Sometimes one just wants to query some data, right? I recently found myself again wanting to query the excellent work of the Supreme Court Database (SCDB for short), which is an important resource for legal historians and political scientists of all stripes. Several years ago, I pulled together a quick SQLite database and have used it since then. It’s now time to generate a fresh database with updated SCDB data, so I figured I would document how I do it, in case it might be useful to others.

This post is an explanation of the napptools scripts, including how they transform NAPP download files into a SQLite database. The tools napptools consists of three script programs: napp2csv.sh: A Bash script that uses traditional unix tools cut, sed, and tr to chop a NAPP data file into its respective columns, guided by a SAS-format command file. This also creates secondary tables in .CSV format from the variable descriptions in the SAS file.

Last semester, several of my students ran afoul of a perennial problem with PowerPoint. They had created their slide decks on a large screen, but when they connected to the room’s projector, it forced a lower screen resolution. Blammo! – ugly slides. Text too big, images cut off, broken layouts everywhere. The wreckage was so horrifying, two design students in the audience were forced to avert their eyes. There are several ways to solve this problem, but here’s the trick I use all the time: Instead of showing your slides in PowerPoint, make your presentation deck into a PDF, and show that.