I spent the last week at the Oceanic Conference for International Studies (OCIS) in Auckland, New Zealand, a conference that was something of a luxury for me in that I had no leadership responsibilities, and got to be in a beautiful city I'd never been to literally on the other side of the world. While zorbing and bungee jumping would normally be the highlight of such a trip, actually, the Conference was. I didn't know what to expect at first;...
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It’s radical, man.
Through the very good King’s of War blog I was directed to a post on Jihadica on the recent emergence of an apparent Al-Qaida affiliated English-language publication called “Inspire”. While the author suggests that this has thrown Western media into a panic, there was very little to actually be worried about (other than the fact that it might contain a computer virus).The bottom line is that Inspire is a drop in an ocean of jihadi propaganda....
Turning up the heat on Iran
In case you're like most American academics and are on vacation, you may have missed the fact that America is seriously turning up the heat on Iran. The US has begun squeezing Iran's fuel imports and access to financial markets in response to Iran's refusal to halt its alleged nuclear enrichment activities. A controversial new US law has been signed by President Obama which will sanction any company (regardless of national origin) that exports...
Hybrid car bleg
I've been doing some car shopping this past week and it appears as if one of the best bargains around is the 2010 Nissan Altima Hybrid. The base car's invoice price is a bit less than $26,000. However, Nissan is offering $5000 (!!) cash back in some areas of the country -- $4000 that has been available for many months, $500 that is a generic Nissan incentive over the next month, and $500 more for the holiday weekend. That means that
The Poppy Cultivation Blame Game
At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting three weeks ago Hamid Karzai asserted that "foreign circles" were promoting the cultivation of poppy in Afghanistan. Last Saturday, on International Anti-Narcotics Day in Kabul, Karzai once again argued:"First of all, I would like to say that poppy was not cultivated in Afghanistan before the Soviet Union's invasion. We had very few poppy fields in some parts of our country. This means, we had...
Happy Canada Day!
For Canada Day I wanted to post my favourite Canadian short film ever - The Sweater by Sheldon Cohen. It's based on the story by Roch Carrier (who narrates with the most awesome Quebecois accent ever). It's so popular among both Anglo and Franco-Canadians that they printed an excerpt on our $5 Bill.I just feel that it really helps to understand what Canada "is" because we're so often defined by what we're not.Quite frankly, we make...
What I’ll Be Reading on the Plane to Thailand
I'll be mostly off the grid traveling for the next two and half weeks, and I want to thank readers for their many suggestions as to what I should take with me. I probably won't flesh out my entire reading list until I get to the airport Barnes and Noble, but I have decided on one book I'm definitely taking with - and it's not even a paperback: Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do by Albert Laszlo Barabasi.Barabasi first captured...
In the blogosphere…
Since I blogged about Journolist here in March 2009, I thought my followup (confessional) was worth mentioning now.
What Exactly is a “Human Security Perspective” Anyway?
I use that term a lot, and I've been realizing that it's unclear to many people what that actually means. As Roland Paris pointed out years ago, the term means different things to different people; in fact my own empirical research suggests as much. So as I think ahead to teaching a course on this subject in the Fall, I thought it might be useful to nail down what the term generally means to me when I use it. My first stab at doing just that...
Beach Book Blegging
At the invitation of an old friend, my daughter and I will be traveling to Thailand the first two weeks of July, and I've been commanded to bring only vacation reading. It's been awhile since I did any of that and I could use suggestions for humorous, smart, non-war-crimes related non-fiction or other good beach reads.In the past I've enjoyed humorous science writing like Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers; funny, twisted...
Some NPT Reading… if you’re out of summer novels.
International Affairs – the (increasingly policy oriented) official journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (aka Chatham House) has published a “virtual” issue of articles on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) dating back to 1968 and going up to the present. It includes one by Hedley Bull published in 1975 which (although very much dated) highlights the dilemmas of nuclear diplomacy during the period of detente and when India...
Free at Last
I am happily in receipt of a letter from University of Massachusetts' Chancellor Holub informing me that I have been awarded tenure. Of course you know what this means: the days of keeping my outside-the-box ideas to myself are gone like the Twelve Colonies. Yep, I just cannot wait to write something controversial or unpopular using my newly acquired academic freedom.