This is my first time doing the Duck linkage, as I will be alternating with Charli on Tuesdays. I may eventually figure out a style, a pattern, a focus, but my first shot at this will be either completely random or entirely typical of my various fascinations and...
It's Syria week. Post use of chemical weapons, some sort of intervention looks more likely than not. We are conflicted. Here to help us make sense of this: The intel that suggests the Syrian regime...
So, I ran into Dan Drezner in the trendy-food part of the West Loop in Chicago tonight, as you do when you are at APSA. Dan asked if I was planning to respond to his post on networking, which is...
So, in the interests of shameless self-promotion, I just wanted to mention that if you are attending APSA and stop by the Cambridge U Press booth, there should be copies of my new book with Ethan...
Who is the most admired woman in the nerd universe? Hmmm. Could it be: If loving Princess Leia is wrong, I don't want to be right. I also don't want to be her brother.
. Happy International Women's Day. Remembering events in Bosnia twenty years ago and how the world was changed. The Guardian's profile of a few voices from around the world. Urvashi Sahni and Xanthe Ackerman offer strategies for action. In my weekend reading, I'll be trying to make sense of some of this week's bizarre events. North Korea ends peace pact and ratchets up the threat. Jeffrey Lewis worries about the next moves Senator Robert Menedez says Congress and the United States must "ensure that North Korea pays a price for its continued reckless behavior." BBC has video of North Korean...
Here is some Thursday morning linkage action: In time for the CITES meeting on the trade in endangered species, scientists released a study that showed a 60% decline in the small forest elephant species in Africa in the last TEN years Meanwhile, news accounts reported on the shadowy networks of criminals involved in the trade of endangered species (see here as well) Scientists reported that they were able to cure a little girl infected with HIVÂ by giving her large doses of a triple cocktail of antiretrovirals at birth; this is only the second reported case of someone known to have the HIV...
This article discusses the importance of doing counter-intuitive work in the social sciences: We love our counterintuitive findings. And for fields such as psychology, they’re almost a necessity.If new conclusions already gel with our beliefs, goes the common refrain, why was precious taxpayer money ever wasted on the study in the first place? (I find the prospect of a society populated by commenters on most social science articles chilling.) Never mind that because our beliefs are not immune to prevailing worldviews, what we find intuitive has almost certainly been shaped by the past...
Yesterday I decided to create an account at thegradcafe.com. In doing so, I joined a handful of political scientists who post there in an effort to increase transparency. Of course, I'm now being flooded with questions about improving applications and the like. Which I don't really mind. But I am surprised at (1) how many people want to get a PhD in political science and (2) how many of them think that there's some kind of "secret sauce" to admissions. On the subject of graduate school... we're about a decade into a major expansion of parental leave for permanent faculty, but that hasn't...
Mitt Romney is back in the news with more than a little schadenfreude, talking about how he would be better not only to deal with sequestration but also with Iran. Or so he claims. But had he become president, it would have been interesting to see the Romney Doctrine in action—a foreign policy lodestar distinctly different from the Obama Doctrine. Normally foreign policy experts talk in terms of grand strategies—sets of guiding principles for an administration’s foreign policy—but occasionally in the world of ideas a particular set of strategic principles gets defined as a doctrine. Here,...
Someone comes along with a "Call Me Maybe" joke. A mashup of Nine Inch Nails' "Head Like a Hole" and the insidious zombie-song of last summer. The worst part? It works.
Polls in Kenya closed 16 hours ago, but votes continue to be counted.  Those familiar with Kenya and with the electoral crisis of 2007-2008 will know to distrust provisional results. In December 2007, challenger Raila Odinga seemed substantially ahead during much of the early voting, only to see that lead evaporate as returns came in from more remote districts. Despite this qualification, it does look increasingly likely that Uhuru Kenyatta will gain the presidency in the first round of voting.*  In the past two weeks, there was some speculation that Kenyatta might struggle to meet new...