The Duck of Minerva

Apologies for the delay in Thursday linkage but was a bit under the weather. It's the Texas heat, making me crazy and violent, or at least so suggests a recent empirical study in Science though it has its detractors. This week, I link to the back and forth of a major study on climate and conflict that carries out a meta-analysis of 60 studies and finds a 1 standard deviation change in variety of climate indicators leads to a 4% rise in "interpersonal violence" and a 14% rise in "intergroup" violence. "Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict", Science, Hsiang et al., 2013 More...

Here is your Thursday late morning linkage. Let's start with a couple of stories about getting out to the field. Kim Yi Dionne writes about the challenges of taking her toddler to Malawi during field work (on second thought, maybe not!) U.S. diplomats confined to Kabul and can't visit aid projects as military drawdown deprives them of protection for field visits In environmental news, here is some fracking and Google-related chatter and more: Environmental research group study claims efficiency more than fracking drove U.S. greenhouse gas emissions reductions of late Back and forth by...

Here is your mid-morning linkage for this Thursday. Three strands this week: one on higher education and social science, another on conservation, and a third on global health. Oh, and CFR's International Affairs Fellowship is taking applications. Higher Education and Social Science You all saw the story by the Harvard prof (now tenured I might add!) who mused on treating her tenure-track position as a 7-year postdoc (and Steve's commentary). You probably also saw the broadside about shaking up the social sciences (and Dan's post). Here are some other social science-y and higher ed. stories...

Before posting some mid-Thursday afternoon linkage, here is a little musing on not overstating the influence of social media on entertainment and politics. For a moment this week, the horribleness that was the SyFy Channel's Sharknado set off a mini-Twitter storm that resulted in: a bunch of tweets but still dismal ratings for the made for TV movie. This reminded me of the fleeting victory in Texas for supporters of abortion rights: while State Senator Wendy Davis' filibuster scored 200,000 live-stream viewers on the Texas Tribune website and netted her $1 million for a future gubernatorial...

“Of course this is risky,” Mr. Logulov said, “but risk is everywhere in life. A brick could fall on your head in the street, for example. And this is just a small risk.” - on the practice of having Russian children take their pictures with circus animals (WTF!?) Here is your morning linkage with a return to form, conservation concerns and pollution in Asia loom large: Worries about China's resumption of the trade in tiger parts Yao Ming urges Chinese to give up on shark fin soup And good news, big drop in demand for shark fin soup record 4,000 missing in recent India floods Massive flooding...

In the spirit of the dramatic events of yesterday, we at the Duck want to bring your morning linkage with news of the Zimmerman trial. Err, scratch that, we'll leave that to CNN. Lots of attention being directed to the dramatic events in Egypt, plus some obligatory posts below about conservation, including reports that Joseph Kony has turned to poaching elephants (what unsavory s--t will that guy not do?). On Egypt, for me the requisite judgment is, at this stage, ambivalence. I can't see how the events unfold in a positive way. You have the ouster of a democratically elected leader but one...