Sorry folks, but with intermittent wifi in the US (my mother-in-law is a neo-luddite), the best I could do was this: Indeed, I spent part of this break reading less of a dissertation than I should have.  So, yeah, there's that. May your New Year's Resolutions prove...
What's right and wrong in the world this holiday season? This is a sundry list related to recent interests of mine, mostly related to humanitarian assistance. UN seeks record $13 billion for...
Dear Kansas Board of Regents, Greetings. You probably don’t know me but I’ve been a long-time user of your services. I started my college career taking dual-credit courses at Pratt Community...
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...
In 1987, I was a high school sophomore and somehow, no doubt through rock music, became aware of the anti-apartheid struggle. As it was for President Obama, the movement to end apartheid was my political baptism. It's what got me engaged and interested in global politics. I remember going to the Texas A&M campus and participating in meetings of Students Against Apartheid. I joined rallies to encourage the university to divest from any investments in U.S. companies doing business in South Africa. Hearing of Nelson Mandela's death today brought all those memories back and prompted me to...
One of the recurring subjects among folks using data is: why does person x not share their data with me? Mostly because they are fearful and ignorant. Fearful? That their work will get scooped and/or their data might be found to be problematic. Ignorant? That they don't know that they are obligated to share their data once they publish off of it and that it is in their interest to share their data. There is apparently a belief out there that data should be shared only after the big project is published, not after the initial work has been published. I will address this as well as the...
This week's stories have no unifying theme other than they kind of capture the end of term mood, a certain grumpiness on the part of the writer (Bjorn Lomborg's tsk tsking of clean energy advocates, Paul Collier's screed against immigration) or not altogether pleasant images (an elephant run amok in a wedding, modern conflict with bows and arrows). Happy grading! Or dissertating! Or turning in those final papers! Enjoy. (My wife pointed out a hopeful Iranian "Yes We Can" video of Rouhani so all is not bleak!). Get off My Lawn: The Written Version Bjorn Lomborg, the skeptical...
Congratulations to Jacques E.C. Hymans for winning the 2014 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. The award is administered by the University of Louisville's Department of Political Science. Disclosure: I'm currently the Department chair and for 17 years I directed the award (1994-2011). There's more on the local angle at the end of this post. Hymans won the $100,000 prize for his 2012 book Achieving Nuclear Ambitions; Scientists, Politicians, and Proliferation. Here's a brief description from the Cambridge University Press webpage: Despite the global spread of nuclear hardware...
I tried to get this out at dusk, but Steve Martin and I both have a problem with doing things at dusk.  This week's Tuesday links follow thusly: First, Duck-ster Phil Arena demonstrated the power of twitter as his rant on twitter about the events in Ukraine got picked up by Max Fisher of the Washington Post. Two reasons to post this--Phil's take is not only strident but also illuminating and clarifying; and it shows that twitter can cross-over to the mainstream media. Fisher has done this before, as he likes to take social science of stuff and discuss it over at his WashPo blog. Not a...
Well it is officially December- and you know what that means...all the hipsters and single dudes can finally shave off their Movember moustaches (those are the only men who participate, right?). Movember is a fundraiser for testicular cancer that has gained traction (in 2012 the campaign raised 29 million in Australia, where the idea originated) to the point where the moustache has become a symbol for cancer awareness. But is Movember racist and sexist? According to Arianne Shahvis at the New Statesmen, Movember is not all it is cracked up to be. She notes that the campaign's call for "real...
Sunday, December 1st was World AIDS Day, the annual reminder of the state of the epidemic, a way to focus attention on a problem that is perhaps less visible than it was two or three years but not defeated, not by a long shot. To that end, this week, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria will be convening its fourth replenishment conference in Washington, DC, where it is seeking $15 billion for the next three years. Recall, in 2011 , the Global Fund canceled its 11th funding round in the midst of the global economic crisis and concerns about some millions of the Global Fund's...