Monthly Archives: October 2008

Most Effective Commercial of the Year?

Posted on October 17, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

This commercial for Tom Udall (NM Senate candidate) has to be near the top of the 'best' list for this cycle.

But I think it's beat by this anti-Palin commercial called Choice?

Please feel free to nominate other contenders in the comments.

Posted in Politics: US: 2008 Elections | Comments Off on Most Effective Commercial of the Year?

Paranoia Strikes Deep in the Heartland (Countdown Edition)

Posted on October 16, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

The Booman Tribune points to this Al Jazeera news report finding hate and fear in Ohio.

Gonna be a rough (almost) three weeks…

Posted in Politics: US: 2008 Elections | Comments Off on Paranoia Strikes Deep in the Heartland (Countdown Edition)

The Great Debate

Posted on October 16, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

Further proof that debates do a bad job of raising the tone in America. (Warning: not politically correct or polite, but pretty funny except for the ending.)


(Thank you to A. for the link.)

Posted in Completely Different | Comments Off on The Great Debate

Law on the Sharp End

Posted on October 15, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

Under the Supreme Court's decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., students in public schools are allowed to wear political statements to school (the case concerned black armbands protesting the Vietnam war, back when we had student protests against wars), so long as they are not “disruptive”.

The application of this standard has caused considerable angst over the years, with school Principals sometimes allowing what to my eye is a 'heckler's veto' when they forbid some controversial statements because it could cause trouble. The cases as a group don't make a whole lot of sense to me (e.g. no to a T-shirt with a gun, yes to a pro-gay rights shirt, no (mostly) to the confederate flag, and so on). But that's not the point of this story.

One of my sons goes to public school. We were talking this morning on the way in, and we got around to whether people wore Obama or McCain buttons to school.

“We're not allowed to do that,” he said.

My lawyer brain lit up with a big blinking TINKER! sign.

“Why not?” I asked very calmly. (LAWSUIT! LAWSUIT! I'm thinking.)

“Because we're not allowed to have anything sharp, and the buttons have sharp parts [pins] on the back. Teachers can wear them, but we can't.”

“Oh. Would you be allowed to wear a sticker?”

“Sure.”

We often hear that law on the sharp end is different from law in the books. Here's a content-neutral prohibition — part of a general zero-tolerance policy on weapons and the like — that I imagine the school could successfully defend as a safety issue in almost any court. And yet it shuts down a whole range of political speech.

Posted in Law: Constitutional Law | 3 Comments

In the Interests of (Social) Science (Second Repeat)

Posted on October 15, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

According to a very polite email I got four weeks ago, a research team from the Psychology Department at New York University, headed by Professor Yaacov Trope and supported by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the cognitive causes of voting behavior, political preferences, and candidate evaluations throughout the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.

They're doing a study and in the hope of getting politically aware respondents are asking bloggers to pass on their request to fill out their survey. The study will, they hope, “shed light on the information people use to inform evaluations during the last few weeks before the election”. They “seek respondents of all political leanings from all over the country (and from the rest of the world)” to complete a 15-minute questionnaire, the responses to which they promise will be completely anonymous.

It looks legit.

One interesting aspect of the request is that I turn off comments on this item: “a necessary precaution we have to take in order to avoid the bias that is likely to result when new respondents see comments about the survey before taking it.” That sounds sensible, so I've complied with the request.

Another is that they want time series data:

… we would like to have respondents complete the survey throughout the days leading up to the Election. To this end, if would be ideal if you were willing to have the link appear (i.e., repost it) four times, in equally spaced out intervals (about every two weeks), with the first running asap and the last running several days prior to Election Day. Of course, if you would be willing to post it even once, it would already be a great help to us.

So, what the heck, I've queued it up for science. Excuse the repeats.

Posted in Politics: US | Comments Off on In the Interests of (Social) Science (Second Repeat)

Dysfunctional Doesn’t Cover the Half of It

Posted on October 14, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

At first glance, the situation described here seems callous beyond weird: Dembot – Open Letter to James C. Mullen, CEO of Biogen.

There is a method to the madness, described here but any system which produces this outcome is worse than broken.

Posted in Science/Medicine | Comments Off on Dysfunctional Doesn’t Cover the Half of It