by Charli Carpenter | 11 Apr 2012 |
In between ultimate frisbee and lying around in bed sick, I managed to attend a workshop on network theory at the International Studies Asssociation. I spent some time there thinking about different things scholars mean when they say they are doing network theory, and what is the value added to IR of this basket of approaches. Here are some tripartite thoughts on the matter, and you can probably guess which approach I'll be taking in my new...
by Brian Rathbun | 11 Apr 2012 |
I am headed out to Coachella this Thursday for three days of music in the desert. Well, two days. I am too old to make it all the way through, and I have to teach on Monday. In any case, I thought I would offer this Friday anti-nerd blogging column a little early in the week. For those of you teaching or taking classes on the semester system, it is that time of year that you are very, very tired. You need the break a bit in advance. The MLB...
by Dan Nexon | 11 Apr 2012 |
After Charli's video mashup this feels pretty lame, but I did promise the slides from my talk. Thanks again to all those who responded to the bleg. If it isn't obvious, I should note that everything I said is influenced by PTJ and his course.The basic takeaways?1. Science Fiction (SF) has close ties with social-scientific inquiry and, in general, has lots of political and international-relations content. It is therefore well-suited for these...
by Rodger Payne | 10 Apr 2012 |
Photo credit = Dirk Hansen. Last Friday, April 6, Time magazine published controversial excerpts from an interview with Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen: "I love Fidel Castro," Blurts Ozzie Guillen, the new manager of the Miami Marlins, in his Jupiter, Fla., spring-training office before an early-March team workout....After a second of reflection, the most unfiltered figure in baseball, if not sports, wants a do-over. "I respect Fidel...
by Charli Carpenter | 10 Apr 2012 |
Dan Drezner was kind enough to link to my YouTube ISA Presentation. However Foreign Policy has headlined it "Is This the Future of Teaching?" Given that a number of colleagues have written to me this morning along the lines of "if that's the future of teaching, I might as well give up, it looks too hard," and "how long did that take you, anyway?!!" I feel compelled to provide some caveats. 1) If the medium is the message here, it's a message...
by Dan Nexon | 9 Apr 2012 |
Christian conservative crusaders have targeted Electronic Arts for its inclusion of LGBT relationships in its games, including Bioware's Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Old Republic series. A notable feature of all three series is that they allow players to make "evil" choices: killing innocents, betraying comrades, profitting from illicit ventures, and even contributing to genocide.So, in short, this is apparently worthy of protest: But this is...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 9 Apr 2012 |
[Note: This post is almost entirely "inside baseball" for IR academics.]For this year's ISA conference I was supposed to write a paper called "The Constructivism That Wasn't: On the Non-Inevitability of Sociological Liberalism." The idea was that I would go back and carefully reconstruct those moments of historical contingency in which an alternative IR constructivism -- one which did not so neatly track with sociological liberalism, roughly...
by Robert Kelly | 8 Apr 2012 | Featured
Here is part one, where I argued that Kim’s rise scrambles our conventional wisdom on NK, opening a lot of unexpected room, at least early in his tenure, to try to deal. The cold war stand-off in Korea is now so bad, that there is little to lose in trying to talk with him, and it would seem like a huge missed opportunity to simply blow him off as identically awful to his father. For my regular argument that negotiating with Kim Jong Il was...
by Charli Carpenter | 8 Apr 2012 | Featured
Though my ISA experience was indeed interrupted both by an ultimate game and a nasty case of the flu, rumors of my disappearance have been wildly exaggerated. A travel-intensive Friday day plus a kid-intensive Saturday are all that have impeded timely nerd blogging this week. It won't happen often.
by Steve Saideman | 7 Apr 2012 |
I cannot say for sure, the last we saw of her was running deep towards the endzone looking for a long throw. We are left with a mystery--what happened to the Friday nerd blogging? Thus, I must leap into the fray (since I was the one with the disk looking to throw deep) with this:
by Brian Rathbun | 5 Apr 2012 |
The big cats in political scientists like to hunt big game, the book contract at a “major university press.” Landing such a catch can feed oneself and his or her cubs for a long time, even for a lifetime. The “book at a major university press” can get you tenure. You will never have to eat again. Book editors are wily prey, however, and have adapted to their dangerous environment through a number of clever strategies, the most important of...
by Robert Kelly | 5 Apr 2012 | Featured
Or maybe not…The following short piece for the Korean National Defense University was written after the Leap Day Deal, but before the rocket launch announcement. In the interim, the US has decided to cancel the leap day deal, which is entirely understandable, but a mistake nonetheless I think. NK’s elite has to do something for Kim Il Sung’s 100th birthday this month (the cause of the launch); the regime depends on these sorts of shows. But...