Last week I purchased a Nintendo handheld (on steep discount) for the express purpose of playing Okamiden. Okami is one of my most favoritist games evah; even though Okamiden is basically more of the same, I'm cool with that. Yesterday we had to buy off the wee one--we did, in fact, have a pretty terrible day from her perspective--so we offered to purchase her a game to play. That led to Animal Crossing: A New Leaf and a complete loss of...
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Posthumous Justice
My initial reaction is that this is a spot of good news: Alan Turing, the Enigma codebreaker who took his own life after being convicted of gross indecency under anti-homosexuality legislation, is to be given a posthumous pardon. The government signalled on Friday that it is prepared to support a backbench bill that would pardon Turing, who died from cyanide poisoning at the age of 41 in 1954 after he was subjected to "chemical castration"....
Storm-Delayed Friday Nerd Blogging
Friday nerd blogging was delayed due to a powerful thunderstorm that disrupted power in the SW part of Ottawa. Anyhow, most of us nerdish folks would prefer to be at Comic-Con this week. Alas, most of us have day jobs. So, here is a video presented at Comic-Con that marks the death toll of the past three seasons:
Friday Morning Linkage
Is it 1953 or 2013? 2013 Aspen Security Forum is currently meeting in Aspen Meadows, CO. Here's the list of speakers -- scroll through and see if anything strikes you. HT: Tamara Cofman Wittes. An excellent piece by Naunihal Singh that concludes for all the talk of a unique people's revolution, the Egyptian coup (yes, it was a coup) was a pretty common variant of coups. Spoiler alert: It's the economy stupid. The Obama administration had...
Guest Post – Dave Kang: "International Relations Theory and East Asian History"
It’s always a pleasure to guest-post my good friend Dave Kang. Dave teaches at the University of Southern California and runs their Korean Studies Institute (the pic). Here are some previous guest posts he’s written (one, two, three). Here is his encouragement to actually apply international relations theory to East Asia. I can’t agree more. There is far too much superficial, think-tank wonkery about East Asia (how many nukes does China have?...
Summer Teaching – Why Teach and What Makes It Different
Recently, I finished teaching a month long summer course on International Relations to mainly first and second year undergrads at the University of Missouri. Although I’ve taught summer courses before, this was actually one of my first experiences with having to –for the love of all things holy! – do what my public school teaching spouse does and ACTIVELY TEACH IN A CLASSROOM WITH THE SAME STUDENTS EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. This summer class got...
How the Media is Mis-Reporting the DOD’s Drone Casualty Study
Earlier this week I posted about the classified DOD study showing a high rate of civilian harm from drone attacks. Not much else can be said about this finding by analysts until the study is de-classified, so instead let me discuss at some length the one other thing we do know: that the media has badly misreported this story. The headline should not be "New Study: Drones Kill Ten Times More Civilians" as so many articles are claiming. It should...
Thursday Afternoon Linkage
Before posting some mid-Thursday afternoon linkage, here is a little musing on not overstating the influence of social media on entertainment and politics. For a moment this week, the horribleness that was the SyFy Channel's Sharknado set off a mini-Twitter storm that resulted in: a bunch of tweets but still dismal ratings for the made for TV movie. This reminded me of the fleeting victory in Texas for supporters of abortion rights: while State...
Talking Academic Journals: Online Fora
At the end of May I posted the Georgetown-anchored bid for International Studies Quarterly that provides a roadmap for what we intend to do with the journal. I also briefly discussed the online model we're developing for International Studies Quarterly Online, an effort under the capable supervision of PTJ. And yes, we might need a better name for it. Among the online-only content that expect to include on the website are symposia and fora. We...
The Global Diffusion of Bikeshares (I)
Editor's Note: This started off as two bullet points, but it’s morphed into a surprisingly lengthy piece about Bikeshares. Blame the easy availability of both picturesque bike rides and cheap wine in Western Europe. This is the first installment; a second will follow. At the age of 19, I moved to the Netherlands for a summer. Like most tourists, I had read about the famous Dutch “white bikes,” a non-locked bike-sharing system that guidebooks...
Tiwesdæg: the Left-hand of Linkage
Henry Farrell and Abe Newman have a new piece at Foreign Affairs Online on the NSA's surveillance of European Union officials. They argue, among other things, that: "For the last several years, those interested in promoting intelligence sharing with the United States have been winning. If European governments now decide to curtail that cooperation -- a decision that seems increasingly likely -- Washington will have only itself to blame."...
Francesco Guicciardini Prize (ISA HIST Section Book Prize)
Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) was an Italian historian and statesman who served in the Florentine and papal diplomatic services and was the author, among other works, of the landmark History of Italy (Storia d’Italia), a foundational work on statecraft and grand strategy which combined careful historical research with general theorizing about the ethics and practices of international behavior. The Francesco Guicciardini Prize is given...