Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Steps in the Right Direction

Posted on September 23, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

At first glance, Dodd's counter-proposal on how to deal with the Bush financial mess looks like a real improvement. But there's still room for more improvement.

(URL fixed, thanks to Adam)

Posted in Econ & Money | 8 Comments

A Bad First Draft

Posted on September 22, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

Seven Simple Reasons To Oppose The Bailout

I'm on board with at least six of these.

Posted in Econ & Money | 5 Comments

Friday McCain/McSame Bashing (Repaired)

Posted on September 21, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

Thanks to the helpful intervention of techs at Dreamhost, I managed to pull up a backup of the blog’s database and find at least 95% of the lost text for last Friday’s McCain bashing entry. So I’m reposting it here even though it's a little dated – the stuff that got cut off previously starts after the horizontal line.

Of course, there's been a ton of good stuff since then…

Thurs

Wed

Tuesday

Monday

Sunday

Saturday

Friday

Earlier

Posted in Politics: McCain | Comments Off on Friday McCain/McSame Bashing (Repaired)

Register to Vote – It Matters

Posted on September 20, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

Oct 6 is the deadline to register to vote in Florida if you want to vote in the November election.

If you are a student and plan to vote absentee where you last lived, whether in or out of state, don’t wait to apply for that ballot; these things take time.

[Queued up to run while I’m in New York.]

Posted in Florida | 1 Comment

Friday McCain/McSame Bashing

Posted on September 19, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

There's more out there, but I'm traveling…

Thurs

Wed

[there were 5(!) more days here, but something seems to have eaten them — I fear I have lost the data unless it's lurking in some cache on my home computer]

Update (11/21): To see the full text, with the missing parts restored, please go to Friday McCain/McSame Bashing (Repaired)

Posted in Politics: McCain | 6 Comments

In the Interests of (Social) Science

Posted on September 17, 2008 by Michael Froomkin

According to a very polite email I got today, 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.

[slightly edited since the original posting]

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