The Duck of Minerva

PM

Recent Posts

Why political science matters

by PM | 14 May, 2012 |

 Some critics of academic social science, and political science in particular, have recently asserted that it's difficult to see the benefit of what we do. To be fair, our output is less immediately tangible than the Hubble Space Telescope, treatments for HIV/AIDS, or the decoding of the human genome, to take only three visible and valuable recipients of federal funding for science in my lifetime.To date, however, the defenders of political science have been a little less full-throated in their case for our discipline than one might have expected. It is all well and good that this recipient...

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The Quiet Assassin of European Democracy

by PM | 4 May, 2012 |

Herman Von Rompuy is going to steal your sovereignty.Also, Christmas.There is something refreshing in British newspapers. Empires come and empires go, but tabloids are one of life's constants. So with the Express, which has discovered "EU Plot To Scrap Britain": The new bureaucrat, who would not be directly elected by voters, is set to get sweeping control over the entire EU and force member countries into ever-greater political and economic union. Tellingly, the UK has been excluded from the confidential discussions within the shady “Berlin Group” of Europhile politicians, spearheaded by...

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Are our courses easier than sleeping?

by PM | 1 May, 2012 |

Yes. Your students have less observable brain activity duringlecture than when they're asleep.Updated for the humorless. See postscript below.A new paper in IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering suggests so:Long-term assessment of EDA [a measure of nervous system activity] revealed interesting trends in the participant’s sympathetic modulation over a week-long period. Intervals of elevated EDA frequently corresponded to times when the participant was studying, doing homework, or taking an exam. This is possibly due to the increased cognitive stress associated with these activities. The...

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Interstellar Relations: A New Old Course At Georgetown

by PM | 17 April, 2012 |

 This is a shameless bleg to two different audiences.The first, and immediately more important, is undergraduate students who might like to take a serious course about international relations, political science, and science fiction this summer. During the first summer term, I'm picking up Dan's section of Government 310: Interstellar Relations.The second, and closely related, audience is the readers of this blog, to whom I turn to help improve my syllabus. I wanted to do something a little different than Dan or PTJ's version. Summers here are shorter than the semester, and I wanted the...

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The tradeoffs of getting to graduate school in political science

by PM | 23 March, 2012 |

This is the nerd equivalent of a dad joke. A pair of posts today from political scientists I admire prompts me to postpone my musings on the Hunger Games and to talk about how to get to graduate school in political science again instead. In an effort to convince you to read on, I'll name the authors of the two posts: Dan Drezner and Chris Blattman. Dan Drezner writes about how a post-graduate (non-Ph.D.) degree can help you to get into the doctoral program of your dreams. I'm surprised, by the way, that Dan doesn't address the burning issue of whether it's a good idea to go directly from...

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The ethics of buying an iPad

by PM | 22 March, 2012 |

This is not an iPad. It is also not anethical statement.Globalization is no longer the Western world's ethical quandary.The biggest story in globalization this week has been the saga of Mike Daisey, the storyteller who posed as a journalist in a theatrical monologue about working conditions in Apple's factories in the People's Republic of China. Daisey, who has now been outed as a fabulist, lied about his visits to China and what he saw there, greatly exaggerating the misery in the places that manufacture iPhones, iPads, and the other accoutrements of the smart set.The discovery of Daisey's...

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Sunday Nerd Blogging

by PM | 18 March, 2012 |

 A monologue from Julian Comstock, Robert Charles Wilson's fascinating novel of post-scarcity America:You might want to consider your tone of voice, Private Commongold. May I offer you a lesson in Civics? There are three centers of power in the modern Union, and only three. One is the Executive Branch, with its supporting host of Owners and Senators. One is the Military. And the last is the Dominion of Jesus Christ on Earth. They're like the tripod feet of a stool: each supports the other, and they work best when they're equal in reach. But you're not a propertied person, Mr. Commongold, as...

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Should I get a Ph.D.?

by PM | 9 March, 2012 |

Matt Groening's Life in Hell comic strip is requiredby federal law to be posted in all grad studentlounges. There's a reason for that.By now, acceptance and rejection letters (or emails) have begun to filter back to graduate school applicants.I want to offer some advice for people who want to be graduate students. I begin by making it clear: I'm loving graduate school; it's been on balance the best time of my life; and nevertheless there have been times when (to quote a colleague) I've wished I'd taken the blue pill and kept my job. (Most of those times were during coursework.)Erik Voeten...

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Tackling the challenges of Big Data

by PM | 21 February, 2012 |

 This is what I'm talking about:City University London's Centre for Information Leadership is hosting this free symposium to bring together academics and practitioners from across industry to tackle the challenges posed by "big data" - the growing amount of information that needs to be stored, searched, analysed and visualised in the digital age.The event aims to begin a dialogue across traditionally-siloed sectors, reflecting the fact that a wide range of organisations and individuals are struggling to cope with the explosion of data brought about by new technologies - from smart meters in...

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Labels and tribes

by PM | 19 February, 2012 |

In the Matrix, it's trivial to specify the underlyingdata-generating process. It involves kung fu. Given PTJ's post, I wanted to clarify two points from my original post on Big Data and the ensuing comment thread.I use quantitative methods in my own work. I've invested a lot of time and a lot of money in learning statistics. I like statistics! I think that the development of statistical techniques for specifying and disciplining our analytic approach to uncertainty is the most important development in social science of the past 100 years. My objection in the comments thread, then, was not to...

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