Had a nice early dinner tonight with my colleagues-slash-friends Suzanne, Peter, Kamilla, and Kelly at Hal and Mal’s to celebrate some good employment news, the precise details of which I’m not ready to share with all the readers of Signifying Nothing just yet.

Topics of discussion included such eclectic topics as hair (Kelly’s good, mine bad), the spatial properties of glowingness (I made an argument that glow is a multidimensional concept that has, at least, romantic and vocational axes, while others disagreed), coattail effects, the incumbency advantage, metrics of success, whether “free love” and pot was all it was cracked up to be in the late 60s and early 70s, sumo wrestling as a career option, and the geography of Ann Arbor. Damn I’m going to miss these folks.

As alluded to below, I am very pleased to announce that I have accepted an appointment as a visiting assistant professor at Duke University for the 2005–06 academic year, which—if nothing else—will make Duke the most blogged political science department in the world. Thankfully for Messrs. Troester and Nyhan, however, Dr. Munger has chosen to inflict me primarily on the undergraduate population.

I’m told that my offer of employment is conditional on learning how to spell Coach K’s full name, so I suppose I should get to work on learning that, as well figuring out why a glorified gym is referred to as an “indoor stadium”—perhaps because the events at the outdoor stadium, absent the good graces of Mr. Spurrier, are such a disappointment.

In other news, the paper I sent to APR got rejected (or, as I like to call it, “revise and resubmit—but elsewhere”). At least it wasn’t in turnaround hell forever.

Update: Will Baude quibbles with my assertion that Duke is now the “most blogged” political science department in the world. If one were to count the joint-appointed and intermittent blogger Cass Sunstein and the silent Jacob Levy, I might grant his point, although I’ll raise him the equally-silent Dan Lee in the Blue Devils’ defense. Of course, Drezner can squash us all like bugs, but on one-person, one-blog rules I think we’re essentially tied.

Further Update: Mr. Troester adds D. Laurence Rice to the list, pulling Duke ahead by my estimation.

The crisis continues: Mr. Baude has dug up two more UC types with blogs. Can my fellow Cameron Crazies meet this challenge?

After adding fuel to the Munger-Drezner blogging feud (rather lopsidedly decided for Drezner, I might add), I’ve discovered more evidence to back up the rivalry: namely, that the latest US News rankings have Duke and the U of C tied for 8th place in the “political science” rankings. You’ll have to go and read the copy at your local bookstore to verify this yourself, unless you want to drop $14.95 for online access to the full list.

Of course, the standard caveats about the US News rankings being complete garbage apply. These rankings, based on refereed journal publications, are probably a bit better (and put Chicago well ahead of Duke), but omit effects such as book output, Ph.D. placement, and the like, as well as publications in journals outside of political science.