Strict monotonicity

Obama bumper stickers

A little late but these keep popping up - which ones are made up?
Asian Americans for Obama
Women for Obama
Lawyers for Obama
Librarians for Obama

What if I were an Asian American Female Lawyer Librarian and voted for McCain?

Economic indoctrination

One of Ariel Rubinstein's dilemmas was depicted in the Layoff Survey where respondents (mainly students) were asked how many people to layoff in a hypothetical situation. He found that Econ students were more likely to respond to the profit maximizing solution (and hence laying off more) than either Philosophy or MBA students. He concludes:

The interpretation of the results cannot be separated from one’s personal views regarding the behavior of economic agents in such a situation. If you believe that the managers of a company are obligated morally or legally to maximize profits, then you should probably praise economics for how well it indoctrinates its students and be disappointed that so many of them still do not maximize profits. On the other hand, if you approach the results with the belief that managers should also take into account the welfare of the workers, particularly when the economy is in recession and unemployment is high, then you probably feel uncomfortable with the results.

I think that this is one of the problems with using students. It is possible that once the students are out of school the effects of indoctrination might be ameliorated. Having come from the economics department from Rochester (a very free market school) and having been out of economics for almost 10 years I have no problems entertaining the following seriously (whereas I would have not in the first few years out of school):
1. Nationalization of the financial industry
2. Health care is a right, not a privilege (Bumper Sticker)
3. Living wages
4. Free trade is over rated

It is also possible that the Econ students were not responding truthfully but responding in a way that they think the questioner would want them to respond. For instance, they may have viewed the survey as a "test" of how well they had learned economics. This may be an instance of where asking a question might be distorting.

Bottom line: I'm not as worried about indoctrination as Prof. Rubinstein as long as Econ students don't remain in academia. This is when they move from being indoctrinated to being idealogues.

Aggressive drivers tend to have bumper stickers

This article in WaPo:
Three horrors await Americans who get behind the wheel of a car for a family road trip this summer: the spiraling price of gas, the usual choruses of "are-we-there-yet?" -- and the road rage of fellow drivers. Divine intervention might be needed for the first two problems, but science has discovered a solution for the third. Watch out for cars with bumper stickers.
That's the surprising conclusion of a recent study by Colorado State University social psychologist William Szlemko. Drivers of cars with bumper stickers, window decals, personalized license plates and other "territorial markers" not only get mad when someone cuts in their lane or is slow to respond to a changed traffic light, but they are far more likely than those who do not personalize their cars to use their vehicles to express rage -- by honking, tailgating and other aggressive behavior. It does not seem to matter whether the messages on the stickers are about peace and love -- "Visualize World Peace," "My Kid Is an Honor Student" -- or angry and in your face -- "Don't Mess With Texas," "My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student."

The key to the phenomenon apparently lies in the idea of territoriality. Drivers with road rage tend to think of public streets and highways as "my street" and "my lane" -- in other words, they think they "own the road." Why would bumper stickers predict which people are likely to view public roadways as private property? Social scientists such as Szlemko say that people carry around three kinds of territorial spaces in their heads. One is personal territory -- like a home, or a bedroom. The second kind involves space that is temporarily yours -- an office cubicle or a gym locker. The third kind is public territory: park benches, walking trails -- and roads. Previous research has shown that these different territorial spaces evoke distinct emotional responses. People are willing to physically defend private territory in ways they would never do with public territory. And people personalize private territory with various kinds of markers -- in their homes, for example, they hang paintings, alter the decor and carry out renovations. "Territoriality is hard-wired into our ancestors from tens of thousands of years ago," said Paul Bell, a co-author of the study at Colorado State. "Animals are territorial because it had survival value. If you could keep others away from your hunting groups, you had more game to spear . . . it becomes part of the biology." Drivers who individualize their cars using bumper stickers, window decals and personalized license plates, the researchers hypothesized, see their cars in the same way as they see their homes and bedrooms -- as deeply personal space, or primary territory. Unlike any environment our evolutionary ancestors might have confronted, driving a car simultaneously places people in both private territory -- their cars -- and public territory -- the road. Drivers who personalize their cars with bumper stickers and other markers of private territory, the researchers argue, forget when they are on the road that they are in public territory because the immediate cues surrounding them tell them that they are in a deeply private space. "If you are in a vehicle that you identify as a primary territory, you would defend that against other people whom you perceive as being disrespectful of your space," Bell added. "What you ignore is that you are on a public roadway -- you lose sight of the fact you are in a public area and you don't own the road." Szlemko said that, in an as-yet-unpublished experiment, he conducted tests of road rage in actual traffic. He had one researcher sit in a car in a left-turn lane. When the light turned green, the researcher simply stayed still, blocking the car behind. Another researcher, meanwhile, examined whether the blocked car had bumper stickers and other markers of territoriality. The experimental question was how long it would take for the driver of the blocked car to honk in frustration. Szlemko said that drivers of cars with decals, bumper stickers and personalized license plates honked at the offending vehicle nearly two full seconds faster than drivers of cars without any territorial markers.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of cars with bumper stickers in Washington, DC. If I get honked again because the driver behind me thinks I'm too slow .... grrr ... almost makes me want to move out of the region.

Reunite Gondwanaland

That was another interesting bumper sticker.

Shrill bumper stickers

buck fush

Imagine World Peace

This was on a bumper sticker while I was at a light. I gave it a try, except that I couldn't. Unless peace was the absence of ....
1) Absence of countries? One world, one country, one peoples?
2) Absence of war?
3) Absence of strife?