WHAT IS THE PROBABILITY YOUR VOTE WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

One of the motivations for voting is that one vote can make a difference. In a presidential election, the probability that your vote is decisive is equal to the probability that your state is necessary for an electoral college win, times the probability the vote in your state is tied in that event. We computed these probabilities a week before the 2008 presidential election, using state‐by‐state election forecasts based on the latest polls. The states where a single vote was most likely to matter are New Mexico, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Colorado, where your vote had an approximate 1 in 10 million chance of determining the national election outcome. On average, a voter in America had a 1 in 60 million chance of being decisive in the presidential election. (JEL H0)     

Home Is Where She Is

ABSTRACT

I have written this paper with the intention of reading it out loud to you. As I was writing this paper, I imagined your skin, that soft outer membrane of your body. I imagined my tongue moving to shape my words, all the while carefully shifting my teeth out of the way. I imagined having these words thump under your skin and tremble your presence to the beat of our hearts. Because this paper was supposed to have you feel me and my people. And by “my people,” I truly mean everyone around me, including you. So, this paper is essentially about us, you and me. You know, I just had a feeling that you might know us, but you do not feel us. I just had a feeling that you have got to feel how we are. … Do you hear me? Because, only then, can we finally, start.     

Darren: Erotic Interludes in Political Transference

The dilemmas and opportunities of interpellation and intelligibility play out also in the sexual domain. In “Darren: Erotic Interludes in Political Transference,” Stephen Hartman shows how interpellation makes both him and Darren intelligible and therefore anxious: The power of discourse to legitimate desire means that you can lose your legitimacy and fall into abjection if you ever refuse your interpellation. Here Hartman, interpellated by The New York Times announcement of his marriage to another man, desexualizes and abjects his patient by interpellating his desire as a desire to be a married gay guy, a “good gay” too.     

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

This article analyzes two broad questions: Does your first name matter? And how did you get your first name anyway? Using data from the National Opinion Research Centers General Social Survey, we find evidence that, even after controlling for a myriad of exogenous background factors, first name features are predictors of many lifetime economic outcomes that are related to labor productivity such as education, happiness, and early fertility. However, we also find evidence, based on the differential impacts of gender and race on the “blackness” of a name, that identity could be an important channel for linking first name to lifetime economic outcomes. (JEL D1, J1, J7)     

Method Madness

I caution you not to expect a cookbook solution to your difficulty. I cannot tell you what to do in ten easy steps. Precious few successful career searches are conducted in so mechanical a fashion. You must decide the best sequence of events for yourself. —Howard Figler, The Complete Job Search Handbook     

Pheromonal influences on sociosexual behavior in postmenopausal women

To determine whether a putative human sex‐attractant pheromone increases specific sociosexual behaviors of postmenopausal women, we tested a chemically synthesized formula derived from research with underarm secretions from heterosexually active, fertile women that was recently tested on young women. Participants (n = 44, mean age = 57 years) were postmenopausal women who volunteered for a double‐blind placebo‐controlled study designed “to test an odorless pheromone, added to your preferred fragrance, to learn if it might increase the romance in your life.” During the experimental 6‐week period, a significantly greater proportion of participants using the pheromone formula (40.9%) than placebo (13.6%) recorded an increase over their own weekly average baseline frequency of petting, kissing, and affection (p = .02). More pheromone (68.2%) than placebo (40.9%) users experienced an increase in at least one of the four intimate sociosexual behaviors (p = .04). Sexual motivation frequency, as expressed in masturbation, was not increased in pheromone users. These results suggest that the pheromone formulation worn with perfume for a period of 6 weeks has sex‐attractant effects for postmenopausal women.     

Exploring the (Post) Industrial Subculture - Towards a Critical (Post) Anal-ytical Approach to Organizational Analysis

You could maintain incredulity toward metanarratives as much as you liked, but it wouldn't keep your feet on the ground. Not if you were an oilskin. If you were a fleece however, your feet may be on the ground, but your ideas may be in the air. Yet your problem wouldn't be how to resolve your differences - it would be how to recognise them.     

Views,events, and debates

Welcome to Gender and Development's Views, Events and Debates section. We'd like to invite readers to respond to any of the views expressed in this section, to contact us with reports of events, and to suggest debates on important contemporary issues of relevance to the journal's core concern: to strengthen and support development which supports women's empowerment and gender equality as goals. We'd also like to invite you to send us your feedback on Gender and Development, and suggestions for future issues, to: jporter@oxfam.org.uk     

Possibilities Might Be More Encompassing than Solutions: An Interview with Bill O'Hanlon

Bill O'Hanlon has authored or co-authored seventeen books, including Taproots; Solution-Oriented Hypnosis; An Uncommon Casebook; Shifting Contexts; Rewriting Love Stories. He has published 32 articles or book chapters. Bill has produced or co-produced two computer programs and several audiotapes and videotapes about therapy. His books have been widely translated. He is co-editor of The Journal of Collaborative Therapies and is on the advisory board of the International Association of Marriage and Family Counselors. He says that his teaching ‘may cause severe disruption to old beliefs and unhelpful patterns and you may have no place to go but toward the life that has been your heart's and soul's desire’.     

“What Colour Is Your English?”*

This paper raises questions about ways in which the “imagined community” is discursively patrolled through accents. Drawing on preliminary research with African immigrant women, we argue that “Canadian English” constitutes a border allowing only partial and provisional crossing for those with an “African English” accent. The accent border is material and figurative, affecting access to material benefits such as jobs or housing, as well as shaping perceptions of who belongs in Canada. Thus, accents form a site through which racialized power relations are negotiated and “Others” are reproduced materially and figuratively in Canada.

Citing Literature

Volume 40 , Issue 5 December 2003

Pages 565-573     

Effort to remove Medicaid prior authorization for bupe in NJ advances

You're a health care provider, and your patient is interested in cannabis — perhaps for pain, for anxiety, for depression or even for trying to quit drinking or using drugs. You think it could help him or her. Or, rather, it might — you really have no idea, because you didn't learn about it in medical school (except that it's illegal and addictive), but you know it's now legal in your state and you want to know how to respond to your patient's request.     

定制你的私人印刷

你想拥有一本为自己量身定制的图书吗？你想自己的结婚喜帖与众不同吗？你想把自己最喜欢的照片做成台历摆在桌上吗？没问题!别忘了，我们生活在定制时代，个性化印刷正在流行。     

DUBIOUS AND DUBIOUSER: CONTINGENT VALUATION AND THE TIME OF DAY

We collect contingent valuation data from 524 student survey respondents over a 3‐day, 72‐hour period. Data analysis of a hypothetical campus referendum focuses on time‐of‐day effects on willingness to pay for a renewable energy project. We find that subjects responding to the survey during the night‐time hours (i.e., between 12 a.m. and 6 a.m.) do not display the law of demand, offering theoretically invalid responses to questions with important policy implications. Results from this research may have serious implications for the contingent valuation method (CVM). In short, just like your father said, nothing good happens after midnight when using the CVM. (JEL Q51)     

Psychoanalysis: A Traveller's Guide for Family Therapists

ROLL UP, ROLL UP! AirFreud is pleased to announce a special and spectacular Around-The-World Package for Down Under Family Therapists. Psychoanalytic ideas are being rediscovered in your field and you may like to encounter these first hand, in the places and spaces where the ideas arose. Visit first Vienna, the city of Freud's love-hate and his adopted home: see Freud's apartment, in a fashionable Viennese suburb, home now to the Sigmund Freud Museum. Then on to Paris, La Rive Gauche and the Sorbonne. Hear the echo of Jacques Lacan's Seminar resound along the famous boulevardes. Experience the stirrings of 1968. Then to London and feel the tension that still exists between the Anna Freud Clinic and the Tavistock, just as in the days of Miss Freud and Mrs Klein. Then whisk across the Atlantic to New York and then on to Los Angeles. Follow the footsteps of the psychoanalytic diaspora from Hitler's Germany to the security and comfort of forward-looking middle-class America. Along the way friendly tour guides will provide you with plenty of information. In the Handy Travel Pack, there are useful summaries of major theoretical writings, a map, and a splendid bound journal is included for your own notes and observations. No prior knowledge is assumed; take an open mind and enjoy the journey.     

夏季生活的健康之选

夏季气候炎热，病菌繁殖生长快，影响身体健康的因素多。在此，我们愿．为您推荐夏季生活的健康之选，为您平安度过炎夏助—臂之力。     

Views,events, and debates

Welcome to Gender & Development's Views, events, and debates section. We’d like to invite readers to respond to any of the views expressed in this section, to contact us with reports of events, and to suggest debates on issues relevant to the journal's concern: to inspire and strengthen development initiatives which support the goals of gender equality and women's empowerment.

We’d also like to invite you to send us your feedback on Gender & Development, and suggestions for future issues, to: gadeditor@oxfam.org.uk     

Imprisonment in Hospital

You are sitting drinking tea at your midmorning break, chatting to your neighbour about the cost of living. There is an announcement over the radio: “Caffeine has been declared a dangerous drug under the Queensland Health Act Amendment Act 1971. Caffeine is a stimulant found in coffee, tea, cocoa and cola.”     

“炫”出你的掌中宝!(英文)

当看到街上来来往往的人手里拿着相同或相似教式的手机,你是否觉得有些单调乏味?当自己的手机不知不觉间挂上道道划痕,你可曾感到郁闷。甚至有些恼火?想"炫"一下自己的手机,让它变成只属于你的掌中宝吗?     

Views,events, and debates

Welcome to Gender & Development's Views, events, and debates section. We'd like to invite readers to respond to any of the views expressed in this section, to contact us with reports of events, and to suggest debates on issues relevant to the journal's concern: to inspire and strengthen development initiatives which support the goals of gender equality and women's empowerment.

We'd also like to invite you to send us your feedback on Gender & Development, and suggestions for future issues, to: gadeditor@oxfam.org.uk