And You’ll Be Helping How?

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Another piece on the China-North Korea relationship.

Just a quick thought on this and on the broader question.  There are some pretty clear reasons for wanting to do something about the current regime in North Korea.  But when people discuss what should happen, the common refrain seems to be treating China like a teenager that wants oh so badly to drive mom and dad's car, but just hasn't proven himself yet.  I'm fairly certain this article explicitly mentions the notion that the US has tried to get China to feel like it has some "responsibility" for taking care of this issue, and I think this is part of the problem. 

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“A leopard don’t change its stripes… You mean spots… I means Snaps!”

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If you are looking for a good political science movie to show an undergraduate class, I highly recommend the movie Oscar (1991). I really like this movie because it can be used to teach a variety of concepts, such as path dependency, institutional change, beliefs and how they affect behavior, and bargaining. It is also incredibly well done and extremely funny; from my experience undergraduates really enjoy it.

Following the jump, I give a brief synopsis of the movie and explain how certain parts of the movie can be used to demonstrate certain concepts in political science. So if you have not seen the movie, there will be spoilers if you follow the jump! (If you would like to see it first, it can be rented through Netflix. There are also clips of it online, although they are of low quality).

More after the jump…

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The Symbol or the Substance?

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The UN Security Council was set to vote this morning on new sanctions/strengthening existing sanctions targeting Iran.  The US administration seems to be keen on building up just how tough these new sanctions are.   I have to wonder how much of this is simply rhetorical and how much reflects an actual belief in the efficacy of sanctions within the Obama administration. 

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My Backwoods Upbringing Serves Me Well

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I found this article while glancing at Thomas Ricks' blog at FP–It's about the issues that US troops have been facing in Afghanistan with the weapons they're assigned.  I've commented on similar micro-level issues before and I think this AP article is pretty closely related, although it focuses more on the US side.  I really think framing the issue in the way that the AP does undercuts our ability to
understand what the problem is. 

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The War We Don’t See

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This is a topic that I’ll probably expand on later, but I was just reading an article discussing the role of Hamid Karzai’s brother in the present Afghan conflict.  This article gets at an issue that I’ve thought about before.  From the FP article cited above: But he could not exist without the support of coalition … Read more

Scribtex: online collaboration for LaTeX

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Michael Flynn and I have been discussing a new project based on recent data we have discovered and our mutual academic interests.  Given that we both have become LaTeX savvy, I was hoping to find a convenient way for us to collaborate without using the archaic system of emailing each other back and forth.  My … Read more