by Dan Nexon | 9 Aug 2012 |
Daniel Drezner unloads on Jennifer Rubin. Bottom line: better hacks, please!Thomas Rid argues against much of our current discourse on cyberwar. Lincoln Mitchell writes that: "Georgia's government has lost its identity as one led by bright-eyed democrats seeking to build a European style democracy deep in the heart of what used to be the Soviet Union. Instead, the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili has become another semi-authoritarian...
When Usain competes, U.S. aid plummets. At Andrew Sullivan's Daily Beast, Patrick Appel offers a few hypotheses about why Americans seem to care less about the killing of Sikhs than the killing of moviegoers, including the observation that the timing of the Milwaukee shootings so soon after the Batman massacre have left many pundits unwilling to talk further about gun control for fear of sounding redundant. Appel also hypothesizes that low...
by Charli Carpenter | 9 Aug 2012 |
Recording Casualties and the Protection of Civilians from Oxford Research Group (ORG) on Vimeo. As the lone social scientist in a room of lawyers, philosophers and technicians last week, I was struck by a couple of things. One was the disconnect between descriptive and normative ethics, or rather questions of is versus ought. Everyone was speaking about either norms and rules, but whereas the lawyers treated existing norms and rules as social...
by Dan Nexon | 8 Aug 2012 |
by Charli Carpenter | 8 Aug 2012 | Featured
One of the more interesting issues raised informally during the time I spent at the Lincoln Center's Emerging Technologies Workshop was the relative likelihood of developments in lethal autonomous robotics leading to fully autonomous armies: that is, eliminating the human presence from battle-spaces altogether. The general consensus is that this is unlikely, with which I am not claiming to disagree. But what fascinated me was a particular...
by Dan Nexon | 8 Aug 2012 |
More politics of Batman, this time with special Schmitt sauce. Well, yeah, superheroes are kind of about who gets to decide the exception.... and their answers are often fascist. Wasn't that a major point of Watchmen?Thomas Wright: the Republican Rejection of UNCLOS was a Very Bad Thing. Alexander Cooley: what Central Asia tells us about a post-hegemonic world. Against adverb police. Two sides of the same COIN?Joseph Young discusses extremely...
by Charli Carpenter | 8 Aug 2012 |
I spent last week doing "field research" - that is, participant-observation in one of the several communities of practice whose work I'm following as part of my new book project on global norm development. In this case, the norm in question is governance over developments in lethal autonomous robotics, and the community of practice is individuals loosely associated with the Consortium on Emerging Technologies, Military Operations and National...
by Steve Saideman | 7 Aug 2012 |
Too good to wait (spoilers for Dark Knight Rises):
by Dan Nexon | 7 Aug 2012 |
I've put together a collection, albeit not a comprehensive one, of posts at the Duck of Minerva that focus on what might be called "the profession." The link is now a tab (Academia and Graduate School) below our banner.The rationale? Many of our most consistently popular pieces -- including ones that still get significant hits years after their publication -- fall into this category, so I think it might be a good service to try to consolidate...
by Dan Nexon | 7 Aug 2012 |
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I am now chief interviewer for the New Books Network's SF and Fantasy channel. I've got some exciting authors lined up for launch, and a few more who have agreed to record in September. But my response rate has dropped off dramatically in the last two weeks.In retrospect, August might not have been the best time to start interviewing.Anyway, I'm hoping that many of the outstanding requests will come through. But...
by Dan Nexon | 7 Aug 2012 |
The battle for Aleppo continues.Are China and Russia providing the US with an excuse for not acting in Syria? James Vreeland, quoted in the article, thinks so. Did the USSR win the solar-system race?Joshua Foust slams Alex Cooley for the content of his interview in Harpers.Sarah Wanenchank on digital dualism in augmented-warfare discourse (via Adam Elkus).Brad DeLong discusses the tragedy and farce of US inaction on climate change. Kindred...
by Dan Nexon | 6 Aug 2012 |
Back in May Robert Kelley touched off a discussion about Journal Citation Reports and impact factor rankings. Journal impact factor provides a textbook study in the consequences of a well-institutionalized but highly problematic quantitative measure. Impact factor is highly skewed, easily gamed, and somewhat arbitrary (two-year and five-year windows). Nonetheless, it drives a great deal of behavior on the part of authors, editors, and...