by Bill Petti | 20 Jun 2005 | Featured
I guess that's what I get for waiting until everyone else has already posted. Ok, so I need to comply with the “five books I liked enough as a teen/young adult to read again as an adult” meme. After reading some other folks’ lists I am a little weary about posting mine, since I didn’t do all that much reading as a child (my teachers are still shocked that I am pursuing my PhD, as are many of those who ‘knew me when’—lets just say I wasn’t...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 20 Jun 2005 | Featured
Listing beloved books from my adolescence is so much more enjoyable than prepping for class…Also, I'm choosing to interpret the meme quite strictly, as asking for fictional books read as an adolescent (middle school/high school) that I felt were good enough to read again later on (college or later). This isn't a list of the books I read that had the most impact on me; that list is here. And this is not an exhaustive list; I recently re-read...
by Rodger Payne | 20 Jun 2005 | Featured
Yesterday, Dan "tagged" me and the other bloggers at the Duck to participate in one of those circulating book threads (or "memes"). I am now supposed "to describe the 'five books I liked enough as a teen/young adult to read again as an adult.'"Hmmmm. This is tough.First, I'm older than the other guys and have thus had more time to re-read more books that I read as a teen/young adult. Theoretically, my list could be very long.Second, and this is...
by Dan Nexon | 20 Jun 2005 | Featured
Not that long ago I questioned whether David was giving realism a fair shake. Recently, David shared an email on his blog that does the work I should have done:First off, the notion that a nuclear Iraq would be problematic but not inherently disastrous isn’t some bizarre notion – the fairly-insane regimes of Stalin and Mao proved manageable even once they got nuclear weapons. The same arguments made in favor of stopping a nuclear Iraq were also...
by Dan Nexon | 20 Jun 2005 | Featured
Daniel Starr explains:I'm not happy with the CCP today: it turns out that they've made the Asian bird flu virus resistant to the best antiviral drug we would have relied on to tame the next outbreak of avian-based flu in humans. They ignored the advice of the World Health Organization and had farmers drug their chickens with antivirals instead of vaccinating them. In effect, they evolved the virus strains for drug resistance. Now the antiviral...
by Dan Nexon | 19 Jun 2005 | Featured
I've been tagged by Daniel Drezner. As I understand this process, I am now obligated to describe the "five books I liked enough as a teen/young adult to read again as an adult." If I do not comply, I will suffer the same fate of those who break chain letters and chain email.The problem is that I already suffer from an incurable "Peter Pan" complex (not to be confused with the "Peter Pan Syndrome"). Five books? There are at least a dozen I've...
by Dan Nexon | 19 Jun 2005 | Featured
The situation in Zimbabwe deteriorates even further, with the government pressing ahead with its campaign of mass violence and political cleansing:EVERY morning Father Michael looks out of the window of his Harare parish house and sees an ever larger crowd of homeless families outside. “I feel helpless,” said the Jesuit priest, who was too terrified to give his real name. “I keep telling them my little homilies, that the violent will not win,...
by Dan Nexon | 19 Jun 2005 | Featured
Like Scott, I found my results in the "Which American Cities Best Fit You?" survey a little surpring: American Cities That Best Fit You:80% Chicago75% Philadelphia70% New York City65% Boston45% AtlantaMy real list is NYC; Boston; San Francisco; Washington, DC; Chicago; and Minneapolis.I suppose part of the problem with this survey is that it probably gives the questions equal weight. Thus, for example, it can't know that a particular issue,...
by Bill Petti | 18 Jun 2005 |
Dan posted a while back on the debate over at Democracy Arsenal by members of the Truman National Security Project on what a progressive national security platform would/should look like. He provided a summary-to-date of the discussion, which I shamelessly pilfered for this post:Michael Singer started by posting a series of common principles that he felt had emerged from the Truman National Security Project's annual meeting. At America Abroad,...
by Dan Nexon | 17 Jun 2005 |
The debate on the UN Human Rights Commission continues.Patrick responds to my critique of his post, so now I respond in kind.Patrick’s first set of arguments make two key points. First, the current system doesn’t shame anyone, because odious regimes get to sit on the Commission. Second, that denying states membership on the Commission because of their human-rights records would only provide opportunities for “rhetorical coercion” if “if a)...
by Patrick Thaddeus Jackson | 17 Jun 2005 |
Dan raises some important points in his response to my post expressing some skepticism about the Congressional Task Force's recommendation to eliminate the United Nations Human Rights Commission and replace it with a democracies-only Human Rights Council operating outside of UN control. After considering his arguments I remain convinced that the Task Force's proposal is a bad idea, even though the present system is certainly a flawed one....
by Dan Nexon | 17 Jun 2005 |
I've thought about Patrick's post, "The Uses of Hypocrisy", and I've come to the conclusion that I cannot agree with the interesting arguments he puts forth. I share some of his concerns about the proposal for a "Human Rights Council," but I think he gets the effect of having gross abusers of human rights on the UN Human Rights Commission exactly backwards.1. Gross human-rights abusers are unlikely to be "shamed" because of their presence on...