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Monthly Archives: February 2013
Testing: How Many Questions Should I ask?
This year I have switched to asking only short-answer questions on my American Government exams, instead of using multiple choice questions (and I have only rarely used long essay questions for that class), primarily to push the students to learn … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
8 Comments
Sequester! Any Thoughts?
What are your thoughts on the sequester issue? – What’s going to happen? – Will there be a deal? Will the Tea Parties allow a deal? – Will Boehner craft a working majority of more moderate Republicans and the Democrat … Continue reading
Posted in Politics in General
64 Comments
Another Reason I Can’t Break the Libertarian Habit
A person with a gun and a government badge asked me to swear in writing that a lie was true today. And when I didn’t do what she wanted she simply took my boat and asked me to leave. The … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
21 Comments
Solitary Confinement–Why George Will Is Still the Most Interesting of Conservative Pundits
George Will has a recent column about solitary confinement, and the law-and-order conservative doesn’t like it. [T]ens of thousands of American prison inmates are kept in protracted solitary confinement that arguably constitutes torture and probably violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition … Continue reading
Undigested Thoughts on North Korea’s Bomb Test
Conveniently, North Korea’s latest nuclear test came just as my Nuclear Weapons and Power class was coming to the section on proliferation, so of course it has me thinking. But I don’t have a fully coherent set of thoughts that … Continue reading
Posted in Politics in General, Research Blogging
Tagged North Korea, Nuclear Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons
10 Comments
Somewhat Conflicted on the Budget
Reading up on the latest budget battle stories (yawn), I had one of those moments that make me pause and think about what I think about government. The line that made me blink was; House Republicans passed a bill last … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
8 Comments
Final (?) 2012 Election Comment
All the conservative criticism of the election polls last year emphasized the belief that Republicans were being under-sampled in the polls. Had that been true, Romney’s popular vote percentage should have been higher than his poll percentage, which was a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
4 Comments
Saving the Liberal Arts, part I
The Associated Press recently ran a very good article about liberal arts colleges that featured my very own workspace, Adrian College. It discusses the challenges of liberal arts colleges in an age when most students (and their parents) want pre-professional … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching
4 Comments
This Is Not a Chicken
Daughter #1 showed this to me the other day. How long does it take you to figure out what it is?
Posted in Uncategorized
7 Comments
I Heart Liechtenstein
Not that I’ve ever been there, but… I have evolved over the last few years to using, very explicitly, a comparative approach in my American Government class. As I tell my students, our system is just one case study in … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
2 Comments
The Bawdy House Provisions 