by Brian Rathbun | 19 Oct 2011 |
Political scientists hate, hate, hate faculty meetings. They are yet another drain on the time they need to do their Original Research. Before political scientists assemble for a faculty meeting, they will chit chat with one another about how pointless the agenda is for that day. Surely we could do this all by email, they say to one another. Is it really necessary to come all the way to campus to approve a courtesy appointment for the newest...
by Vikash Yadav | 17 Oct 2011 | Featured
Photo: Protester at Zucotti Park, 9/28/11; Credit: David Shankbone/Wikimedia CommonsI support the on-going Occupy Wall Street protests. I do not share the common complaint that the protesters need to formulate a clear list of demands - which is itself a rather odd demand to make of what seems to be an anarchist inspired movement. The protesters' lack of an explicit set of demands and coherent arguments when interfacing with corporate media is...
by Charli Carpenter | 17 Oct 2011 |
The Economist reports on advances in non-lethal weaponry, emphasizing the latest line of research into electro-magnetic weapons: BULLETS and bombs are so 20th-century. The wars of the 21st will be dominated by ray guns. That, at least, is the vision of a band of military technologists who are building weapons that work by zapping the enemy’s electronics, rather than blowing him to bits. The result could be conflict that is less bloody, yet more...
by Megan MacKenzie | 16 Oct 2011 |
My second option for a title was: 'How to teach masculinities by looking at pictures of handsome men.' (Note: this photo was sent to me as a humor-gift from one of my students...I didn't do it myself!)Feminist Ryan Gosling, a website featuring photos of actor Ryan Gosling posed next to intelligent quips about feminist politics is a perfect tool to use in a lecture on gender- no really. Why has this website gone viral (it was even re-posted on...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 16 Oct 2011 |
Although the majority of the offerings in the European Consortium on Political Research's inaugural Winter School in Methods and Techniques (to be held in Cyprus in February 2012) are pretty firmly neopositivist, at the risk of sound like a shameless self-promoter I'd like to call your attention to course A6, "Knowing and the Known: Philosophy and Methodology of Social Science," which I am teaching. The short description of this course is:"The...
by Josh Busby | 16 Oct 2011 |
Supporters of action on climate change are under siege in Washington. House Republicans are attempting to cut appropriations on all things related to climate change. Even Democrats appear to want to downplay talk of the issue. The "green jobs" agenda, in light of Solyndra solar's woes, is now mired in controversy. Despite Al Gore's recent effort to refocus attention on the problem with his new Climate Reality campaign, an economy wide...
by Charli Carpenter | 14 Oct 2011 |
And this week, in problematic-representations-of-indigenous-populations-on-children's-television, Lucasfilm brings you Nomad Droids: Well I guess some foreign policy subtext in TV for eight-year-olds is a step up from 99.7% of what's on American prime-time. Thanks to Clone Wars, my kid is quickly becoming fluent in such concepts as strategic depth, diversionary warfare and humanitarian mission creep. Last week he learned, for example, that real...
by Brian Rathbun | 14 Oct 2011 |
I used to watch all of the presidential debates when I was in my late twenties and early thirties. Even though my party allegiance was never in doubt, I wanted to know the contours of the debate even for the other side, what there substantive differences were, where the daylight between the candidates was, etc.I don't do this any more. Obviously one reason is that they are just not informative. None of the candidates truly embrace policy ideas,...
by Megan MacKenzie | 13 Oct 2011 |
With the rugby world cup semi-final only a few days away, it would take something like a broken ship dumping tons of oil and chemicals onto the country's beaches to get the country to talk anything besides the All Blacks... Wait... New Zealand is all about environmental protection, green energy, clean air (and funny guys like Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Concords) isn't it? I mean, what is a ship with oil even doing near this...
by Alana Tiemessen | 12 Oct 2011 | Featured
Nothing risks inviting cynicism and despair like teaching and learning about failed states. For the second year I'm teaching an upper level International Relations course titled "Weak and Failed States" in the Poli Sci Department at UMass Amherst. Much to the confusion of my students, I introduce the course by explaining that "weak and failed states" is a highly contested concept, driven more by policy agendas than empirical consistencies, and...
by Charli Carpenter | 12 Oct 2011 |
One of the few items recently that has caused me to emerge from my nothing-but-Friday-nerd-blogging temporary hiatus was this article on civilian war deaths by Michael Spagat and his collaborators. I wrote a post with some praise and some questions, and recently received a thoughtful response by email from Michael and his crew in which they further detail the coding methods used in the project. Since the original thread generated some interest,...
by Vikash Yadav | 11 Oct 2011 | Featured
And now for something completely different... Feminist Ryan Gosling...