Marc Schulman wants his regular readers to publicize one of his recent posts, in which he reflects on French philosopher André Glucksmann's recent article in Democratiya, "Separating Truth and Belief." It is an interesting read. Marc emphasizes a particular passage:Civilised discourse analyses and defines scientific truths, historic truths and matters of fact relating to knowledge, not to faith. And it does this irrespective of race or...

Two polls on the motion to censure Bush show very different results. Yesterday an ARG poll found Americans favor censure for the President by a 46-44% margin, i.e., a statistical tie. Today, Rasmussen found Americans oppose censure by 38-45%. Seems like a big swing for a single day, eh? Perhaps one of the polls is screwy? After all, ARG and Rasmussen use different methodologies.There are number of plausible reasons for the apparently steep...

If Barry Bonds had never taken steroids, never broken the single-season HR record, and never moved himself into baseball's holy trinity of HR hitters (i.e. Aaron, Ruth, and Mays), he still would have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer. In addition to his 8 gold gloves and 3 MVPs (pre-juice) he would have finished among the all time leaders in a number of prominent offensive categories. But what has been lost due to the hysteria over Bonds the...

The new 2006 National Security Strategy is out. Bill has been anticipating this since early January. CSM has a March 17 story ...with some remarks by John Mearsheimer."It's not an especially hawkish document," says Professor Mearsheimer. "It makes arguments about using force that most security experts - left or right - would agree with. It goes out of its way to say that using force would be a last resort."Ivo Daalder of Brookings says that the...

Over at Donklephont, Michael Reynolds tackles foreign policy through his lens of self-proclaimed centrism. In doing so, he makes some important errors. The first, and less obvious, is that he conflates broader approaches to foreign policy with specific ideological positions within the American political tradition. Thus, he treats realism as co-equal with what he takes to be (a) contemporary American liberal outlooks on foreign policy, (b)...

During one IR seminar in grad school (this would have been about 1985), George Quester pointed out on several occasions that a good book could be written comparing international relations and mobsters. Has anyone done that in the past two decades?Maybe the point is too obvious. It certainly would not be especially controversial to realists like John Mearsheimer:For Realists, all states are basically black boxes that behave the same way. If the...

Rodger is certainly right that posting has been light due to grading. However, in my case the combination of spring break and massive amounts of grading offered me the opportunity to watch the World Baseball Classic the past two days. And while I admit that I was somewhat skeptical of the whole enterprise when it was announced (Rob still has some issues with the WBC), the past two days of games that I was able to watch (and the highlights of...

Vice President Dick Cheney found a friendly audience for his latest hawkish statements about Iran, but his March 7 speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee 2006 Policy Conference was obviously quite constrained compared to what he and others in the Bush administration used to say about Iraq, back in 2002 and early 2003. To begin, Cheney focuses exlusively on nuclear weapons, rather than the more ubiquitous notion of "weapons...

I suspect that the other bloggers at the Duck have been relatively silent lately for the same reasons that I have been quiet. We're grading stacks of student midterm exams (or papers) and writing our own papers for the upcoming International Studies Association Annual Meeting.If you need something to do while we're temporarily distracted, I suggest renting "Owning Mahowny" and "Freeway." The former features a first-rate performance by...

Duck of Minerva has been nominated for two Koufax blog awards, given annually to the best "lefty" blogs. To vote, simply go to the link and leave a comment in favor of Duck of Minerva.Best New BlogBest Group BlogWhile you're voting, cast a ballot for Phronesisaical for Most Deserving of Wider RecognitionFiled as: Koufax awards

The Bull Moose says we're in a "clash of civilizations." Not that long ago, Marc Schulman made the same point. Marc notes, quoting Pew data, that the Bush administration's repeated claims that the war on terror is not directed at Islam have "failed to impress" many Muslims:Sizable percentages of Muslims in many countries with significant Muslim populations also believe that suicide bombings can be justified in order to defend Islam from its...

States I've visited--and I'm not counting the inside of airports or the corridors of an interstate.Create your own visited states map.I can't, unfortunately, come up with any sort of "cute" pattern for my travels.UPDATE: my international travel? Not so impressive.Create your own visited countries mapVia Republic of Heaven.Filed as: geekery