Every time I try to understand a complex problem, I think on it myself, but I also develop a constellation of fellow travelers to who I turn to to read for guidance, inspiration and exposure to new and interesting ideas.  Since I read Peter Levine’s Living Without Philosophy I have always been interested in what he hast to say (his [...]

It’s funny.  I watched the HBO movie Recount last night, where both sides of the Bush-Gore election are portrayed in a fairly positive manner, but the Supreme Court is not.  It was an interesting thing to watch in the context of the nomination of Justice Sonia Sotamayor to the United States Supreme Court.  
I’m not [...]

In one of my student’s papers comparing Henry V to Ligurio in Machiavelli’s The Mandrake Root (Mandragola), the student writes that Ligurio’s plan makes everyone happy and Henry’s invasion of France makes “everyone who is still alive happy.”  Aside from the fact that this isn’t even true in Henry V, I could not help but [...]

I am writing this from the lobby of the Palmer House. The hotel is the setting for the MPSA conference. The hotel is also the setting of an early scene of Thomas Pynchon’s “Against the Day.”. Industrialist Scarsdale Vibe meets Inventer Extrordinaire, Heino Vanderjuice and offers him a massive amount of money to eliminate [...]

Palmer House Lobby:

Name Tag, Membership Card, Program:

I’m in Chicago for the Midwest Political Science Association.  I had to get a photo of the sign welcoming MPSA participants at the airport, because I’ve never had that happen to me before… More on the conference once registration starts at 4.  

I just wanted to note the passing of political scientist Samuel P. Huntington.  Read about it here.

My new course. My new school.
 
 

Are Democrats principled more than Republicans?  Hard to say for certain that one party is full of "more principled people than the other", but one would have to assume a skeptical position.   Are Democrats playing politics better than Republicans right now?  I’d say yes. 
The Democrats have won a major electoral victory and have proceeded [...]

Peter Levine posted the following comments on his blog today:
I don’t think you can tell the difference between the disciplines by
asking what they study: pyschologists explore human behavior in
markets, and modern economists investigate practically everything.
Instead, the divide is between a kind of empiricism or nominalism that
distrusts general constructs, versus a kind of philosophical "realism"
that takes [...]