Patrick and Dan talk about the newest feature of the podcast: a series in which they combine thei…
Episode 29: Introducing: Whiskey & IR Theory… in Space!
read more
Recent Posts
A Tale of Two Protests
The artist Rufina Bazlova has used traditional embroidery to describe current events in Belarus This past weekend, two European capitals witnessed large-scale protests. Both of them protested...
We all suffer if the field is parochial
David C. Kang is Maria Crutcher Professor of International Relations at the University of Southern California, where he also directs the Korean Studies Institute. His latest book, coedited with...
Do Policy Recommendations = Policy Relevance?
Whether scholars embed policy recommendations in their work is a flawed measure of whether work is policy-relevant. Across a series of articles and book chapters, Michael Desch...
More Recent Posts
The power of mentorship: a reflection
In the Monkey Cage’s recent symposium on gender and political science, David Lake writes how important it is that our scholarly networks become less gendered, how male scholars must make an effort to mentor women in the field. In my view, the importance of mentorship cannot be understated. ...
Engineering Peace
Can third parties do more than foster temporary, unstable ceasefires? Without perpetually holding the belligerents at arms' length via heavily militarized buffer zones? Is it possible to make peace self-enforcing at a reasonably low cost? Recent work on conflict management suggests not. Less...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Indiana Jones and the Plot Hole of Power
Two CBS sitcoms have references Indiana Jones in the past couple of weeks: How I Met Your Mother invoked Last Crusade as Barney imagined that Ted and he entered the room where the grail and the fake grails were stored at the end of Last Crusade. The ghostly knight kept playing a role, telling Ted...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Here is your morning linkage with stories on energy and the environment, conservation, conflict in Africa, and health. Energy and Environment Alex Wang on the really bad air in the Chinese city of Harbin, buses getting lost, school canceled, video here 4.5% drop in GHG emissions in the U.S....
So you want to move to the United Kingdom…
Its 2013, the U.S. government was recently shut down for almost two weeks. The National Science Foundation will only fund grants if you can help the U.S. build operational transformers or drones that can make targeted killing choices. The movement to replace full time faculty with part time...
The Duck of Minerva is blocked in China
I was just in China for a work thing, when I checked the Duck for something. Turns out the Duck is screened out by the Great Firewall. Even if you go to Google Search Hong Kong, it’s still blocked. Wow. Who knew even nerdy IR theory and pop culture references posed a threat to CCP rule? Lame. Even...
Do Cyborgs Dream of Electric Femme-Bots?
[Note: This is a guest post by Lauren Wilcox, Lecturer in Gender Studies at University of Cambridge, and author of "Machines that Matter: The Politics and Ethics of ‘Unnatural’ Bodies" in Iver Neumann and Nicholas Kiersey eds, Battlestar Galactica and International Relations, Routledge 2012] In a...
Advancing Global Environmental Governance
[Note: This is a guest post by Peter M. Haas of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst] Transboundary and global environmental threats require collection action. Concretely, this means developing forms of governance that apply common rules, norms and decision making procedures. Ideally, such...
Another Great Video – Why You Should NEVER Lecture from the Book’s Slides
My first semester teaching as a PhD'd professor was tough - I was constantly struggling to stay on top of my research responsibilities and my family responsibilities. Add in teaching 2 new preps - something had to give! Well, I thought I found a solution - the textbook I was using for Intro to...
Tuesday Linkage
Killer Robots: Wired reports on developments in autonomous weaponry, quoting military personnel who say the idea is to think of them "not as tools but as members of the squad." Video gamers collaboratively solved a decade-old puzzle about the complex structure of an enzyme relevant to HIV-AIDS...
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....
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…