The Quantitative Peace

The Dark Knight Rises and the Economic Impact of Bane's Occupation of Gotham

I started working on this post a long time ago and, for whatever reason, never got around to finishing it. So please keep in mind that this was largely written shortly after the film first came out. I should also disclose at the outset that this post will contain spoilers, so if there is some sort of unbelievably powerful force that has kept you from seeing this fantastic movie, please be warned. For those still interested, there's more after the jump.

Links Galore

It's been a while since my last post, so I thought it was time to put up at least a little something:

Senate Republicans are, for the moment, blocking Chuck Hagel's nomination as Defense Secretary. Admittedly, my attention to current events has been spotty over the past couple of months, but it seems that every time I turn my attention back to this the basic rationale for opposing Hagel has changed. Initially it concerned his comments regarding Israel, then it morphed to include a means of obtaining more information about the attacks on Benghazi, and now it seems to have evolved further to include concerns over compensation Hagel received for giving some speeches since he left the Senate. Ultimately I guess I remain unsure as to how this works out for the better for Republicans—now, or in the long run. 

A meteor injured several hundred people in Russia. 

Spencer Ackerman has a piece up at Wired looking at the mistakes made by the Galactic Empire at the Battle of Hoth. There is also a broader set of responses to Ackerman's piece at Wired, and the folks at the Duck of Minerva have several followup posts debating the shortcomings of the Empire in a wider context. Itemize these posts, I will:

1. Here's Ackerman's post.
2. Wired's symposium.
3. Dan Nexon's piece for said Wired symposium.
4. Patrick Thaddeus Jackon's piece at the Duck.
5. Robert Kelly's piece at the Duck.
6. Steve Saideman piece at the Duck.
7. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson's followup at the Duck.

As these discussions have mirrored some of the lunchtime discussions I've had over the past few years with fellow bloggers Chad Clay and Michael Allen, I've enjoyed reading them immensely. I will try to update this list if there are any new additions.

 

 

Gotham City as the Paris Commune

A spoiler warning before I get to the heart of the discussion: This blog entry is being posted the Monday after the release of The Dark Knight Rises.  The blog post deals with material presented in the film, plot elements, as well as some dialogue, so consider this a warning.  While I am not going to go out of my way to spoil parts of the plot intentionally, some revelations about the film is inevitable.  So, if you still have not seen the movie, you probably do not want to read this discussion.

The Batman trilogy has concluded. The trilogy satisfied both my preference for solid comic book films as well as engaging some interesting academic topics through film; some of the material in the series is ready-made for the classroom. The previous movies have delved into topics including economics, politics, and game theory and the conclusion to the series is not an exception.  When I wrote about the Dark Knight, I focused on the game theoretic outcomes of the ferry situation produced by the Joker.  Other bloggers noted that scene as well as a few others that contained game theoretic elements; there is some debate about whether or not the characters within the movies behaved how we would expect them to in the real world or if their cost-benefit calculus was altered due to the presence of under-explored elements such as living in a world that contains both the Joker and Batman. For this movie, I was struck by how the film seemed to be recreating a modern day Paris Commune in Gotham.  Given that I have not seen any other mentions of this parallel thus far, I figured it was appropriate for me to illuminate the historical precedent for the Dark Knight Rises' Gotham City.  

The story as we know it from the film. Bane, the main villain for the Dark Knight Rises gains possession of a nuclear weapon and provides an ultimatum to the United States as well as the citizens of Gotham: no one can leave or enter the city and if anyone does either of these things, the bomb will detonate and destroy Gotham.  This effectively adopts a strategy of disproportionate response; given that Bane does not have too many bargaining chips, he does not want to allow the existing government any inroads that could ultimately thwart his plan.  After trapping the vast majority of Gotham's police beneath the city, he functionally separates Gotham from the rest of the country's political and economic structures and returns the rule of Gotham "to the people."  This turning over of Gotham to the people is a mix of mob mentality combined with disproportionate control of force in the hands of criminals in the city. Jonathan Crane (the villain known as the Scarecrow from previous films) establishes a court to try the remaining elite within the city.  

To clarify, before going further, Bane's liberation of the people from the economic and political shackles of daily life is a false promise to the citizens of the city.  Bane tells the protagonist, Batman, that he is merely giving Gotham some hope before destroying the city, and, after 5 months, the device will detonate automatically due to nuclear core's instability. This torture of false hope is the same punishment he plans to inflict upon Batman. As such, Bane's attempt at local control and advocacy for anarchism is merely a ruse, a faux-anarchism. However, the 5-month time frame where he enacts his social and political project is still of interest.  Consequently, the rest of this discussion is taking his advocacy at face value.  Also, as a side note, I will be describing Bane's public advocacy as either anarchism or as libertarian-socialism, a decentralized, workers' or peoples' control over the economic and political institutions.  This type of anarchism, one with limited, local government should not be confused with the abolition of all hierarchy or an advocacy of pure political chaos; the latter of which is best exemplified by the Joker in the previous film.  Instead, the intent in these philosophies is to disestablish the nation-state and return to local governance by local actors in non-authoritarian manners.

The historical analogue to this fictional drama is the Paris commune.  The Paris commune was a 2-month project in 1871.  France, embroiled and losing the Franco-Prussian war started in 1870, lost control over the capital to its citizens.  Radical, pro-democratic insurgents grew in numbers and threatened the existing regime. The political and civil elite evacuated the capital, including the police, with hopes of retaking the city later.  The commune held hostages initially and attempted to use them as bargaining chips with the existing government as well as adopted several policies to help the common people of the city.  The increasing disparity between the rich and the poor gave way to several reforms such as (directly taken from the Wikipedia article):

• the separation of church and state;
• the remission of rents owed for the entire period of the siege (during which, payment had been suspended);
• the abolition of night work in the hundreds of Paris bakeries;
• the granting of pensions to the unmarried companions and children of National Guards killed on active service;
• the free return, by the city pawnshops, of all workmen's tools and household items valued up to 20 francs, pledged during the siege; the Commune was concerned that skilled workers had been forced to pawn their tools during the war;
• the postponement of commercial debt obligations, and the abolition of interest on the debts; and
• the right of employees to take over and run an enterprise if it were deserted by its owner; the Commune, nonetheless, recognized the previous owner's right to compensation.

In essence, Bane's criminal take over of Gotham is not too ideologically distant from Paris in 1871.  The gap between the rich and the poor in both cities had become noticeably problematic for those on the wrong side of the distribution.  Bane, nominally, attempted to put "the people" in charge and used force to redistribute wealth.  The trials of the rich and their subsequent execution (through exile by the order of Crane), is more like the French Revolution than the Paris Commune, but other aspects of the revolutions are similar.  As mentioned, the police are not present in either city and traditional political institutions are not present within Gotham or Paris.  The nation-state has every interest in retaking the city and putting an end to the city's secession. 

 

There are differences as well.  Bane's separation was much more violent than those in Paris.  The majority of the violence resulting in death from the Paris commune comes from the government's reacquisition of the capitol (between 20,000 and 50,000 people died when the state reasserted its authority over Paris). Peter Kropotkin, writing in 1880, describes the creation of the Paris commune as relatively benign; "the government evaporated like a pond of stagnant water in a spring breeze, and on the nineteenth the great city of Paris found herself free from the impurity which had defiled her, with the loss of scarcely a drop of her children's blood."   However, while the Paris commune served as a positive example for anarchists and communists alike (with some critique by Marx and Engels), not all observers saw the rebels as freedom fighters, but as criminal thugs who had taken control over the city.  Bane's liberation of Gotham was quite bloody as was the reacquisition of Gotham by the state. Additionally, Gotham city lasted longer as an experiment, doubling the lifespan of the Paris commune.  This may have been purely for the plot device of allow Bruce Wayne's spine to heal in a more believable time frame (though that is not an overly compelling recovery time for a spinal injury). Finally, the commune of Paris had a more functioning decision-making body that was intended to offer long-term democratic decision-making, while there does not appear to be much of a functioning governmental body in Gotham. 

So, the question is whether Gotham is an accurate representation of what would have to happen for a major city in the US to be allowed to be a Paris commune.  The result of Gotham was not something to be modeled, unlike the vision adopted by leftists from Paris.  Bane's rhetoric was hollow, but did contain the components of redistribution usually attributed to leftist movements.  While Batman is fighting to save his city from destruction, it is not hard to see the juxtaposition between the espoused radical politics of Bane (and Catwoman) versus what Bruce Wayne epitomizes as a member of Gotham's elite.  The conclusion of the film results in Bane being thwarted, Gotham re-annexed by the nation-state, and the voluntary redistribution of Wayne's assets to the people outside the coercive politics of the villains. 

A separate message is that a commune enacted through evil criminals is not a desirable commune---perhaps a too obvious lesson.  Given that Bane has no long-term incentive in institution building, he does not appear to do much of it at all.  He acts as a warlord and not really a leader of the people.  As opposed to a libertarian-socialist commune, he creates a anarcho-totalitarian commune. 

Of course, this anti-leftist message in the movie is the opposite of what has been proposed recently due to Bane having a name similar to Bain Capital.  

Using private information to beat Death

 

 

In Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (not to be confused with their most Excellent Adventure), the duo are killed and sent to Hell.  On their way to an eternity of punishment, Death gives them the ability to escape their fate if they can best him in a game of their choosing.  The wager seems to be an obvious one to take: If you lose, you are stuck in hell for eternity; if you win, you can leave.  However, if you do not play the game, then you are still stuck in Hell without the ability to leave. In a previous dialogue (not shown in the above clip), Death boasts that he has never lost a game. 

If Death really never lost a game, it is reasonable to assume he has played billions of such games (assuming billions have encountered him and wanted to leave).  A variety of games are likely to have been proposed including athletic competitions (perhaps the most common up until this point in history), strategic games with full information, and even gambles.  Given this, Death would have to be some sort of super athlete that makes the right move every time (perfectly rational), and wins all lotteries. Even in fair lotteries, Death could only win so many coin tosses in a row before it appears the game is rigged in his favor.  As an aside, it is likely that no single player would know that he has played coin tosses before and won so many in the past, but his boast out to tip players off.  Thus, unfair lotteries biased in favor of the condemned are likely to still be skewed in their actual results for Death.

Given these constraints established by the movie, the question for the viewer becomes obvious: What game would you choose to play against Death?

 

After some pondering, the optimal game would be one of private information--where the player can control elements outside of Death's control.  As such, Death's ability to win depends on his ability to guess what the player has chosen. Given this proposition, then it appears that Bill and Ted stumbled upon the right course of action in their initial choice: Battleship.  In a world where you are playing the best strategy possible without cheating, the average win using a decent algorithm averages 40 moves. If we posit that Death plays perfectly strategically without knowing what the players know, then there is room for the other player to do better than Death.  So, Bill and Ted knowing he would put his ship in the J row may work out as a better strategy given their glimpse into Death's psychology. Clue, again, affords them room for private information in guessing which character committed the murder of Mr. Body.  Twister, on the other hand, I lack a convincing interpretation as it is clearly a game of athletics.  Perhaps Gymnasts have not challenged Death before.  Though, of course, I am sure the script was written with the idea of seeing an ancient mythological being playing modern games against two relatively airheaded dudes and not with a mind towards game theory.

Given this understanding of how to beat death, and while Bill and Ted succeed in finding the right path to victory, they allow too much for error.  If Death can lose at games of private information, then the best strategy is to make it a game of asymmetric private information instead of a symmetric one (technically, a symmetric, asymmetric information game) like Battleship.  Simply, offering Death a game of "Guess What Number I Am Thinking Of" and making the possible set of numbers contain all numbers would make Death's ability to guess the number indistinguishable from zero.  The game is much less fun, but the certainty it provides makes it an optimal choice given the symmetric alternative.  For this solution to be accurate, then it means that either people have never played an asymmetric information game against Death, that his strategy was superior to his opponent's in stategy previous games and could overcome the information asymmetry, or, perhaps, he was simply boasting to dissuade would-be challengers.  Also, this is what happens when you leave Comedy Central on during the day while doing house chores. 

Hunger Games: Civil Wars, Victory, and Repression

The movie version of the book The Hunger Games (Paperback, Kindle) is being released this week; the movie is expected to draw a large crowd and is already drawing superb ratings from critics. As such, given that there are both political and economic themes that run in the book that are ripe for political scientists and economists, I figured I would touch upon at least one of those interesting threads related to the study of international relations.  

Now, what I am drawing upon is purely from the first chapter of the book and can be easily gleaned from the trailer of the film.  As such, this discussion should not be spoiling anything.  However, if you are attempting to see this movie without any background whatsoever, consider this your spoiler warning for the post.

The book takes place in a future dystopian world set in North America. During this time period, political organization is non-democratic and highly centralized.  North America is divded into 13 districts excluding the Capitol.  As Katniss, the protagonist (the novel is told through first person narration), explains in the first chapter (p. 18):

The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games.

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

In the above account, the districts mobilized to overthrow the central government (perhaps as revolutionaries or as separatists, it is not clear in thie passage) and the Capitol is able to persevere over all 13 districts.  1 district is obliterated and the 12 remaining districts are put in a worse position than they were prior to the conflict as the Capitol ramps up the repression of the districts by extracting tribute in the form of humans (the Capitol is quite repressive in other economic and political venues as well). Two children from each district are randomly selected to fight in the Hunger Games each year. The above passage is leading up to the point where we find out which children serve as tribute for the 74th annual Hunger Games. 

Since the government of the Capitol gets to play the obvious villain in this post-civil war story, we should be interested in the likelihood of some situation akin to this happening in reality.  That is, after a failed civil war attempt, are there times when the government uses its new position to further repress instead of adopting some form of accommodation to stave off a future rebellion.  While we are unlikely to see the specific scenario of the Hunger Games played out, increasing repression after a civil war is something that seems feasible.  We can think of civil war as a bargaining failure between two actors (rebels and the government) and, once a victor has been determined through the random number generator that is war, we are left with one party to reap the spoils.  It would make since that the a newly consolidated government would ramp up its extraction of resources beyond what it could achieve pre-war.

To understand increased repression after a conflict, I employed the Cingranelli-Richards data set (CIRI) and used their Physical Integrity Rights Index (henceforth refered to as either PI Rights or PIR) to look at their 9-point index as a proxy for government repression.  The index is composed of four 0-2 indicators of government respect or use of torture, disappearances, extra-judicial killing, and political imprisonment.  A score of 0 would be interpreted as little to no respect for physical integrity rights while a score of 8 is high respect for those rights.  The index runs from 1981-2010, so that helped to establish the sample of possible civil wars I could look at.  For civil wars, I used the Correlates of War intra-state war data (v 4.1) and employed the 19 conflicts that had system members as governments, started in 1982 or later, had ended by 2007 (a COW limitation), had over 1,000 battle deaths combined from each side, and the government had won the conflict (thus, excluding compromises, stalemates, and rebel victory).

To get a feel of the data and government use of repression, the first item I looked at was the PIR value one year before the conflict started and one year after the conflict had ended.  This produces the following scatter plot:

The line represents no change in the level of respect for PIRs while points below the line represent a decline and points above the line represent improvement.  So, in this instance, we have some cases in which the government represses more after a civil war.  Since there are only 13 dots for 19 cases, there must be some overlap.  As such, we can examine this as a change histogram as well:

The slim majority of cases are worse off with a few very large decreases in PIR values.  There are several states that show improvements as well.  However, a one year change may not be enough time for the government to adopt a new strategy for winning a civil war and the PIR value may be a hold-over from conducting the fighting in the civil wars.  Looking at 5 years ahead, the 18 cases (losing one observation due to temporal limitations) produces the following distribution:

Five years after the conclusion of the civil war looks generally better for those societies.  There still remains 28% of the sample that have a worse off situation, but 50% show an improvement.  Naturally, this is a small sample of intra-state wars and the possibility of a Panem type situation is certainly possible.  The 3 cases that show a change below -1 are Myanmar in 1982, Indonesia in 1992, and Ethiopia in 2000.  The Panem situation, if I understand the story correctly, has been ongoing for 74 years by the time of the first novel, no such analogue is available in the data given the limitations of the CIRI dataset.  Also, the amount of state capacity demonstrated by the Capitol in enforcing laws seems far superior to any of the examples above.  The strength of the state in the book is something that should decrease the probability of conflict by rational revolutionaries.

As an aside, one of the other side tidbits I have noticed is that all the characters that are in the Capitol have Roman names such as Cinna, Octvia, Caesar, and Plutarch (among others).  I am not sure if this has relevance beyond harkening to a city-dominated empire, is veiled allusion to the idea that the United states is becoming a new Rome, or some other significance I am not familiar with yet.  I do not know the full story of the Hunger Games, but I will likely be catching the first movie this weekend. 

Linear Time and Games

I am glad to see someone has taken the opening episode of Deep Space 9 and created a clip of one of the more theoretically interesting segments of the episode.  Granted, this was uploaded 4 years ago, but I had not come across a short version of the clip until now. 

I watched the show when I was in middle/high school and had the opportunity to rewatch it all the way through when we picked up the complete series a few years ago.  While the longer story arcs are compelling and the show gains some decent steam in the 4 and 5th season, much of it is not digestable for a class (unless I am teaching "The Politics of Star Trek"). Unlike traditional Star Trek series (Original, ST:TNG), much of the better stories are not episodic.

The clip features Commander (not quite a Captain yet) Sisko explaining to wormhole aliens the utility of living in linear time - the aliens experience time simultaneously.

 

 

With the proper context, this can make it into a game theory lecture.

 

Sci-Fi Poli Sci, Episode I: Regime Types Across Sci-Fi Universes

Assuming that one is looking for them, it is fairly easy to find internet arguments that stem from comparisons among and between science fiction universes, and a great many of these arguments center on comparing governments within those universes. Which government is more democratic: Star Wars' Galactic Republic or Star Trek's United Federation? Who is more repressive: Firefly's Alliance or Star Wars' Galactic Empire? How do the military assets of the Stargate universe stack up against those found in all of the other sci-fi universes? Indeed, given that nerd culture is now nearly synonymous with pop culture, these conversations seem to be quite common, particularly if one regularly eats lunch with the bloggers at The Quantitative Peace.  However, while some political scientists and economists have tried to answer questions that have clearly spawned from science fiction, I am unaware of any that have attempted to apply some of the more commonly used quantitative measurements in political science to the governments seen in such universes. Therefore, this post represents a first attempt to apply quantititative measures from political science to the polities envisioned in some of the most beloved science fiction franchises, in an attempt to answer the question: Which sci-fi governments are the most democratic, and which are the most autocratic? In the paragraphs below, I take a close look at a few sci-fi governments and use a couple of the more popular measures of regime type to compare them.

While this is mostly an attempt to have some Friday fun with political science measurement, I do not think it is an entirely frivolous exercise.  If our measurement schemes are valid, then they should apply quite nicely across regimes, even imagined ones.  Furthermore, as someone who regularly teaches classes about quantitative research in political science, I think there may be instructional advantages to using fictional regimes to introduce students to the methodological challenges associated with developing valid quantitative measures of such things as human rights, regime type, military capabilities, etc.  In fact, the use of fictional governments may allow the instructor to escape the various normative hang-ups and national attachments that can often impede undergraduates' willingness to pursue strict coding guidelines in quantitative data collection.  Thus, to quote Paul Krugman (1978, 2), "while the subject of this [post] is silly," the content should make sense, and as such, the post should be viewed as a "serious analysis of a ridiculous subject."

A Rare Glimpse Inside North Korea

In 2006 National Geographic produced a documentary that gives viewers a rare glimpse into everyday life in North Korea. In the documentary, Inside North Korea, an eye doctor travels to the isolationist country to perform surgery on 1,000 patients in 10 days. The doctor convinces the government to allow a camera crew to document his work. However, the camera crew really wanted to document everyday life in the country. Once inside, the crew took every opportunity they got to film the everyday lives of ordinary North Koreans.

The film is really compelling, as it demonstrates how much control the North Korean government has over its people. Reading about how Kim Jong-Il controls the country is nothing like actually witnessing it. Below I discuss some of the key segments from the documentary that were quite surprising.

1. Concentration camps

The North Korean government has set up several work camps for prisoners and their families. According to a North Korean defector who used to be a guard at such a camp, once people enter the camps, they never leave. They die there either from overwork, starvation, or disease. There are even children born in the camps who live their whole lives there without ever leaving.

The camps are obviously a way for the North Korean government to maintain tight control over the population. Since people can be punished for family members' so called transgressions towards the government, it gives people the incentive to ensure that (1) they encourage their family members to respect the government and (2) not to make a mistake, as their family members will also be punished. Furthermore, these rules could encourage family members to turn on one another in order to avoid punishment for another's transgressions.

2. Guarding the DMZ

The documentary devotes an entire segment to discussing a normal day on the DMZ. It focuses in particular on a location where North and South Korean guards literally stand on each side of the border. On the North Korean side, there are three guards- two that face and stare at each other, and one that faces into North Korean. According to a guard on the South Korean side of the border, the two North Korean guards that stare at each other do so in order to ensure neither defects and crosses over into South Korea. Furthermore, the guard that faces North Korea does so to ensure no North Korean defects and runs into South Korea.

3. A cult of personality

Either the North Korean people really adore Kim Jong-Il, or they are really good at pretending. In the documentary the crew never met anyone who did not continuously sing praise for the dictator. Their answers to the many questions asked of them were always the most positively extreme responses they could give. For example, when the crew asked one North Korean which of the many pictures of Kim Jong-Il they liked best, they responded, "I like all the pictures the best." Furthermore, although many North Koreans often do not have access to adequate food and medical services, they still do not place blame on the government for these problems. In fact, they believe they would be worse off if Kim Jong-il was not their leader. It is interesting (and disheartening) to see how the North Korean government has effectively prevented its population from being able to judge the actions of the government and hold it accountable.

Gift List for Political Scientists, 2010

Mind Your Decisions has done an annual gift list for economists for the last few years, and Presh just put together his 2010 list.  Using his list as inspiration, I have compiled my own list of possible gifts for Political Scientists. Given my proclivity for strategic leisure, I believe I can construct this with some authority on the matter.

 

Board Games - We attempt to host a fortnightly game night, sometimes the evening is started with an appropriate movie, but often the board game will be the center of it all.  As political scientists, we have tried a few different ones, and I have a few suggestions based on what you are looking for:

• Settlers of Catan (Amazon) - This is a gateway board game.  The rules are simple and feature a Euro-style board that changes with each game and enables or disables particular strategies.  The main components of the game are about development, production, and trade.  The base game suits 2-4 players, and there is a 5-6 player expansion that can be bought. If you have grown beyond the base game, then expanding the game's scope can be done.  Being political scientists, we have favored the Cities and Knights expansion that involves collective action problems and defense.  Finally, if you are a Catan veteran and want to up your game, there is the nearly $500 version, 3d Catan.
• Carcassonne (Amazon, itunes) - A tile based game that, again, has simple rules, but offers some deep strategy components.  The game is based around producing cities, farms, and roads - and claiming such objects using "Followers" or "meeples".  There are several expansions to the game and even has an iphone/ipod version that can be played online.
• Civilization (Amazon) - based on the popular video game (see below for that suggestion), up to four players compete to construct a civilization and win the game through one of four victory paths (military domination, culture, economics, or science).  While I have yet to play the game, I did pick it up on Black Friday and expect to enjoy it.

Card Games

• Saboteur (Boardgamegeek) - A card game where up to 10 players are dwarves mining for gold.  A percentage of the players are potential Saboteur who, secretly, want to prevent the dwarves from getting the gold.  A game of strategy and incomplete information leaves player guessing who they should stop and who they should enable.
• Bang (Amazon) - An Italian game that is also based on incomplete information.  One individual is known to be the sheriff, 1-3 people are deputies (unknown), 1-3 people are bandits (unknown) and 1-2 people are renegades (unknown).  The object of the game for the sheriff and the deputies is to kill all the bandits and renegades, the bandits just want to just the sheriff (though killing deputies does have benefits during the course of the game), and the renegade wants to be the last person(s) standing.  Half the game is figuring out who is on your side and who should be a target for your guns.  Quite a fun game that can be played by multiple ages and groups of people.  Michael Flynn reminded that I should have this up here as well.

Video Games

• Civilization 5 (Amazon - PC) - Following a long line of civilization games, this has simplified some of the extensive rules and development paths that were found in civilization 3 and 4.  This has made it more penetrable for the new user or casual player.  A game of Civilization starts in 4000 BC and you progress, controlling one of the major civilizations it offers (list here).  While offering a form of simulation, it is a game and the object is often to win.  It offers multiple paths to victories as the players control construction, expansion, civic policy, economic policy, science policy and progression, diplomacy, and military strategy.  I can and have lost hours playing this game as it has tremendous replay value.  While the game does offer multiplayer, the speed at which the game is played makes it less than ideal unless both players have a day or two to kill.
• Bioshock (Amazon) - Recommended by Michael Flynn, a dystopian Randian future sets the stage for this first person shooter.  Likewise, I would consider picking up the new Fallout (Amazon) game. 
• Starcraft II (Amazon) - A real time strategy game that is conducting from the perspective of humans versus the Protoss and the Zerg.  This is the first of a series of three games in the Starcraft II line. 

Books/Reading

• An e-reader (Kindle) - While still not ideal for textbooks, the amount of time I can now read while traveling or just througout the day without lugging large books has improved tremendously.  I am partial to the kindle given that it was my first and I sync it across my iPhone and computer in case I do not have it with me.  
• The Workflow of Data Analysis Using Stata (Amazon) - My .do files are messier than they should be and I have been slowly going through Long's book to try improve my work for replication.  
• The Black Swan (Amazon) - Another recommendation by Michael Flynn, a book based on probability in real life and the fixation on outliers.

 

Movies

• The Dark Knight (Amazon- Blu-ray/Special Edition normal DVD) - Perhaps an obvious choice.
• The Princess Bride (Amazon - Blu-ray) - Another movie filled with game theory and appropriate for viewing with your academic peers. 
• Dr. Strangelove (Amazon - Blu-ray) - This section might as well be called "Game Theory Movies" as this serves as a classic for the use of game theory, especially the grim trigger strategy. Julie VanDusky-Allen reminded me to add this to the list.
• The Watchmen (Amazon - Ultimate Cut, Normal DVD) - The implications of a world where a super hero is America's deterrent to aggression and nuclear confrontation paints a dramatically different universe.  In this alternate universe of the 1980s, Nixon is elected to a third term, the United States won Vietnam, and masked vigilantes have been banned from fighting crime after a series of police riots.  The conclusion of the movie and the motivation of the main villain can fill a class period or two with discussion (which I won't spoil on this post).

 

Television

• The West Wing (Amazon) - A must see for anyone vaguely interested in the political process.  I have forced this upon a few political scientists myself and have yet to hear anything but glee from watching the series.
• The Wire (Amazon) - I have yet to see this series, but it was recommended by Matt DiGiuseppe as a great show that seems to be enjoyed by political scientists.  It, apparently, contains many instances of suboptimal policy outcomes that are trumped by individual's ambition as well as many cases of Realism-esque behavior between gang members.

Clothing- I own most of these already, but perhaps others would derive similar enjoyment out of them that I already do.

• Want to play a game? (Thinkgeek) - An anti-nuclear weapon message with game theoretic implications can be found in the 1980s movie of Wargames. You can live your nostalgia, or your frustration with tic-tac-toe, with this shirt!
• Stand back (Thinkgeek) - Science does not always have to be the last resort.
• e by the numbers (Thinkgeek) - Just in case your forget exactly what you are exponentiating by when deriving the predicted probabilities of your log regression.

Toys

• Albert Einstein Action Figure (Thinkgeek) - He watches over my desk from afar.
• Levitating Desktop Globe (Thinkgeek)
• USB Laser Guided Missile Launcher (Thinkgeek) - Show your power in the office so you can demand more in your bargains over space.

Productivity

•  A second monitor - Another recommendation by Matt, multiple screens allows for more virtual workspace or procrastination.
• Camtasia - Software used to record Powerpoint and other documents as movies with a narration.  I plan on picking up this or similar software for teaching my online, winter class in January.
• Presentation Remote (Amazon) - Those of us who are active on the conference scene, given job talks, or even teaching will benefit from having a laser pointer as well as a remote to advance slides during a lecture.  My Logitech pointer has treated me well for several years and was worth the investment.

If you have more to add to the list, please do contribute.  I will likely add inspired suggestions, especially for the underdeveloped categories.

P.O.V.: Truth and Reconciliation in Chile

The PBS series, P.O.V., aired an excellent documentary Tuesday night called The Judge and The General.  This film tells the story of Juan Guzmán, a judge assigned to try criminal cases against members of Augusto Pinochet's regime in Chile.  Guzmán had been a supporter of Pinochet, and the film chronicles the information he uncovered while investigating these cases, and how he ultimately came to the realization that Pinochet's legal immunity from prosecution was a huge hurdle toward Chile's goal of truth and reconciliation.  From the P.O.V. synopsis:

The Judge and the General follows the twists and turns of the efforts of Guzmán and others to overcome Pinochet's immunity and his claims to be too ill, even too senile, to stand trial, and then his final defense — when significant proof had been gathered — that he had known nothing of the crimes. Was Pinochet, who died in 2006 while under house arrest, brought to justice in the eyes of society? Or did he escape being "touched," as his supporters jubilantly proclaim? What are the prospects for the cases against Pinochet underlings that are now under way? Most important, what are the prospects for Chile finding both truth and reconciliation through a legal accounting of its recent violent past?

A brief discussion of the film's finer points follows the jump.