by Robert Kelly | 26 May 2012 | Featured
Here is an answer to Jon Western’s good question. Here is Steve Walt saying nice things about Ron Paul, and Layne has a nice recent piece in the National Interest, and another at ISQ, about looming US retrenchment. Earlier I argued that I think lots of people in IR now both expect and want some measure of US pullback. The argument is pretty well-known by now – empirically, the US is doing more than it can afford, like the Iraq war (trillion...
by Jay Ulfelder | 25 May 2012 | Featured
This is a cross-post from my solo blog, Dart-Throwing Chimp.A few days ago, Sean Langberg blogged about a subject that's long been a pet peeve of mine: how we classify countries when we try to talk about the international system, and the labels we apply to the resulting groups. I thought I'd take the cue to air my grievances on the topic and make a couple of simple suggestions.Taxonomies require organizing principles, and the kernel of the...
by Jon Western | 25 May 2012 | Featured
I'd write a lengthy comment on this, but with my new administrative responsibilities, I have a full day of meetings on liberal arts assessment and impact -- oh, and some kind of silly discussion on the instrumentalization of education and the vocational turn. Whatever. I'll just say that this should take care of my presentation at new faculty orientation next month.... From Department of Omnishambles: Karl Marx's end of year department...
by Jon Western | 24 May 2012 | Featured
With Obama's proposed $487bn cuts in defense spending over the next ten years and the potential for another $500bn in cuts through sequestration set to kick in next January if Republicans and Democrats fail to reach the grand bargain compromise on the budget, lots of folks are now harping about the looming threat to American national security if the cuts take hold. Earlier this month, General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., assistant commandant, U.S....
by Rodger Payne | 22 May 2012 |
Two years ago, Der Spiegel published an audio recording of secret negotiations involving many of the world's most important leaders meeting together on Friday, December 18, 2009, during the Copenhagen climate summit:The world's most powerful politicians were gathered in the "Arne Jacobsen" conference room in Copenhagen's Bella Center, negotiating ways to protect the world's climate. US President Barack Obama was perched on the edge of a wooden...
by Robert Kelly | 22 May 2012 | Featured
Yeah, I don’t really know either. I always hear the expression ‘SSCI’ thrown around as the gold standard for social science work. Administrators seem to love it, but where it comes from and how it gets compiled I don’t really understand. Given that we all seem to use this language and worry about impact factor all the time, I thought I would simply post the list of journals for IR ranked by impact factor (after the break).I don’t think I ever...
by PM | 22 May 2012 | Featured
I'm totally not bitter that Tom Friedman'selementary correlations have 165citations on Google Scholar!Kindred Winecoff, who is both very smart and possessed of good taste in linking, discusses the value of social science.Winecoff discusses a recent splenetic venting by a philosopher claiming that social science has no role to play in policy debates, unlike physics or biology. I am unaware of any particular policy implications that flow...
by Charli Carpenter | 22 May 2012 | Featured
This video is part of an advocacy strategy launched by a new NGO, Article36, whose focus is the humanitarian control of weapons technology. The organization takes its name from the provision in the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions that requires governments to consider the humanitarian impacts of new weapons.Article 36 operates from a principle that practical, policy and legal controls over weapons should be founded on publicly...
by Dan Nexon | 20 May 2012 |
@*#!@^TR!*&^azwebfuhbdza SzzzhGT! Grawldanidnqdfij!!! Maiewfhiu!This survey of American households has been around in some form since 1850, either as a longer version of or a richer supplement to the basic decennial census. It tells Americans how poor we are, how rich we are, who is suffering, who is thriving, where people work, what kind of training people need to get jobs, what languages people speak, who uses food stamps, who has access to...
by Dan Nexon | 18 May 2012 |
AbstractThough scholars widely claim that they are capable of writing creative titles, there exist some notable skeptics. Resolving this debate requires empirical evidence. However, beyond a few anecdotes, no one has systematically tested trends in the mind-numbing dullness of IR article titles. I correct this lacuna through the use of an original data set containing eight independent measurements of the originality and wittiness of article...
by Brian Rathbun | 18 May 2012 | Featured
This is me with Rick Allen, the drummer for Def Leppard who lost his arm in the 1980s but retooled his drum kit and life to adjust to his injury. He now runs the Raven Drum Foundation, which focuses on helping veterans with PTSD and other mental and physical injuries heal as they return home. Through drumming. Pounding the hell out of something and not someone seems like a brilliant idea. It inspired me to write a post on the virtues of heavy...
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...