A cultural milestone has been passed: Political science is now science-y enough that XKCD pays attention.
A New Era
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The final 2012 Presidential debate was a decisive "victory" for President Obama on both style and substance. Romney's tack to the center left him with no other arguments than to invoke the resolve...
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) includes a right that many grad students and professors probably feel is constantly under attack: the right to leisure. It’s there, clearly laid out...
REK: I am pleased to guest-post my friend Dave’s longer, fuller version of a book review he wrote for CSIS. My thanks to CSIS as well. If you aren’t reading Dave yet, I’d recommend it. “Is America...
This is a guest post by Peter S. Henne. Peter is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University. He formerly worked as a national security consultant. His research focuses on terrorism and religious conflict; he has also written on the role of faith in US foreign policy. During 2012-2013 he will be a fellow at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. The Syrian shelling of Akcakale--a Turkish village on the Syrian border--and Turkey's military response against Syrian targets was shocking. Personally, it made me think of a 2009 trip I took to Antep and Urfa--cities in southeastern...
As a graduate student at an urban university, I envy this RA's large office. New technologies adapt terms from older tools, even when they're curiously inappropriate. Consider "dashboard," which we use now to refer to an easy display of critical information (as in Google Dashboard) or the control panel of an automobile. Originally, however, a dashboard was (per Wikipedia) "a barrier of wood or leather fixed at the front of a horse-drawn carriage or sleigh to protect the driver from mud or other debris "dashed" (thrown) up by the wheels and horses' hooves." Clearly, that term outlasted its...
I had three immediate reactions to last night's Presidential debate. First, when one side is ecstatic and the other side is talking about how "debates don't matter," that's a pretty good indication of who "won." Second, #bizarro2004 continues, with Mitt Romney playing the role of "John Kerry" and Barack Obama of "George W. Bush." In fairness, though, Romney was less stilted than Kerry and Obama wasn't as bad as Bush was during the first debate of 2004. Third, as a former policy debater and debate coach, I felt a bit like I was watching a decent national-circuit debater take on a decent...
Explanation at Wired:Hard to believe, but it’s been 10 years since goofy fun-rockers They Might Be Giants released their first family album, No! To accompany the album’s 10th anniversary reissue, the Giants have recorded a revise of the geography-laden track “Alphabet of Nations” and released an accompanying crowdsourced video to benefit the Global Fund for Children.
Now THAT is Korean art – the Seokguram Buddha; I’ve been to see it 3 times The Internet has slapped down my arrogance. I told myself I wouldn’t write about k-pop, but that post on ‘Kangnam Style’ drove so much traffic to my site and twitter, that here is a response to all the comments. It’s kinda of depressing how my posts on Asian political economy or what-not get little traffic and a lot of yawns, but K-pop brings huge numbers. It’s like those Facebook posts on something you find interesting that no one bothers to look at, but put up a pic of yourself blotto on a beach, and everyone...
Dan Nexon is not responsible fortoday's links.Dan is traveling today, so it's the Duck of Minerva's version of Assistant Editor's Month (or, perhaps, assistant to the editor's month):Dani Rodrik becomes the Clippy of forensic investigators, as he relates how the Turkish government may have faked evidence against 300 officers on coup-plotting charges: "It looks like you're trying to frame someone for treason. Would you like help with that?" (Dani Rodrik's Weblog)Jay Ulfelder shows off a political science version of the Netflix Prize, in which a bunch of quantoids tried to systematically...
The German Justice Ministry has outlined a new draft law regulating the circumcision of children in that country, on the heels of a Cologne court’s decision that circumcision of non-consenting minors constituted a human rights violation.The decision, after a four-year-old Muslim boy experienced uncontrollable bleeding following his ritual circumcision, sparked a firestorm, with some child rights activists hailing the decisionand while Muslim and Jewish communities within Germany and abroad argued that the ruling constituted a violation of religious rights. The new law must pass by at least a...
UPDATE: the author of the Chronicle article, Peter Schmidt, discussed the issue on the Kojo Namdi show yesterday.The SEIU wants to unionize adjunct professors at Georgetown University. As their card makes clear, this is part of a broader effort to unionize contingent labor at colleges and universities. George Washington's adjuncts unionized in 2006, and won a significant pay raise this August. American University's and Montgomery County's adjuncts are also unionized.From today's Chronicle of Higher Education article: SEIU Local 500 began a campaign to organize an adjunct union at Georgetown...