So That's the Way Scholars of Literature Write These Days

I went over to Google Scholar to test my hypothesis that there must be some scholarship on Dan Brown by now. And indeed there is. Among the first hits is an article by Victoria Nelson entitled "Faux Catholic: A Gothic Subgenre from Monk Lewis to Dan Brown", published in a cultural studies journal called boundary 2 (No, I don't know what boundary 1 is). It begins thus:

We’ve seen it on the big screen any number of times: the possessed woman writhing, screaming, face morphing (courtesy of computer-generated imagery) into a hideous leer as despairing relatives edge prudently away from the imminent prospect of projectile vomiting.

Demon possession, open-and-shut case. Who you gonna call?

Not your rabbi, imam, or Methodist minister. No, you want that Roman Catholic priest with his collar, cross, holy water, and Vulgate Bible—all the papist trappings that Protestant Americans shun in real life but absolutely demand for a convincing on-screen exorcism. A mild-mannered Episcopal reverend, a Southern Baptist preacher in a Men’s Wearhouse suit reciting the Lord’s Prayer in English over that tormented soul? I don’t think so.

If you think the writing style is an ironic take on pop culture, you're mistaken. The topic of Dan Brown is introduced with the phrase, "Looming over it all like the proverbial nine-hundred-pound gorilla is the Dan Brown phenomenon." And if you think that's a parody as well, this time of Brown's writing style in particular, I disagree. Brown would have written something like, "Nine-hundred-pound gorilla Dan Brown phenomenon was looming over it all, his eyes glowing like icicles in the mist."

It's been a while since I've read CultStud, but I don't remember authors aiming to write like sixteen-year-olds. But this just seems to be Mrs. Nelson's style. And, guess what? She teaches creative writing of all disciplines. Here's the somewhat unsettling opening bit from her teaching philosophy: "Teaching writing at the MFA level for me is an empathic act that amounts to entering my students’ imaginations".

Um, thanks, I'd rather not.

The Best Blog Posts of 2013

It's about time, so here.

As usual, brackets are appended to each link to indicate whether the post is Long, Medium lenght or Short; High-Brow, Mid-Brow or Low-Brow, and Funny or Not.

For other years' lists, use the tag.

15. Offsetting Behaviour: "Social Costs and HPV", by Eric Crampton

14. Discover: "Why Race as a Biological Construct Matters", by Razib Khan (L; HB; N)

13. The Power of Goals: "Home Sweet Home", by Mark Taylor (L; MB; N)

12. Crooked Timber: "New Tools for Reproducible Research", by Kieran Healy (S; MB; F)

11. German Joys: "The Metamorphosis (US Summer Movie) Elevator Pitch", by Andrew Hammel (S; MB; F)

10. Code and Culture: "You Broke Peer Review. Yes, I Mean You", by Gabriel Rossman (L; MB; N)

9. EconLog: "The Homage Statism Pays to Liberty", by Bryan Caplan (M; MB; N)

8. Scatterplot: "Annals of Self-Refuting Tweets", by Jeremy Freese (S; MB; F)

7. Overcoming Bias: "Future Story Status", by Robin Hanson (M; HB; N)

6. Gulf Coast Blog: "Defamiliarization, Again for the First Time", by Will Wilkinson (L; MB; N)

5. Armed and Dangerous: "Preventing Visceral Racism", by Eric S. Raymond (L; MB; N)

4. Askblog: "It Is Sometimes Appropriate . . .", by Arnold Kling (M; HB; N)

3. EconLog: "Make Your Own Bubble in 10 Easy Steps", by Bryan Caplan (M; LB; N)

2. Armed and Dangerous: "Natural Rights and Wrongs?", by Eric S. Raymond (M; HB; N)

1. Falkenblog: "Great Minds Confabulate Like Small Minds", by Eric Falkenstein (L; HB; N)

Thanks and congrats to all above.

Around the Blogs, Vol. 103

Bit late today, but here's some recent posts that may be worth your time.

1. Andrew Gelman knows how randomization works in animal studies. (Post starts off with disturbing image)

2. Gabriel Rossman has tips on how to be a better journal reviewer, with a focus on decreasing turnaround times. Fabio Rojas links and summarizes.

3. Christian Jarrett summarizes a new paper by Brian D. Earp, Jim A. C. Everett, Elizabeth N. Madva, and J. Kiley Hamlin, who cannot replicate the "Macbeth effect", i.e., the finding that feelings of disgust increase the desire for physical cleaning.

Around the Blogs, Vol. 101: Long Wait, Long List

Because I've been collecting for so long, it's so many links. Because it's so many links, I'm posting it early.

1. If the effect in question was found in a particularly small sample, should that strengthen or weaken your belief in the effect? (Eric Falkenstein) From the same author: A critique of Stevenson and Wolfers' happiness research.

2. Thoughtful, personal essay by Eric S. Raymond about the emotion and cognition of racism.

3. A body-mind theory of lefties and righties (Agnostic)

4. "Annals of Self-Refuting Tweets" (Jeremy Freese presents the American Sociological Association make an ass of itself)

5. Wie intensiv werden die Deutschen eigentlich von der eigenen Regierung ausgespäht? Man weiß es nicht. (Niko Härting) (via)

6. "A conservative estimate is that we’re spending a million dollars per year per terrorist, maybe more – that’s not even counting Iraq and Afghanistan." (Gregory Cochran)

7. The case against (eating lunch) outside (Matthew Yglesias) (via)

8. Matthew Desseem reviews Rififi.

9. Person fixed effects and psychological testing.

10. The theory that Marcia Lucas contributed more to Star Wars' quality than is usually acknowledged. (Fabio Rojas)

11. A discussion of reviewing and reviewers (with a focus on sociology) (olderwoman and commenters)

12. Is US violent crime actually down? Looking at non-police data. (Steve Sailer)

13. "William Boyd’s Taxonomy of the Short Story" (Will Wilkinson)

14. How not to get published. (Andrew Gelman/Brian Nosek, Jeffrey Spies, and Matt Motyl)

15. Getting the priorities straight (Foseti) (on this blog)

16. Male feminists: Demand and supply. (Nick Borman)

17. Real life cases of amnesia that are stranger than fiction. (Christian Jarrett)

18. Season of birth is endogenous (Eric Crampton/Kasey S. Buckles and Daniel M. Hungerman)

19. A model of how the internet works (Marco Arment) (via)

Around the Blogs, Vol. 98

1. Race as a biological and social construct (Razib Khan)

2. The case for taxing oral sex (Eric Crampton)

3. "My hypothesis is that progressives, conservatives, and libertarians view politics along three different axes." (Arnold Kling)

4. Don't try to become good at something (Ben Casnocha)

5. If you really set your mind to it, you can find unfair inequalities everywhere. Scatterplot's mike3550 shows how to.

6. "Want to Know What Someone Really Thinks?" (Gretchen Rubin) The case seems way overstated to me, but you may want to add that tool to your box.

7. Wikipedia's most controversial topics (Samuel Arbesman/Taha Yasseri, Anselm Spoerri, Mark Graham, János Kertész) (via). Who would have guessed that the most controversial topic in German Wikipedia is Croatia?

Pebbles, Vol. 42

Rolf Dobelli explains why you shouldn't follow the news.

Arnold Kling makes the argument that states are better than clans.

"A founder of the anti-GM food movement on how he got it wrong: Mark Lynas in conversation with Charlie Gillis"

Naughty logos (mildly NSFW) (via)

Preface and Chapter 1 (Abraham Lincoln) of Edward Jay Epstein’s book, Annals of Unsolved Crime (via). Don't be put off by the trashy graphics.

Paris in 1900 vs. 2013 photos (via)

Startup ideas that looked stupid but weren't (via)

Small island problems (via)

New journal called Porn Studies founded. Sounds interesting, but the Call for Papers/Mission Statement suggests it's some cultural studies crap.

Comments, Journal Space, the Internet, and the Cynical Theory of Journals

Andrew Gelman, discussing scientific standards in the social sciences, relates the following:

Recently I sent a letter to the editor to a major social science journal pointing out a problem in an article they’d published, they refused to publish my letter, not because of any argument that I was incorrect, but because they judged my letter to not be in the top 10% of submissions to the journal. I’m sure my letter was indeed not in the top 10% of submissions, but the journal’s attitude presents a serious problem, if the bar to publication of a correction is so high. That’s a disincentive for the journal to publish corrections, a disincentive for outsiders such as myself to write corrections, and a disincentive for researchers to be careful in the first place.

Commenter WB wonders:

Why don’t journals simply post serious criticisms and important corrections on their websites? Any reluctance to admit mistakes and publish corrections seems inexcusable given how easy it is to post items online. Obviously, websites don’t face the strict space limitations of print journals. So online sections could be used to publish items that aren’t “in the top 10% of submissions to the journal,” but are nonetheless important and worth the attention of readers.

And Gelman replies:

I suppose one reason they don’t do it is that it would take effort and expense to set up the website. Another difficulty is the need to review the critiques. If it were easier to publish a letter to the editor, I suppose the journal would get more submissions, then they’d need to find more reviewers, etc.

Yeah, maybe. But for the time being I'll hypothesize that the cynical theory of journals explains a larger chunk of the variances.

Three Quick Shots

1. If you like outlandish academic papers, how about "An examination of Rushton’s theory of differences in penis length and circumference and r-K life history theory in 113 populations" by Richard Lynn? Here's the abstract:

Rushton’s (1985, 2000) r-K life history theory that Mongoloids are the most K evolved, Caucasoids somewhat less K evolved, and Negroids the least K evolved is examined and extended in an analysis of data for erect penis length and circumference in three new data sets. These new data extend Rushton’s theory by presenting disaggregated data for penis size for European and North African/South Asian Caucasoids; for East Asian and Southeast Asian Mongoloids; for Inuit and Amerindians and Mestizos, and for thirteen mixed race samples. The results generally confirm and extend Rushton’s r-K life history theory.

Seriously, though, this paper is pretty uninformative for the same reason that most research on sex differences is pretty uninformative: It uses nonrepresentative samples.

2. A NY Times comment by Thomas Edsall (via) discusses disagreements about economic inequality. Basically, economists seem to have different opinions on whether consumption inequality is more important than income inequality, and if so, which consumption counts and how it should be measured. This illustrates a pervasive point about the inequality debate in both academic circles and society in general. Few people care about economic inequality per se; what they really mean is human well-being. But the psychological theory that would tell you how inequality translates into well-being is, basically, absent, and people work with implicit assumptions all the time. For example, if you think that consumption inequality is the only kind that matters, you are implying (whether or not you're aware of it) that nobody's ever suffered because his colleague down the hall earned ten percent more. Speaking of which, the concept of the reference group is old, but, unless I've missed something, social scientists have yet to come to a conclusion on what the relevant reference group for a person is. I suspect that has nothing to do with social scientists' laziness and a lot with reality not lending itself to a general answer.

3. Via Steve Sailer, here are some results from a study of the representation of women among authors of academic papers (the dots represent subfields within a discipline, such as "socilology of the family"):

You could explain the differences in representation between economics and sociology as a consequence of economics being much more mathematical than sociology, combined with the fact that women tend to be underrepresented where maths features heavily. Unfortunately, this theory runs into the immediate problem of women being underrepresented in economics even relative to probability and statistics. However, both observations are consistent with a two-step selection model. In a first step a person either does or does not go into a social science field, and in a second step, the more specific discipline is selected. This is basically the same explanation I've offered for why there are no romantic comedies for men. Well, sort of.

The 'Nonexpert' Challenge

When there is a public debate about a (social) science topic, pitting proponents of view A against proponents of view B, you sometimes encounter a variant of the following statement by someone promoting view A: "The specific person who holds that B is correct has never published original analyses concerning the topic in question in the peer-reviewed literature."

Let's note in passing that people who know the peer-review process first hand are often not as impressed by this institution as many journalists. More importantly, I am not so sure that not having published extensively about a topic makes your view less credible. If you do have a history of publication on the topic, you will probably have a better grasp of the facts, including methodological challenges brought about by the kind of data that we're talking about.

On the other hand, if you don't have such a history, you have some advantages. First, you can look at the issues with a fresh eye. You may, for example, see issues that people trained in a certain field can't, because that is not germane to the way one looks at things in a that field. Second, you are less subject to pressures that come with being a researcher in a field. This comes in two flavours - social disapproval (no one wants to have a beer with you after the conference) and professional disadvantages (no grant money for you). Third, long-standing researchers went on the record long ago with their view on whether A or B is correct. It is painful to state in public that you were wrong. A newbie does not have this problem.

Given this, it's not clear to me that an author's lack of a history of publication should signal reduced credibility of his views. It seems quite clear, though, that if the only rebuttal to A that B-proponents can come up with is that A-proponents have no history of publication in the field, this is a strong signal that there is a lot to be said for A. If that's all B-proponents offer, this suggests they have no good replies to the actual arguments in question.

While I'm at it, let me note that stating (perhaps correctly) that a certain view is "divisive" says nothing about its veracity, just as the claim that being a Christian improves your behaviour says nothing about the existence of god. 

Around the Blogs, Vol. 88: Social Science Special

1. Bryan Caplan discusses Malcolm X's autobiography: Directory to all parts.

2. How important are survey response rates? Jeremy Freese, Fabio Rojas.

3. Retracted psychology articles keep getting cited as evidence. (Sanjay Srivastava)

4. What would an ideal stats text book look like? (Phil Price)

Around the Blogs, Vol. 86

Long time no Around the Blogs, lots of links collected:

1. "New study shows half of the global warming in the USA is artificial" (Anthony Watts)

2 The exploit/explore tradeoff (Seth Roberts)

3. "Disclosing hospital quality works" (Economic Logician/Lapo Filistrucchi and Fatih Cemil Ozbugdayand)

4. Who's to blame for biased reporting on medicine: researchers or journalists? (Andy McKenzie/Yavchitz et al.)

5. Stuff you might not yet know about questionable practices by medical journals, or: Ever wondered who buys reprints these days? (Richard Smith) (via)

6. Anonymity may decrease the accuracy of questionnaire responses. (Christian Jarrett/Yphtach Lelkes et al.)

7. Just in case you had Malcolm X down as some kind of civil rights hero, Bryan Caplan reminds you what a vile racist he was.

8. Sociologists name their papers (Kieran Healy) (related post)

9. Relational aggression as a form of mate competition (Eric Barker/Jesse Bering)

10. Blogger points out he has been misquoted, commenters go bonkers (Tyler Cowen and commenters)

11. Six tips for better sleep, number 4 being almost definitely wrong for me (Eric Barker/David K. Randall)

12. Taste for extreme answers as a factor distorting the comparability of cross-cultural questionnaire data (Christian Jarrett/Möttus et al.)

Video Won't Kill the Lectern Utility Player

If I am informed correctly, the lecture format developed in the early days of the university because books were so damn expensive. As no student could afford them, the university would offer the option of gathering around a professor while he actually read aloud from his books. Back then, lectures made sense as means of learning. Lectures still make sense because (i) some lecturers are entertaining, (ii) lectures offer good opportunities to check out whether there are attractive members of your preferred sex around that you haven't talked to yet. As means of learning, they are terribly ineffective, as anyone knows who spent three days reading a book and was surprised to find that this provided as much useful information as all of a one-semester lecture.* The difference between then and now is that these days, books are cheap. (Yeah, I know what they charge for textbooks in the U.S. I also know what they charge for college in the U.S. The comparison makes books look really cheap.)

I hence always found strange the theory that has been prominent on the kinds of blogs that I read: that universities are on their way out because you can now get cheap or free lectures online. Eric Crampton, a professor of economics, describes this view, only to unsubscribe from it:

Whenever I read stories about the growth of MITx or other equivalents, I get a bit nervous about the long run for academics. I've consoled myself with that academia is really a rather more complicated product than just book-learning: there's all kinds of consumption and complex human capital formation bundled in with it; MITx can't easily replicate that bundle.

In order to make that argument, he more or less fully subscribes to Noah Smith's view of what it actually is that college provides. But you don't need a theory to come to the conclusion that MITx and the Khan Academy are no threat to universities. That's because universities have long been surviving the cheap availability of substitutes for lectures that also provide book-learning. They're called books.

______

*For the same reason, I hardly ever watch videos of lectures or presentations. I can take in the same number of words in a third or fourth of the time, and I'm not a particularly speedy reader.

Around the Blogs, Vol. 82

1. Advocating marijuana decriminalization: You're doing it wrong, Sandy Mulqueen! (brought to us by Eric Crampton)


2. Robin Hanson makes an unwise/brave publication decision and channels Goffman.


3. John Althouse Cohen raises an interesting point about moral psychology (will have to have another look at the Sowell book).


4. Andy McKenzie discusses bets on the replicability of research results.


5. Serguei Saavedra, Satyam Mukherjee, and James P. Bagrow deliver the overgeneralization of the month (brought to us by Tyler Cowen)

Evidence that Economists Understand Incentives (but What about Collective Action Problems?)

From the latest issue of Econ Journal Watch:

David Findlay and John Santos replicate an analysis of the market for baseball Hall-of-Famer rookie cards produced since 1947, when Jackie Robinson made his major-league debut. The earlier study did not find evidence of significant racial discrimination by card buyers. Having detected a pattern of data errors in that study, Findlay and Santos correct the errors, extend the analysis, and include Hispanics. Their more powerful analysis also finds no evidence of significant racial or ethnic discrimination.

That took a surprising turn, didn't it? I applaud the journal editors for publishing the article despite the result, as this increases the incentives for researchers to check other people's results, which, at the margin, is probably more desirable than more original work. Also, the topic wins the prize for the least troubling dimension of racial discrimination I've ever seen an abstract on. And on top of that, it doesn't even exist.

All Journals Are, in Effect, Open Access

In recent years, there has been a lot of complaining about the fact that articles in academic journals are not, as a general rule, available for free, but behind a paywall. The standard view is that it is outrageous that the public, who paid for reasearch via grants and salaries, are asked to shell out for the writeups of that research. I am generally sympathetic to that point, yet I don't see what all the fuzz is about. Even if no copy of the paper you desire is available online in an ungated version (which will sometimes, but not always, be identical to the final version), you shouldn't have too much trouble getting your hands on a copy without paying the ridiculous sums some publishers demand.

I don't know about where you live, but where I live members of the general public get a year's membership at the local university library for 40 euros. That gives you access to electronic copies of uncounted journal articles as well as the right to check out hundreds of thousands of books (but only fifty at a time).

If neither the university library nor the www work for you, you can always send the first author of the paper a mail and ask whether they might send you a pdf copy. I have done this about ten times (from a private address) and always received a friendly answer with the paper attached, usually within 24 hours. This includes one prompt answer from a bigwig, who didn't forget to thank me for my interest in his work. Another guy sent me paper copies of older articles of his all the way from Florida.

When you think about it, this ain't all that surprising. The typical research paper is read by, I don't know, perhaps fifty people. No wonder authors are eager to move their work under another set of interested eyes.

Some people might still hesitate to use this tactic because they subscribe to the view (probably more common in the German- than the English-speaking world) that professors are somehow an elevated variant of homo sapiens sapiens. The house I grew up in featured a professor - my father - and I can assure you they're regular human beings who sometimes drink too much and fart in their sleep. You have this on authority.

Around the Blogs, Vol. 75

1. Bryan Caplan makes the case against (subsidizing) education (and also).

2. According to Wikipedia, Nobel Prize Sperm Bank recruiter Paul Smith "traveled throughout California, focusing mainly on college campuses, in search of volunteers", which suggests awkward conversations in Berkely men's rooms. But Henry Harpending reveals evidence to the effect that they simply sent a letter.

3. Eric Crampton summarizes what economists (well, a panel of 40 specific economists) agree on.

4. Golden Krishna against the cutseyfication of software (via)

5. Gowers against Elsevier

The Best Blog Posts of 2011

Eagerly awaited by all of the world wide web, here is the list of the best blog posts of 2011. For your convenience, brackets are appended to each link to indicate that the post is Long, Medium lenght or Short; High-Brow, Mid-Brow or Low Brow and Funny or Not.

If I counted correctly, economists take only four spots in the list below, which is much of an improvement over last time. This includes the two authors we met on last year's list. Which is still available, as is the 2009 edition. Without further ado -

15. Orgtheory: "Your ASA Vegas Bingo Card", by Kieran Healy (S; MB; F)

14. Dr. Boli's Celebrated Magazine: "Advertisement", by H. Albertus Boli (S; LB; F)

13. Dalrock: "Should I Divorce Him?", by Dalrock (L; LB; F)

12. Eli Dourado: "Peace through Political Assassination?", by Eli Dourado (M; MB; N)

11. Decision Science News: "Five Books That Changed a Statistician", by Dan Goldstein (M; MB; F)

10. Core Economics: "English Language Requirements for Immigration", by Joshua Gans (L; LB; F)

9. kenodoxia: "What Ancient Greek Philosophy Was Not Like . . .", by James Warren (S; HB; F)

8. EconLog: "The Overlords of Immigration", by Bryan Caplan (M; HB; N)

7. PJ Media:"The Myth of the ‘Ethical Vegan’", by Ward Clark (L; MB; N)

6. Overcoming Bias: "Why Men Are Bad at 'Feelings'", by Robin Hanson (M; HB; N)

5. Forbes: "The Moral Default Setting: Liberal or Conservative?", by Will Wilkinson (L; HB; N)

4. Less Wrong: "Working Hurts Less Than Procrastinating, We Fear the Twinge of Starting", by Elizer Yudkowsky (L; MB; N)

3. Armed and Dangerous: "What 'Privilege' Means to Me", by Eric S. Raymond (M; HB; N)

2. [Companion Pieces:] Pileus: "Cheap Sex as Collective Action Failure", by Sven Wilson and Armed and Dangerous: "Reconsidering Sexual Repression", by Eric S. Raymond (M; MB; N)

1. iSteve: "Racehorse Haynes", by Steve Sailer (L; LB; F)

Auteurs in Film and Academia

Last night I watched Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, the documentary about New Hollywood based on Peter Biskind's book of the same name. A main point I take away from the film (and which I don't remember taking away from the movie) is that maybe giving directors more or less complete control may not be such a good idea after all. The narrative is that it worked for a few years, giving us The Conversation and Taxi Driver; but then, the treatment directors received, coupled with excessive cocaine consumption, got to their heads, which gave us films like Scorsese's New York, New York (I haven't seen that one, but there seems to be a general agreement that it's, um, not a masterpiece.). The general argument need not be restricted to U.S. cinema. I certainly wouldn't have minded if some money men would have told Godard, "Er, Jean-Luc, can't you give us something that's a little more À bout de souffle?"

So perhaps artistic freedom isn't that hot after all. From a theoretical standpoint, that shouldn't be too surprising. Artists are good at creating original ideas and are almost bound to exhibit a certain amount of self-absorbtion; moreover, going against the grain is pretty much part of the job description. No wonder they'll pursue crap ideas from time to time, scoffing at the proles' ignorance.

I am writing this as I am in the middle of revising an article for resubmission. (In fact, I'm procrastinating). The main insult challenge is to cut its length by about 30%. No fun. But then, would I rather read a shorter or a longer article? Well, we all know the answer to that one. If you think that peer-review is the work of the devil whenever you're on the receiving end, but think, "Thank god there's peer-review" whenever you're asked to act as a gatekeeper, be aware that there's an inconsistency.

Around the Blogs, Vol. 72

1. "When a person is placed under cognitive load (by having to memorize a string of numbers while making a moral evaluation), the individual does not express the usual bias toward self." (Robin Hanson/Robert Trivers)

2. "[T]here are a non-trivial number of potential states of the world in which all human life is extinguished. It's not immediately clear how we ought to expend resources in insuring against all of the different risks." (Eric Crampton)

3. "Questionable Research Practices Are Rife in Psychology, Survey Suggests" (Christian Jarrett/Leslie et al.)

4. "How to Fix Science" (Neuroskeptic)

5. "On Famous People Telling You to Become Who You Really Are" (Nick)

6. "First-hand Experience of Kitchens" and other fun conference papers (Eric Crampton/various authors)

7. 'The very existence of a sovereign regulatory body suggests that powerful actors (occasionally) need to be bullied into behaving themselves, but the only provision for bullying that sovereign body into behaving itself is a vague wave of the hand at "elections" and "democracy".' (Matt)

8. "Here’s an interesting general way in which a group of people can start burning all kinds of utility." (Paul Gowder)

Pebbles, Vol. 35

1. "The asymmetric nature of the bonus (an incentive for success without a corresponding disincentive for failure) causes hidden risks to accumulate in the financial system and become a catalyst for disaster."

2. Is Julian Assange a force for freedom?

3. Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the western world?

4. For those who think Germans don't have a sense of humour. (via)

5. "It's Time to End the War on Salt?"

6. South African football team misses out on the African Cup of Nations due to misreading the qualifiers rules. Coach: "Africa is a jungle, my friend." Uh-oh.

7. Return of the Jedi never made any profit

8. "Bread and Peace": A very simple model of U.S. presidential elections