Offbeat « Nor Talk Too Wise

On the Debt Ceiling and The Game of Chicken

The debt ceiling debate is a complex, multifaceted problem facing the American Government. I think Toby represents it best:

It’s a fair representation of the situation to think of it as a game of chicken: The two players (Dems+Obama, Repubs.) are each careening towards a cliff. Neither wants to be the first to back [...]

The Failed State Index 2011

The 2011 Failed States Index was released last month, and as always, it’s the pits. Hunger porn, maps with alarming shades of red across Africa, and the flashy dataset with lots of variables.

I wrote a paper for a class awhile back comparing the Failed States Index, the Polity IV data, and the Democracy Index. [...]

Wargaming The Battle of Prokhorovka

I took a class this semester called “Wargaming.” It was a project course in which teams of five were instructed to devise an agent-based model which reenacted an historical battle. The teams were all split between Computer Science undergrads and International Affairs grads, in hopes of training us for the kind of cross-talk between the [...]

Academic Hijinks #2: The Journal of Universal Rejection

The excellent Journal of Universal Rejection is the most prestigious journal (judging by selectiveness) in academia today. It is entirely honest in its title: it rejects all submitted works in any genre for any reason. The editor, Caleb Emmons, is particularly poignant. Check out the blog to read a sampling of Prof. Emmons’ reviews of [...]

Academic Hijinks #1

I’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a regular feature of the blog, based on Academic pranks and related weirdness. I’d wanted to do this for a while, but I feel I was emboldened by The Duck of Minerva’s Stuff Political Scientists Like. And there are plenty of good examples of Academic humor. Today, [...]

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