Iraq is merely the latest example of the US going to war under apparently false pretenses. In the debate leading up to the war against Iraq, the "mushroom cloud" fears were almost completely unfounded. Ironically, of course, intelligence to challenge the claim was...
Chris Bertram received some flack, apparently, for describing the recent Birmingham race riot as a "pogrom." Today he gets to enjoy a qualified (and somewhat angsty) last laugh:But I see that both...
I recently wrote about the misuse (or, more to the point, apparent schizophrenic understanding) of reputational logic in the war on terror. Administration officials have repeatedly utilized rhetoric...
Through the magic of podcasting, I've been able to listen to a number of pre- and post-game interviews with baseball players and managers as I go for my morning run -- subscribe to the daily MLB...
In my post on Stanford's iTunes store, I mentioned that Patrick has always been on the cutting edge of integrating technology into the classroom. Well, Patrick's just been featured prominently in a Chronicle for Higher Education story on the costs and benefits of podcasting (subscription only). Here are some key excerpts:Lectures on the GoAs more colleges use 'coursecasting,' professors are split on its place in teachingBy BROCK READWashingtonTake your typical college student — bright, curious, but probably a bit sleep-deprived and short on attention span. Stick that student in a lecture...
Couldn't resist (thanks to Brian Levy for the link):Strauss Guides Sox From GraveFiled as: Leo Strauss, White Sox
Iranian officials, not surprisingly, defended President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's comments at a conference Wednesday called "The World Without Zionism" where he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map". Their argument: It has been Iran's policy since the 1979 revolution. Oh, well that does it I guess. World leaders, including many in the Arab world, condemned the statement. The Washington Post has a great article which discusses the context of the statement as well as outlines the early difficulties President Ahmadinejad has encountered being a foreign policy novice (hell, even Ayatollah Ali...
As if on cue the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, yesterday released the US National Intelligence Strategy of the United States (NIS). The WP has a nice article which summarizes the report as well as notes what is different from past reports. Most of the rhetoric in the report is unremarkable. However, the portion of the report getting the most attention is the appearence of democracy promotion as a main strategic objective of the intelligence community (pg. 4). Apparently, this is the first time this kind of language was included in an intelligence mission statement....
The latest issue of Foreign Affairs contains a review by John Owen IV of Ed Mansfield's and Jack Snyder's Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. Mansfield and Synder contend, among other things, that a transition from authoritarian to democratic regimes can make states more war prone than it would otherwise have been. As Owen argues, this has profound implications for Iraq:The Bush administration's desire to break with its predecessors and alter the authoritarian status quo in the Middle East was admirable. But the White House got its science wrong, or at least not completely...
I haven't had the time to write my next installment on the balance of power, but it looks like I'll be addressing some of the key issues I wanted to raise in an incremental form.The Christian Science Monitor has a provocatively titled story on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO): "Russia, China looking to form 'NATO of the East'?"MOSCOW - Russia and China could take a step closer to forming a Eurasian military confederacy to rival NATO at a Moscow meeting of the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Wednesday, experts say.The group, which started in 2001 with limited...
A growing number of professors use podcasting - or the functional equivalent - to distribute their lectures, overviews of readings, and so forth. When I have the time, I know that I want to supplement blogging with podcasting. Our very own Patrick Jackson, on the other hand, has long been on the cutting edge of using technology in the classroom. Perhaps some day he'll tell us about what he's been up to.Meanwhile, Stanford is testing the waters in a big way. Coming Anarchy reports on iTunes at Stanford. The Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (which was the "Stanford Institute...
Mother Jones recently had a brief note about the Roosevelt Institution, which is a progressive think tank organized by and for college students: The Roosevelt Institution takes students’ ideas out of the filing cabinet and places them on the desks of reporters, civil servants, and politicians so that students’ ideas change public policy. One of the ways Roosevelt brings the innovative ideas of brilliant students to an audience capable of influencing public policy is through its national student research journal, the Roosevelt Review, a journal devoted to publishing high quality research,...