Like millions of other people around the world, I have spent much of the past few weeks playing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (TotK), the nineteenth installment in Nintendo’s widely acclaimed series.
This is a cross-post from my solo blog, Dart-Throwing Chimp.A few days ago, Sean Langberg blogged about a subject that's long been a pet peeve of mine: how we classify countries when we try to talk...
I'd write a lengthy comment on this, but with my new administrative responsibilities, I have a full day of meetings on liberal arts assessment and impact -- oh, and some kind of silly discussion on...
The musician K'naan's haunting elegy for his country Somalia, wracked by famine:So, 20 summers after I left as a child, I found myself on my way back to Somalia with some concerned friends and colleagues. I hoped that my presence would let me shine a light into this darkness. Maybe spare even one life, a life equal to mine, from indifferently wasting away. But I am no statesman, nor a soldier. Just a man made fortunate by the power of the spotlight. And to save someone’s life I am willing to spend some of that capricious currency called celebrity.My pale by comparison five-part series on...
The world has been watching this week as the Palestinian Government prepares to make a bid to the Security Council for recognition as an independent state. Many thought Obama had backed himself into a corner with a statement last year declaring his support for Palestinian statehood. But never fear, the President's propensity to dilute astute political goals to the point of meaninglessness appears to be limitless. In fact, if Obama was a superhero it is likely that his power would be to retract from lofty political objectives and political commitments at the speed of light. He entices victims...
Debate over NATO's military intervention in the Libyan civil war has reinvigorated discussion among observers of international relations on the merits (or demerits) of the United Nations's Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. You can find links to important entries in the current debate at the end of this post, but I'm going to react here to one part of it. In a rejoinder to her critics, including IR student and Slouching Towards Columbia blogger Dan Trombly, Princeton University's Anne-Marie Slaughter casts R2P as an instrument for positive change in the international system, a wrench...
Now that Blood and Chrome appears to be at risk of demotion from upcoming TV show to series of webisodes (!) BSG fans among the readership can at least geek out on this documentary. (Because most of us have so little better to do with the start of the term and all.)
This post is a little impressionistic and attempts a few trans-Atlantic generalisations, but is probably still worth a punt.If Clausewitz was right that each period holds to its own theory of war, what do we see when we look in the mirror after a decade of the conflict against Islamist terror networks? In the US and UK at least, I'd suggest that the War on Terror was a reflection of the evolving liberal-market state.That is, a state that defines its security interests through an expansive liberalism, securing itself by exporting liberal institutions and values and investing its struggles...
H/T PhDComics. Hey, there are all kinds of nerds.
Is the IMF growing a pair....? This past week, the Fund's new Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, delivered a rabble-rousing speech in Jackonson Hole, Wyoming in which she called for a mandatory capital increase for European banks, using public funds if needed. I'm not convinced that's going to fly, but I have to say that I admire Lagarde's moxy. Today, Kenneth Rogoff, the Fund's former Chief Economist, published an op-ed in which he suggested that the Fund may finally be pulling away from the party line and demonstrating some willingness to contradict its European masters. Maybe. I had to...