The Culture novels have long been concerned with the interplay of simulation, simulacrum, religion, and materialism.
Dan Nexon on The Hydrogen Sonata: To Sim, Perchance to Dream
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Year: 2012
Friday Morning Linkage
Driving in Russia: And also: Justin Gengler on... well... just go read. In a move sure (not) to keep NATO defense planners up at night, China and Belarus hold a joint exercise. Long-term US...
When the Asian Growth Model Starts to Stumble, or how Korea could go like Japan if it’s not careful
Newsweek Japan asked me for an long-form essay on Korea’s economy for its December 5 issue (cover story to the left). Here is the link in Japanese, but I thought it would be useful to publish the...
Thursday Morning Linkage
Last Monday President Obama reiterated that Syrian use of chemical weapons would cross a US red line. Today brings multiple reports of the Syrian military preparing for their use. The government...
More Year: 2012 Posts
Wednesday Morning Linkage
There's some rambling analysis after the linkage. Charles King is very skeptical of the Scottish independence referendum. William Nomikos argues that Israeli politics may be moderating. Lisa Lundquist on the most recent insider attack in Afghanistan. Via Victoria Hui, An H-Diplo/ISFF roundtable on Wang Yuan-kang's  Harmony and War: Confucian Culture and Chinese Power Politics (Columbia University Press, 2011). Via Anjali Dayal, a "Moral and Political Chart of the Inhabited World" from 1837. Daniel Little goes in search of Leon Trotsky. Phil Arena responds to Andrew Kydd on "deadlines and...
When is it rational to leave graduate school?
Among the many interesting things about graduate school is its propensity to spark greater drinking than I ever thought possible. After preparing (most of) a three-hour talk on using R, I definitely found that celebrating America's greatest brewer-turned-patriot was useful. (For the benefit of readers who are serious snobs, my favorite beers are much more hoppy and more indie than anything brewed by such a large producer.) I'm more interested, though, in the thoughts of those who have problems that can't be solved by the sweet release of Mr. Adams's brewery. In particular, Dan and I would...
War Rape is Not Declining
The Human Security Report Project (HSR) recently released their 2012 Report. The first chapter on wartime sexual violence makes sweeping conclusions and provocative claims about the nature and rates of sexual violence. The overarching message, and certainly the one picked up by the media is that wartime sexual violence is on the decline. Before taking a closer look at the 5 Myths about sexual violence that HSR seeks to dispel, it is important to put this report in a bit of context. In case you aren't familiar with HSR, they have made a name out of making counter-factual hypotheses and...
Explaining Butter for Bombs Agreements
In 1963, JFK predicted that there would be as many 25 nuclear powers by the 1970s.  Yet here we are, some 70 years later, and the number of states believed to possess nuclear weapons has grown from 4 to 9.  Why haven't more states joined the club? A variety of factors are undoubtedly at work (see this piece by Gartzke and Joon for a good attempt at bring systematic evidence to bear on this question). In this post, I am going to discuss one in particular: what William Spaniel refers to as "butter-for-bombs" agreements, wherein one state makes concessions to another in attempt to dissuade them...
Snap Reaction: Foreign Policy and the 2nd Presidential Debate
Topics covered: Process arguments about Libyan attack; Obama likes to kill Islamic terrorists; Energy independence is good, because... jobs; and Romney wants to start a massive trade war with China, Obama just wants to keep it low-level. That's pretty much all, folks.
VP Debate once again tells the World that all We care about is the Middle East
Yes, it’s partisan, but it’s a somewhat useful deconstruction First, I included the above video to reference a point I tried to make earlier – that Romney flip-flopped so much in the first debate that I no longer have any idea what he thinks about the big issues of campaign. I just wish I knew wth Romney wants to do with the presidency. There has to be some purpose, some reason to vote for him, and I can’t find it. Someone tell me in a few coherent, specifics-laden paragraphs why I should vote for him? Not why Obama is a bad president – I know that already – but why Romney should be...
Should Progressives Vote Green?
A few weeks ago we saw a nasty eruption of the should "progressives vote for Obama" debate--prompted, ironically enough, by a libertarian columnist. My reaction at the time was rather short. But I feel moved by Russel Arben Fox's explanation of why he's voting Green, albeit in Kansas, and the ensuing discussion at LGM, to say a bit more. Note that I'll focus on the left-wing variant, but my comments apply equally to the right side of the spectrum. What nags at me about the standard defense of "voting your conscience" is this: it often depends upon assuming that other people with similar...
The Stupidest Article in Foreign Policy?
tl;dr notice: 1200 words. Zack Beauchamp points us to Douglas Feith's latest broadside against the administration with the tweet: LOL Feith cites @slaughteram and Sam Power's jobs as evidence that Obama wanted to limit American use of military force It turns out that the absurdity runs far deeper in Feith's piece. I know that Obama's fecklessness in the face of the Russian threat is an article of faith among neo-conservatives. As I've mentioned on numerous occasions, I think there's a case for the administration overestimating the willingness of Moscow to accomodate US policy priorities. But...