Preliminary results show it is too close to call; the Guardian interprets this as Karzai having a narrow lead.UPDATE: Oh, crap.
by Charli Carpenter | 25 Aug 2009 |
Preliminary results show it is too close to call; the Guardian interprets this as Karzai having a narrow lead.UPDATE: Oh, crap.
by Charli Carpenter | 25 Aug 2009 |
UPDATE: The original version of this post was "Children and the Media." It was basically a little tirade about the absence of genuine news media for children. What was ironic about this post is that my rant was triggered by a visit to BBC's website (upon following a link from BBC's homepage to their "Children's" page, I found primarily a bunch of games rather than substantive news for children):"What a statement of contemporary assumptions...
by Charli Carpenter | 24 Aug 2009 |
Bob Drogin at the LA Times is the latest to regurgitate the misinformed claim that Raymond Azar, whose human rights appear to have been violated as he was extradited from Afghanistan to Washington on bribery charges, is "the first target of rendition under Obama." The incident described yesterday by Drogin, in which Azar was arrested in his home and then allegedly hooded, photographed, subjected to a cavity search and told he would "never see...
by Charli Carpenter | 23 Aug 2009 |
I spent ten hours today playing Risk with my son. What would normally have been simply a time-killer on a rainy Sunday became, after my earlier perusal of P. Michael Phillipps' treatise on the non-decline of the non-Westphalian-system, a day-long exercise in thinking about political geography. By lunchtime we had grown tired of the Classic version and took a break to run down to World Apart Games and pick up the 2008 version for an "updated...
by Charli Carpenter | 23 Aug 2009 |
Mark Safranski has a useful post up at Zenpundit critiquing LTC P. Michael Phillips' Parameters article Deconstructing our Dark Age Future."(I cannot remember the last time I saw an article written by a military officer, rather than a civilian post-modernist, whose title began with the word "Deconstructing.") Phillips argues (like many before him, not least Yahya Sadowski) that:The Westphalian state system is not in fact in decline; this...
by Bill Petti | 23 Aug 2009 |
[Cross posted at bill | petti)Christopher Penn crafts an interesting piece arguing that piracy (i.e. copyright infringement) is, among other things, a market signal:Piracy indicates that something is sufficiently valuable enough that it’s worth stealing. It’s worth making an illegal copy and spreading without compensating the creator.Do you want the most accurate, unbiased, unmanipulated measure of how popular and valuable something is? Go hit...
by Peter | 23 Aug 2009 |
David Rothkopf has a nice piece in today's Washington Post giving a positive review to Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State. He makes the prescient point that she has revitalized US Diplomacy by revitalizing both the department and its approach, taking on important yet not headline grabbing issues that will have a profound impact on the relationships that define the US role in the world in the coming decades. While the White House and...
by Bill Petti | 22 Aug 2009 |
Today's Wall Street Journal notes that the number of private military contractors (PMCs) current outnumbers the number of military personnel serving in Afghanistan, and the numbers are extremely close in Iraq:A few points to make:The data illustrate that with the troop surge in Afghanistan has come a slight uptick in the number of PMCs, but overall contractors have far outnumbered troops in that theater. What the article does not discuss is the...
by Charli Carpenter | 21 Aug 2009 |
And now I can say that and support a good cause. This email came to me, through a colleague, from the American Political Science Association today. Members among the Duck readership, please send a brief email to the organization at apsabags@hotmail.com. Dear APSA member,Do you need the annual conference bag? The APSA Labor Project is concerned about the labor conditions of those who make the bags. We are also aware there are environmental and...
by Charli Carpenter | 21 Aug 2009 |
I have just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest book Outliers. For those who haven't picked it up, yet, the key thesis is that extraordinary individuals are actually not extraordinary as individuals, but simply happen to be the lucky beneficiaries of chance, opportunity and social structures that unwittingly favor some over others by accident of birth - in ways we seldom recognize and even more seldom legislate to balance out.Bill Gates?...
by Charli Carpenter | 21 Aug 2009 |
I was proud to get home from a five-week, 18-state trip without a single speeding ticket. Then I opened my mail to find a stern letter from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, with this photo and a citation for going 6 miles over the speed limit on the interstate:My first response was to feel a little freaked. Clearly the robot menace has moved from the battlefield to our highways a modest revolution in roadside camera technology has...
by Peter | 21 Aug 2009 |
During any Presidential Administration, there are heated debates, accusations of horrible mismanagement, and political intrigue, but they are actively papered over and downplayed by a powerful White House communications operation dedicated to protecting the image of the President. Once everyone leaves office, however.....It seems the floodgates of insider accounts that "make news" and tell heretofore unknown details about the good old days of...