by Charli Carpenter | 1 Mar 2009 |
Cleitus the Black has an amusing post up at Elected Swineherd about parents who ask their children to honor the Geneva Conventions while playing violent video games such as Call of Duty. According to MSNBC:"Evan Spencer wanted to play 'Call of Duty: World at War.' So he asked his dad. Hugh Spencer wasn't initially thrilled about the idea of his son playing the World War II-based game. "I've never really enjoyed first-person shooter games," he...
by Charli Carpenter | 1 Mar 2009 |
At ISA, I had the pleasure to share a panel with Alison Brysk, whose new book Global Good Samaritans was hot off the presses. I just went through my copy and wanted to offer a few off the cuff reactions.Brysk's key contribution is to focus on positive cases - cases where human rights policies have been enacted by states (primarily middle or weak powers: her case studies include Canada, Sweden, Costa Rica, South Africa, the Netherlands and...
by Rodger Payne | 28 Feb 2009 |
We're just a few weeks from the 6th anniversary of the Iraq war -- but the end is now clearly in sight. President Obama, earlier today: Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end.Even better, as Obama told U.S. troops: "mission [kinda] accomplished."We sent our troops to Iraq to do away with Saddam Hussein’s regime – and you got the job done. We kept our troops in Iraq to help establish a...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 28 Feb 2009 |
My Theories of International Relations course spent this week discussing Rousseau, a theorist whose relevance to international relations is a little unclear at first glance. Hobbes and Locke have been -- if badly -- imported into the canon of IR theory, largely through the use of their definitions of the state of nature as accounts of the international system. Individuals in Hobbes' state of nature, famously, lead lives that are "solitary,...
by Dan Nexon | 27 Feb 2009 |
Just to follow up on Charli's post: if for some reason, you're not one of the millions who have already seen "An Engineer's Guide to Cats," please rectify that now.And the sequel:
by Charli Carpenter | 27 Feb 2009 |
I swore I'd never catch the whole "Friday cat blogging" meme, and this won't be a regular thing, but I just have to wish everyone a happy "Leave Your Cat at Home Day." Founded in response to "Bring your Kid to Work Day" and "Bring your Dog to Work Day," ("Kids and D*gs have their own day - they go to work! Now cats have their own day - are they going to go to work? Of course not!" ), this holiday celebrates the spirit of cats, and asks us to...
by Peter | 26 Feb 2009 |
After the Animal Revolution, monkeys will take revenge on us for attempting to domesticate them. Monkeys do not make good pets. There are very sensible arguments for this--Hilzoy makes them most eloquently--and there are the times when it is self-evident that one must be a bit crazy to keep a monkey as a pet:On one occasion, they got in a wrestling match, and Higgins [the baboon] put one of his “steel-like fingernails” through Bob’s...
by Charli Carpenter | 25 Feb 2009 |
President Obama said a lot of important things tonight, but he also regurgitated a disturbing Bushism or two.* One of these is the term "America does not torture." Stated in this particular way, an indisputible statement of principle is conflated with and therefore masquerades as an empirical "fact," one which is blatantly untrue. This trope was one of the Bush Administration's many brilliant inventions, and was designed as a public relations...
by Dan Nexon | 25 Feb 2009 |
Abi Southerland on the current popularity of Zombies:I mentioned this puzzle to my better half, who happens to be in the middle of a reread of World War Z. His answer? ... You can have a fascinating story about a single zombie in a world of humans or the last human in a world of zombies. You can do one on one human-zombie interactions, or set entire armies against each other. They work differently as individuals (stupid and clumsy) and in...
by Dan Nexon | 24 Feb 2009 |
One of the panels I attended at ISA was a roundtable on Stephen Brooks' and William Wohlforth's excellent new book, World Out of Balance: International Relations and the Challenge of American Primacy. The participants did an outstanding job of discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the piece, but it was a point made both by Charles Glaser (soon to be of George Washington University) and Randall Schweller that got at the crux of a larger...
by Dan Nexon | 24 Feb 2009 |
John Dickerson asks "Is it Obama's Fault the Dow Is Tanking?" and provides "yes" and "no" talking points. Josh Marshall thinks the answer is no:I was just watching Chris Matthews explaining how the Dow is President Obama's "scoreboard" and how people are going to start getting angry at him soon if he's not able to get the Dow to stabilized and start going up soon... There does seem to be a certain lack of comprehension of the fact that there...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 23 Feb 2009 |
From the department of shameless self-promotion and linking to one's colleagues: here's a little scholarly op-ed I wrote for the good folks over at e-ir. Nice site they have there, and they read Duck, making them people of taste and discernment besides.The op-ed is titled "What the Philosophy of Science is Not Good For."