The ISA-NE conference scheduled for 2-3 November in Baltimore, Maryland will take place as scheduled. Official emails are going out. Hope to see attendees there.
by Dan Nexon | 30 Oct 2012 | Featured
The ISA-NE conference scheduled for 2-3 November in Baltimore, Maryland will take place as scheduled. Official emails are going out. Hope to see attendees there.
by Dan Nexon | 30 Oct 2012 | Featured
The ISA-NE leadership hopes to make a decision by 1200 EDT concerning the status of the conference. While the DC area looks like it should be navigable by Thursday, we don't have good information about Baltimore or about what the state of east-coast travel will be like. The Baltimore Sun is pretty useless. Any commentary from readers in Baltimore would be appreciated. If you haven't been paying attention, the situation in New York an New Jersey...
by Vikash Yadav | 29 Oct 2012 | Featured
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard stated last Sunday that every Australian child should learn Mandarin, Hindi, or other regional languages as part of Australia's embrace of the Asian Century. While her new agenda set out in a 300 page report has received its share of harsh criticism and questions about funding, one has to admire the audacity of Gillard's vision of an Australia that seeks to engage Asian states and societies through an...
by PM | 29 Oct 2012 | Featured
A cultural milestone has been passed: Political science is now science-y enough that XKCD pays attention.
by Vikash Yadav | 29 Oct 2012 | Featured
What?? It was too good to resist...
by PM | 29 Oct 2012 | Featured
Florida Governor Rick Scott is considering changing the cost of different college majors at Florida's public colleges to influence students' choices. The reasoning is standard rightist dirigisme: STEM degrees would cost less, and artsy ones would cost more, because STEM = jerbs and, presumably, English = liberals. Debate over the proposal has broken down along the usual lines. Unsurprisingly, Marginal Revolution co-blogger Alex Tabarrok offers...
by Dan Nexon | 29 Oct 2012 | Featured
Last year Nate Silver posted numbers going back to 1972. Bottom line: for Obama and Romney to be running roughly even at this point tracks with 2004--and represents an improvement for the Democrat over most pre-2004 cycles. Obama picked up a number of normally Republican-endorsing pages in 2008, which tracks with the general revulsion against the Bush era that swept the country that year. The fact that many of those pages are switching back...
by Dan Nexon | 29 Oct 2012 | Featured
Follow Mitt Romney's storm tips on twitter. Remember that Sandy has already killed over 60 people in the Caribbean, and that many of those deaths are tied (in one way or another) to the unequal distribution of global wealth. Star Wars pork, or how to alienate the Jedi voting bloc? Over at The Disorder of Things, Pablo K. weighs in on the Human Security Report and engages with Megan's critique here at the Duck. Natural-resource policy for Burma....
by Dan Nexon | 27 Oct 2012 | Featured
My daughter is very anxious that Mitt Romney might win the election. Before that she was worried about the European monetary crisis and what might happen if Greece defaults. This suggest that the problem is less one of our partisanship than of growing up the kid of international-affairs specialists who listen to the news during the morning commute. Regardless, her anxiety suggested it was time for "the talk." We'd already had the "Republicans...
by PM | 27 Oct 2012 | Featured
I'm pretty sure I'm the only Duck to (a) have lived at a state fair, (b) know the 4-H pledge by heart, and (c) have been quoted by the Watertown, S.D., newspaper on ... well, on any subject, actually. And although I had the misfortune to be born in Washington, D.C., I quickly decamped for America's Heartland, where I learned Real American Values, which include RC Cola, moon pies, and a fondness for country music not sung by the Dixie Chicks....
by Robert Kelly | 27 Oct 2012 | Featured
Did anyone else find the third presidential debate just appallingly narcissistic and self-congratulatory? Good lord. Good thing America is around to show you bubble-headed foreigners the way to freedom. I could run through all the offensive, ‘America-is-tasked-with-upholding-the-mantle-of-liberty’ patronizing condescension, but why bother? (Nexon does a nice job here.) I told my students to watch it, and in retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have....
by Dan Nexon | 27 Oct 2012 | Featured
I refuse, on principle, to post "Rock you like a Hurricane" or some such. So instead, here's Japandroids, "The House that Heaven Built." This is the kludge, folks.