In every episode of the classic 1960s television series "The Prisoner," Number 6 and Number 2 had this exchange: Number 6: Where am I?Number 2: In the Village.Number 6: What do you want?Number 2: We want information.Number 6: Whose side are you on?Number 2: That would be telling. We want information... information... information.Number 6: You won't get it.The lack of information is a problem widely recognized by international relations...
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Monitoring the NGO Sector
Kevin Jon Heller at Opinio Juris says NGO Monitor should practice what it preaches when it comes to transparency about donations from government funders. The dialogue in comments on this and older threads is illuminating and raises some interesting questions about the accountability of the NGO sector. Like Heller, I would like to see greater transparency from both Human Rights Watch and NGO Monitor.I think it's a shame that NGO Monitor is so...
The Johnny Foreigner’s Guide to the UK Election Part II – The Second Great Debate
I’m planning on writing a larger post on the topic after the Second Election Debate tonight – particularly since it is going to be about UK Foreign policy (and, in theory, more or less related to the topics of this blog...)In the mean time if you haven’t been paying attention, the election has basically exploded into interestingness in the last week. The First (ever) Leader’s Debate basically jump-started the election in a way that I (and I...
“Statistics is the New Grammar”
[Cross-posted at Signal/Noise]In the latest issue of WIRED, Clive Thompson pens a great piece which echoes a sentiment I've touched on before: in a data-driven world it is critical that all citizens have at least a basic literacy in statistics (really, research methodology broadly, but I'll take what I can get).Now and in the future, we will have unprecedented access to voluminous amounts of data. The analysis of this data and the conclusions...
What Are the Hardest Problems in the Social Sciences?
A bunch of "big thinkers" sat down at Harvard last week to debate this question. You can watch their videos here. Some of the "problems" put forth were simply timely empirical issues with important normative content, like how to close the gender gap in pay equity, or reduce the "skills gap" between Blacks and Whites, or how to understand the relationship between ethnic diversity and civil war. But some were more wide-ranging: What is the...
Reading Andrea Dworkin to Write Feminist IR?
"I wasn't raped until I was almost ten which is pretty good it seems when I ask around because many have been touched but are afraid to say .... I couldn't tell how many hands he had and people from earth only had two ... You get asked if anything happened and you say well yes he put his hand here and he rubbed me ...and he scared me ...you say the almost-ten-year-old version of f*ck you something happened alright the f*ck he put his hands in...
Social Construction and Deceit
I'm fascinated by the narratives of the financial crisis that basically cast it as a mass deception. Clearly we need to develop a scale of deceptive practices and think about how this all relates to the social construction(s) of reality(ies). At the simple end there are the flat-out lies, for example those told by the peddlers of certain types of mortgages, but things quickly get more complicated. There are the accounting tricks used by big...
My plans for the weekend
Making the World Better through Online Gaming?
The World Bank Institute last month launched an online game, Evoke. It lasts for ten weeks, with Missions each week that include such global issues as solving water scarcity or thinking about the future of money. I haven't signed up or played yet, but it raises interesting questions about social innovation. Is global crowd-sourcing likely to lead to new solutions to existing problems? How likely is it that innovations would be implemented?...
Making Factories Disappear during War
[Cross-posted at Signal/Noise]Noah Brier links to some incredible pictures at Sociological Images that show the "efforts to camouflage the Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant during WWII. The plant was essentially covered in netting made to appear, from the air, like a residential neighborhood. The aim was to keep it from being found by pilots and bombed."Before:After:The post includes some close ups as well as some views from underneath the...
Garzon’s Reign in Spain Falls with Mainly Who to Blame?
It was announced last week that Judge Bathazar Garzon will be investigated for over stepping his authority for knowingly taking on a case that was outside of his jurisdiction. Garzon is, of course, famous for indicting Chile’s General Pinochet for crimes against humanity in the 1990s which lead to his arrest in London (although he eventually was let go on medical ground – and died).Since 2008, Garzon had apparently been turning to domestic...
Would you like to map a pandemic?
SupraMap is an on-line tool that traces the mutation and spread of virues around the world. Fascinating.