Following Friday’s events, the attached image went viral. The figures (if correct) are certainly suggestive, but obviously, the population at risk varies widely between countries. What we need is the gun-related homicide rate for a sample of comparable countries. I headed over to the Brady Campaign, which had created the image, but could not easily…
After a mere three years, I’m back to working on a German SEM textbook. The hiatus is not entirely my fault. Back in 2009, the editors told me not to rush it. They felt that they should kick off their new series (to be published by VS, which in the meantime became VS Springer) with…
From the Great Pyramid to Berlin’s shambolic airport experience, public building projects have a tendency towards overspending, confusion, and delay. Rather unsurprisingly, the new Social Science building in Mainz is no exception, and so we will in all likelihood hold the 41st Joint Sessions not in this shiny new temple of knowledge but rather in…
I could drone on about neo-Gramscian approaches to Social Media, but lets be frank: The English Disco Lovers’ attempt to displace the (so far) slightly better known English Defence League from google’s number one spot is part tongue-in-cheek, part plain silly. Then again, they post silly stuff and run competitions. If you take that as…
I’ve just published a chapter on party identification’s continuing relevance for electoral choice in Germany (in German). I like the piece well enough, and it is full of nice graphs, but its intellectual history (if I may say so) is more than a little bit convoluted. It began its life some twelve years ago or…
A friend sent me the link to this very short article in Perspectives on Psychological Science that use precious journal space to highlight a lot of rather disturbing parallels between (social) science and Dante’s Inferno in creative ways. It would seem that we are all sinners, which, on second thought, is hardly news. For once,…
The deadline for paper proposals has now passed. While everyone was watching the drama across the Atlantic, we’ve been quietly celebrating that many, many of you submitted your paper proposals for the 41st Joint Sessions of Workshops in March, sometimes quite literally at the 11th hour (or even a little later). Thanks to everyone who…
Like social networks, multilevel data structures are everywhere once you start thinking about it. People live in neighbourhoods, neighbourhoods are nested in municipalities, which make up provinces – well, you get the picture. Even if we have no substantive interest in their effects, it often makes sense to control for structures in our data to…
Going to the 2013 Joint Sessions at Mainz? Toddler tagging along? Here is information on on-site child care facilities.
Going to the 41st Joint Sessions? Looking forward to the “Social” in Social Science? We’ve posted information on a couple of guided walking tours on the local website, including the “Great Wine Capital” and the “Sparkling Wine” tour. Highly recommended, though the “walking” part could become a bit of a challenge!