Newmark's Door

The last 2004 prediction from Ray C. Fair's model: W. wins 57.7% of the two-party vote.

Interesting data source, freely available over the Web: "the Chicago Police Department Homicide Record Index-–chronicling 11,000 homicides in the city during those years." (Link via Peter Scott's Library Blog.)

Independent scholars say, "Universities? We don't need no stinkin' universities!"

Duke can compete with the Ivy League . . . but so can NC State!

My wife brought to my attention the fine blog of David M. Mr. M. tabulates donations to the Bush/Cheney and Kerry/Edwards campaigns from individuals employed at Ivy League schools. He found 792 donations during the 2004 cycle and reports that 725--91.5%--were to Kerry/Edwards. (High, Dartmouth: 97%; low, Princeton: 84%.)

The data Mr. M used are publicly available.

So, I tried to perform the same analysis for Duke and NC State. I found for Duke, including employees of the hospital, 90 contributors, 84 of which gave to Kerry/Edwards or Edwards. That's 93.3% and worthy of the Ivy League. (The Durham Herald-Sun reported similar results.)

NC State is a bit more problematic; I checked "North Carolina State," "NCSU," and "NC State". That would seem to cover the most likely listings, but it's an open question whether I missed some folks. But under those three names I found 20 contributors and all 20 were to Kerry/Edwards.

That's 100%.

Take that, Ivy League.

Thanks to Patrick Sullivan, I've seen a blog by Dartmouth economist Andrew Samwick, "Vox Baby." Some excellent stuff there, including posts on the Social Security system here, here, and here.

Sales of music CDs seem to be recovering. The econometricians have their work cut out for them: is the recovery due to the RIAA lawsuits? Or, maybe, piracy wasn't as damaging as the recording industry thought?

Persi Diaconis, MIT mathematician, has been quoted to the effect that if you look at a large enough population over a long enough time period then "any damn thing can happen."

How's this for an illustration: "The [Boston] Celtics won their first championship against St. Louis (1957); the [Boston] Bruins broke a 41-year Stanley Cup drought against St. Louis (1970); and the [New England--c'mon, it's basically Boston] Patriots won their first Super Bowl against St. Louis (2002)."

And Boston just beat who to win the World Series?

Any damn thing can happen.

I, among many others, wouldn't have thought it possible, but it looks as though McDonald's has turned itself around.

Chart comparing the features of Dreamweaver MX2004, Frontpage 2003, and GoLive 6.

Not geeked enough for the election? Wanna go really hard core? Try Andrea Moro's page (U. of Minn. economist).