I got a 404 error. Does my response to that (reload, go back, manually edit the URL, complain that Heebie messed up the link) predict my political leanings?
Huh, I haven't the foggiest what you're going on about. Why don't you try again?
Heebie is conservative, tries to cover up her mistakes.
I think it puts everyone in the middle because the only way to get an extreme is to be strongly agree/disagree on everything. I had about equal answers con and lib but was less strong on the con so was 71% liberal. Would I try fusion cuisine? Depends what cuisines!
A guy who looks like John Boehner just walked into my kids' hockey practice. Not quite orange enough to be him. Maybe I should ask if he's proud of our country's history.
With that one I was like, "A new restaurant in this two-horse town? Oh yes! A new fusion restaurant up in Austin? I would never bother to check it out. There are too many great places that take priority."
I'm a goddamn idiot who just got sucked into responding to THIS TEACHER ROCKS! Entire Class Fails when Obama's Socialism Experiment Fails on facebook.
I LIKE HIPSTER GLASSES AND GLOCKS AND I AIN'T ASHAMED ONE BIT!
i'm 30% con just because i am proud of my country's history
take that, cerberus, hope you get dumped by the ex/present whoever it is, that will be a nice karmic retribution for you for being an intolerant bigot informant
How can you moderately or strongly disagree that you'd rather go to Times Square than the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Am I going to Times Square to see a play or to shop for a fake ID? Is Times Square supposed to be the conservative answer or the liberal one?
I guess the quiz doesn't really test for the stereotypes of 1940s conservatism.
13 to 11.
And thanks for the earworm, Lizardbreath. Sincerely.
10: Times Square is the liberal answer, it says. I got 71% liberal, partially because I picked the Met on account of hating traffic noise.
15: No, it's listed as liberal on mine. I'm 93/7, and my only conservative one was that kids should respect authority, which is kind of funny because the rest of that sentence would be "so they're less likely to get shot by the police." And I only moderately agreed.
I guess because Disney controls it now.
90% liberal
I bet there is some weighting of the questions
10/15: The Bubba Gump Shrimp Company is actually a front for the Communist International. Don't even ask about the M&M Store. The NSA will come down hard.
22 Comrade!
Times Square is the liberal answer? WTF is there to do there anyway? Especially without kids. I work a couple of blocks away and it just seems like a giant tourist trap.
So, there is liberalism in the world, and conservatism in the world, and these tendencies exist in mutually exclusive quantities in human beings. Let's find out our proportions and...do something with them?
22% conservative, 78% liberal. I don't like documentaries enough to be really liberal.
I agree with heebie about stereotypes, and I'm generally annoyed by questionnaires that label people based on correlations to correlations to correlations. (Or is Haidt basing directly on stereotypes because they have social reality or something like that?)
And as far as I'm concerned, "slightly disagree" and "slightly agree" are both synonyms for "don't care," which wasn't on offer.
But I guess I'm just annoyed that it put me as more conservative than I am, apparently because (1) there were two questions on whether you think nation-states should have priority over internationalism, and (2) I slightly or moderately agreed that children should be respectful (and maybe we should ask Bianquette's teachers whether in their perception I'm raising her according to what they'd understand by those words).
Oh, and action movies were pretty far over.
Good action movies, though. I guess I'd rather watch the History Channel than Transformers.
You mean the Hitler Channel? Don't they do that Vikings show now?
I'm only 71% liberal. Will you let me stay? I've only been to New York once and I went to Times Square, not the Met. And I hardly ever watch documentaries.
I'm 78% liberal. Which is exactly what 23andMe said.
Also, my work e-mail was down intermittently all day yesterday and has been down all day today. This makes it impossible for me to do something that needs doing. I'm 96% annoyed by this and 4% bemused at the thought that surely there are other people who can't do work that REALLY needs doing.
I thought the History Channel had become all about the influence of extraterrestrials on Earth history. Or is that one of the other wacky channels?
Dogs are clearly commies and cats are libertarians to a one*. Bad quiz!
(Watch me not make a Cat-o Institute joke.)
The hidden secretly conservative part of me is skeptical of one world government.
I like dogs more because they're more intelligent, not because of their obedience. I think my dog manipulates me.
The server for the link in 7 was down, so I googled and found it on Stormfront instead. Awesome.
Maybe Times square is the liberal answer is you slightly or moderately want to go but it's the conservative answer if you strongly want to go because in the latter case you're probably looking for a prostitute.
And you're also conservative because there haven't been prostitutes walking Times sq. for a decade.
So, as I read that link, the professor was annoyed because his students supported the policies of the President, which he thinks are socialism, so he punished them.
I wonder how these results compare with simply asking about people race, ethnicity, gender and income.
Sometimes I think sociologists and psychologists are desperately trying to come up with deep explanations of the harsh political divide, when a very simple explanation based on obvious characteristics is available.
Also, I used to be saddened by the decline and fall of Jon Haidt, because, like him, I'm basically a Humean about morality and I think we need to pay attention to the full range of moral emotions.
Then I realized that the most natural way to classify moral emotions is based on the negative emotion used to punish transgression: either guilt, shame or disgust. This lets me avoid all the complicated weirdness with his every growing list of moral modules. Also there is already a rich literature on the shame/guilt divide and its role in broad ethical outlooks.
I need to redo the first section of my ethics class to work in this lovely schematic. I don't know when that is going to happen, though.
The very existence of the Golf Channel is one of those unexplained mysteries that one of those paranormal investigation shows need to look into.
I am also a cliche, 85%/15%. I even lied that I use Chrome more than Safari, not that it mattered.
I have a messy desk but wished I had a clean one. Does that make me a utopian socialist?
44: Are Republicans more likely to believe that aliens built the pyramids?
I was 85/15 "liberal." I have absolutely no idea what that is supposed to mean what this measures. Also, there was little room for my actual political beliefs on this quiz.
Also, there was little room for my actual political beliefs on this quiz.
You really don't appreciate the wonders of social science, do you?
And thanks for the earworm, Lizardbreath. Sincerely.
Wouldn't we all like to take credit?
Among my political beliefs is eliminating social science. Or, actually just that moron sociologist who was wrong about Richard Scarry, 95% of economists, this guy Haidt, and anyone who has ever been on the University of Chicago or George Mason campuses or used the phrase "law and economics" without contempt.
I'm ready to join you on the barricades, Halford, but I couldn't see what was so wrong with the post about Richard Scarry. It wasn't interesting, certainly, but it didn't seem false or pernicious.
Oh my God don't start me up. That guy's knowledge of Busytown was stunningly weak.
Ha, I'm with Halford. That Scarry post was dumb as hell.
Huh. 84% liberal, 16% conservative. I'm a bit surprised, as I thought I was coming across as a milquetoast in a number of answers, refusing to strongly agree or disagree with much. Many answers were moderately agree/disagree, which I imagined made me a bit of a fence-sitter.
Anyway, yeah, Haidt is at it again with his terrible quizzes. Why is this guy so celebrated again?
I forgot how entertaining that Scarry thread was.
Are Republicans more likely to believe that aliens built the pyramids?
Probably as back then there was no fencing whatsoever.
sociology can be helpful. for instance the spawn is going barefoot a lot in part due to studies which show that it improves athletic performance, over a lifetime.
Many answers were moderately agree/disagree, which I imagined made me a bit of a fence-sitter.
Yes, better to announce strong prejudices without adequate rationale, because it looks good.
|| Pouring rain. 36 degrees. Who the fuck is responsible for this? |>
I took the stupid quiz. I am 17% conservative and 83% liberal, which I suppose makes some sense. Really though I would want to go to both Times Square and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as should everybody.
63 Pouring rain and 57 degrees here
Hah I am the only one who has made 90%!
I keep telling y'all that you still have residual Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity.
O maybe like I said there is some weighting, because on the question about "proud of America's history" I found the cheat code and wrote in "rubble bounce, parking lot, salt the earth, expunge from written records, and make the name an eternal curse."
here it's quite sunny and pleasant, though in the early morning it must have dipped down into the fifties, so I had to wear a coat.
Comity, Halford. When I googled, I found a different sociologist posting about Scarry, and her take was entirely predictable (in the 1960s, Scarry caricatured Indians, but not in more recent editions) so I couldn't understand your outrage. But now, having read the thread gswift linked to, I can.
31: Don't they do that Vikings show now?
Which is awesome.
24.1 to 67. Read it again, Bob.
And I would scored even higher if I didn't prefer action/adventure movies to documentaries.
67: Oh come on Bob, one might as well be proud of things over which one had no control.
70. Is it? I've been told that by a few people. I'll have to give it a try.
Good. Now that we've reached comity on Richard Scarry, it's time to combine our forces and seize power.
Do they ever address the confounding effect of political identity exerting a top-down pressure on what cultural preferences you're likely to cultivate/have, rather than simply being a function of the latter?
24.2: In Times Square, the thing to do is walk around in the crowds, look at flashy signs and, if you're a teenager or somewhat immature person in his twenties, bargain for fake watches and sunglasses. The sunglasses can remain an attraction further into life as well. I suppose that might get old for a person who lives in New York, but if you're visiting, you should really go to Times Square, you should want to, and you should never have to choose between it and fancy culture.
Pouring rain and 60 degrees here. Not only did I stupidly wear clogs to go grocery shopping earlier, so that my socks are soaking wet, but I broke the big yellow bowl this morning by turning on the wrong burner on the stove, and now my housemate has a full load of laundry sitting in the washing machine so that there can be no laundry-doing, and the pharmacy is still unable to process my new health insurance plan to refill my prescription.
Luckily it's only Saturday.
"Our analysis of 17,000 responses from readers who chose to report their actual ideology found a strong correlation (r=0.604, for those of you keeping score) between a person's self-reported ideology and the output of the quiz."
You mean R2 = 0.36? I suppose that's strong for sociology.
75: I would guess there is a feedback loop at work between political affiliation and other cultural preferences. But either way, if sociology can predict the former from a narrow selection of the latter, I guess you'd have to score one for sociology.
76 Comity. Agreed about Times Square. Only it's usually the tourist crowds I have to wade through to get to work when my train is running to the 42nd street stop and I have to take the R there.
80: In your position I probably would have learned to hate Times Square very quickly.
73: Yeah, Vikings is pretty great, in my view. I've no idea if it's historically accurate (probably not, though I did haul out a map to see where our Viking protagonists must be landing in the British Isles when they precociously dare to sail west across what we now call the North Sea, my guess being somewhere in Scotland?). There are some disturbing dissonances for a pansy liberal sensibility: our Vikings are relatively feminist in their own society, the women are strong and all that, but they also sacrifice a virgin from time to time, and they readily and quite viciously slaughter others, take slaves, and whatnot.
It's interesting. The main character is hawt, not that that's relevant in any way.
I am pretty much a classical liberal. No real surprise there.
I'm libertarian on some topics.
The funny part is that I'm an anarchist, and live my life as close as possible to that.
Pajama boy?
I am somehow 94/6 and will now commence condescending to all of you about your watery liberalism.
My real answers always need qualifiers. "Times Square if I'm going to John's Pizza or the play line at the TKTS booth. The Met if I don't have to pretend to have opinions about Albrecht Durer."
Each question should have had a choice: "Question is fscking stupid." I would have aced that. 100% whatever party that makes me. "Annoyed Party," perhaps.
This is:
1. At the same level as the various quizzes generated by randos that used to proliferate on Livejournal and I presume now do on Facebook. (Are you more like (a) characteristic of person/group/category A, (b) characteristic of person/group/category B, or (c) characteristic of person/group/category C?)
2. An object demonstration of the principle that every news entity headline phrased as a question can be correctly answered with "No".
What's a rando? I'm going to guess that it's a random person/generator, rather than a Randian.
So is Haidt, or TIME (which I guess renders itself in all caps now), embarrassed yet?
The Met if I don't have to pretend to have opinions about Albrecht Durer.
Oh, you had better get to pretendin' if you know what's good for you, son.
85 gets it right. And rob is winning the thread with 43/46.
I was 62% liberal. I hate cats and I can't think of anything worse than Times Square.
They definitely tipped their hand in a number of places. The snark in some answers is revealing -- "You use a modern browser."
There are so many things wrong with this quiz that I hesitate to dignify it with a critique, but I guess my overall reaction is kind of exasperated, "Do they not understand that a person can be temperamentally personally conservative and yet not hold those values for others?"
a kind of exasperated. So exasperated that I forgot a word.
If the Milky Way represented Los Angeles' urban sprawl, these galaxies would be Manhattan.
"It's sort of like a busy, congested downtown area with a lot of activity and a lot of people wandering around wearing bright blue lights," Illingworth said.
Oh right, one of those downtowns.
Witt, I think there's a broader problem with the notion of being temperamentally conservative (or liberal) in the first place. What makes liking dogs vs. cats conservative or liberal?
BUT. What is involved in hating cats? My dear, how can you hate cats? Or rather, why do you hate cats?
To me, temperamentally conservative means things like putting more effort into self-control than self-expression, liking a neater desk, etc. I don't think the pets things have anything to do with it.
Half of why I hate cats is because the first two I lived with were a giant pain in the neck (constant peeing on my bed, constant whining when in heat, and for fun they would jump on the bed when I was sitting there reading, landing on my ankles with their claws out).
The other half is because it grosses me out to have cats walking all over food-preparation and serving areas.
That said, I still catsit my former neighbors' cats off and on for four years. Because my neighbors are lovely, lovely people.
Oh, this fucking thing, what a fucking thing it truly is. I should go drown my sorrows in a glass of class-appropriate tipple and a volume of Bourdieu.
96: Bordeaux would be both presumably liberal, because France, and euphonious.
To me, temperamentally conservative means things like putting more effort into self-control than self-expression, liking a neater desk, etc. I don't think the pets things have anything to do with it.
I too was iffy on the self-control question. Obviously it's just as important as self-expression. (That's why I thought I'd come out of that quiz more middle of the road than I did.) The desk, eh, it's not anally neat, but it ain't tidy either; that said, my work partner's desk behavior is disgusting, in my view.
I don't see a way to distinguish whether "more effort" is being put into self-control or self-expression. That would be a matter of which of those is more difficult for you personally. In reality land, both skills are essential.
Half of why I hate cats is because the first two I lived with were a giant pain in the neck (constant peeing on my bed, constant whining when in heat, and for fun they would jump on the bed when I was sitting there reading, landing on my ankles with their claws out).
The other half is because it grosses me out to have cats walking all over food-preparation and serving areas.
I'm pretty sure dogs do those kinds of things too. They were badly trained cats you experienced. I'll guess that they were indoor-only cats.
And when they're in heat, for god's sake, they should have a visit to the vet sometime soon, and until then, they're in a *situation*, you see.
As if dogs don't ever whine.
Oh, and:
it grosses me out to have cats walking all over food-preparation and serving areas.
Correct. That is not allowed. It's not very hard to train cats that it's not allowed.
I can't think of anything worse than Times Square.
Eh, as long as it's a brief walk through, infrequently, I find (and with a sigh, he amended to "found") it nice to remember how overwhelming the city looked before living there for ten years turned me into a jaded, weary old queen.
We recently were asked by some Russians who were about to bring their daughter to NYC what they should see, and after a while I added "you should really walk through Times Square." And then, for the sake of authenticity, Bave and I argued about which deli they should go to.
||
This article about Appalachia is interesting and maddening. Mostly maddening for the snide denigration of the white trash and the implication that everything would be fine if it wasn't for that pesky welfare.
|>
103: I can't get past the byline. He used to edit a local paper around here and I have firsthand knowledge of his prejudices and assumptions.
103 seems like a fair assessment. Also he keeps saying "this is nothing at all like Elmore Leonard's Justified" but then he describes all these things that are literally plot elements in Justified.
103: Paul Krugman responds to the Williamson piece.
National Review has an actually interesting report by Kevin Williamson on the state of Appalachia, providing a valuable portrait of the region's woes -- plus an account of how people turn food stamps fungible by converting them into soda. But the piece also has a moral: the big problem, it argues, is the way government aid creates dependency. It's the Paul Ryan notion of the safety net as a "hammock" that makes life too easy for the poor.
Williamson makes a return reply later. Big arguments, or small.
Once again, Smearcase and I are twinsies. I'm only 94 percent liberal because I prefer a tidy desk. Wait, what? Re: Times Square, I do have a fake Baume & Mercier from NYC, but I bought it on the Upper West Side, because I'm a liberal.
||Get your flu shots! Not because the flu currently in vogue is apparently really awful, but because I want everyone to have the opportunity to feel as utterly miserable as I do after getting mine yesterday.|>
I got 89/11. The lack of a neutral option on the questions was very annoying.
And rob is winning the thread with 43/46
It's time to enforce standards. One only wins a thread by killing it.
Killing a thread that way may work on /., but we are more civilized in these parts. You kill a thread here by disclosing dirty sexy time details, really wonkish statistics, or preferably some combination.
The fusion question is a little funny in that it asks about a new restaurant combining the cuisine of very different cultures. My gut reaction was to imagine really unusual combinations. Scottish/Ethiopian? Eastern European/Salvadorean? Maybe pierogi/pupusa doesn't sound terrible, but I wouldn't be first in line.
You kill a thread here by disclosing dirty sexy time details, really wonkish statistics, or preferably some combination.
On the contrary, around here I think those sorts of things tend to revive threads.
110: It's all summed up in my opera about RTFAA (an extra A, because it's opera).
I got 82% conservative. My liberal-leaning friend got 76% conservative. It seems to place a lot of importance on nationalism.
For some reason I am greatly amused by parsimon liking Vikings - I thought your tastes were more refined, I suppose! Kid A and I watched it and enjoyed it greatly - she wanted to watch it for Grantaire (can't remember his real name) and it seemed to fill a gap after Rome. Looking forward to series 2, and not just because of the hot lead (are his eyes really that blue??) and all the nudity. Yeah, ok, because of those reasons.
They landed in Northumberland in the very north east of England. The monastery they raided first of all was Lindisfarne, the Holy Island.
I very much enjoyed the Rome series, though I heard a rumor once that were it not for HBO's plans for that series, Deadwood would actually have taken place in an ancient Roman farming village solely populated by ex-legionnaires and their families. And I really would have liked that, probably more than either Deadwood or Rome. But apart from that, Rome was a pleasure in my lonely Nashville days.
The red-haired fellow, whatsisname, was also really good in Journey Man (I think that's what it was called, though I always wanted to call it Nowhere Man) which was limited to one season. That was a travesty.
I guess I have evidence for the fusion question, when we were in Toronto this summer there was a hungarian thai fusion restaurant and we didn't go. But it was heebie's problem of having too many restaurants to go to, there were about 30 within walking distance of where we were staying.
Somehow I'm reminded a game children play wherein they imply someone is some ridiculous thing -- a suckup perhaps, or a libertarian, take your pick -- and when the insults are returned, it's taken as evidence of libertarianism or being the type of person who would hide outside of his friend's house, something like that. Anyway, I'm no kind of conservative, but I also don't believe in labels.
In that situation I would probably not worry about the implication and insult my friends anyway, because it's fun and they're around.
I came out 80% conservative! I was kind of trolling the quiz though.
I came out 80% conservative! I was kind of trolling the quiz though.
||
I have rarely seen a football play where all the broadcast team is completely clueless about the rules and best action for the player (this was the safety on the bad punt snap.). No one realized that if he'd made a successful pass, as he was trying to do, and the receiver dropped it they would have saved 50 yards without giving up points.
|>
It all went downhill after they allowed the forward pass.
124: also, once the ball is down by the 5, giving up 2 points isn't such a bad outcome.
124: What constitutes a successful dropped pass? I think I understand what you're trying to say, but it overlooks the very real possibility of an interception in that situation.
The game of which I was put in mind was Cards Against Humanity, which I've actually never played, so go figure.
Arm moving forward at release which he failed to do by tenths of a second. Sure int is possible but so was a fumble which is what happened although it wasn't recovered.
I think the term you were searching for was "incomplete pass". But yes, an incomplete pass is usually better than a safety. Is that what happened?
This was all an excuse for farts. I've been made a fool once more.
I meant successful pass attempt, which the receiver should have intentionally dropped. His arm was hit before moving forward so it was a fumble batted out of the end zone for a safety.
The punter probably can't be blamed for what was likely an unstoppable blocking effort.
Or do you say that you fart on me? I will not be farted on! (baritone)
My complaint was with the broadcasters who said he should have fallen on it at the 5 or kicked it out of the end zone on purpose for a safety. They were mystified by why he would try to throw it to a receiver a couple yards away as he was being tackled.
Anything the punter does which has a chance of avoiding something terrible happening, and doesn't increase its risk, when a punt is about to be blocked is a smart play. Often announcers are just looking for something to say in front of their audience.
I doubt the coaches had given this punter specific instructions about what to do in the face of such an unexpected onslaught. If they had told him specifically to always fall on the ball or always turn around and kick it through the end zone, then the punter should be expected to do so. Otherwise, the punter made a reasonable decision in extraordinary circumstances.
If I knew this punter somehow -- even if I were on the opposing team, and even if it were I dragging him to the turf and swatting his arm so that the pass could not be considered a true incomplete -- that is, if I knew him previously, and especially if we had been known to start trouble together, I would have told him that it wasn't at all his fault; the blame should go to whoever was supposed to block me, though in fact he should be let off lightly as well, as he had a tough night.
||I didn't see these elsewhere commemorated on the blog, so NMM to Ariel Sharon, A-Rod's 2014 season and, at long last, my marriage. All are best gone.|>
I knew someone would do that, and I ought to have figured it would be you.
Heh. Anyway, congrats on the divorce, I guess.
Thanks. First in my family, so I pretty much clinch the black sheep sweepstakes.
We should celebrate with the Portland Meatup we were talking about a while ago.
65/35. Because I don't like documentaries or porn.
I've got that morning feeling where you suspect you just haven't gotten to your hangover time yet. wheee.
Also our friends crashed at our house last night with their three kids, and I love having that kind of party and weird impromptu sleepover, with three year olds zonked in front of endless episodes of Chuck and Friends at midnight.
It's not something that happens very often, but only does with this particular family. So maybe this is just a tribute to these two friends and their particular ways of getting me to party more than I otherwise would.
Also, it turns out that plastic Adirondack chairs are the type of thing that people are trying to get rid of on Craigslist. For $10, I have no reservations just trying them out and passing them along if they end up not working.
I feel like the official run on the sidebar must include comments in every thread on the front page, because just running up one thread is too easy.
Ain't nothing gonna breaka my stride.
Besides children. I think children are about to breaka my stride. The six of them are going fucking nuts and the other set of parents is still asleep.
Awww, Jammies is making pancakes and bacon for everyone. My New Year's resolution was not to suffer pancakes anymore myself, personally, but I think it's rather sweet for everyone else.
They're okay, but we have them way too often.
If you drink enough, everything becomes healthy.
I guess I am not a stereotype. I tested 81% conservative though I have never voted republican.
I've generally had the sense that culturally I should be conservative. I just can't stomach the idea of being one of those traitors.
Portland meetup! Now I could sort of get there, especially if we held it in my non-west-coast understanding of the world, where it was yet to be explained to me that Oregon isn't like an hour north of San Francisco. Or if we held it in the imaginary dream world where I will ever again have a job. I'm so there!
Impromptu sleepovers in our house these days mean coming downstairs to find a teenager (or two! That was amusing) asleep on the sofa.
Portland might be a fun place to ride around in a canary yellow vespa and pretend to be a poet. I'm all about pretending, so if someone could bring his vespa, I might try it out.
I really wish these comments would load faster. It's like going on a date with a completely expressionless person, or someone whose face you can't read for some odd physiological reason.
I found out recently that IHOP gives you a side of pancakes with nearly all the breakfast items. (Western Omelet? Side o' pancakes!) But it's no big deal: you can substitute a side of hashbrowns, which are objectively superior to pancakes.
I guess hashbrowns are ok, if you liked burnt potato (which I do sometimes).
The problem with the pancakes is that with syrup they're like 600 calories, the caloric equivalent of six shots of hard liquor, and in my book alcohol beats pancakes every time.
Are you on the all alcohol diet now, gswift?
I'm working towards it, kind of like a boozy Breatharian. More realistically, as I head into middle age I gain weight easier and there's going to have to be sacrifices to maintain both my waist size and my alcohol intake.
Last night I had two White Russians, because I've gained 37 pounds since The Big Lebowski came out.
I also had a Russian cab driver, but I couldn't bring myself to ask if his name was Picov Andropov.
Last night I had some red wine and watched Synecdoche, New York. I really enjoyed it, but it was long and required a lot of attention. I don't think it would go over well with an audience accustomed to short, flimsy material.
One thing they don't seem to take into consideration at all is intensity of feeling. I only had 2 or 3 answers more than one notch away from neutral (which is NOT a possible answer), but I got 85% liberal.
More than one question was indifferent to me, e.g., Times Square vs. museum. To a degree I might have answered some questions with the expected liberal answer just because it was expected.
I did *everything* as near as I could to the middle and I got 81% liberal.
174 Proof that reality is liberally biased.
What's this about a Portland Meetup?
103: This article about Appalachia is interesting and maddening.
Holy fucking shit, Owsley County, Kentucky again--just in the last year or so there was another (or several) big article(s) on it (and yes he acknowledges that in the article, and that it gets selected because it is the "poorest" county, but still). Know it well since it was aplace where our chirch did "outreach" in the 60s and 70s. It just misses on about every possible count--too hilly for good roads, non-subsidence farming or just about anything else; but not really interesting enough countryside for tourism or serious outdoors stuff, no coal (he mentions miners but they have long twisty commutes). It was flat broke in the 60s with a lot of people living in "walk-up" hollows and the like.
Haven't read the whole thread, so this may have already been remarked upon, but one thing Haidt is measuring is the way the Right has appropriated certain types of rhetoric.
Like Thorn in 16, I teach my kids to respect authority. They damn well need to do what I tell them to do, and I don't think I've yet contradicted something they were told to do by a teacher.
So by any accurate standard, I'm in strong agreement with the principle of respecting authority. And yet, I have a hard time answering that way, because the authority language belongs to the Right. When it says "respect for authority," I read it as "blind obedience to authority and I recoil.
I can't fly an American flag because that's a symbol that belongs to the fascists now. Pretty soon, I won't be able to say "Merry Christmas" any more.