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POPSPsychology, Sociology most politically correct fields The first thing that Simmons does in the study with the database — which covers a range of disciplines and institution types — is to identify a politically correct cohort, reflecting largely common views on a set of issues that are seen as defining political correctness. He finds a set of issues that produce this cohort. The views are the belief that gender gaps in math and science fields are largely due to discrimination; support for affirmative action; and belief that discrimination is a key cause of racial inequities in American society. Generally, members of this cohort see race and gender as fundamental — and share that belief much more than beliefs about the curriculum or scholarship, such that the study says that “multiculturalism trumps postmodernism.” Via Tyler Cowen
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POPSFewer Belgians attending Mass 7% attend church weekly (11% a decade ago) 57% new born children are baptised (65% a decade ago) 26.5% opt for a church wedding (49% a decade ago) 61% for church funeral (76% a decade ago) The full press release (27 pages) is available in Dutch or French
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POPSLibertarian Paternalism This is a new one on me. From article: "That is not an oxymoron, they insist in their book. Rather it is a corrective to the longstanding assumption of policy makers that the average person is capable of thinking like Albert Einstein, storing as much memory as IBM's Big Blue, and exercising the willpower of Mahatma Gandhi. That is simply not how people are, they say. In reality human beings are lazy, busy, impulsive, inert, and irrational creatures highly susceptible to predictable biases and errors. That's why they can be nudged in socially desirable directions." "A nudge is thus any noncoercive alteration in the context in which people make decisions. The libertarian paternalism behind it is rooted in Thaler's lifelong fascination with the power of small, seemingly innocuous details — the arrangement of food in a cafeteria, the drawing of a small fly in the bowl of a urinal, a pattern of lines on the road — to influence people's behavior. "
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POPSIt's a Republic When will they learn, it's a Republic not a democracy. It is not about the popular vote, it's all about the states and the electoral college. And Hillary is a presidential candidate.
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POPSObama And Alinskyism
The Los Angeles Times, persuaded a Democrat-appointed judge in California to open the sealed divorce records of Obama's Republican opponent to a press fishing expedition. The resulting sex scandal cleared... With a $10 million campaign war chest from contributors, and with no Republican opponent who could garner much support, Obama had an open road to become the next U.S. Senator from Illinois. In April 2007, Obama addressed the National Action Network, a civil rights group founded by Al Sharpton. In 2007, then-presidential candidate Obama named Robert Malley, the Middle East and North Africa Program Director for the International Crisis Group, as a foreign policy advisor to his (Obama's) campaign. In March 2008, Al Sharpton, a strong supporter of Obama's presidential candidacy, stated that he spoke to Obama on a regular basis -- "two or three times a week." Sharpton also said that he had told Obama four months earlier, "I won't either endorse you or not endorse you.
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POPSObama's bitter comment: wrong on every count What Obama did was just parrot the conventional wisdom about small-town, working-class Americans. As political scientist Larry Bartels points out, the CW is wrong. Mr. Obama’s comments are supposed to be significant because of the popular perception that rural, working-class voters have abandoned the Democratic Party in recent decades and that the only way for Democrats to win them back is to cater to their cultural concerns. The reality is that John Kerry received a slender plurality of their votes in 2004, while John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, in the close elections of 1960 and 1968, lost them narrowly.
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POPSFull Yale Video Courses Available Online for Free! I personally recommend Professor Shelley Kegan's "Philosophy of death" class. It's a very interesting set of videos. You watch the entire course in your browser with good audio and video. He also gets into Plato's phaedo. Have a look!
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POPSHe Said He's Still Heading To California Tomorrow — "I've got my ticket!" But at the Orange County Republican dinner Saturday night, Rudy made a telling quip: "People pay a lot of money to spend the month of Florida in January." When the political science classes ponder the remarkable collapse of the Giuliani '08 campaign, they might come to think of it as a $40 million Florida vacation.
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POPSElection Fever Epidemic Hits World Much of the fervid absorption in the primaries and caucuses — accessible as never before on 24-hour satellite and cable television channels like CNN and Fox News — seems inspired by a hope that the American electoral process will end an era of foreign policy dominance by neoconservatives. It is, perhaps, too early to guess what specific changes Europeans and other non-Americans expect from a new government. Many of America’s Asian trading partners worry about what they see as Democratic proclivities toward economic protectionism and stricter targets on greenhouse gas emissions. But there are broader concerns. As Ramesh Thakur, a political science professor in India, wrote: “We foreigners can but pray that the new president, whoever he or she may be, will return America to its strengths, values and the tradition of exporting hope and other optimism. And so help to lift America and the world up, not tear one another down.”
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POPS'Promiscuity leads to lower grades' The poll comes only months after it was claimed Cambridge students were working as prostitutes, strippers and escorts to earn extra money. According to reports, some female students work as call girls and lapdancers while others are said to be signed up to a local escort agency.
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POPSM.I.T Open Courses I know that M.I.T. has been clipped in the past. However this is a list of updated courses. Please refrain from studying too hard during the festive season
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POPSHow much scientific abuse can a polar bear?
A favourite deceit of AGW sceptics is to present Bjorn Lomberg as a "scientist." He isn't. His PhD is in Political Science — a humanity. There are different methodologies between those used in "hard" and social sciences. Social sciences don't really use the scientific method. This is clearly demonstrated through out a recent Salon.com interview with Bjorn, and was especially telling in the discussion of Bjorn's use of polar bears. Here is a response to the writer quoting one expert's opinion (a front-line researcher in polar bears). "OK. But I've talked to a different expert that's up in Greenland, who works for the Danish government, and he has looked over my chapter, and said that it's OK." If only all experts were equal. Bjorn's referencing of another expert is supposed to counter the point, but he never makes a commitment on which has the better data and the better hypothesis — a fundamental step in science. We will be tested over the next twenty years, so we w
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POPS Germany Seeks Expansion of Computer Spying The purpose of government is to govern, not rule as a master. Good government doesn't need to spy on citizens. Ruling masters do. Democracy in actin? Now ask yourself, do you have a government, or a master? Sigh!
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POPS Ahmadinejad Pushing Iran Into Future Trouble It could be a risky bet. Ahmadinejad's main vulnerability is domestic: rising criticism from a public angry over the country's poor economy and from politicians disillusioned by what they call his mismanagement. Even some conservatives have expressed fears Ahmadinejad is pushing Iran into future trouble over the nuclear issue Further sanctions, even unilateral ones from the U.S., could hurt the economy more by further isolating it from international finance—and Iranians were already expressing worries over the new measures. Ahmadinejad, who faces elections in 2009, knows "jobless and poor people will not vote for him if his policies bring them more difficulties," said Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a political science professor at Tehran's Azad University. But he believes "unilateral economic sanctions by Washington are not strong enough (to hurt Iran) due to Iran's widespread economic relations with the world."
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POPS7 years later: I told you so! We're no longer hearing much about third parties in Amerika. What happened to them? Why don't we hear from them anymore? It's because they can no longer legally raise enough money to get their word out. The misnamed `campaign finance reform' actually outlawed the ability of all challengers to effectively raise funds for their campaigns. A better name for this heinous law would be `the Incumbent Protection Act', since that's precisely what it really does. And it does NOTHING to stop corruption in campaign financing. Rather, it has increased it, if anything. I warned about it years ago here: http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2002/022002/02152002/524933 So now that enough time has passed for everyone to see the results of this law, I can honestly say: I told you so!
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POPSThe New Nostradamus worth read the whole article. as they say: there is nothing new under the sun, but there is a lot of unknown there still 2be discovered .... -))
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