Syllabus-revamping time this year coincides with the last few quiet, pre-soccer-season weekends available for paint-balling with my son. With both BT Omegas and class prep on the brain, thought I'd reach out for ideas on how to integrate class trips to the arena into a course on the laws of war. I've done this once before, when I taught "War and Gender" back at Drake University. In that case, the students organized it as an experiment in...
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Are You Ready for Some Football…..Analogies?
Recently I offered an "argument" about what conservative males find attractive about Sarah Palin -- her attractiveness -- and I provided some "evidence" by reference to the parallels between pretty female candidates and women sideline reporters with two XXs (Chromosomes, you creeps! Get your mind out of the gutter!). I made the claim that Bachmann's support rested more on her craziness than her beauty, but then I found this. I am recalibrating...
Pornography and National Security: The ever expanding threat
In today's 'horrors of bad social science', we have a piece by Jennifer S. Bryson, director of the Witherspoon Institute’s Islam and Civil Society Project, (which seems to be a conservative think-tank) who has written a piece for the Institute's blog on the threat of pornography for national security. (No really.)Bryson asks the question that no serious scholar has ever, ever addressed and comes up with an argument to be considered. In fact,...
Friday Nerd Blogging
George R. R. Martin to JK Rowling: via GameofLOLs:Harry Potter spoiler: Snape kills Dumbledore. A Song of Ice and Fire spoiler: EVERYONE YOU LOVE IS KILLEDOh about that? here is one awfully funny ASOIAF essay (I really do mean 'awfully').
Impunity Gap: Syria
There is a near absence of calls for accountability in the international responses to the ongoing and escalating violence in Syria. Unlike in the Libya situation, where there was a swift UN Security Council Resolution mandating both the use of force and a referral to the International Criminal Court, influential states and human rights groups have yet to stand firm on either type of response for Syria. Is it simply premature or...
Film review: Godard’s “Made in U.S.A.”
“We were in a political movie ... Walt Disney with blood.”I generally do not discuss films unless I enjoy them and intend to recommend them without hesitation. Jean-Luc Godard's "Made in U.S.A." is an exception, worth mentioning in part because it has so rarely been viewed in the US. Godard made the film in 1966, during an incredibly prolific period of his career. Ostensibly, the film pays homage to "The Big Sleep," a Humphrey Bogart-Lauren...
Stability Ops Among Muggles
Foreign Policy's latest foray into the nexus between science fiction and political reality is a lively sketch on post-conflict reconstruction, Harry Potter style. Written by experts on the topic from the Marine Corps War College, Human Rights Watch and the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, the key point is this: though the "story" ends when the bad guys are vanquished (be they Deatheaters or Saddam Hussein's forces) is is then that the...
Safeguarding medical workers in hostilities
Yesterday the ICRC released a report on the very scary and depressing trend of attacks on medical workers in situations of armed conflict and civil disturbances:According to Dr Robin Coupland, who led the research carried out in 16 countries across the globe, millions could be spared if the delivery of health care were more widely respected. "The most shocking finding is that people die in large numbers not because they are direct victims of a...
State of the Field, Redux: What’s Wrong with IPE?
There are a few things that make me really hot under the collar. The first is the unending 100+ degree summer heat in central Texas. The second is the unending debate on the "state of the field", in particular the state of the International Political Economy (IPE) discipline. It is a topic near and dear to my heart (IPE, not Texas heat). A few years ago, I was so provoked by Benjamin Cohen's trenchant intellectual history of IPE and the...
Scenes from Security Theater at Dulles Airport
Dulles Airport, just before noon. My daughter and I have dropped off my father in-law. We're sitting in our compact car, waiting for one of the vehicles blocking us to move on. After six minutes, I notice that the engine of the Acura SUV sitting to my left is off. Me: Hmmm. I don't think there's anyone in the car.Daughter: What do you mean?Me: We can't leave because of that Acura... but I don't think there's anyone in it.I wait another minute...
The soundtrack of barbarism…
...sounds something like this.Why are these urban riots happening on this side of the pond?Predictably, two strong lines of argument are forming. Both of which can be supported from that interview.The 'mere criminality' school finds that these youths are robbing and looting out of sheer, brutal opportunism. Whereas the 'material deprivation' school sees these riots as the upsurge of social distress, misdirected political rage and alienation in...
The Similarity between ‘Feminist’ Politicians and Female Sideline Sports Reporters — They’re Hot
Like Megan, I think that Naomi Wolf's post on Al Jazeera is dumb, dumb, dumb. Wolf gets it completely wrong because the whole popularity of Palin and Bachmann (particularly the former) is a function not of feminism, but of the 'new chauvinism.' What do I mean by that? The feminist movement has of course radically transformed American society. Women have broken into some of the last bastions of male dominance -- the sports locker room and the...