A Few Non-Connected Thoughts and Links

The three of us, along with Ray Carman, traveled to New York City for the weekend to enjoy a few hours of Eddie Izzard performing at Radio City Music Hall for this current "Stripped" tour.  As such, the trip is still fresh in my mind as I return to work on a few projects involving asymmetric relationships; this clip from over a decade ago is begging to be included as an introductory quote to an article or chapter on imperialism:

Second, for those of you who are design savvy (I am not), the Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science blog is requesting ideas for a book cover.  A prize (free book) is involved and may prove to be a fun challenge of how to graphically represent methodological unity across the social sciences. 

Zero Intelligence Agents presented a defense of the scientific method in response to the Wired article Cynthia discussed previously. Both authors are accurate in critiquing the article and David provided an apt point in response to Cynthia’s post: waiting to hypothesize and forecast until we have significant data collected in the petabyte age can be a dangerous hobby for those of us studying areas such as proliferation, war, and terrorism.  While we may joke about being able to generate new data points, the abandonment of the scientific method compels us to an inductivist panacea of “wait and see.” 

About Michael A. Allen

Michael is an Assistant Professor in Political Science at Boise State University with a focus in International Relations, Comparative Politics, and Methodology (quantitative and formal). His work includes issues related to military basing abroad, asymmetric relations, cooperation, and conflict. He received his Ph.D from Binghamton University in 2011.

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