I’m still waiting for a review copy of Charles Stewart’s Analyzing Congress before deciding on my textbook requests for the Congress class I’m teaching in the spring—like most of my syllabi, this class has been historically heavy on CQ books (Congress and its Members, Congress Reconsidered, and Unorthodox Lawmaking), but teaching my American government class using Kernell and Jacobson’s Logic of American Politics has me in the mood to be a little more explicitly rat-choicey in the Congress class too. Last time I taught the class I also included Jacobson’s The Politics of Congressional Elections, but I’m getting a bit price-sensitive to the reading list so it may disappear. Or maybe I’m just bored with teaching elections stuff, since that’s what I’ve been doing this semester in my upper division seminar.

In other news, one of my loyal(?) readers has apparently taken to posting links to this blog on the various and sundry political science rumor mills out there. I suppose I ought to be flattered, but really the market isn’t about me: just ask any of the upwards of a dozen schools—some I would have given my left arm to teach at, some I would have been more ambivalent about—where I applied but (at least according to the rumor mills) shouldn’t expect to receive phone calls from. As for SLU… let’s just say I’m reasonably confident that the department is entertaining the possibility of hiring other candidates in preference to me, and on some level I’m fine with that; someone whose research and teaching interests didn’t overlap as much with Drs. Warren and/or Puro would probably be preferable to someone with more overlap (like me).

As for the market otherwise, this evening I did my first real cruise around the job listing sites in about a week and found the first genuinely exciting listing I’d seen in several weeks. We’ll see if my enthusiasm for the position translates into interest from the institution; somehow, judging from the past few months, I’m not overly optimistic. But, as they say in the lottery ads, you can’t win if you don’t play.

If there is a recurring fall “theme” here at Signifying Nothing, it’s my belief that the political science job market is fundamentally broken; the only candidates who are well-served by the market appear to be the 3–4 “star” ABDs every year and established scholars (the latter of whom don’t actually participate in the same job market), and the only employers who are well-served are those who ultimately get their pick of the litter from those categories. For everyone else, there’s the obscenely stupid APSA meat market that (except for the earliest-deadline institutions) really doesn’t work except as an impetus for a run on the hotel bar by candidates and search committee members alike.

Unlike political scientists, the economists have actually thought about these problems, and continue to refine their processes. A case in point: Stephen Karlson reports on the new ‘signaling’ mechanism that allows candidates to credibly indicate up to two positions that they are particularly interested in, getting around the problems of both private (every application including the boilerplate “I really want to teach at [Institution mail-merge name here]”) and public signals (the candidate declaring on his/her website what job he/she really wants, which probably doesn’t help the candidate with other job applications)* in cover letters and recommendations. Greg Mankiw and the AEA website explain the details.

Obviously getting political scientists to adopt a similar process would be like herding cats—but there is a strong case to be made that the lower-tier R1s and other schools would be best served by banding together and either getting the APSA to sponsor an AEA-like hiring event, or organizing their own event, in the November-January time frame where more serious interviews could take place than at the APSA meat market and departments would have a clearer idea of their needs and realistic prospects for attracting the top candidates.

Even absent a hiring conference, though, APSA could provide a similar credible signaling system for candidates in eJobs—if it were so inclined. Doing so, while a baby step towards a more useful market, would probably at least help a few candidates get on the shortlists they want to be on as opposed to the ones that departments think the candidates want to be on.

* As for me, I’ve made no real secret of my preferences, but if an R1 wants to pay my salary for a few years on the tenure track while I try to find a good liberal arts college that will take me I’m certainly not going to complain.

The Auburn game pretty much felt like the games against Georgia and Alabama this year: a game the Rebels could have won—perhaps even should have won—but for a few mistakes on both sides of the ball that are the result of two major factors: playing true freshmen and playing Schaeffer, who is still learning the offense due to arriving on campus in mid-August.

The good news for the Rebels is that they probably don’t have to worry about doing worse than last year’s three-win mark, with four wins highly likely and an outside shot at five wins if the Rebels can steal one in Red Stick against an LSU squad that’s not having its best year.

I found out today I made the shortlist for at least one other job. More please.

After a brief respite at home, it’s back on the road again tomorrow; I’m going to Memphis for the weekend to watch Ole Miss get trounced by play Auburn down in Oxford with my mom and my step-dad.

But never fear, posting won’t be going away… for reasons that deeply annoy me (largely the intersection of Charter’s unreliable cable modem service and AT&T’s nonexistent DSL in my little corner of Clayton), my mother’s house actually has better high-speed Internet access than mine.

I’m 99.8% sure the department decided on an interview list for “my” job today. Of course if it’s like typical faculty meetings I may be jumping the gun slightly, since the meeting only began an hour and a half ago.

After fiddling with my thermostat this afternoon, including partially disassembling it and then putting it back together, I got the heat to work in my apartment. I have no clue what I did, but whatever I did to it seems to have worked.

SLU’s computer system still refuses to believe I am teaching classes this semester, so I can’t enter midterm grades for them.

Mind you, I think assigning midterm grades is a waste of everyone’s time—and, from a faculty member’s perspective, counterproductive, as they are by definition imprecise and incomplete yet function as a ready source of student complaints—but I’d at least like the opportunity to abide by the rules and assign them nonetheless.

I’m back safe and sound in St. Louis, but my suitcase will be spending the night at Memphis International Airport. Good thing there isn’t anything important in there like my electric shaver and toothbrush. Oh, wait… there is.

My visit to New Orleans culminated in more dining and dancing yesterday, along with some DVD viewing and dog-walking. Alas, today I have to go home, and all I have to look forward to is spending Tuesday grading papers and exams so I can submit midterm grades by the end of tomorrow afternoon. But the good news is that I’ll be back in the Crescent City in about ten weeks for SPSA, or possibly sooner if one or more of the local universities are seriously interested in my job applications.

Kelly and I went to a ballroom/salsa dance thing tonight with some of her friends after an excellent dinner at Juan’s Flying Burrito. I am immensely surprised to find that I don’t completely suck at at least the rudiments of ballroom-style dancing, but salsa was a bit more of a challenge.

If it’s fourth down, and you’re on defense, and you are ten yards past the line of scrimmage, you should never under any circumstances intercept the ball… because, when you do, you just cost your team ten yards of field position.

I’m enjoying my visit to New Orleans thus far—except for a bit of rain this afternoon, the weather has been quite pleasant. I certainly got my exercise in today—I walked from my hotel two blocks south of Canal St to the Old Mint and back, at least 3 miles total—compensating somewhat for the beignets and hot chocolate Kelly and I had at Café du Monde last night, although I did have lunch at the Crescent City Brewhouse, probably making the effort less effective.

Someone visited my blog today and looked at 46 different pages. I really didn’t think the blog was that interesting, to be honest.

My vacation is now officially underway; here’s the view from my hotel room window:

As correctly guessed by Frequent Commenters Scott and Alfie, I am in New Orleans (although my flights are in and out of Baton Rouge). They share the rights to the official Signifying Nothing no-prize of the week, which is a free copy of the 2007 edition of the Spreadsheet of Death™ upon request.

I have decided to take a real vacation this weekend, courtesy of the good folks at Northwest Airlines, who graciously bumped me from a flight last Thanksgiving. I leave Friday morning and will be back Monday evening. My hotel will have free high-speed Internet access, so I’ll be able to blog from away from home. And, since I have a cell phone, I can basically keep where I’m going a secret from everybody (except the TSA) until I am there… so you can play “Where’s Chris Lawrence” in the comments. One rule: Alfie is not allowed to guess.

Your first free hint: I am going somewhere I can see the Ole Miss-Arkansas game on broadcast television. That isn’t why I picked the destination, but it is a bonus.

Your second free hint: it’s not Memphis, since I’m going there next weekend to see the Ole Miss-Auburn game with my mom and stepdad. But I will be connecting in Memphis (this is Northwest).

At the moment, the email system at SLU is pretty much choked, with no sign of a solution coming any time soon (and, no, ITS throwing more money at the problem is not a solution, it's a stopgap). I think it’s time for a replacement.

After various and sundry experimentation, I have concluded that no matter what I do, it will take me about 12 minutes to get to my Metrolink train Tuesday and Thursday mornings when I have my classes:

• I can walk to the Richmond Heights station. This takes 10–12 minutes, depending on the signal phases along Brentwood Blvd.
• I can drive to the Brentwood station—this takes about 7 minutes, but it takes me 5 to get in the car, get out, and walk through the parking garage construction zone to the station.
• I can ride a bus (WashU Gold #1) along Brentwood to the Richmond Heights station. This takes less time, but to ensure I make the bus I have to leave the apartment 10–12 minutes before it would get to the station. And the bus only runs every 30 minutes, so unless I time things well I’ll get to the station faster if I walk.

The ideal solution to this dilemma, of course, would be if Metro had put a park-and-ride lot at Richmond Heights right next to I-170. Or if they’d stuck a station at Brentwood (or Clayton Rd) and I-170 or in Clayton Corporate Park.

I have also figured out that I can drive to the Forest Park station… but that doesn’t get me to work any sooner than the other options, and there’s the non-negligible risk of not finding parking when I get there.

So, the commute choice is basically driven by my level of laziness, how nasty the weather is, and whether or not I plan on doing any grocery shopping at Sam’s or Dierberg’s after work; if I do, then taking the car to Brentwood makes sense. But this also exposes me to the temptation of having dinner “out,” which makes the not walking worse.

Megan takes a break from sewer policy issues (no, I’m not joking) to consider the elements of a good party. While my parties have never been as disastrous as the archetypical Mary Richards event, nonetheless I can’t say I’ve quite mastered the party maestroing art. Better to go to someone else’s and be a wallflower, methinks, although if I ever get back into the party-throwing game I suppose Megan’s advice is a good place to start.

Like Dan Drezner, I’m a little late to the discussion of the latest study of postwar casualties in Iraq that was recently published in the British medical journal The Lancet, following up an earlier study published in October 2004.

Setting aside the “October surprise” approach that this journal appears to be taking to these studies, there seem to be some methodological questions about the authors’ approach that are being raised; see Andrew Gelman and David Kane, the latter of whom is skeptical of the reported nonresponse rates—which do seem abnormally high, although Iraqis may be much more interested in responding to surveys than the typical citizen in developed (or even developing) countries, perhaps due to novelty effects. As David Adesnik notes, the folks at Iraq Body Count (an anti-war outfit) believe the numbers are seriously inflated as well, although this could just be a turf war among researchers rather than a legitimate grievance.

I think from my perspective the thing that jumps to mind in this discussion is “garbage in, garbage out”—basically, your statistical inferences about a population are only as good as your ability to get a true random sample and minimize response bias; this is Stats 101. These issues are problematic in developed countries, much less in countries undergoing civil upheaval, and solving them is not easy (look at the work of Leslie Kish if you don’t believe me). Does that mean that the numbers are wrong?—no, not necessarily. But my spidey sense tingles nonetheless.

I am in the rather odd position of now having two declared gubernatorial candidates on my blogroll, which has to be some sort of record.

Incidentally, Karlson’s rhetorical question—can’t they both lose?—has been plaguing my thoughts about the Missouri U.S. senatorial race too, wherein we have a choice between an anti-cloning clone of John Ashcroft and someone who was clearly out of her depth as state auditor, much less as a national legislator. At this point, I’m trying to decide between exercising my nonseparable preferences and voting in favor of divided government, even though I’d rather be represented by a broken vacuum cleaner than Claire McCaskill, or voting for Frank Gilmour, the Libertarian candidate, for purely symbolic reasons, even though I think his position on Iraq is dopey and his moustache is creepy-looking.

At least there will be some ballot propositions to make my election day amusing.

This weekend’s disgusting display of thuggish behavior by the Miami and Florida International football teams is a black eye on college football—and one that Miami president Donna Shalala is not treating very seriously to say the least.

Given the Miami program’s long and storied history as a rogue organization under a series of coaches, the NCAA would be more than justified in imposing the death penalty at this point—and if Shalala had any guts, she’d impose it herself, along with demoting Miami out of Division I-A and banning the program’s alumni (I advisedly hesitate to use the word “graduates”)—including former Miami receiver Lamar Thomas, who functioned as a de facto cheerleader for the brawl from the television broadcast booth—from having anything to do with Miami football in the future.

Update: Prof. Karlson proves prescient; I too wondered what exact qualifications Shalala had for running a major research university, and never really thought being known in recent years solely for being a FOB, despite her previous appointment at Wisconsin, was either a necessary or sufficient condition.

Ilya Somin has a reaction to the discussion of Moneyball hiring in academe sparked by his recent post.

Prof. Karlson posts an initial reaction to the contributions of Eugene Hicock to the debate over the future of higher education in the United States:

Answer me this: why isn’t there a reality show titled Who Wants to Marry a Ph.D? You’d think that casting would be able to identify gold-diggers willing to feign an interest in Proust or obscure varietals to land someone as overpaid and underworked as columns like Mr Hickok’s suggest populate the ranks of the professoriate.

I am not totally unsympathetic with Hicock’s broader interest in assessing the quality of higher education, at least to the extent that taxpayers ought to be entitled to some measurement of the effectiveness of the educations they are subsidizing and the efficiency of use to which those funds are put, but his rhetoric—and factual errors—are hardly recruiting allies in the professoriate.

Great, another game the Rebels could have won if they’d just played a little better down the stretch. This trend is starting to get annoying—and I’m probably more annoyed at the outcome of this game because it wasn’t a blowout like I expected it to be.