I might have to re-think this whole life choice. Tenure is supposed to mean more than just job security--that it is about academic freedom. To teach and research in ways that may not always be popular and certainly in ways that are not politically desirable. Yet in...
Given the intricacies of our job and the cushy lifestyle most academics live in, it disconcerting when academics use improper and incorrect analogies to describe the intricacies of their job. The...
What does any faculty member REALLY want for the holidays? It’s not a Lexus, it’s not jewelry, it’s a brand new revise-and-resubmit (R&R) manuscript. It’s really all that is on my list every...
Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Rights groups criticize incendiary attacks in Syria. Important new report on Syrian child casualties. On corpse-counting in former war zones. "Terminator...
[Note: This is a guest post by Peter M. Haas of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst] Transboundary and global environmental threats require collection action. Concretely, this means developing forms of governance that apply common rules, norms and decision making procedures. Ideally, such governance should be resilient in the sense that it is able to persist over time and respond quickly and accurately to new threats. Yet the record of international environmental governance is mixed, at best. According to a recent UNEP overview of global environmental governance, some regimes have...
My first semester teaching as a PhD'd professor was tough - I was constantly struggling to stay on top of my research responsibilities and my family responsibilities. Add in teaching 2 new preps - something had to give! Well, I thought I found a solution - the textbook I was using for Intro to IR had already-made Powerpoint presentations! All I needed to do was change the name and date on the slides and - Voilà! - teaching duties done! Unfortunately, every time I tried that, I ended up looking exactly like this guy: Powered by MediaTram
Killer Robots: Wired reports on developments in autonomous weaponry, quoting military personnel who say the idea is to think of them "not as tools but as members of the squad." Video gamers collaboratively solved a decade-old puzzle about the complex structure of an enzyme relevant to HIV-AIDS research, suggesting human spatial reasoning is superior to algorithms: a point not at all lost on those who think putting complex situational life and death judgments into machine hands is a bad idea. 270 engineers, roboticists a computer science experts have signed a statement demanding a...
How do you spell heteros*edasticity? Economist Alfredo R. Paloyo surveys the evidence and shows that the variant "heteroskedasticity" overtook its rival, "heteroscedasticity", several years ago. Oddly, "homoscedastic", "heteroscedastic", and "homoscedasticity" continue to trump their k-variants. (Clearly, I am in the copy-editing phase of revising a paper, and this blog post must be part of the revision process, since it would be procrastination otherwise.) Orthographic purists will insist on heteroskedastic because it is closer to the Greek root. Seizing on yet another opportunity to be...
certainly sounds like my 20s… The Duck hasn’t had a good video up in awhile, and for all of you thinking about grad school apps this fall, well, here it is…
According to economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, "gender smarts" were key to ending the recent congressional deadlock. She argues: "Unlocking gridlock in government, it turns out, depends on precisely the mechanism that unlocks competitive strength in the private sector: a diverse team (laden with gender smarts and cultural fluency) managed by leaders whose aggregate of experience motivates them to manage inclusively." A new "ism": motherism, or prejudice against stay-at-home-moms.The Guardian reports that- according to Dr Aric Sigman, a biologist and psychologist- "stay-at-home mothers are...
“Breaking Bad” has achieved something akin to artistic immortality, crowned by critics near and far as the finest television show in history. Such is its outsized achievement that it has taken up its perch in that rarefied stratosphere where only giants roam and even the creative gods bow down. Once Breaking Bad reached such heights it could no longer be evaluated in mere entertainment art terms. Just as Dylan is now revered with the poets, Breaking Bad began to get lionized alongside the likes if not of Bellow, Hemmingway, Morrison, and Faulkner then at least Mailer, Roth, Styron, and...
[Note: This is a guest post by Jerel A.Rosati of the University of South Carolina and James M. Scott of Texas Christian University. It is the final installment in our forum on Teaching US Foreign Policy. You can follow more of the conversation at #TeachForPol.] Teaching US Foreign Policy with The Politics of United States Foreign Policy (6th ed, Cengage: 2014). By Jerel A. Rosati and James M. Scott Using The Politics of United States Foreign Policy, we engage our students to consider the players, processes, and politics that drive U.S. decisions and involvement in the global political...