by PM | 19 Feb 2013 | Featured
Only a handful of links this morning: Seth Masket investigates what happens when you raise the cost of voting. Unsurprising: minority and poor voters suffer more. Tim Burke pushes back against MOOCs and the failure of managerial class models of higher education. Nina Zumel provides a public service by transforming William Cleveland's plots into ggplot2. Gopnik on Galileo [The New Yorker] Xavier Marquez traces the spread of liberal norms:[I]t...
by Dan Nexon | 18 Feb 2013 | Featured
Okay, I don't have one. But I'd like to call attention to some excellent discussion of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Adam Kotsko asks "what is the business model for online education." Nigel Thrift analyzes the recent "media obsession" with MOOCs. Louis Betty makes unfortunate swipes at Apple in pursuit of a larger point about techno-faddishism, pedagogy, and higher education. Betty's piece recalls a great satirical post that Paul...
by PM | 18 Feb 2013 | Featured
Here's the ten eleven best West Wing episodes you should watch today: Noel Posse Comitatus A Proportional Response kludge
by Brian Rathbun | 18 Feb 2013 | Featured
The Canard “All the Fake News that is Fit to Print” Cat Fancy, Inc. is the target of an aggressive takeover bid by Battlestar Galacitcum, an upstart nerd pornography site. The Duck of Minerva, purchased by Cat Fancy earlier in the year, would be the prize in the acquisition. A mainstay among international relations blogs, it has increasingly veered into the academic analysis of science fiction and fantasy and seen its readership soar. “We...
by Vikash Yadav | 18 Feb 2013 | Featured
Good Morning! Let's start the week in the Asia-Pacific... North Korea It looks like US officials met secretly with North Korea three times in 2011 and 2012 without telling Japan or South Korea. Why the US loaded heavy equipment, including a bulldozer, on their plane during a stopover in Tokyo remains a complete mystery. Not surprisingly, the Japan-US relationship appears strained on the issue of sharing intelligence about nuclear...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 17 Feb 2013 | Featured
I thought, mistakenly, that the Hoth symposium had run its course: Ackerman point, a bunch of us counterpoint both at Danger Room and elsewhere (here at Duck, and, if it's not up yet it will be soon, over at Grand Blog Tarkin), and my tossing a little more fuel on the fire by arguing what I generally take to be a pretty obvious and I thought uncontroversial point: that Star Wars is a story about the struggle between Jedi and Sith about the...
by Dan Nexon | 16 Feb 2013 | Featured
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...
by Steve Saideman | 15 Feb 2013 | Featured
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.
by PM | 15 Feb 2013 | Featured
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...
by Jon Western | 15 Feb 2013 | Featured
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 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. Really...
by Megan MacKenzie | 14 Feb 2013 | Featured
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...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 14 Feb 2013 | Featured
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...