Undead Astronauts

1. More speculation on why Asians don’t vote more Republican from Charles Murray. There’s legitimate speculation from around the web that Asians should be a natural Republican constituency due to their income levels, family oriented values and “leave me alone” attitude towards gov’t. But Asians, like Jews before them, have gone solidly Democratic.
2. Intrade has now been banned for being detrimental to larger society. They were allowing unregulated trading, but when a similar outfit had applied for a permit, they were denied. Why don’t they just go and ban all commodity trading?
3. More on corrupt Ivy League admissions here.
4. Brazilian candid camera show with a prank that could cause heart attacks.

I have a complete lack of enthusiasm for Obama’s win, but a great deal of enthusiasm for the win of big data. Even though many pundits (primarily conservatives) thought they were crazy, the number crunchers pretty much nailed their predictions of a clear Obama win. Grats to Sam Wang, Nate Silver and the rest. Hopefully the Republicans come back to live in the world of reality. I’m rooting for them. Anyways, the data based win confirms the viability of the Moneyball (or Politiball if you prefer) approach to analysis. The pundits are the dinosaur baseball scouts that make gut based calls, and the nerdy quants are… the nerdy quants. Tellingly, Silver comes from a baseball statistics background. Wang on the other hand is has a neuroscience background. The pundits/scouts (and their guts) didn’t have a chance in either case.

The second interesting thing is the change in the Asian American vote. The exit polls show that Asians went for Obama at 73% this year compared to 62% in 2008. This is a significant shift as Asians are now bigger supporters of Obama than Hispanics. Unfortunately, nobody cares because Asians still only comprised 3% of voters. I don’t understand the underpinning of the further shift left. Yes, Romney made a string of anti-China comments, including saying he’d label China a currency manipulator on day 1. But could that alone really shift the vote more than 10%? Maybe those comments and the party’s anti-immigration stance together really made the Republicans appear too xenophobic. Or maybe Obama really is the first Asian American president.

The long wait is over. HERE WE GO BABY.

So I just watched it and … hmm. Not what I was expecting. They dropped Peter Le (probably because he was gay) and Jennifer Field (maybe she found a better gig). Where was the hair pulling and scratching? Where were the drunken orgies? The debauchery, humiliation and shame? These people seemed *gasp* almost normal. One of them is just got engaged to his girlfriend of 5 years. Uh… hmm.

Pew Research has a wide ranging report on the status of Asians in the US. One wonders if the author was thinking about China’s “rise” when he titled this report.

It covers some familiar ground about education and income (Asians are group with highest in both). It also reaffirms some long held views that I haven’t seen numbers on, such as importance of family.

More than half (54%) say that having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in life; just 34% of all American adults agree. Two-thirds of Asian-American adults (67%) say that being a good parent is one of the most important things in life; just 50% of all adults agree.

They are more likely than all American adults to be married (59% vs. 51%); their newborns are less likely than all U.S. newborns to have an unmarried mother (16% vs. 41%); and their children are more likely than all U.S. children to be raised in a household with two married parents (80% vs. 63%).

The tiger mom perception is confirmed to no one’s surprise.

Nearly four-in-ten (39%) say that Asian-American parents from their country of origin subgroup put too much pressure on their children to do well in school. Just 9% say the same about all American parents. On the flip-side of the same coin, about six-in-ten Asian Americans say American parents put too little pressure on their children to succeed in school, while just 9% say the same about Asian-American parents.

Religiosity and political views in this survey generally matches the information posted yesterday. There’s a ton more information in the full report, but it’s so large I haven’t finished reading it. Here are some of the key numbers.

The full report is 8 pages. Quite comprehensive and really too much to cover in a blog post. As I read more of it, I’ll post anything that sticks out.

Huffpo has an article on the subject of Asian American voting tendencies. It’s nothing groundbreaking as we’ve known since 2004 that Asian Americans vote Democratic in presidential campaigns. The question is why, as Asians tend to be more family oriented and a significant number of them own their own businesses. The Huffpo author pronounces immigration issues and high education as the driving force for the trend, but there’s another important component he’s missing: religiosity. According to ARIS and the US Religious Landscape survey, somewhere around 23-27% of Asians are “Nones” unaffiliated with any organized religion (Irish and Jews are other groups with significant number of Nones). Another 21-30% are affiliated with Eastern religions like Hinduism and Buddhism. Also, the surveys show that those with no religion have different political affiliations than the rest of the population. In particular, there are many more Independent Nones than Republicans, while Democrats remain the same (as of 2008).

If Asian Nones are anything like the other Nones, then they’ll be more independent and less Republican. A key fact here, however, is that the percentage of Democrats is exactly the same between the US population and Nones. Nones are more likely to be swing voters than a base either one of the parties can rely on. I don’t have specific data on it, but it’s possible that those who follow Eastern religions are also less likely to be Republican simply because of the party’s strong identification with Christianity.

The 2004 vote was an important marker. That’s the first election after Bush Jr came to office, and it’s possible that his overtly religious political agenda turned a number of otherwise sympathetic Asian voters away from the Republican party.

(Sources: AAA, Asian-nation, ARIS)

Can’t wait for the godawful awesomeness.

This is a few days old, but I just now had time to watch it. There’s been some comment on how Asian American artists are supporting each other by consuming each other’s media, and there’s nothing I’ve seen that exemplifies this phenomenon better than this video.