Sorry for the blogging hiatus, I've been on the road in South Korea and Japan for the past six weeks and not able to blog. I've spent quite a bit of time talking to folks in Seoul about the situation in North Korea and whether or not we are likely to see any movement in the relationship. North Korea is again suffering acute food shortages and another famine appears to be unfolding. The poster above, according to North Korean Central Television...
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Stuff Political Scientists Like #7, International Relations edition: Isms
Lest you ask, I do understand the irony of me writing this particular post and risking being a one-hit blogger with the continuation of this series. But I haven't read a single Harry Potter book, so there is not much I can do. Enjoy!If you show up at the bar at a conference of international relations scholars, you will immediately stumble upon a conversation about paradigms or ‘isms.’ You will quickly learn that almost all of those same...
Key Constraint on Policy Relevance
Dan Drezner has a great post today about how the foreign policy smart set (his phrase) gets so frustrated by domestic politics that they tend to recommend domestic political changes that are never going to happen.I would go one step further and suggest that one of the key problems for scholars who want to be relevant for policy debates is that we tend to make recommendations that are "incentive incompatible." I love that phrase. What is best...
Pirates, Hackers, and Terrorists
A hypothesis: Pirates, hackers, and terrorists are perennial actors in international relations. They will never be permanently defeated; the frontier will never be permanently settled.The underlying material reason that these actors exist is actually quite simple. Each of these (Weberian) ideal type actors emerges as a consequence of the (proto-capitalist or industrial-capitalist) overproduction and networking of standardized technologies. [I...
Explosion in Norway (Updated/Updated Again)
A likely bombing near the PM's office in Norway. I don't have time to write at the moment, but there are a number of policies and political factors that make Norway a target for jihadists. But there are also reasons why those of other ideological stripes are very unhappy with the current red-green government. Concerns, prayers, and sympathies to our many friends in Oslo.UPDATE: Follow the news on your source of choice. The small-arms attack on...
Friday Nerd Blogging: Robopo-collapse
I am less impressed with Daniel Wilson’s new book than my frenemy Drezner appears, and quite possibly because I so wanted it to be what Wilson admits, at the end of this diavlog, that it is certainly not: World War Z for anti-zombites, a fictionalized near-future scenario that throws lights on present-day socio-political conditions through the metaphor of killer robots rather than supernatural threats. How Wilson fails so spectacularly is the...
Terror, Counter-Terror, and Insurgency in Harry Potter, or Why Harry Won
In the waning days of classes, one of my colleagues asked a student if she’d been among those celebrating outside of the White House the night that President Obama announced the killing of Osama Bin-Laden. “Of course,” she responded, “I mean, they got Voldemort!” For many readers who aged along with its titular hero, the Harry Potter series inextricably intertwines with the war on terrorism. This connection stems from more than a mere accident...
Harry Potter and Foreign Policy, or Voldemort is not Osama Bin Laden
One draft of a piece that will not be appearing anytime soon. I will post the other version, a strategic-studies analysis of the outcome of the Deathly Hallows, later on.The sixth Harry Potter film, the Half-Blood Prince (2009), opens with Harry standing side-by-side with his mentor, recently reinstated Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Blinding flashbulbs illuminate Harry’s vacant stare, rendering the scene a literal, as well as...
Observations on Traffic Safety From Indonesia
A few days ago this startling report hit the newsstands in Jakarta, proclaiming Bali to have surpassed Phuket in highway "carnage":Bali’s roads have become the scene of unprecedented carnage, with 758 people dying in traffic accidents in just three months, 200 more fatalities than all of last year, police said on Friday. An average of more than eight people a day died on the resort island’s roads in March, April and May...May was the deadliest...
Six Years of Gay Marriage in Canada and the World Did Not End
Fact: 6 years after gay marriage Happy Cat is still happy.It’s the 6th anniversary of gay marriage in Canada and – financial meltdowns in Europe and America aside – the world hasn’t ended. Society has remained intact. Babies are being born, flowers are blooming, a Canadian hockey team still can’t win the Stanley Cup and otters are still cute. Actually, Canada is more than fine. In an article in the Calgary Herald, Naomi Lakritz argues: While...
Did it take you (or your assistant) five minutes to Google that?
Anyone think Kathryn Lopez (of the National Review) actually reads the social-scientific articles she links to? This is from a screed attacking college co-ed housing:And, if you want to get even more practical, W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, points out: “Needless to say, binge drinking and casual sex tend to distract students from their studies. For instance, young women who engage...
Raising the Debt Ceiling and Avoiding Economic Catastrophe
I keep meaning to write a follow up post on U.S. public opinion on climate change and how and why it matters for the world. But, the ongoing political posturing over raising the debt ceiling keeps commanding my attention. Everything I’ve read suggests that failure to resolve this by August 2nd would be what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called a "self-inflicted wound" on the part of the United States and potentially send the world in to...