Uncategorized
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Thomas Friedman turns lemonade into lemons
Yesterday’s Thomas Friedman column featured this clunker of a lede: While President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have gotten a lot of things right on foreign policy, they’ve made quite a mess in Israeli-Palestinian relations… Then again, the actors they’ve had to work with were both lemons… But you know what they say
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New paper on causal inference in social networks
Hans Noel and I have a forthcoming paper on the difficulties of estimating causal effects in longitudinal social network data that is now available online from Social Networks (gated). Here’s the abstract: The “unfriending” problem: The consequences of homophily in friendship retention for causal estimates of social influence An increasing number of scholars are using
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed (6/1-6/14) Brendan Nyhan Jun 14, 2011 at 3:02 PM Powered by Keepstream BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Possible first Obama scandal – “Lawmakers press feds for documents on cartel gun sales” http://j.mp/m5A3A2 Hearing Wed.: http://j.mp/lWbFTX Lawmakers press feds for documents on cartel gun sales | Chronicle | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle WASHINGTON – House
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Does legislative gridlock cause scandal?
On Tuesday, the blogger Nicholas Beaudrot suggested that the lack of legislative productivity in Congress was an underlying cause of the frenzy over Rep. Anthony Weiner’s online behavior: A conversation with a friend of mine helped me put a finger on just why it is that DC news coverage has felt like it’s had zero
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Twitter roundup
Twitter roundup (5/24-5/31) Brendan Nyhan May 31, 2011 at 11:49 AM Powered by Keepstream BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Don’t want to pick on undergrad but post hoc perceptions of who smiled more are not a good way to understand elections http://j.mp/linMEm RealClearPolitics – Articles – Print Article We can predict the answer to that question more than
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New column: Where are the Obama scandals?
I have a new column in Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball on the striking absence of Obama administration scandals. Here’s how it begins: One of the least remarked upon aspects of the Obama presidency has been the lack of scandals. Since Watergate, presidential and executive branch scandal has been an inescapable feature of the American presidency,
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Twitter roundup
Twitter roundup (5/18-5/24) Brendan Nyhan May 24, 2011 at 1:54 PM Powered by Keepstream BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Implausible @jpodhoretz claim — “Why They’re Not Running: $1 Billion Is Why” http://j.mp/jp2KGk So they would have run if Obama had $500M? Why They’re Not Running: $1 Billion Is Why « Commentary Magazine Mitch Daniels’s announcement that he’s not
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The use and abuse of bar graphs
Ken Schultz, a political scientist at Stanford, was inspired by the misleading Wall Street Journal graphic and disappeared Tax Foundation blog post to illustrate just how easy it is to manipulate bar graphs by changing the boundaries of the bins: I thought it would be an interesting exercise to see how easily someone without scruples
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Twitter roundup
Twitter roundup (5/12-5/18) Brendan Nyhan May 18, 2011 at 6:41 PM Powered by Keepstream BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @willwilkinson Romney and cognitive dissonance http://econ.st/ijVlaW Romney and cognitive dissonance May 17th 2011, 19:21 by W.W. | IOWA CITY FOR my money, the most interesting thing about Mitt Romney’s health-care speech last week wasn’t his struggle to defend
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Please Hammer don’t endorse ’em
A friend currently living in Jacksonville reports on the latest in C-list celebrity endorsements. Apparently, MC Hammer thinks City Council candidate Kimberly Daniels is “too legit to quit” (image from mailer): I’m hoping Vanilla Ice will back a competing candidate and they can battle: Update 5/18 9:45 AM: Daniels has a narrow lead going into