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
2004-12-28
It takes a gay
and they just don't get it
Our people, the gays, throw dinner parties. That's one of those things we happen to do with unrivaled panache. With multiple themed courses, before- and after-dinner drinks, paired wines, and elaborate desserts. We move naturally from one course to the next; cold foods are cold and hot foods hot when they reach the table.
Not so in heterohio. Their people struggle to host a family-style dinner with three dishes (all at once, of course), and get it all on the table at the same time. In fact, they not only struggle, they fail. The food's not at all bad, it's all just planned and executed in a particularly un-gay idiom.
And the funniest part of it is they don't know they're all wrong, and it makes "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" that much more amusing.
How I learned to stop worrying and love suburbia
There's an xmas tree on the second level, "so people driving by can look in the window and see the nice tree."
That's what suburban life is about. Showing off what you've got from behind closed doors and preferably a gate.
That and santitized everything, like the remote-controlled Heat-N-Glo® SL-950TV-D™ gas fireplace behind glass (as the model number suggests, it's as easy as watching tv!).
2004-12-27
The New York Times > Science
Flour, Eggs, Sugar, Chocolate . . . Just Add Chemistry
About the author of this book I'll soon be buying for the Scott :)
canoe! canoe!
You know people who are into BDSM sex have safewords that mean, no, seriously, stop now?
Scott and I need such a word for Ed and Kathleen. We ask for one thing – a gift bag, say, or a bit of gift wrap for stuff we'd brought to give them – and it starts like five minutes of digging out every roll of wrapping paper they can find and going down in the fucking basement and getting out four boxes of nice bags and store bags and ribbons and bows and three scissors and four things of tape and tissue paper and colored tissue paper and—CANOE!
Or we say, when throwing together some food, "Could I have a prep bowl or two?" that prompted like five minutes of opening cabinets and getting out all the glass, plastic, and metal bowls,— wait! I think there are more in the basement!— to have a place to put one diced onion so I could clear off the cutting board.
Kathleen thinks we're saying "noo" like Canadians. It's not entirely untrue; we think that "canoe" is Sue's suggestion for a safeword.
So to them, our saying, OK! That's enough! Stop! We're fine! is like S&M sex where ow! stop spanking means "oh yes do it harder." Seriously, we tried. It only intensified the pain, and believe me, it was without pleasure.
Update: I was trying to show her how to make challah. Aside from her complete lack of interest in the science of bread (Scott and I believe it's essential to understand why things work the way they do, if you're going to change them, or even follow a recipe), I asked for a measuring spoon. I'd already looked through all the logical drawers, such as the one containing silverware, serving spoons, and the measuring cups – only to discover that there is no order whatever to the kitchen. It was as if every box that they opened just got its own fucking drawer / cabinet with no thought to where you'd be using its contents. Outrageous, and almost unusable. Of course I asked her about them (don't normal people who pretend to cook know where such tools are?) and this prompted another search through all the same damn drawers, and then Ed had to get involved, and look through boxes and shit in the garage—CANOE!
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