Some Politics May Be Etched in the Genes - New York Times

My thesis reader, Dr. John Hibbing, made the New York Times today. It's not often you see the word "dizygotic" in APSR.

Some Politics May Be Etched in the Genes - New York Times:

Political scientists have long held that people's upbringing and experience determine their political views. A child raised on peace protests and Bush-loathing generally tracks left as an adult, unless derailed by some powerful life experience. One reared on tax protests and a hatred of Kennedys usually lists to the right.

But on the basis of a new study, a team of political scientists is arguing that people's gut-level reaction to issues like the death penalty, taxes and abortion is strongly influenced by genetic inheritance. The new research builds on a series of studies that indicate that people's general approach to social issues - more conservative or more progressive - is influenced by genes.

...

In the study, three political scientists - Dr. John Hibbing of the University of Nebraska, Dr. John R. Alford of Rice University and Dr. Carolyn L. Funk of Virginia Commonwealth - combed survey data from two large continuing studies including more than 8,000 sets of twins.

Polaroid-o-nize johnfulwider dot com?

Here's what my front-page photographs would look like if I used the free Polaroid-o-nize service to, you guessed it, make the photographs look like old school instant photos.

The service lets you select the angle of tilt and the caption, among other things. I could alternate the tilt for variety so today's tilts to the left, tomorrow's (or, at my blogging pace, next month's) tilts to the right.

The pictures seem pretty blurry and pixellated, which I can completely understand. The server load to accept image uploads of varying sizes and then send a modified image back must be astonishing.

Valued five readers, consider your feedback solicited.

Blue Mounds Blue Skies

The summer Minnesotaclimbing.com gathering drew more than 70 people this year, including an impressive Nebraska contingent: Doug, Jake, Tim, Jami, Javal, Shannon, Mark and ... and ... that guy whose name I can't remember right now! Anyone who was there knows the title of this entry is ... well ... optimistic. But that's water under the bridge. Next time we face climb on dry sandstone, we'll look back to the wet and mossy Sioux quartzite and think everything else is just a piece of cake.

Here's a slideshow.

Firewire Network Transfers

Found on Lifehacker:

After stringing a firewire cable between my two machines, adding internal IPs, and mapping the mac drive on my PC desktop, my transfers are 20-50x faster over firewire than they ever were over the network. What used to take hours now takes seconds.

Transfering files between two computers on your network FAST!:

Get Help with Priceline Hotels at Betterbidding.com

A while back I used Betterbidding.com to help me make the best bid on Priceline Hotels and ended up getting about $99 $75 a night for a Club Quarters room in Chicago when the conference rate at the nearby (four blocks away) Palmer House Hilton was over $160 $169 a night. I saved $282.

The users and especially the site manager there will bend over backwards to help you find the best rate, even going so far as to post a detailed multi-step bidding strategy to take advantage of some quirks of Priceline bidding. Basically, a rejected bid is not the end.

Here's a link to the discussion thread on the forum for the Chicago trip, which includes the bidding strategy they posted for me.

Florida Wedding Odyssey, Day Three: The Big Event

I've been writing journalistic and academic articles for a decade, yet words fail me to describe James and Laura's wedding. It was perfect for them and for their guests. I hope you, dear five readers, will join me in wishing them all the best.

Here, as you can imagine, is a slideshow. Credit for the photos goes to my dad Randy, who had the presence of mind not to drop his camera in the sand on the day of his cousin's wedding.

Update: Fixed the captions on two photos. Laura's dad is Ben, not Ken.

Florida Wedding Odyssey, Day Two

A beautiful rehearsal dinner capped Day Two of the Florida Wedding Odyssey (so called for its four-day length and multiple events, each requiring a separate outfit). My cousin James and his fiancee Laura looked great and James' parents, Rick and Deb, redeemed my opinion of country clubs by finding one with really quite good food. I ended the evening buried underneath a dogpile of little kids, which suited me just fine.

Here's a slideshow.