Alexander Pope thought he was dullness incarnate; Henry Fielding accused him of murdering the English Language; Aaron Hill compared his acting to ‘the heavings of a disjointed caterpillar’. Even one...
Our everyday experience of the world reveals that the things around us are constantly changing. As I look out my window, I notice that the grass outside has grown taller, the green raspberries have...
What is Bayesian reasoning and how can we apply it to case studies and qualitative research? The basic idea is simple—we are social science “detectives,” and our goal is to find any and all...
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has caused a global energy crisis. The United States and the European Union have instituted partial embargos on Russian oil and gas, while Russia has responded by cutting off...
The succession of a child king was a relatively common occurrence across medieval Europe, but kingship is still usually studied from an adult-focused perspective which sees boy rulers as paradoxes or...
There is no doubt that liberal democracy as being currently practiced in the west, despite serious problems, is superior beyond comparison to many authoritarian or totalitarian autocracies. The latter...
At the end of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Edgar Allan Poe’s detective Auguste Dupin, the prototype of the analytical detective, offers a disparaging verdict on the Parisian Prefect of Police....
Perhaps the biggest challenge to dictatorships is the danger and uncertainty associated with a leadership transition. No one—including the ruler—knows the real rules of transition, such as how the...
‘Oh, I’ve cut out carbs. I feel so much healthier’, many people tell me. But I doubt they know what ‘carbs’ really are, nor why we really need them in our diet. The word carbohydrate...
We are living in a global age of masks. The face coverings that many of us have worn since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic range from medical-grade PPE to handsewn cloth to expensive designer-branded...
Forty years after the end of authoritarianism, many Latin American democracies exhibit high levels of state violence, primarily attributable to the agency most directly responsible for preserving the...
Recently, I was in Wauchula, Florida, at the Center for Great Apes, which is a sanctuary for chimpanzees and orangutans. There, I met Sandra, an orangutan, and the only non-human person living...