With the loss of the drinking intellectual stimulation that comes from APSA, I'm in need of some inspiration to kick start the semester that begins next week. We all know that academic life is full of adventure, comedy, human drama, and conflict. So, it shouldn't be...
H/T to @stephaniecarvin for this bit of silliness:Â Â Enjoy your last few days before the students come back, if they have not already done so!
Who will win in a world of .... LASER CATS andhegemonic stability theory?In an interesting thought experiment at Foreign Policy, James R. Holmes (an associate professor at the Naval War College)...
The Syrian civil war continues. The state of the Brazilian defense industry.STRATCOM commander "rejects high estimates for Chinese nuclear arsenal" (via Taylor Fravel). Minimal deterrent lives...
I've put together a collection, albeit not a comprehensive one, of posts at the Duck of Minerva that focus on what might be called "the profession." The link is now a tab (Academia and Graduate School) below our banner.The rationale? Many of our most consistently popular pieces -- including ones that still get significant hits years after their publication -- fall into this category, so I think it might be a good service to try to consolidate links to them.In theory, post labels should do that, but after seven years of myriad bloggers our "labels" are a disaster. We have over a thousand;...
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I am now chief interviewer for the New Books Network's SF and Fantasy channel. I've got some exciting authors lined up for launch, and a few more who have agreed to record in September. But my response rate has dropped off dramatically in the last two weeks.In retrospect, August might not have been the best time to start interviewing.Anyway, I'm hoping that many of the outstanding requests will come through. But I also need a longer list of authors to pester contact, especially if I'm going to bank enough interviews to start the channel at two podcasts per...
The battle for Aleppo continues.Are China and Russia providing the US with an excuse for not acting in Syria? James Vreeland, quoted in the article, thinks so. Did the USSR win the solar-system race?Joshua Foust slams Alex Cooley for the content of his interview in Harpers.Sarah Wanenchank on digital dualism in augmented-warfare discourse (via Adam Elkus).Brad DeLong discusses the tragedy and farce of US inaction on climate change. Kindred Winecoff can't believe that he's defending Waltz in light of Patrick Porter's critique.A disturbing illustration of how Barbie screws up female body...
Back in May Robert Kelley touched off a discussion about Journal Citation Reports and impact factor rankings. Journal impact factor provides a textbook study in the consequences of a well-institutionalized but highly problematic quantitative measure. Impact factor is highly skewed, easily gamed, and somewhat arbitrary (two-year and five-year windows). Nonetheless, it drives a great deal of behavior on the part of authors, editors, and publishers.Impact factor, of course, is just one objective in the pursuit of prestige. Editors, boards, and associations want the status that comes with being...
 Phil Arena has been playing around with alternative measures of military power. He begins with the straightforward observation that one current and popular measure of military power, the CINC scores in the Correlates of War project, list the United States as having fallen behind the People's Republic of China in its military capability. As Phil writes, this is not a conclusion that most, if any, observers of world politics would endorse--and that even if it is true in the broadest sense (that in some total war between the United States and the PRC, the United States might not be able to...
James Hill for The New York TimesThe game theory of Olympic Badminton, from Quantitative Peace and Jordan Ellenberg. At e-ir, Tanzil Chowdhury says that intervention is never justified -- because of imperialism and messiness and all that.Amartya Sen places the European crisis within the context of the Great Convergence (via 3QD). China moves forward on its SSBN program, and in the South China Sea. Mark Byrnes ruminates on Churchill and modern American conservatism. Evgeny Morozov overkills TED (via Blood & Treasure).Ken Macleod on the present and the future imaginary in science...
With sanctions and talks – and a big stick in the background – the United States and its allies are trying to curtail Tehran’s nuclear programme. Australia is playing its part. Canberra recently blocked a shipment of industrial equipment to Iran. Australia’s Foreign Minister, Senator Bob Carr, believes preventing a nuclear Iran is vital. Is he right?Kenneth Waltz thinks not. The celebrated American political scientist says we should redefine the problem. The real difficulty in the Gulf is not Iran’s nuclear ambitions, he argues. It is the fact that one state in the area (Israel) has a...