Social Science

I didn’t think a debate I’d encountered in my last International Relations methodology course would wind up appearing so quickly in the mainstream press.

Props to George Kenney and his Electric Politics podcast, and Dr. David Kanin. I’ve commented on a few sites over the years, and given and taken my fair share of abuse. Once in awhile, an exchange is fruitfully consummated. But, I’ve now received two emails from Kanin. The exchange almost gives me hope about the communicative potential of the internet – almost.

I’ve always regretted not taking more biology and chemistry classes in college. But, now, this lowly Poli Sci major knows better how scientific fact is made in America.

…[P]rior to the May 2009 study, the National Cancer Institute had also performed a preliminary study that linked formaldehyde to leukemia, but members of Congress including Sens. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and David Vitter, R-La., managed to delay the EPA from officially designating the chemical as a “known carcinogen.”

(The EPA in June, however, released a draft assessment [3] of formaldehyde that supports that designation, but it’s not yet official.)

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Piangtawan Piang Phanprasit separates the wheat from the chaff concerning the 1997 IMF Crisis.

…it is tempting to suggest that market-oriented policies as opposed to the East Asia development paradigm have been more successful in that the economies pursuing the former were not relatively affected. Nonetheless, the paradigm was rather market-enhancing and at least accounted for unprecedented growth in the economies concerned. The financial collapse was the consequence of financial liberalisation which the troubled economies’ institutions had not yet fully developed to cope with but in other areas of development the paradigm has proven rather successful.

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As an undergrad, I had the honor of studying with a student of Robert Keohane, one half of the team that wrote Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition and founder of the complex interdependence “school”. Now, Charles Kupchan claims he has proven that regime is irrelevant to diplomacy, and that geopolitics trumps economic interdependence. Although Eli Lake highlights the relevance of Kupchan’s work to Iran and Israel, I immediately thought of the DPRK. Kupchan’s theory helps those opposing economic engagement with Pyongyang.

Days are when I despair of a peaceful Pacific – pardon the redundancy – and I start seeing portents of an angry future – evidence of a Confucian peace notwithstanding.

Even if the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) could manage to launch the Naro I (KSLV-I), does it really matter? It seems all so 1950s.

The part-Russian, part Korean rocket is a result of a 502.5 billion won ($418 million) investment. Russia’s Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, which is providing the core technologies for the Korean rocket project, designed and developed the KSLV-I first-stage, which holds the rocket engine and liquid-fuel propulsion system.

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