Blacks like socialism and other sundries from Pew's word association survey

About a month ago, Pew Research released the results of a word association survey it conducted in late April. Word association is by some distance removed from anything actionable, but the survey is nonetheless useful in calibrating common perception with the actual feelings of various groups of people. A few instances of this follow.- Awhile back, I had some fun creating hypothetical electoral maps portraying what the outcome of the 2008 Presidential...

Half Sigma asserts that church-attending atheists have high IQs

Half Sigma recently reiterated the claim that atheists tend to be more intelligent than believers do, noting the findings from a recent study by evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa. The GSS reveals the same (at least when atheists are compared to firm believers*). HS then takes this a step further with the following:It should also be noted that smart people are more likely to behave the way they are supposed to behave, so there’s the phenomenon...

No click of the trigger when she's in the crosshairs; is this love?

An excerpt from the life of AE follows. No empirical work is to be found, and it's a bit graphic, so if you're understandably uninterested, disregard this post.---Five-hundred miles over two days in my cloud chariot with my best friend and two nineteen year-old girls to see my favorite band play. This is living. The encore is a letdown, yet we get bartender, nancies, and especially...

Young Jews as conservative immigration restrictionists?

Referencing Stephen Steinlight in a column on the perceived loneliness of immigration restrictionism, the Derb noted that younger Jews are more politically conservative and inclined towards restrictionism than their elders are. The Derb reports that at a function organized by the Center for Immigration Studies, Steinlight "quoted a wealth of surveys and studies to support his case".In Steinlight's originating article, though, he doesn't present anything...

Blue is back

A couple of months ago, just ahead of the Rise of the Eldrazi pre-release, I expressed frustration with how blue was clearly the standard environment's bottom feeder. Pointing out that color share is cyclical, blogger Alleged Wisdom predicted that blue would be back in vogue soon enough.It didn't take long. With RoE came Wall of Omens, a huge asset for UW control in the Jund...

Motley mix

- I'm not aware of any reason to suspect Armando Galarraga is not a naturally gracious and understanding athlete, but what I do suspect is that on the long road of sports history, umpire Jim Joyce's blown call will accentuate Galarraga's profile, not diminish it. Twenty pitchers have thrown perfect games, and over the last two decades, it has occured, on average, about every other year (and twice this season alone!). Among the general public, Galarraga's...

Madonna more restrictionist than WSJ op/ed board?

A couple of months ago, OneSTDV compared Madonna's opening of a school for girls in Malawi in a putative attempt to stop African brain drain into the West to immigration restrictionism in the US--the difference in perception not being due to logical differences in outcome, but who is portrayed as the ultimate beneficiary*. To a large extent, such a distinction works well in defining contemporary cultural and political discourse in the US--conservatives...