Timothy Ryan

Harvard Students Skip Class and Still Get High Grades, Faculty Say

At Harvard, students can register for two classes that meet at the *same time* because classes are Important and we’re Very Serious about education.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/u...

My wife's roots are in Georgia. I've thought about how it's quite possible that one of her relatives killed one of mine, or vice-versa.

No doubt you've seen the movie Glory. (I rewatched it recently.)

Somebody actually sat down and wrote these two sentences, one after another. www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/u...

Neat! Here is a history of my relative, written by someone in the National Archives, many years ago.

AI tools helped me finish a replica of the regimental flag that my 3x great grandfather fought (and died) under during the Civil War. It's based on a photo of the deteriorated flag that I got from the New Jersey State Museum.

I like how it came out! And what it symbolizes.

Yes. (See p. 8)

www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/...

Today's cute teaching example of the kind of policy that a federal bureaucrat would need to make: when a blind person hires someone to groom their seeing eye dog, is this a tax deductible medical expense? See below for the answer.

The Myth of the Campus Snowflake The students I encounter as a university president aren’t afraid of free speech—quite the contrary.

Nice mention of my Free Expression work, three paragraphs from the bottom.

YouTube video by Taran Axethorpe Sixta and the grooming standard

Apropos of nothing, here is a montage from the great 2008 series Generation Kill where John Sixta--the battalion yutz--bangs on and on about adherence to the "grooming standard." (NSFW)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQr9...

You want my letter of recommendation to be answers to six questions that you came up with, and that are specific to your organization.

I want to write one general purpose letter that covers all the same substance and that I can upload to *any* organization.

We are not the same.

UNC Political Science is hiring in methods!

UNC has an amazing department and the triangle is a great place to live.

Tenure Track Assistant Professor in Methods (Deadline Oct 24)

link to the posting👇
unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

#polisky #psjobs #poliscijobs

UNC is hiring in Political Methodology. Please spread the word and encourage people to apply.

unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

Former Provost Sues UNC-Chapel Hill Trustees Over Closed Meetings Chris Clemens accused the trustees of "hiding matters of grave public concern,” including tenure debates, using a Signal group and closed session.

Happening at UNC.

I'll credit Thomas as a committed originalist when he points to the clause in the Constitution that grants the president near-blanket immunity from criminal prosecution.

Of all the times in history that someone was handed $50,000 cash in a takeout bag, what percentage of them do you suppose were completely legitimate and above-the-board?

"Preregistration isn't handcuffs" ~ Me.

If it were, Alexander Fleming might have to roll back his happenstancial discovery of a bacteria-eating "mold juice" (penicillin).

In NC, you need a prescription for Covid. My PCP wants me to come and visit the office to get said prescription. It's so bananas.

My mom got sent home from CVS because her doc gave her an Rx for Pfizer and that CVS only had Moderna. She had to get the Rx updated and go back.

Political violence is bad. That’s it. That’s the tweet. (Skeet.)

This is true, but the number of districts that are way out of whack is quite small. (See below.)

from this one.

All this is separate from gerrymandering, which is about how legislative districts are drawn. (Mostly irrelevant to presidential elections.)

Making the House bigger *might* indeed make gerrymandering harder---but it's not, like, analytically straightforward. Complicated question.

to the US Senate, where a WY vote weighs more than 60x a CA one. The distortion would get a little better if the College were bigger, but the distortion already only really benefits a few very small states.

The winner-take-all system is an additional Electoral College distortion distinct

Ah. There are a few things here. A state's weight in the Elec. College grows steadily in proportion to its population--subject to the restriction that all states start with 3 EVs. This is a distortion, but not an especially huge one. A WY vote weighs ~3.5 times as much as a CA one.

Compare that

I'm also not sure whether gerrymandering becomes easier or harder with smaller-population districts. That seems analytically tricky, and to depend on the geographical distribution of Dems vs. Reps.

Still? I don't think the US House ever had a proportional representation system in the modern sense of that phrase. Am I missing something?

What do you mean by land being more disproportionate? Districts need to have approximately equal populations. (Except 6 states with just 1 representative.)

The surprising thing? It turns out that couples that last always select on the dependent variable.

Not hard to do much better. E.g.: "How often do you find that achieving a goal was easier than you expected?" (Never, not very often, etc.)

I reflexively think about revisions. If it must be Agree/disagree, I'd nominate: "If a brand doesn't feel like me, I won't buy it."

Kinda interestingly, that's still several negatives. But still feels like a big improvement.

Declaration of Independence: 1,320 words.

University-required statements on UNC course syllabi: 2,402 words.

curricula.unc.edu/wp-content/u...