2005-01-29
2005-01-27
late breaking news
Jenny just informed me that her grandmother died yesterday. I offered my condolences, of course... but this means for me that class tomorrow morning is just me & Itai.
2005-01-26
One approach to comparative politics
Could it be that governments have always existed? The Hebrew bible comes close to providing an answer with the story of Saul. According to this story,members of the twelve tribes of Israel, each living under "his grape tree and fig tree" [read: state of nature] came to Samuel asking him to "make us a king" [read: constitute a government] so they would be as secure as "other nations." The old Hebrew prophet agreed to met his people's demand but not before he explained to them the nature of the trade-off associated with their request. With the benefit of the security they wished to obtain, so he argued, there would be a real cost to be paid in terms of their personal freedom.
Gideon Doron and Itai Sened (2001), Political Bargaining, p. 56
The next page gives the utility function for every agent i∈N from any σ∈σ to respect the law:
ui(σ) = ∑j≠ibiσi–ciσi
Amen!
2005-01-23
on open formats
Most interesting in the comments on this blurb, a similar experience to my managing bibliographic data between Word users (Ryan and Christy) and Jim's WordPerfect.
You must be using extremely simple documents... basically plain text. My supervisor and his other grad students use different versions of Word (I'm not sure which one), but all the the figure positions, get screwed up, equations get put everywhere, and it's a general mess. I manage to maintain compatibily with both of those guys by not using Word but OpenOffice instead. It's actually this lack of compatibility between Word versions that got one of the other grad students to switch to OpenOffice, which was better at handling different versions of Word documents than Word itself.
2005-01-22
2005-01-20
spring classes: for scott
Theories of Individual and Collective Choice Behavior I
aka Game Theory, with Ethan. My cohort, minus Steve, plus Rachel the Political Economy masters student. Lots of problem sets because that's the only way to learn game theory apparently. I'll appreciate it when it's done.
Quantitative Political Methodology I
with David Park. This is the class that somehow went from 3 hours a week to 5. Again, all of us minus Steve. Lots of problem sets. Apparently the first time David taught this one student said he stared at a midterm for no less than 5 hours not knowing where to begin. David's teaching style is taking some getting used to. It's not that we don't understand probability; everything we've done so far is review; but his roundabout presentation and random introduction of strange examples... hard to follow sometimes.
Comparative Party Politics
with Guillermo. Probably the most required work I'll have; research paper, discussant twice, and 3 response papers. And I'm interested in a lot of the stuff we'll be talking about.
Approaches to Comparative Politics
And... It's Jenny and me and Itai. I think we're actually going to just have "class" in his office. Three times just in the first class we got from him, "we are top twenty department in top ten university. because we are not placing our students well enough." This is after he poked around the room and like looked under chairs for how to get the overhead screen down. Finally I was like, "what are you looking for?"
2005-01-19
my new favorite pens!
Staedtler Triplus Fineliner
99¢ each! But they're not permanent like lumocolor, or my all time favorite sakura pigma micron 01.
2005-01-18
Are you a tool?
Would you like an opportunity to serve on the Washington University Board of Trustees as a Graduate Student Representative for academic year 2005-2006?translation: Are you a tool?
I can see being on a committee, or in the grad student association or whatever, but really, is anyone on the BoT going to give a fuck what any grad student has to say? I think not.
2005-01-11
I'm not getting one, but it's super cute.
I think and hope that it's the right move for apple: so many millions of people love their iPods, but are put off by the price of a Mac.
2005-01-05
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)