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The Late Show starts again tonight after the strike. I am sure there will be lots of hairy jokes. I generally prefer the Daily Show, but Letterman is great, no doubt about it.

Talking about the Daily Show. Studies show that those who watch the Daily Show are on average more confident about their abilities to judge politics. At the same time, these viewers become more negative about politics in general and about political candidates. This is after controlling for other factors such as political knowledge, education, age, etc.

written by Jacob \\ tags: politics, television

A story/video by the National Geographic gives the impression that polar bears are threatened in Finland because of climate change. Finland might be cold (or at least used to be), but it has never been known for its population of polar bears.

I hear that National Geographic will run a story tomorrow about the penguins in Scotland that nowadays face extinction.

Crazy stories like this one might make it harder for people who care about climate change to be taken seriously.

written by Jacob \\ tags: climate change, Finland, misunderstandings, polar bears

I am going to spend most of the day in the library to look for older journal articles. Fortunately, almost every paper is published electronically and many older get scanned and put online. But not everything is online.

Ancient articles from like 1988 should be in the library and I will have to dig them up. It is not exactly Indiana Jones, but it will do for me. I will most likely be the only one there. I will try to make a classic sound, the sound of one individual’s footsteps in a huge library.

Stony Brook’s strength does not lie in it glamorous and long history so it will be difficult to find articles written before 1957. It was around this time that quantitative social science started to become big (with primarily the Michigan school and their national election polls). Psychology also started to become really interesting and something similar to what it is today. For example, Leon Festinger published his seminal book on cognitive dissonance in 1957. In sum, almost all the references I need were written after 1957.

written by Jacob \\ tags: research, Stony Brook

Due to popular demand. Here it goes:

—

Lives are like delicate pencils
If you push them too hard they’re gonna break
And people are like paper dolls
Paper dolls and people, they’re a similar shape
Hmm hmm hm
Love is like a roll of tape
It’s real good for making two things one
But just like that roll of tape
Love sometimes breaks off before you were done
Another way that love is similar to tape
That I’ve noticed
Is sometimes it’s hard to see the end
You search on the roll…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fycGFGSeKpc[/youtube]

written by Jacob \\ tags: music