Wednesday, March 5, 2008

The Science of Graft

I finished work on the massive research project for our Democracy in Latin America lab tonight. The final piece came out to 5,585 words, which is around what I was shooting for. It's big. The document itself is near 136kb, and it comes in at 17 pages in single-space block paragraph form. A handful of snarky footnotes and a firm unwillingness to adopt a paragraphing style that is easy on the eyes have turned the paper into something strange to look at. I footnoted the title. Who footnotes titles, anyway?

The TA will tell me soon whether or not I lived up to expectations. I certainly hope so, eh? Once it's graded and I'm sure that I can move it around, I'll post it through the blog as a Googledoc.

But damn, was it a lot of work. I still have another pile of research that never even made its way into a brief mention; there were things that I just didn't have the wherewithal to mention.

On the whole, though, I find the concept of corruption as exclusion to be a pretty damn salient point when one is discussing notions of vertical and horizontal accountability in democracy. It's possible that I will return to this paper at a later date and do some more digging. There's gotta be an answer in there somewhere, right?


Haircut


This might be the funniest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. It was clicked on a whim, but had me gasping for air by the end.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/f171d726e8

This is going to cause me trouble in settings where I shouldn't laugh, I can just see it.