(Click on the image for a larger view. 
(Click on the graph for a larger view.)Relative to their Democratic colleagues, Republican professors tend to assign more very low and very high grades: the share of the lowest grades (F, D-, D, D+, and C-) out of the total is 6.2 percent in courses taught by Republican professors and only 4.0 percent in courses taught by Democratic professors; the share of the highest grade (A+) out the total is 8.0 percent in courses taught by Republican professors and only 3.5 percent in courses taught by Democratic professors.
(MSU photo. Other pictures are here.) 
(Click on the graph for a larger view.)There is notable variation in academic experiences and outcomes across fields of study. . . .While appreciating the diverse causes of differences by field of study, we observed several patterns in our data:*“Improving Undergraduate Learning: Findings and Policy Recommendations from the SSRC-CLA Longitudinal Project” by Arum, Roksma, and Cho. (Full report downloadable here.)
Students majoring in traditional liberal-arts fields, including social science, humanities, natural science, and mathematics, demonstrated significantly higher gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills over time than students in other fields of study.
Students majoring in business, education, social work, and communications had the lowest measurable gains.
In life, events tend to follow patterns. People who commit crimes tend to be criminals, for example. Can anyone tell me any economists who have been convicted of violent sex crimes? Can anyone tell me of any heads of nonprofit international economic entities who have ever been charged and convicted of violent sexual crimes? Is it likely that just by chance this hotel maid found the only one in this category? Maybe Mr. Strauss-Kahn is guilty but if so, he is one of a kind, and criminals are not usually one of a kind.Drawing conclusions about an individual’s motivations, behavior, honesty, etc., based on these demographic characteristics – there’s a word for that: stereotyping.
What do we know about the complainant besides that she is a hotel maid? I am sure she is a fine woman. On the other hand, I have had hotel maids that were complete lunatics, stealing airline tickets from me, stealing money from me, throwing away important papers, stealing medications from me. How do we know that this woman's word was good enough to put Mr. Strauss-Kahn straight into a horrific jail? Putting a man in Riker's is serious business. Maybe more than a few minutes of investigation is merited before it's done.
Strauss-Kahn no longer electable for many French (Reuters)None of those headlines about Strauss-Kahn’s political future rests on actual evidence except perhaps a brief in-the-street interview or the estimate of some politician. Maybe DSK’s presidential career is fini, at least for now. But maybe it isn’t. The point is that the people who wrote those headlines and articles don’t really know what the electorate thinks. Like Louis XIV, they are conflating themselves with the nation. (Another post on this bit of journalistic arrogance is here.)
Strauss-Kahn Rape-Attempt Charge May End Presidential Prospects (Bloomberg )
Allegations leave presidency bid in tatters (Financial Times)
People Talking about Clinton: 'If He's Lying, It's Over' (AP, Jan. 22)Some pundits assured us that Clinton’s presidency was all but over. The nation would not tolerate such behavior. Sam Donaldson, a top reporter at ABC news, predicted that Clinton would resign within days. These predictions seemed like a good idea at the time. But Clinton remained in office.
Clinton's Cooked If It's Fire, Not Just Smoke (Daily News, Jan 22. 1998)
Public's Tolerance Wears Thin (Star-Ledger, Jan. 23)
One alternative would be for Congress and the Administration to collaborate on writing a new statute aimed more precisely at provocateurs like Mr. Assange. At a minimum, the Administration should throw the book at those who do the leaking, including the option of the death penalty. That would probably give second thoughts to the casual spy or to leakers who fancy themselves as idealists.Five months later, the WSJ announced its own version of WikiLeaks called SafeHouse. It sounded pretty good to me. It would do for (or to) capitalists what WikiLeaks did to governments.
Documents and databases: They're key to modern journalism. But they're almost always hidden behind locked doors, especially when they detail wrongdoing such as fraud, abuse, pollution, insider trading, and other harms. That's why we need your help.Business Insider dashed onto the field to lead the cheers, comparing the WSJ most favorably to WikiLeaks.
If you have newsworthy contracts, correspondence, emails, financial records or databases from companies, government agencies or non-profits, you can send them to us using the SafeHouse service.
[An informant] can simply and easily submit his documents to an organization with a reputation for journalistic excellence. The choice between the erratic Julian Assange and WSJ is not a tough one at all.Or is it?
Except when we have a separately negotiated confidentiality agreement… we reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and/or requests under legal process, to operate our systems properly, to protect the property or rights of Dow Jones or any affiliated companies, and to safeguard the interests of others.[emphasis added]There’s probably a sociological point here – something about technology and information and institutions. Or maybe just something about my own (temporary, I hope) credulity. As our great orator (and apparently great Who fan) said, “There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — [pause] — shame on you. Fool me — [pause] — You can't get fooled again.”
“What are your names?”Read the entire post (here). I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten more attention.
They tell him. He nods
“Your father,” he says to the one who threatened to rape me, “does he know this is how you act? He was an officer, yes? And he served in ...” (he mentions exactly and then turns to the other) “and your mother? Wasn't she the daughter of ...?”
They are both wide-eyed, yes, that is right,
“What would they think if they heard how you act? And my daughter? Let me tell you this about her; she has done many things that, if I had been her, I would not have done. But she has never once stopped being my daughter and I will never once let you do any harm to her. You will not take her from here. And, if you try, know that generations of her ancestors are looking down on you. Do you know what is our family name? You do? Then you know where we stood when Muhammad, peace be upon him, went to Medina, you know who it was who liberated al Quds, you know too, maybe, that my father fought to save this country from the foreigners and who he was, know who my uncles and my brothers were ... and if that doesn't shame you enough, you know my cousins and you will leave here. . . . .
And time froze when he stopped speaking. Now, they would either smack him down and beat him, rape me, and take us both away ... or ...
Reason: If big government is really the culprit, why do Sweden and many Scandinavian welfare states seem to be prospering? . . . Sweden is reasonably successful.
Hayek: Yes. But there is perhaps more social discontent in Sweden than in almost any other country I have been. The standard feeling that life is really not worth living is very strong in Sweden. Although they can hardly conceive of things being different than what they're used to, I think the doubt about their past doctrines is quite strong.
(Click on an image for a larger view.)
The objects themselves are not particularly intimate or revealing, and the women did not feel that Klein was intruding on their privacy. Instead, as Klein says, it is in talking about the the things in their purses that they vident leur sac. It suggests a new strategy for sociological interviews: start with tangible objects.
(Click on the graphic for a larger view.)
(Click on the graphic for a larger view).
(Click on a picture for a larger view.) 
or, especially, flowers.
The above scene is on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which celebrated its celebrated mass. Outside, things were much more secular (apparently, what happens in St. Patrick’s stays in St. Patrick’s).
And some of the guys dressed up in fancy suits to pose for the photographers.
This woman had her arms tattooed to match her skirt.
I did see one religious message, but even that one added a somewhat post-Biblical context.
New York City does not do much officially for Easter. The police wear their traditional hats.
I hope all readers of the Socioblog had a wonderful Easter.
No one told me to “be there or be square,” but everyone I met, it seemed, expected me to have fun.Her science adviser (“Have fun”), the nurse she saw regularly because she had not passed the TB skin test (“Have a good time”), and a sorority mother who
asked repeatedly, “Did you have fun?” after I visited the sorority house and dined with her girls.Cultural help for foreign students also included a midnight to 3 a.m. ride-around in a police cruiser.
In parting, I said goodbye to the officer, and he wished me “a fun time in America.”Not all cultures think so highly of fun, and I don’t just mean dour dictatorships and theocracies. In France, for example, as people mature into their late teens and beyond, they are supposed to become sérieux. Those stereotypical left-bank students deep in philosophical discussions. But look at the pictures here on US students’ dorm-room doors and on the walls of their rooms and Facebook pages. The dominant value is fun. The snapshots, with their laughter and exuberance and ubiquitous red plastic cups, proclaim the ideal: we are wild and crazy guys.
(Click on the chart for a larger view) A recent development in American culture is the emergence of what we may call “fun morality.” Here fun, from having been suspect if not taboo, has tended to become obligatory. Instead of feeling guilty for having too much fun, one is inclined to feel ashamed if one does not have enough.It often takes an outsider to see the obvious. I didn’t notice all those fun messages flowing in the media. But Martha Wolfenstein and my father did – they both had come of age in a pre-fun America. Then, forty-five years after Wolfenstein’s article, a Chinese girl arrives in the American heartland.
What a strange country, I thought, where fun, like good lighting, seemed mandatory.
Again, they don’t look so different (a video is here )
And then there’s the Japanese version. The switcheroo is unmistakeable, nor is there any attempt at misdirection by focusing the person’s attention on a map. The victims of the prank are asked to point the camera directly at the two young girls, who then become two old men So people do notice. But to befuddle them further, the experimenters add a gaffed Polaroid camera.How many of the following things make you angry or upset?Respondents were told not to say which ones pissed them off, merely how many. Researchers calculated the average number of items people found irritating. The second half got the same list but with one addition:
- The way gasoline prices keep going up.
- Professional athletes getting million dollar-plus salaries.
- Requiring seat belts to be used when driving.
- Large corporations polluting the environment.
If the other surveys are correct, adding this one item should increase the mean by no more than 10%. As it turned out, 26% of the electorate would be upset or angry about a woman president, considerably more than the 6% in the GSS sample who said they wouldn’t vote for a woman.
- A woman serving as president.
(Click on the photo for a larger view.)
(Click on the chart for a larger view.)
It reminds me of those photos (from the pre-Photoshop era) of now-divorced couples, the photo torn in half to remove a husband or wife. The 
Warning labels should inform right-wing students that economics will encourage their bad intellectual habits just as labels should inform left-wing students that sociology will encourage theirs.(Sociology faculty and students probably thought this was going to be about that other kind of labeling, an assumption that maybe illustrates Brad’s point.)
This morning I went to sign my dogs up for welfare. At first the lady said, “Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare.” So I explained to her that my dogs are mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who their Daddy’s are. They expect me to feed them, provide them with housing and medical care. So she looked in her policy book to see what it takes to qualify. My dogs get their first checks on Friday.The relative’s ignorance extends far beyond not knowing how to form plurals in written English, and Jenn provides, point by point, actual evidence that refutes the assumptions behind this supposed satire.
Damn, this is a great country! [emphasis in original]
Here’s why I don’t trust the Dems—I see them as the party of one marshmallow eaters.* They represent people who have less self-control. I fear they will cut my benefits, but not cut the benefits of people who didn’t save for retirement. . . . .Sumner is talking here not about the poor but about middle income (or somewhat higher) people who spent rather than saved. Still, the same moral sentiment underlies much opposition to policies designed to reduce inequality: they take from prudent ants and give to profligate grasshoppers.** The tone is different from the dogs-as-poor-people bit of hilarity. But it’s the same song, just played in a different key.
In my view there is nothing egalitarian about redistributing income from two marshmallow eaters to one marshmallow eaters. They’ve already had their fun when young, loading up their three car garages with all sorts of fun toys. I’ve never even had a garage. (full text here )
I started out life in physics and then mathematics, and at some point I switched over to become a sociologist—and in the process of transitioning, I noticed this interesting phenomenon: When people perceived me as a mathematician, and I would describe my research, they would say, "Wow, that's really fascinating. How do you figure these things out? It's complicated and difficult." But when a few years later I was describing the same work in terms of social phenomena and the behavior of people, fads and historical events, success and failure, and so on, people would say, "That sounds kind of obvious. Don’t we all know that?"It’s probably because we study people. Everybody has a working theory– probably several theories – about why people do what they do. Those ideas are dime a dozen. Ah, but scientists . . .
When someone tries to explain to us how electrons behave, we think it’s amazing and completely unintuitive, but when we explain how people behave, it always seems trivial.I’m not familiar with Watts’s work. Sight unseen I’m fairly sure I don’t have the math chops to handle much of it (the library call number prefixes on his earlier books are QA, not HM). It’s about social influence and networks – he takes issue with some of the “tipping point” and “small world” models. I might have better luck with his new book (published, less dauntingly, by Crown Business), Everything Is Obvious:* *Once You Know the Answer
| Enzo (1) | Ines (7) |
| Nathan (4) | Jade (9) |
| Tom (8) | Lola (10) |
“What does Fox News do on April Fool's Day?” is a question akin to “What do slutty nurses do on Halloween?”
Gaddafi Replaces Moussa Koussa with New Foreign Minister, Banana FannaNow, here’s the sociological connection. Andy Borowitz was a sociology researcher. Well, not quite. But he appears in the initial footnote of a classic article, Wendy Griswold’s “American Character and the American Novel” (AJS 1981).
The indefatigable research team consisted of Andy Borowitz . . . .Clearly, Borowitz coulda been a contender. Instead, he turned his back on sociological research (maybe he wasn’t all that indefatigable after all) and went with comedy. I guess it was a choice between sending out reprints or cashing in residuals. In Hollywood, he created “Fresh Prince,” which ran for six seasons and is probably still being recycled today somewhere on cable.
There are 52 women on the list of the top 1,000 economists. None of them blog.That was the subhead in a recent Christian Science Monitor article (“Where Are the Female Economist Bloggers?”) by Matthew Kahn.
I think we female economists have our own empirical (not just theoretical) reasons why those of us who blog aren’t the same people as those of us who are at the top of the REPEC* list. . . . It’s called we have and care about other things and people in our lives, not just our own individual, introspective views about how the supposed world around us supposedly works (in our own opinion)! And that’s even things and people other than what Matthew counts so endearingly as the “home production” sort of things–you know, “cooking and rearing children.”Kahn, besides speculating on why female economists don’t blog, also says why they should blog:
The shrewd academic uses his blog to market his ideas and to “amplif” his new academic results. This is a type of branding.But I think that when it comes to the reasons men blog – the things they care about – Lim Rogers and XKCD are closer to the mark.** It’s about Ego, though it usually marches under the banner of Principle.
| Jacob | Gabriel |
| Ethan | Nathan |
| Joshua | Isaiah |
| Noah | Isaac |
| David | Caleb |
| Benjamin | Jonathan |
| Elijah |
