Researchers from UC Berkeley and the Univeristy of Michigan dug up some surprising results after posing the question: How much do lawmakers really know about their voters' political views?

"Pick an American state legislator at random, and chances are that he or she will have massive misperceptions about district views on big-ticket issues, typically missing the mark by 15 percentage points," David Broockman and Christopher Skovron wrote in a study for the Scholarly Strategy Network originally published in 2013.

To investigate the question, the duo surveyed thousands of state legislators and compared their perceptions of voters to people's actual views, derived from a large body of public opinion data.

Their conclusion: "legislators usually believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are."

On three issues — universal healthcare, same-sex marriage, and welfare — lawmakers' assumptions about what their constituents believed were "15-20 percent more conservative, on average," than the actual base of public support for such issues.

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/study-lawmakers-liberal-conservative-assume

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Breaking down misperceptions by the leanings of legislators reveals further imbalances:

The typical conservative legislator overestimates his or her district’s conservatism by a whopping 20 percentage points. Indeed, he or she believes the district is even more conservative than the most right-leaning district in the entire country.

Liberals also think their constituents’ views are more conservative than they really are, but are typically only off by about five percentage points.

Most conservative legislators believe their positions on same-sex marriage and health care command majority support in their districts – but only two-fifths are correct. In contrast, liberal legislators usually share views with constituents, but one in five does not know it.

Read more: http://www.scholarsstrategynetwork.org/content/politicians-think-american-voters-are-more-conservative-they-really-are

Since 2007 photographer Matthias Schaller has photographed raw, abstract paintings. The paintings however are not found on canvas, but rather smeared onto the tools used to craft each work of art—the palettes. His series, Das Meisterstück (The Masterpiece), claims these behind-the-scene objects as portraits of the artist, while also giving a direct insight into the detailed techniques performed by each painter.

Palette of Eugene Delacroix / Palette of Georges Seurat

Palette of Vincent van Gogh, 2007, 190x156cm, Copyright: Matthias Schaller, Musée d’Orsay, Paris;

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Main Findings

The resulting map depicts a variety of distinctive causes of death based on a wide range of number of deaths, from 15,000 deaths from HIV in Florida to 679 deaths from tuberculosis in Texas to 22 deaths from syphilis in Louisiana. The largest number of deaths mapped were the 37,292 deaths in Michigan from “atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, so described”; the fewest, the 11 deaths in Montana from “acute and rapidly progressive nephritic and nephrotic syndrome.” The state-specific percentage of total deaths mapped ranged from 1.8% (Delaware; atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, so described) to 0.0005% (Illinois, other disorders of kidney).

Some of the findings make intuitive sense (influenza in some northern states, pneumoconioses in coal-mining states, air and water accidents in Alaska and Idaho), while the explanations for others are less immediately apparent (septicemia in New Jersey, deaths by legal intervention in 3 Western states). The highly variable use of codes beginning with “other” between states is also apparent. For example, Oklahoma accounted for 24% of the deaths attributable to “other acute ischemic heart diseases” in the country despite having only slightly more than 1% of the population, resulting in a standardized mortality rate ratio of 19.4 for this cause of death, the highest on the map. The highest standardized mortality rate ratio after Oklahoma was 12.4 for pneumoconioses in West Virginia.

A limitation of this map is that it depicts only 1 distinctive cause of death for each state. All of these were significantly higher than the national rate, but there were many others also significantly higher than the national rate that were not mapped. The map is also predisposed to showing rare causes of death — for 22 of the states, the total number of deaths mapped was under 100. Using broader cause-of-death categories or requiring a higher threshold for the number of deaths would result in a different map. These limitations are characteristic of maps generally and are why these maps are best regarded as snapshots and not comprehensive statistical summaries (5).

Ana Navarro, a former aide to ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), said on CNN Tuesday that the potential presidential candidate told her he'd misheard a question about the Iraq War.

Navarro, who was Bush's director of immigration policy in the governor's office, said on CNN's "New Day" that she'd emailed Bush on Tuesday morning for clarification about his comments.

"I emailed him this morning and I said to him, 'Hey, I'm a little confused by this answer so I'm genuinely wondering did you mishear the question?'" Navarro said. "And he said, 'Yes, I misheard the question.'"

Bush gave the answer in a sit-down interview with Fox News host Megyn Kelly that aired Monday night. The question came after reports surfaced last week that he sought advice on the Middle East from his brother, President George W. Bush.

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Fellow guest and Democratic strategist Paul Begala chimed in after Navarro's answer.

"I didn't know he had a hearing impairment and we pray for his swift recovery," Begala said.

Dozens of traffic lights in Vienna have been given a makeover ahead of this year's Eurovision Song Contest on May 23.

Pairs of red and green men and women are lighting up the city's streets in the weeks leading up to the annual singing event in the Austrian capital. Figures in Vienna's traffic lights have typically been just one man or a gender-neutral person.

The campaign is hoping to present Vienna as an open-minded city while improving traffic safety.

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Vienna is also hosting a Life Ball charity event to raise money for the fight against HIV and AIDS on May 16. A number of celebrities including Jean Paul Gaultier, Charlize Theron and Mary J. Blige are due to attend.