mean that really your power was only out for 10 minutes?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Will Baude is doing his best to promote International Kissing Day, July 6, introduced to these fair shores by Amber Taylor (who, incidentally, only seems to get linked by Glenn Reynolds when posting in the realm of making out).

To the attention of my readers in the greater Ann Arbor area: help! Any and all assistance greatly appreciated (via email).

I’ve posted a review of the game El Grande over at Settling Catan.

Dan Drezner and Alex Knapp have staked out positions roughly around Andrew Sullivan’s belief that there’s a coming civil war in the GOP.

Both Dan and Sullivan, however, make the classic “hammer-nail” mistake: Sullivan expects a rift over cultural issues—gay marriage and the like—while Dan expects it to be over foreign policy (and, to a lesser extent, budget issues). Both, I think, underestimate the elite consensus among the Republicans in Congress to tolerate socially conservative positions and spending increases (so long as they keep Bush in the White House) and overestimate the salience of foreign policy issues to the rank-and-file in Congress. If Bush loses, chances are many of the “moderate” Republicans will lose too—moderates tend to be in more competitive House seats—so, if anything, a Bush loss should lead to a more coherent and socially conservative party, who no doubt will be determined to make a Kerry administration the least productive administration in American history.

On the other hand, should Bush be re-elected, one suspects he will be more concerned with his legacy—and, by then, with an economic recovery underway he should be able to make the tax cuts quasi-permanent without restraining domestic spending. Since, rhetortic aside, there are surprisingly few Republicans on the Hill who care about spending restraint (that’d be Ron Paul and, er, uh, Ron Paul), this outcome seems unlikely to result in a GOP fissure either.

So, wishful thinking aside, I don’t think any of this will happen.

I think evidence of middle age is when you start to take interest in neighborhood revitalization efforts. Next thing you know, I’ll be showing up at resident association meetings and writing churlish letters to the editor.

Kate Malcolm has decided she has little use for core curricula:

I have a problem with [the liberal arts approach to] higher education. It seems to me that this approach assumes that college is necessary to be a productive member of society—“an educated citizen.” It also seems to assume that the quality of education at these universities would not decline if they imposed a larger core of required classes. I can’t say this for certain, but I believe that a larger core of required classes would likely result in bigger, less personable, less detailed classes. It might result in less motivated, less interested professors. It most certainly would sap resources from other courses. And it would also force specialized education more strongly into the graduate realm, depriving students who can’t afford those extra years (for one reason or another) of that educational opportunity.

I say phooey on the silly report. Keep the core out of our universities.

I must beg to differ with Ms. Malcolm, on at least a couple of her points. There is nothing inherent about a core curriculum that requires large, impersonal classes—such an approach is often advocated by penny-pinching college bureaucrats, but that has more to do with penny-pinching than any good pedagogical reason why Macroeconomics should be taught in groups of 100 instead of groups of 10.

To the larger point, I think a liberal undergraduate education is largely necessary to be a fully-versed, competent citizen. The purpose of a university or other four-year institution is not vocational training—if you want that, go to Ivy Tech, or go to engineering school. But no undergraduate degree outside engineering and the “applied sciences” (what respectable colleges call their vocational programs)—with the possible exception of a teaching degree—makes any claim that the degree will make you thoroughly competent in that field. Degrees in the liberal arts and sciences are intended as training in general competencies—how to think scientifically, how to come to your own conclusions based on information, how to think—rather than specific, rigorous training in the minutae of a particular field of knowledge, which is the goal of graduate and professional education (law school, medical school, et cetera).

And, in general, I think (in retrospect; as an undergraduate, I probably concurred with Ms. Malcolm’s assessment) that this is the correct approach—specialists are pretty useless outside their field of expertise without a general education to back it up. Witness the travails of modern journalists, who—armed with a B.A. in communications or some other “soft” specialized degree—routinely butcher the basics of the arts, humanities, sciences and mathematics, and confuse the common consensus of their colleagues with “objectivity,” all because their basic knowledge extends no further than a modicum of grammar and the ability to produce prose in “inverted pyramid” form. Those who deride the inability of the American press to “nail” the president might do well to remember that, “chimp” or not, he’s probably significantly more broadly educated than his would-be interrogators.

More core thoughts here.

Update: Stephen Karlson argues that Ms. Malcolm and I are talking past one another, although I personally don’t see it. My conception of the core is largely (though not completely) in line with that expressed in Millsaps’ core curriculum

Who would have thought that updating two syllabi for classes you’ve already taught before would take so long? Now, the fun part: writing a syllabus from scratch for constitutional law…

Pieter of Peaktalk notes an interesting immigration pattern. One suspects, however, that he underestimates the number of reliable NDP voters among my northward-bound ex-countrymen. Of course, the substantive effects of the migration are the same either way.

From Scipio comes this word:

In court on Friday, Judge Pickard announced that he was going to effectively bar asbestos and silica products liability cases in Jefferson and Claiborne Counties, because about half of every jury pool consists of named plaintiffs in asbestos and silica cases. Accordingly, the defendants would not be able to ever get a fair trial in those two counties.

I don’t know what’s more disturbing: that half the people of two counties are named plaintiffs in liability cases, or that it took half the people of two counties being named plaintiffs in liability cases to get any meaningful tort reform in this state.

Interesting statistics: in 2000 Jefferson County had 9,740 people, 86.7% of whom were black (the highest proportion of any Mississippi county), while Claiborne County’s population was 11,831, 84.4% of whom were black (2nd). Mississippi as a whole had 2.844 million people in 82 counties, 36.6% of whom were black; the median county propulation was 22,374, and the median percentage black in a county was 37.5% (μ=39.6%, σ=20.2).

Brian J. Noggle explains the physics behind getting “free” stuff (well, it’s not free—usually, someone else paid for it and got screwed over) from vending machines, an art mastered by many a college student over the years.

My advice: although “tipping” the vending machine may not vend free product (as the labels say), it usually manages to dislodge any loosely-hanging items that failed to vend properly. Just don’t do it when anyone else is around.

Laura of Apartment 11D is understandably quite annoyed at the public response that at least one (presumably prominent, although I haven’t seen the post in question) blogger gave to her survey.

I generally agree that, ethically, a good blogger will provide readers with an opportunity to have opposing views heard, at least in the form of trackbacks. It is disappointing that many “big boys” of the Blogosphere like Glenn Reynolds, Josh Marshall, the Volokh Conspiracy, and Andrew Sullivan don’t use “real” Trackbacks—Volokh relies on Technorati, which isn’t a proper pingback/trackback service, while Reynolds, Marshall, and Sullivan don’t even go that far; Sullivan accepts “reader mail,” but much of it is buried and all is stripped of any way to tell how authoritative the response is.

Laura cites Usenet as a more “democratic” medium; it is, in the sense that it does facilitate conversation more readily, but there are significant drawbacks to it—most notably, no inherent ability to enforce strong identities of participants in the discussion, which leads to the sort of trollish behavior that one finds at the comment sections of some prominent weblogs (or inmate-run asylums like Slashdot and K5), not to mention issues of spam, off-topic discussion, gratuitous vulgarity, and other vices large and small. The “decline of Usenet,” mind you, has been a staple of Internet discussion since at least 1992, when I was first exposed to it, so it has proven to be more resiliant than one might have thought.

In an attempt to curb underage drinking, Missouri has passed a new law which goes into effect Thursday, requiring beer kegs to be registered to their buyers.

The law requires retailers to attach a tag that will allow the keg to be traced back to the buyer. The store must keep records for three months with the buyer's name, address and birth date.

The idea is that if someone bought a keg and supplied it to teenagers, and the party was broken up, law enforcement could identify who provided the alcohol and pursue charges.

They'll take my beer when they pry it from my cold dead hands!

The election came and went, and, while the Liberals did beat the Conservatives in the realm of seat counts, neither side (apparently, pending recounts) won enough to form even a coalition government with a natural partner (a Liberal–Bloc Quebecois coalition would work in terms of seat count, but not in terms of ideology). Collin May suspects the real winner in all this is Alberta premier Ralph Klein, while Albertan Colby Cosh does his postmortem duties. In any event, virtually nobody expects this parliament to last very long.

Apparently the use of cell phones, like everything else it seems (except khat), leads to reduced sperm counts in men.

Meanwhile, I can’t tell if Amber Taylor is upset that these inanimate objects are sexist in their effects or just interested in obtaining an inexpensive form of contraception.

According to this story in the New Zealand Herald, the terrorist menace may have a new weapon: booby-trapped beer coolers!

Security officials have warned of a possible new weapon in the terrorist arsenal - booby-trapped beer coolers.

Law-enforcement officials in the United States have been warned to be alert for the enticing bombs.

The warning was sent to 18,000 law-enforcement groups by the FBI last week, Time magazine reported.

Is nothing sacred to those barbarians?