Two Pictures

From Gallup/538, about party ID (Red is if the President was a Republican at the time the respondant turned 18, Blue had a Dem Pres at age 18, Green line shows strength of Democratic party (Dem Party ID minus GOP Party ID) - It's fascinating how it tracks pretty darn well: Dem Pres=More Republicans, generally, Bad GOP=More Dems (although LBJ, Reagan, and Eisenhower seem to buck the trend a tiny bit.) Sorry, this description is confusing. But I know what it's saying so, ha.















Today's amusement:

Finding consumer equillibrium for babies?

Some people don't have enough: "Dr Zavos said yesterday that this was just the "first chapter" in his ongoing and serious attempts at producing a baby cloned from the skin cells of its "parent"...Little Cady died aged 10 in a car crash in the US. Her blood cells were frozen and sent to Dr Zavos, who fused them with cow eggs to create cloned human-animal hybrid embryos." Some people have too many: "The pregnancy was unexpected, and for one 32-year-old single mother in Syracuse, New York, the ailing economy became a factor in her decision to have an abortion." (funny story: the first time I saw that article, there was a picture of an ultrasound attached...It's gone now...)

On a lighter note, this type of thing is one more reason why I so enjoy baseball...What nerds. But how cool :) And there's nothing like thrift in government to inspire the citizenry. Obama has pledged to cut $100 million from his $3.4 billion budget. The one and only Greg Mankiw puts in perspective:

• "[I]magine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had to be cut? By $3 over the course of the year--approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year."
  

But have no fear, says Roger Simon: "In the future, because of Janet Napolitano, may her name forever be praised, our executive branch will buy its office supplies in bulk."

Lastly, this article was handed out by our "development" (read: fund-raising) crew today...Read it. It gets a little creepy: "See if you can adopt the same breathing pattern as your prospect. In doing so, it is helpful to observe the rise and fall of your prospect's chest or shoulders for cues. Of course, use your peripheral vision to do this so you are always maintaining eye contact. Synchronized breathing between you and your prospect is such a subtle thing, yet people really pick up on it." Creeped out right about now.

A link purge (in honor of Stalin's Birthday)

This will (hopefully) be the only time I ever link to a Playboy article, but I couldn't see this on Yahoo! News without finding (to my great relief) that ND did not make this prestigious list (I do note, however, that WSU and UCSB are both included)

The Economic Crisis in a (humorous) nutshell:




If this story doesn't tug at your heartstrings a little, well, not sure what to tell you. "Last August a 26-year-old dancer named Liu Yan was supposed to give the performance of her life at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics."

I skimmed the much-hyped article about the "Death of Christian America" in Newsweek, and didn't find it particularly insightful, but I will (possibly) get back to it at some point.

A couple weeks ago, Father Dailey mentioned this great quote from Pope Benedict during his homily Nationals Stadium last year: "[The challenges of today] call for cultivating a mindset, an intellectual "culture", which is genuinely Catholic, confident in the profound harmony of faith and reason, and prepared to bring the richness of faith's vision to bear on the urgent issues which affect the future of American society...Those who have hope must live different lives!" No, that's not directed at anyone...

Speaking of Catholicism, it's nice to know that the enlightened progressives among us find a use for the Church every now and then...I have to say, the 65-47 Catholic/Protestant split really surprised me.

Lastly, "We can’t say that use of Facebook leads to lower grades and less studying – but we did find a relationship there." Granted, I don't know what the repubalbility of "Science Daily" is, and correlation does not prove causation by any means, it's still gives one a little pause.

! <3 c0|\|43$$!0|\|

A couple Holy Saturday links:

"For all of his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades." Pew says 61 point-differential. Now, I am going to be the first (well, probably not, but proverbially) to blame this on El Rusho, et al., but I think it does speak to the fact that extremism is no longer the province of one persuasion or the other. I think that both sides are guilty in the same the way that both sides are guilty for cramming as much stuff down as they can and incurring it upon themselves (see: Patriot Act, ARRA.)

From Harvey Mansfield, via AEI:

• "What has happened in the last few months should give them pause. It should make them consider the necessity of looking at economics from the outside, at how it looks and behaves as a whole...Virtue is a habit, not a calculation. It reflects the fact that human beings live in an overall way of life, in diverse ways of life; it is not possible for us, or most of us, to live perfectly flexibly, always ready to calculate anew in fresh circumstances what it is in our interest to do. Thus the ideal of calculated self-interest posited by economics is not a human possibility. We will get in the habit of being spenders or savers and will not be able to turn on a dime, changing our behavior when our interest changes."

It's a little wordy but worth a read for any of my economically-minded conspirators.

This blog post is excellent. The writer should be promoted and given a wreath of honor, the keys to the city, and a bowl of Macaroni and Cheese.

Interesting chart from the CBO

From the Freakonomics blog, interesting data from the  Congressional Budget Office, about the percentage of taxes paid by different segments of the population:

Lowest quintile: 4.3 percent
Second quintile: 9.9 percent
Middle quintile: 14.2 percent
Fourth quintile: 17.4 percent

Percentiles 81-90: 20.3 percent
Percentiles 91-95: 22.4 percent
Percentiles 96-99: 25.7 percent
Percentiles 99.0-99.5: 29.7 percent
Percentiles 99.5-99.9: 31.2 percent
Percentiles 99.9-99.99: 32.1 percent
Top 0.01 Percentile: 31.5 percent

And now you know!

Letting my inner nerd out a bit...

I would definitely describe myself as much heavier into the Political Science half of my studies than the Economics side, but one thing I do enjoy about Econ is the quantitative aspect of data collection/study that is kind of lacking in the more abstract discipline of Poli Sci. As such, I keep an eye on the Freakonomics blog and found these two fun little links that are economics-related but kind of amusing. Many Eyes is an IBM-sponsored way of presenting data in new and interesting ways, while the Baby Name Wizard is just sort of fun to look at how popularity changes over time. Look at your own name and see how it's been viewed over the years, it's kind of a kick.