Tony Lang discusses philosophy, writing, and why the International Ethics section of the ISA developed into such a friendly environment for junior scholars.
Episode 18 – Tony Lang
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Selling Out to the Enemy of Open Access
Yesterday, news quickly spread that the Social Science Research Network was bought by Elsevier. This quickly caused an uproar on twitter. Why? The SSRN was established to provide a place for...
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The Greeks Had a Word For It
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...
Great Video on Getting a PhD in Political Science – Very Funny
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…
Monday Linkage: targeting mothers, uteruses, and the key to ending congressional deadlock
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”: Through a Literary Lens
“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...
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[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...
Duck Forum on Teaching US Foreign Policy #3
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Friday Nerd Blogging
Via Bad Lip Reading. Outtakes here.
What Makes a Great Scholar?
I attended a celebration of the life of Kenneth Waltz held at Columbia University last weekend. The service was organized and hosted by Robert Jervis, Robert Art, and Richard Betts and included sixteen speakers -- family members, scholars, and former students who gave wonderful tributes based on their own personal reflections on his life, research, and teaching. It was clear that Waltz was gifted intellectually. His book Man, the State, and War was written in just over a year in 1959 and transformed the field. But this was only the start, he made major intellectual contributions in each of...