PM | The Duck of Minerva

Should College Costs Reflect Benefits to Society?

by PM | 29 October, 2012 | Featured

Florida Governor Rick Scott is considering changing the cost of different college majors at Florida's public colleges to influence students' choices. The reasoning is standard rightist dirigisme: STEM degrees would cost less, and artsy ones would cost more, because STEM = jerbs and, presumably, English = liberals. Debate over the proposal has broken down along the usual lines. Unsurprisingly, Marginal Revolution co-blogger Alex Tabarrok offers two cheers in favor of the scheme, dissenting only on the implementation (that instead of targeting STEM in particular the subsidies for selected...

Nativism FTW

by PM | 27 October, 2012 | Featured

I'm pretty sure I'm the only Duck to (a) have lived at a state fair, (b) know the 4-H pledge by heart, and (c) have been quoted by the Watertown, S.D., newspaper on ... well, on any subject, actually. And although I had the misfortune to be born in Washington, D.C., I quickly decamped for America's Heartland, where I learned Real American Values, which include RC Cola, moon pies, and a fondness for country music not sung by the Dixie Chicks. So I feel pretty good in asserting my credentials as a Native USAmerican in these parts, even if my current status as a Ph.D. student living in Barry...

When is it rational to leave graduate school?

by PM | 17 October, 2012 | Featured

Among the many interesting things about graduate school is its propensity to spark greater drinking than I ever thought possible. After preparing (most of) a three-hour talk on using R, I definitely found that celebrating America's greatest brewer-turned-patriot was useful. (For the benefit of readers who are serious snobs, my favorite beers are much more hoppy and more indie than anything brewed by such a large producer.) I'm more interested, though, in the thoughts of those who have problems that can't be solved by the sweet release of Mr. Adams's brewery. In particular, Dan and I would...

Does naval success invalidate the need for navies?

by PM | 5 October, 2012 | Featured

Acting was a big part of Battleship. At Crooked Timber, John Quiggin writes a post that seeks to sink a thousand ships: The trillions of dollars that have been spent on building, maintaining and scrapping fleets since 1945 has yielded almost zero benefits to the nations that have spent this money, in the belief that all respectable countries should have a navy. China’s carrier is an extreme example. About the best that can be said is that a zero benefit-cost ratio is substantially better than that for military expenditure in general. Quiggin's smart, but I'm surprised he overlooks the...

Bad Metaphors: Journals, Articles, and Pages

by PM | 4 October, 2012 | Featured

As a graduate student at an urban university, I envy this RA's large office. New technologies adapt terms from older tools, even when they're curiously inappropriate. Consider "dashboard," which we use now to refer to an easy display of critical information (as in Google Dashboard) or the control panel of an automobile. Originally, however, a dashboard was (per Wikipedia) "a barrier of wood or leather fixed at the front of a horse-drawn carriage or sleigh to protect the driver from mud or other debris "dashed" (thrown) up by the wheels and horses' hooves." Clearly, that term outlasted its...

Wednesday Morning Linkage

by PM | 3 October, 2012 | Featured

Dan Nexon is not responsible fortoday's links.Dan is traveling today, so it's the Duck of Minerva's version of Assistant Editor's Month (or, perhaps, assistant to the editor's month):Dani Rodrik becomes the Clippy of forensic investigators, as he relates how the Turkish government may have faked evidence against 300 officers on coup-plotting charges: "It looks like you're trying to frame someone for treason. Would you like help with that?" (Dani Rodrik's Weblog)Jay Ulfelder shows off a political science version of the Netflix Prize, in which a bunch of quantoids tried to systematically...

God and Man at Kale

by PM | 26 September, 2012 | Featured

Governor Romney's Nutrition Czar-DesignateA small part of my portfolio at the Duck is wading into the shallow end of the conservative pool of ideas, and in that spirit I bring to you the latest contretemps over Imam Obama and his jihad against loyal, God- and YHWH-fearing Americans.If I were to walk up to you and say that control of our nation's school lunches is a key part of the Communist plot to control our precious bodily fluids, you would probably leave, or at least think about calling the police. And if I were to tell you that our nation's First Lady--the only one of Barack Hussein's...

Data is not the problem. Data is not the solution.

by PM | 20 September, 2012 | Featured

Data is not good government. Even when it wears a green eyeshade.The Wonkblog view of the world presumes that social problems should be met with policy solutions, and that the best way to analyze policies is to have better data. To an extent, I agree. All else being true, better data does make for better policy.But that is a trivial conclusion. Politics is not policy. Indeed, data isn't politics either. And what Wonkblog provides is frequently an inaccurate guide to all three.The biggest problem with the Wonkblog attitude is its unthinkingly technocratic approach to everything. This...

All Mitt Romney Really Needed To Know He Never Learned In Kindergarten

by PM | 13 September, 2012 | Featured

This is actually a pretty good checklist.I'm busy with other projects--dissertating, researching, and watching Breaking Bad, in ascending order--but I wanted to point out that the problem with Mitt Romney's statement about the attacks on Americans in Libya and Egypt is not what it tells us about foreign policy. We know very little about Romney's foreign policy views, and it is possible that Romney himself hasn't thought deeply about the it. (Indeed, my gut feeling informed intuition has long been that most American presidents simply don't have well-informed views on things like military...

The dull, adventureless journey of post-college life

by PM | 30 August, 2012 | Featured

Dear Leader Kim Jong Un addresses the ruling partyI didn't watch the Republican Convention last night, because I'm not getting paid to do so. I understand that conservatives think it was a hit and liberals a travesty, although the Romney-Ryan campaign's invocation of AC/DC to prove their cool guy credentials strongly suggests the latter.So it wasn't until I read Kevin Drum's blog post this morning that I saw this section of Congressman Ryan's speech:College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they...

PM

Recent Posts