From a USIP Special Report titled Securing the Future:
At a minimum, the security sector includes actors directly involved in protecting civilians and the state from violent harm (e.g., police and military forces and internal intelligence agencies), institutions that govern these actors (e.g., ministries of interior, defense, and justice; and national security councils), and oversight [...]
Science 2.0 sounds a whole lot like epidemiology, political science, sociology, and–egad!–anthropology. *eye roll*
Tagged 2.0, anthropology, criticism, economics, epidemiology, political science, Science (journal), sociology, WiredThe New Yorker has a great article about a study done that identifies the lack of copyrights and patents in the fashion industry as a major source of the industry’s continued success. The article is definitely a good read, although I do not know why the author is so stubborn (at the end) in thinking [...]
Tagged culture, economics, fashion, intellectual property, The New YorkerI love reading about how various cultures (e.g., local, youth, etc.) re-appropriate common practices and transform them into something that is essentially different. In this Reuters article about cell phone usage in Africa, missed calls are being transformed into something useful:
You beep someone when you call them up on their mobile phone — setting its [...]
The blogosphere recently exploded in outrage over awareness that Congressional Research Service research is not publicly available.
For those who do not know, CRS is the research arm of Congress. They are probably best known for budget analysis, but they also do an incredibly wide variety of other top-notch research. You might remember some of their [...]
Here’s a Washington City Paper article of me being pissed about DC9’s fascist New Year’s celebration. Despite what DC9 says, they didn’t want to hear from me (I had e-mailed them and the reporter had my contact information): read me!
Tagged DC9, Washington City PaperI have posted the PowerPoint file Nils Ringe and I presented in New Orleans at the 2007 Southern Political Science Association conference. The presentation–titled Refining and Redefining the Second-Order Election Model: Protest or Pure Preference Voting in Central and Eastern Europe–may be difficult to follow, especially if you are not familiar with the second-order election [...]
Tagged electoral analysis, EP, EU, Europe, Jason Koepke, NR, political science, projects, second-order election model, Social ScienceDuring the past several weeks, I have come across articles about serious treatments of funny during dictatorships. The first one is about jokes under communism, with the expert that is interviewed being a former colleague of mine at University of Pittsburgh. The second one is about jokes under Hitler. Both include LOL bits (gotta keep [...]
Tagged Der Spiegel, humor, ProspectIn the current issue of The New York Review of Books, Tony Judt reviews Leszek Kolakowski’s reissued Main Currents of Marxism: The Founders, the Golden Age, the Breakdown. The review is a good read because of the book, the valuable look back at Marxism now that we are afforded with almost 20 years of hindsight [...]
Tagged Leszek Kolakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, Marxism, New York Review of Books, political Islam, terrorism, Tony JudtIn the activist, policy, and academic worlds, there’s a significant amount of attention paid to the demise of the welfare state or even welfare protections. This is usually tied into neoliberal policies and capitalist/free market economics. The general fear, or analysis, is summed up in the familiar “race to the bottom” phrase-cum-cliche.
The above-mentioned worlds often [...]