These maps are very odd. At first, I thought, why bother? Is there really a need for low-res maps based on 1980s video game graphic style? Then I typed in my address and realized how much was really going on. It’s still pretty silly, but it’s an impressive silly – and not everything has to be utilitarian. Available for 10 different cities.
"The New York Times recently had a symposium headlined "Why Do Educated People Use Bad Words?" For the most part it's fairly predictable thumbsucking on the part of a bunch of intelligent people (John McWhorter, Deborah Tannen, Tony McEnery, Lee Siegel, Ilya Somin, and Timothy Jay) who don't really have anything interesting to say about the topic ("swear words are linked to emotion in a visceral way"—well, duh), but McEnery, who wrote the classic Swearing in English: Bad Language, Purity and Power from 1586 to the Present
Purity of speech has been associated for so long with power in public life in the English speaking world that it is almost inconceivable that it could ever have been different. Yet it was — a powerful example of this comes from James I’s participation in an ecclesiastical debate in the early 17th century. When he said that he did not give a “turd” for the argument of a leading cleric, James did not attract opprobrium. He attracted praise — those present were impressed by his debating skills, not appalled at his choice of words. This is unimaginable now. How did the change come about?
Starting in the late 17th century a movement swept the English speaking world which firmly linked purity of speech with power. Groups like the Society for the Reformation of Manners in the British Isles and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in the colonies began to fight against sin in all of its forms by preaching and prosecution. A main target for them was bad language....
The hypocrisy of public purity but private impurity also has deep roots. Eighteenth-century campaigners gave up on any attempt to regulate behavior in the private sphere, quickly accepting that people could use whatever language they wished in private as long as their public speech was pure. It is to such campaigners that we can ascribe examples such as Richard Nixon, who simultaneously managed to crusade for an improvement in public morals while revealing himself on the White House tapes to have a full command of bad language.
The campaigns of the late 17th and early 18th century that linked bad language with moral degeneracy, low education and general brutishness were incredibly successful in forming views of bad language that endure in the English language to this day. They were also successful at establishing the nascent middle classes of the English speaking world as a locus of purity and hence a locus of power....(I stole from McEnery shamelessly in the introduction to the English section of my own curses book.)
"That is one way to interpret the evidence from a new paper (ungated) by Lawrence Broz on partisan financial cycles, presented at a conference in honor of Peter Gourevitch. The abstract is below:
Financial cycles of boom and bust are as old as finance itself—a fact that has led some observers to infer that human nature may be a fundamental cause of financial cycles. But “politics” also influences financial cycles by way of government policies and regulations. I argue that policies and regulations vary predictably with the partisan character of the government, creating a partisan-policy financial cycle in which conservative, pro-market governments preside over financial booms while left-wing governments are elected to office after crashes. My sample consists of all bank-centered financial crises to hit advanced countries since World War II, including the current “Subprime” crises—a total of 27 cases. I find that governments in power prior to major financial crises are more likely than the average OECD country to be right-of-center in political orientation. I also find that these governments are more likely than the OECD average to be associated with policies that predict crises: large fiscal and current account deficits, heavy borrowing from abroad, and lax bank regulation. However, once a financial major crisis occurs, the causal arrow flips and government partisanship becomes a consequence of crises. I find that the electorate moves to the left after a major financial crisis, and this leftward shift is associated with changes in government partisanship in that direction
Update: See more analysis on the FT blog.
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