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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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  1. The page numbering. The pages are numbered using roman numerals rather than the normal arabic characters. This is common for things like the preface to reports but my general experience (admittedly limited) is that executive summaries tend to be part of the main body and numbered appropriately. Additionally there are no page numbers visible on the title page or copyright page but the "Executive Summary" page starts at "iii". It's normal for title pages and copyright pages not to be numbered but they also are generally excluded from the numbering system altogether such that the first page after them ought to be "i", not "iii". Either two numbered pages are missing between the copyright page and the "Executive Summary" titled page or something odd is happening here.

There are other formatting issues on the pages- RAND doesn't usually put their symbol, or date and (mis-)classification on the Executive Summary page- but I will note that the roman numerals itself isn't off.

RAND regularly has a numbering divide between the main-body of a report, and the pre-body pages that include the copyright page, the agenda, but also the executive summary. Pre-main body material will be in roman numerals, with main body reports in arabic characters. The 'missing' pages would likely have been the Agenda and the Methodology pages... but the implication they were only a page each, on an executive summary this length, is itself a red flag.