Ok, this is late for Friday but we didn't have an entry, so here we go:
Ok, this is late for Friday but we didn't have an entry, so here we go:
"This is what winning looks like" I have to confess, I was late to watch "Zero Dark Thirty" (ODT). I read a handful of reviews and blogs about the movie, had arguments with friends about its...
Apparently, the Arab Spring will not come to the UAE this weekend. Planners of an LSE conference on the implications of the Arab Spring set for this weekend in UAE have cancelled the event after...
Thanks to a very awesome grad student of mine, I just realized that last week marked the second anniversary of the start of the Bahrain uprising. Fueled by protests in Tunisia and Egypt, citizens...
Belated Valentine's from the Duck of Minerva. Brad DeLong wants Cosma Shalzi to figure out what the Chelyabinsk meteorite strike means for policy: "What should this piece of information do, decision-theoretically, to change our view of the situation we find ourselves in?" I'm not a statistics whiz, but I'd say: probably nothing. There's no indication (yet) that the strike is inconsistent with current risk assessments of such events. What it might change is the politics of asteroid early-warning systems and research into ways of defending earth against heavenly aggression. North Korea warns...
We have fallen short of our Friday responsibilities, but given the theme of the week, this video seems most appropriate. Of course, this raises all kinds of possibilities and re-definitions of "bad" PR. My guess is that the best episode of this series of six web-isodes will be the next one. The third will be ok, and then then next three will be profoundly disappointing.
In a nifty contribution to our understanding of LGBT politics, Gallup has surveyed more than 200,000 Americans to ask if they identify as LGBT or not. This gives us what Gallup claims and I'll accept as the first state-level estimate of this dataset. But Gallup mistakenly interprets their own findings (or, rather, do not fully extract as much information as they could). Gallup writes While the variation in LGBT identification across states is relatively small, findings do suggest some evidence that the variation is not entirely random. Social climates that promote acceptance of or stigma...
If it looks like a Duck -- the Monkey Cage's take on the Hagel filibuster and the politics of the Senate Daniel Serwer thinks the US Â should be funneling money to Moaz al Khatib and the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition forces. Corruption and inefficiency in the delivery of humanitarian aid -- can it still be overcome. John McCain wants to give the Syrian Opposition Coalition control over humanitarian aid. Â Really not a good idea. Understanding factionalism in Syria -- and how to start a battalion in five easy lessons. Thinking about post-conflict justice in...
Happy Valentine's Day Duckies! Here are a few interesting links on love and gender. First, for those of you feeling completely clueless when it comes to romance, the Huffington Post put up a list of Five Courses about Sex and Love, including "Beyond Hooking Up: Creating Meaningful Relationships" -- a Chemistry and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies course at Williams College (Williamstown, Massachusetts) and "Dating and Mating" -- a Women's Studies course at Duke University (Durham, North Carolina). Second, rather than chocolates, Ms Magazine hands out a list of suggestions for ways to...
Change you can believe in. Or is it a trap? So our little geekfest-in-a-teacup has provoked, among other things, some additional contributions by members of The Duck focusing on additional ways that the Empire's command structure and Imperial strategy towards the Rebel Alliance doesn't make a lot of sense. The Imperial troops are feckless, letting the rebels escape on occasions when they should have been able to stop them easily. Opportunities to wipe out the rebels are missed through various kinds of incompetence, tactical or bureaucratic or otherwise. The Empire as a whole is riddled with...
and Failure leads to Fear, Anger and all that Stuff. In the renewed discussion of the Battle of Hoth and other failures of the Galactic Empire, there is a running theme throughout many of the posts: how does a leader get the underlings to do what they are supposed to do. Given the affinity between the dark side of the force and Principal-Agency theory,* it is somewhat surprising that nearly all of these analyses have been atheoretical and have ignored the most applicable framework. As the great Jedi Mace Windu once said, it is principals and agents all the way down. The Emperor is the...
You can’t win a counter-insurgency with a military like this The Duck has gotten into an excellent debate with Ackerman on the Empire’s blown opportunity to stamp out the Space Vietcong Rebellion at Hoth. Westmoreland spent 5 years trying to nail down the VC in set-piece battles where US firepower could be brought decisively to bear and end the war. Here was the Emperor’s similar chance, but Vader and Admiral Ozzel blew it (mostly because the Empire’s officer corps was filled with grandstanding self-promoters, as Ackerman rightly points out). But as the respondents noted, the larger...