Money

I'm not so sure that I'm so sure what's actually going to happen with this whole "worldwide financial crisis" business. Just a while ago, we were talking about $200/barrel oil. Now commodities are slipping, credit is unavailable, our banks are being consumed by either the government or each other, and the average consumer, anywhere, is forced to sit and wait.

We're looking for objects of blame, be they the "greedy bank executives," George Bush, the Democratic Party, or irresponsible borrowers like you and me. 

Well, my guess is that we all bear a certain amount of responsibility for this mess. It's not over yet.

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?