Here is your Thursday Morning Linkage! Algal bloom kills 240 of Florida's 5000 manatees (cause of death: natural toxin) Madonna smacked down by Malawi government after her recent visit Shale gas and methane leaks, greener than coal but by how much? Obama tells donors that the politics of the environment are hard, hints at what he might do on Keystone XL pipeline BP is beyond "Beyond Petroleum," sells wind power interests Nicholas Lemann...
And I bet that you all thought that I'd completely forgotten.... Robert Farley on the lessons of the Falklands War... for the PLA-N. Adam Elkus ruminates on the relationship between theory and math. Robert Murray: IR Theory and North Korea. Patrick M. Morgan's award-winning article: "The State of Deterrence in International Politics Today" (PDF). The (Proposed) US Global HIV/AIDS budget. Can Islam Karimov's daughter succeed him? And also: Jay...
"My main job [as an assistant professor at insert-flyover-university-here] is advising presidential policy on public religious life." I actually heard a Ph.D. tell his neighbor that on an airplane. I know that there might be more worthwhole topics for my first post in months (I haven't been a total slacker, I have been doing some programming), but none is more pressing ... I have made back-to-back trips to conferences (first ISA and then MPSA)...
My own thinking on the current Korea flap is on The Diplomat. I argue it’s a faux crisis, which promptly got me accused of being an air-head academic in the comment section. Lovely. I was also pleased to respond to Kim Jong Un’s threat that I should leave the country. And I managed not to explode laughing when a reporter asked me point blank on live TV if Kim Jong Un was ‘just bonkers.’ Was itching to say yes to that one actually. Good times…...
Despite the lack of an update at its website, I am now the Chair of the International Studies Association (ISA) Theory Section. Obviously, all ISA members should join and contribute $5 to our budget. But the reason for this post is that we've promised public discussion of the wording of our new book award. I've set up a page for the section at the Duck of Minerva, but the comments aren't working. So I'm putting the basic text here and inviting...
Robert Farley's post last week about how long the journal publication process is struck a chord. One of my journal articles took three years from submission to appearance and was gated (I had to get my own piece through inter-library loan since it came out and the library didn't have a subscription for the most recent issues). I have often felt as Farley does: If you are reading this article in PS, the article has gone through a vetting and...
Good Mornin' Ducks! Here are some links on the crise du jour... Tim Shorrock discusses what what the US media is missing in its coverage of North Korea on FAIR's CounterSpin. (MP3 Podcast at 9.30 - 18:25) Kongdan Oh discusses how to understand North Korea and the "Republic of Pyongyang" on Brookings FPRI E-notes. UCSD's Stephan Haggard argues that Kim Jong-Un is not crazy. Professor Yoon Young-kwan at Seoul National asks us what would have...
Practically the whole roster of Duck bloggers is out at the biggest IR conference of the year--the ISA Conference is in San Francisco this year--leaving this think tank Duck in DC alone and further pondering the divide between the policy and academic worlds. In light of this cri de coeur from a high ranking Navy officer, I had a long conversation this weekend with a former high ranking Army officer who before recently joining the private...
I am currently at the ISA of Madness. Near the top of the list of insanity is the Blogging Reception, which included an overflow crowd and some great "spoken blog posts" by Erica Chenoweth, Rob Farley, Amanda Murdie, and Dan Drezner. I recorded the event, and whatever the camera caught before the battery gave out will be posted at some point in the near future. We also announced the winners of the awards.... In the "Best Blog Post" category,...
ISA News: Congratulations to Dan and Patrick! They will be involved with ISQ -- ISA's flagship publication for the next five years. Dan has been selected as the lead editor, Patrick as the web editor. Congrats! I'm not a fan of the new grading software technologies, but maybe I can be persuaded -- grading while at ISA does suck. Already? Minerva (note: not Duck of) a threat to MOOCs. We have an answer to the universe? It's all code? ...
One of the topics online and at the ISA has been the gated-ness of academic writings. Journal articles are almost always behind a paywall so that ordinary folks cannot get at them. This is likely to change as many folks are now complaining and the threat of ditching academic publishers for the net may force the journal publishers into being responsive. We are already seeing more journals temporarily providing open access to various articles...
Google N-Grams for "two thumbs up" in American English, 1800-2005.