This weekend marks the debut of the next Star Trek movie: So Dark, Oh So Dark 2. To mark the occasion: Two years to go!
by Steve Saideman | 17 May 2013 | Featured
This weekend marks the debut of the next Star Trek movie: So Dark, Oh So Dark 2. To mark the occasion: Two years to go!
by Steve Saideman | 1 Mar 2013 | Featured
Twitter went nuts when President Obama said he could not get the Republicans to do what is right because of his finite powers, that he could not do some sort of Jedi mind-meld! He mixed his space franchises--Jedis may have Vulcan-like abilities, but the mind meld thing is of Star Trek. So, this sent twitter on a wonderful spiral for awhile. Some of the highlights: RT @jpodhoretz: "By Grabthar's hammer, you will be sequestered." — Hayes Brown...
by Iver B. Neumann | 21 Dec 2012 | The Hydrogen Sonata
General Warning: this is emphatically not a spoiler-free Forum! Hence all of the text all of the contributions will be safely below the fold, and only the identifying information for the author of the contribution will be here for even causal browsers to see. If we are to begin with author intentionality, The Hydrogen Sonata is about ‘the subliming business’. In the Western tradition (which is rather less Western than we sometimes imagine it),...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 20 Dec 2012 | The Hydrogen Sonata
General Warning: this is emphatically not a spoiler-free Forum! Hence all of the text all of the contributions will be safely below the fold, and only the identifying information for the author of the contribution will be here for even causal browsers to see. Chris Brown is Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics. Ten books published over twenty-five years, many brilliant and not one of them a real turkey – such...
by Dan Nexon | 2 Oct 2012 | Featured
Mikheil Saakashvili's party loses in Georgian election (but wait, writes Liz Fuller, maybe not). Mark Adomanis discusses the implications, as does Simon Tisdall. Ankit Panda on Indo-Japanese relations. Dan Brumberg and Hesham Sallam have authored a new USIP paper on Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Egypt. Justin Gengler: "The Uprising is Over. But What is the Price of Bahrain's Victory?"Stuart D. Goldman argues that the Soviet-Japanese border...
by Steve Saideman | 10 Aug 2012 |
I am pretty sure this answers the mail, Charli: Shakespeare, Zombies, John Amos, Shelley Long, June Lockhart, and the dude from Clerks. Yeah, the the skinny one. Plus a Weekend at Bernie's reference. What more could you want on a Friday?Oh, and Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Talk about nerd-overload.
by Dan Nexon | 2 Aug 2012 |
That aircraft carrier base in Perth? Not so much.Against self-epublishing ("self-epublishing"? Gah!).Artillery as "The Last Argument of Tyrants."Gerard N. Magliocca asks if Washington, DC is unconstitutional. The correct question, though, is if it is the greatest place to be?Jamie at Blood and Treasure on the flap over the Churchill bust: "People close to the seat of power in the United States, at least in the geographical sense, are arguing...
by Dan Nexon | 31 Jul 2012 |
Russia seeks to revive its power-projection capabilities by establishing overseas naval facilities. Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times describes the experience of being a drone pilot. Apparently selling F-35s will "cement" US alliances (via a twitter source that I can't recall, but who was equally skeptical of the direction of causality). RPI relates views on whether or not China will have a soft landing. Dan Rodrik on manufacturing...
by Dan Nexon | 27 Jul 2012 |
The fighting in Khorog is very serious. As Eurasianet notes, "The fighting in Gorno-Badakhshan province (GBAO) is being described as the worst in Tajikistan since the 1990s civil war and raises concerns of a protracted new conflict." The government has cut off communications into the region. The Wall Street Journal has an overview. Suzanne Levi-Sanchez reproduces a letter from a close friend of hers in Khorog. Reuters reports on the "Secret...
by Steve Saideman | 27 Jul 2012 |
Instead of posting a video, I thought I would present a short book plug/review:I actually don't read that much science fiction or fantasy, but I could not resist once I heard the concept of Redshirts by John Scalzi: that instead of writing about the main characters on a starship, he would focus on those extras that tended to get killed on the away teams that get deployed to the planets the starship would visit. Scalzi is touching on a key...
by Steve Saideman | 12 Jun 2012 | Featured
Slate posted a piece on the academic study of pop culture. It found that academics studied Buffy the Vampire Slayer most. Well, actually, no, it found that more folks studied the Buffy than the Matrix, the Simpsons, Aliens or The Wire.This led to a Facebook discussion of selection bias. We can discuss the merits of these five and ponder why the Simpsons did so poorly (perhaps we need a consistent plot progression?), or why the Wire is...
by Charli Carpenter | 18 May 2012 | Featured
David Birtley's to-die-for posts chronicling HBO's deviations from the Song of Ice and Fire book series get longer each week over at Wired.Some fans are annoyed at the significant and at times random plot innovations in Game of Thrones (in Season 2 Tywin has come off as a loving grandfather, Arya is killing all the wrong characters, and Dany's dragons have mysteriously vanished!)But I actually think this is nothing short of brilliant precisely...