by Charli Carpenter | 23 Oct 2008 |
A couple of weeks back I visited Arlington for the National Science Foundation's Human and Social Dynamics PI conference. The HSD Initiative is one of NSF's "cross-cutting" programs, which means the same pool of money funds political scientists, neurologists, roboticists, physicists, anything under the sun if the proposal is smart enough and vaguely related to the RFP. The point of their annual gatherings is in part to create interdisciplinary...
by Dan Nexon | 23 Oct 2008 |
Nothing like a global financial crisis to make the IMF relevant again.In all seriousness, though, after the 1997 East Asian financial crisis it seemed that the IMF was in danger of irrelevance. Very few countries were willing to accept the conditions required by the IMF for loans. But with the world only a few steps back from the brink, that appears to be changing. And with the outcome of the Ukraine-IMF negotiations pending, we may soon get a...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 20 Oct 2008 |
Perhaps the only response to reprehensible exclusivity, or to the appropriation of common rhetorical resources ('America') for purely partisan purposes, is satire:Unreality Is Expanding.The question is: is satire enough? One clearly can't argue with "real America" language, so what can one do except satirize it?
by Rodger Payne | 19 Oct 2008 |
Remember when Bill Clinton promised to put together a Cabinet that "looks like America"? Then, to his credit, George W. Bush "appointed a more diverse set of top advisers than any president in history."Now, however, Governor Sarah Palin defines "real America" in a substantially less inclusive manner: "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real...
by Dan Nexon | 19 Oct 2008 |
Forget Powell's endorsement of Obama. The most noteworthy part of his remarks was his public denunciation of those members of the GOP who have engaged in a sickening pattern of Muslim-baiting over the last year or so.Powell's short, but powerful, defense of Islamic Americans earned back, at least for me, a lot of the prestige he squandered during the campaign to sell the Iraq War.His remarks on the subject start around 4:30.
by Randy Waterhouse | 18 Oct 2008 |
Dan recently commented on how the decline in US economic power will likely lead to a rewrite of the post-war global order. Additionally, there are reports that a new intelligence assessment by US agencies is set to be released after the upcoming elections which notes the coming relative decline of US predominance, particularly in the economic realm, by 2025. Now, there have been numerous predictions of US decline that, like the death of Mark...
by Dan Nexon | 17 Oct 2008 |
If British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have their way, the advanced industrialized nations will come together to negotiate a new economic order. But they will do so in a world in which the US and the European Union enjoy roughly equal GDP (with a slight advantage for the EU right now). When Bretton Woods was negotiated, in contrast, the US controlled about half of global economic production.In other words,...
by Dan Nexon | 17 Oct 2008 |
Switzerland is bailing out UBS, but some say the banking system won't melt down. The lead story on the Financial Times website?IMF ready to help stabilise UkraineThe credit crisis deepened as Hungary and Ukraine turned to international institutions in an effort to avoid following Iceland into financial turmoil and US industrial production suffered its largest monthly decline since 1974.I don't think this is what McCain meant when he told us to...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 17 Oct 2008 |
My second-favorite baseball team is whoever is playing against the Red Sox. Tonight, it's the Rays, on the verge of eliminating the Sox, and already up 2-0 in the second inning.It may be The End Of The World As We Know It -- and the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series is one of the lesser-known signs of the apocalypse, in point of fact -- but as long as the Red Sox are losing, I feel fine.
by Peter | 16 Oct 2008 |
I actually enjoyed last night's debate much more so than the previous three. Part of it could be that I watched with a real-live crowd of college-aged students instead of by myself at home with only my minuscule live-blog audience. But mostly, I think, it was because it was, finally, more of an actual debate and less of a set of parallel talking points. The two actually had to speak to each other and were given sufficient time to articulate a...
by Dan Nexon | 16 Oct 2008 |
ACORN is on the brink of "perpetrating the greatest vote fraud" in American history? About to "destroy the fabric of democracy"? As I said before, we're through the looking glass, people.... Oh, and the Asian markets are tanking right now.
by Charli Carpenter | 16 Oct 2008 |
I am no expert on American political campaigns, and do not know the literature on political adverstisements. I have, however, done a fair amount of qualitative research aimed at measuring the meaning of things in a reliable, replicable way. So I'm curious to know who is using such a method to keep track of "negativity" in campaign ads?Someone must be. Because the candidates both argued tonight not just that their opponent's ads are perceived by...