This is pretty cool. Scary, mind you. But it gives some academic cover to things We Pretty Much Knew All Along. From today's Chicago Tribune, with some rearrangement of paragraphs for condensation purposes:

How people deal with existential concerns could help explain a broad spectrum of behavior, they believe, from political and religious leanings to altruism and the pursuit of riches to patriotism and terrorism.

Already, experiments have shown that when people are reminded of their own deaths, they become more patriotic, more conservative, more family-oriented, more security-minded.

The developing field, called experimental existential psychology, or XXP, explores how people find meaning and purpose in their lives.

Okay, enough with the la-ti-dah psychobabble. What does this have to do with the price of ice cubes in Alaska?

In the United States, the threat of terrorism has made citizens feel more anxious for security. A study Greenberg and his colleagues conducted before the 2004 presidential election found that college students were slightly in favor of Democrat John Kerry. But when the students were reminded of their mortality, a fear that terrorism provokes, the majority favored his Republican opponent, George Bush.

Bet these are three scientists who are having no trouble at all getting their grant requests approved. And without even having to cite abstinence, creationism, or Jeebus! Although god-bothering does manage to creep in to their study, they are clear to cite it as an effect rather than a cause:

Two of Buckley's recent opinions on NRO are illuminating, and disturbing.

Editor & Publisher has an odd little article up compiling some statistics on the Iraq War on the occasion of the (announcement of the official) 3000th combat death in the conflict. There are some oddities in this list, like this note:

Deaths by hostile fire: 2422 80.9%
Non-hostile: 578

Age 18-20: 517 17.2%
Age 21-30: 1813 60.9%

Look at those last two entries: 17.2 and 60.9 don't add up to 100%, they only come to 78.1%. Assuming that this is not the Civil War, where underage boys run away from the farm to the recruiting office with a piece of paper in their shoe with the number "18" written on it so that when they are asked their age they can truthfully say they are "over 18" we will assume that the people omitted from this list are over the age of 30.

Are you listening?

Dispute the numbers all you want, the point is still the same. It's soooo easy to believe that "black men are responsible for [insert horrible crime here]." Even for those of us who are black, it's a hard trap to avoid.

I've raged before about ignoring polls. Basically, I remember when I used to work with telemarketing firms. We lied, made stuff up, and got stoned on the job, a lot. I can't believe that's changed.

But my own experiences aside, I like to think that Billmon's post reinforces another belief of mine: that there are two sets of numbers in our political landscape:

Chris tells you about yourself.

Wow, you're smart! But you knew that.

Titter. Liz is obviously having a good time with this one. I don't know about you, but I like the idea that a "healthy" life includes 17 beers, 7 cups of coffee, and all the pizza I can eat- daily.