new SPELbaby

beautiful ** ILSA **, via Edgar Valdez

very reflective for a newborn

congratulations

to everybody who did stuff this year.

(the list is on the listserv)

yay!

Logic exam

reminder:

SPEL Basic Exam in Formal Logic is tomorrow (4/23).

10am, I think.

Democracy?

Gilens and Page:

The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized 
groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government 
policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent 
influence. Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination 
and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or 
Majoritarian Pluralism.

paper: here

media coverage:

New Yorker
BBC
TPM
MSNBC
WaPo
Krugman

Standpoint epistemology

this is what things look like from Inside Higher Ed

Josh goes to Germany

congrats to SPELalum Joshua Wretzel, who won a grant from the Max Kade Foundation to spend some time at the Forschungskolleg Analytic German Idealism in Leipzig.

This one's for Max

link to The Daily Beast

(click through to hear from Petronella Ravenshear)