The other night, before the inauguration, I found myself involved in yet another discussion about the relationship between theory and decision-making. Old, familiar territory for us, but slightly altered in this iteration by two factors: the fact that I'm finally teaching an undergraduate course in IR theory (check out our class wiki here) this semester, and the fact that "change" is very much in the air in Washington DC these days. Especially after President Obama's declaration yesterday that "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of...

Apparently journalists in Iraq. See Rodger, below.I couldn't resist!

I will freely admit to being a FiveThirtyEight junkie over the past few months. The excellent analysis and projection that they do over there is more than a little reminiscent of my favorite baseball site, Baseball Prospectus, in that we have a very self-conscious quantitative methodology in which numbers are used to produce good insights, and not simply crunched for the sake of crunching numbers. Marvelous stuff, and basically updated in real time -- hats off to Al Gore for inventing the InterNet that makes this all possible.That said, I worry just a bit about this obsessive poll-watching,...

[Updated: Thanks to commentator Aldous for pointing out an error in my original predictions--I had Montana for Obama and neglected to include Nevada]I am not, by any stretch, and expert at polling--presidential or otherwise. By that doesn't stop most of the talking heads from bloviating and spewing silliness.Therefore, I thought I'd have some fun and post my predictions for Tuesday's Presidential election.Final: Obama over McCain 349-189I think Obama ends up winning a significant electoral victory--swing states such as Virginia, Ohio, and Florida will break for Obama. He also picks up New...

Given the way the campaign has gone lately, this seems to offer a preview of tonight's presidential debate: I never really previously noticed the parallels between Senator McCain and the Penguin.

Hello loyal Duck readers. I wanted to briefly introduce myself as the newest member of the Duck. I am a longtime friend of the site that has decided to start posting rather than just commenting on the great insights of colleagues.A little truth in advertising: my real name is not Randy Waterhouse. For fans of a certain author you will immediately notice that it is a pseudonym. Unfortunately, my current employer does not allow for employees to blog, so I've decided to assume this online identity so that I can contribute to the broader conversation on, well, whatever is bugging me in the world...

Recent days have seen a number of articles like this one from the New York Times, in which it is claimed that people are changing their commuting patterns because of the high price of gas. The equation is pretty simple: higher gas prices = more expensive to drive to and from work = more use of mass transit. Although the article also cites increased urban congestion and the availability of wireless connections (and hence to ability to do online work while traveling) on mass transit trains as reasons for this change in commuter behavior, the main logic claimed involves cost-benefit...