Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard stated last Sunday that every Australian child should learn Mandarin, Hindi, or other regional languages as part of Australia's embrace of the Asian Century. While her new agenda set out in a 300 page report has received its...
In an effort to add to the discussion on the “living academic,” let me give hat-tip to an often hidden part of the profession: rejection. I’ve had a little over a dozen things accepted so far as an...
Most of you have probably seen this, but why not? It is that kind of day. That's all, folks.
Richard Weitz notes an intensification of PRC anti-missile defense rhetoric. He points to the implications of robust BMD for China's minimal deterrence approach and for US-led containment. David Axe...
Update: the Duck has moslty migrated (and that sentence makes sense in a non-technical context! Score!). Comment migration is in process, so probably not a good time for a magnum opus response. The existing RSS feed should work, so no need to change that. Vikash designed our new banner. The template is likely to shift some over the next week or so. Let us know about missing functionality, aestehic issues, and other stuff. Obviously, FB, Twitter, etc. integration is missing but will be around soon. Update 2: Apparently the template is being played with. So disregard relevant earlier comments....
Featuring Janice Bially Mattern. From 2012.
Georgetown University's debate coach comments (video) on the first presidential debate of 2012. PM's not the only one to respond to John Quiggin's post on the US Navy; Robert Farley also has a lot to say. Jeremy Keenan provides an overview of the Mali civil war at allAfrica. The Syrian civil war continues. Michael Krepon revisits Robert Jervis' The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution.Ryan Evans: "All Politics and Civil War is Local: Helmand's Micro-Conflicts."Dave Schuler riffs on Walter Russel Mead's analysis of Mitt Romney's debate performance: "Tacking Toward the Jacksonians."Daniel Little...
Political scientists like to complain about how little they are paid, which tends to be irritating to any number of other groups, most notably anyone who has a job other than that of a political scientist and has to be into the office say, before noon. Part of the reason that political scientists are so poorly compensated for their great contribution to humankind is that they are only rewarded when others from outside their organization value their work. This is because political scientists most like what other political scientists like. Professor Cumubbins has 10,000 citations this year and...
Acting was a big part of Battleship. At Crooked Timber, John Quiggin writes a post that seeks to sink a thousand ships: The trillions of dollars that have been spent on building, maintaining and scrapping fleets since 1945 has yielded almost zero benefits to the nations that have spent this money, in the belief that all respectable countries should have a navy. China’s carrier is an extreme example. About the best that can be said is that a zero benefit-cost ratio is substantially better than that for military expenditure in general. Quiggin's smart, but I'm surprised he overlooks the...
The sailor (George Mendosa) and nurse (Greta Zimmer Friedman) depicted in this iconic photo snapped moments after the announcement that World War II had ended turned out to be complete strangers, and apparently Greta Friedman, the nurse, wasn't kissing back: Mendosa: "It was the moment. You come back from the Pacific, and finally, the war ends,' Mendonsa told CBS. 'The excitement of the war being over, plus I had a few drinks. So when I saw the nurse, I grabbed her, and I kissed her." Friedman: "I did not see him approaching, and before I know it, I was in this vice grip. That man was very...
I've been getting sporadic reports of problems opening the podcasts, e.g., of people clicking on them from the "podcasts" tab with no result, being unable to force a download to show up as an audio file, and so forth. If you've been having this kind of difficulty would you let me know in comments?Please specify what kind of browser(s), and operating system(s) are involved, and which (if any) workarounds have revolved the problem.UPDATE: I've added an mp3 of Episode 10 to the files linked to under the "podcasts" tab. I'd appreciate it if someone who has had difficulties tries it to see if it...
Check out the third episode of New Books in Science and Fantasy, in which I interview Meagan Spooner about Skylark.The summary:Lark Ainsley lives within a near-hermetically sealed city located in a world scarred and depleted by magical wars. The Architects, who oversee the City, maintain it by harvesting the non-renewable magical energy found in each of the city’s inhabitants. But something goes wrong on Lark’s “Harvest Day,” and she soon finds herself on a quest to find safety outside the City’s walls–where the disappearance of magic has rendered the landscape a wasteland full of sadness...