by Maia Gemmill | 21 Jul 2007 |
I've been meaning to write something about the tit-for-tat between the UK and Russia and the strange and unfolding saga of Boris Berezovsky, but things keep changing before I get anything coherent written. So, let's take a quick look to Russia's neighbor to the west: Belarus.Belarus gets little attention in the western media. They haven't had an exciting people's revolution to cover. The president, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, keeps a pretty tight...
by Dan Nexon | 20 Jul 2007 |
That highbrow publication, USA Weekend Magazine:Scores of absurdtie-ins include "If Harry Potter Ran General Electric," "Looking for God in Harry Potter" and our personal favorite, "Harry Potter and International Relations," in which the boy wizard is linked to real-life globalization and geopolitical issues.The bizarre thing here is actually not the criticism-based-on-title of our book (for redux, see Scott McLemee writing at Inside Higher...
by Maia Gemmill | 18 Jul 2007 |
Welp, we know that a new Harry Potter book is about to come out, because the Washington Post has featured the obligatory piece on Christian reactions to Harry Potter, along with a side-helping of wonderment at the rise of explicitly Christian publishing.Too bad this is so not new.The article points out that some Christians are uncomfortable with the depiction of magic in the series, and notes that literature marketed as Christian in content (as...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 17 Jul 2007 |
It's always fascinating to me to see certain traditional arguments, arguments that I would have liked to think were long dead and buried, resurface in slightly altered form. Highbrow intellectual critics whom I would like to think have been suitably disarmed as a result of their prior encounters with their opponents seem to reincorporate and revivify as if by magic when a target at all similar to the prior object of their criticism emerges; out...
by Peter | 17 Jul 2007 |
On Thursday, ICE agents raided El Pollo Rico, a very, very popular Wheaton area pollo a la brasa restaurant, charging the owners with money laundering and hiring illegal immigrants.Now, as it happens, I live really close to this place, and I often (used to) go there for chicken. It is perhaps the best chicken one can get anywhere--in the DC area Zagat guide, they usually had a top 10 finish for food, up there with all the fancy restaurants, and...
by Rodger Payne | 15 Jul 2007 |
Today, I read an interesting article linking baseball and political science -- "The Etiology of Public Support for the Designated Hitter Rule," (warning: pdf) by Christopher Zorn and Jeff Gill, published in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. Despite the jargon, the piece is quite readable.Zorn and Gill report evidence that baseball fans are far more likely to embrace the designated hitter (DH) if they are Democrats:Most important, and...
by Dan Nexon | 15 Jul 2007 |
Another media appearance, this time in print.The books, whose sales total 325 million worldwide, have clearly moved well beyond the kiddy realm. At the conference – held from Aug. 2 to 5 at the Sheraton Centre – Potter books are referenced in subjects as diverse as law, terrorism and international relations. Harry Potter has even cropped up in U.S. politics – Cheney-Voldemort '08 is a popular bumper sticker, with bloggers referring to the Vice...
by Maia Gemmill | 14 Jul 2007 |
After months of threats, Russia announced this morning that it is officially suspending its obligations under the Cold War-era Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. From a military point of view, this probably isn't all that significant: I haven't seen any one making a serious claim that the Russian Army has the genuine capacity to present a conventional threat NATO and the US.From a diplomatic point of view, though, it represents a new...
by Maia Gemmill | 12 Jul 2007 |
The now independent states that once made up the Republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics are often referred to in Russia as the "near-abroad". The meaning of near-abroad, depending on how broadly you want to interpret it, can range from "those areas that used to be part of Russia in our imperial past" to "those areas that really ought to be within our sphere of influence" to "those areas where we have the right to meddle at will"....
by Maia Gemmill | 12 Jul 2007 |
During World War II, teams of scientists raced to build the ultimate weapon: the atomic bomb. This weapon, everyone believed, was so powerful that it would force the Japanese to surrender immediately, eliminating the need for an extremely costly invasion of the Japanese main islands. They built two weapons using two different models: Little Boy, a uranium gun-style weapon, and, just in case the first one wasn't enough, the Fat Man, a plutonium...
by Dan Nexon | 9 Jul 2007 |
I'm scheduled to appear on Canada AM at 7:45am on Wednesday. This is my first television interview, so if any of our northern readers want to let me know how I did, you should tune in. I'll be discussing, of course, Harry Potter.UPDATE: Video here. No Flip4Mac support, though.
by Peter | 7 Jul 2007 |
The very foundations of Western civilization are under attack in France--President Nicolas Sarkozy likes to jog.From today's Washington Post Style Page:On the primary state television channel, France 2, Alain Finkielkraut, a leading French intellectual, recently demanded that Sarkozy give up his "undignified" exercise. Not only did he imply that exposing the boss's naked knees is something that never would have occurred in the time of...