Now that this academic year’s loose ends are wrapped up, it is time to refocus attention on the important topic of norm development around autonomous weapons. Fortunately for my case study there is much developing on this front, in addition to developments in adjacent...
I was fortunate enough to participate in an ISA panel yesterday morning entitled "The Third Generation of Constructivist Thought: Boundaries, Distinctions, Limits -- Social Theory, Philosophy, and...
About a month ago, the symposium on my book over at The Disorder of Things that I mentioned in an earlier post reached a critical stage: posts by Paul, Joe, Nick, and Meera were up, and it was now...
Dan and I spent the last few days in London doing a variety of talks that might be of some interest to the general Duck readership.On Wednesday I gave a book talk at SOAS; I'm quite pleased at the...
Because I worry that Haloscan may implode before blogger does, I feel compelled to preserve SteveG's comment on Patrick's ode to his HDTV for digital posterity:It may be a non-standard interpretation, but there are some scholars who consider "alienation from oneself as a species being" to be a mistranslation of "not getting decent reception on channel sechs oder acht." Of course, Marx was writing back in the times when they had rabbit ears...Happy independence day!(I watched the fireworks via rabbit-ear powered NTSC)(For five minutes)(Then I played Katamari Damarcy)(A Japanese game)(About...
After a long struggle with some undisclosed ailment that was producing an occasional greenish tint to the images displayed on it, our old 27" Magnavox standard-definition TV finally gave up the ghost a couple of weeks ago. It was a long, slow death, so there wasn't much mourning -- just a couple of trips to electronics stores and some 'Net browsing to find a replacement. What we quickly learned is that they just don't make decent-quality affordable tube TVs any more, and that those that they do make are both gigantic (read: heavy) and affected by things like "geometry problems" (which are...
[Updated 7.4.06] John Robb peaks into his crystal ball to see what might happen if the US moves forward with a strategic bombing campaign against Iran (discussed in the new issue of the New Yorker by Sy Hersh). He relays some interesting possibilities, although I must say that much of what he talks about was echoed by others in the lead up to the Iraq war, and certainly the reverberations from that conflict have not been as severe as predicted.However, there are certainly significant differences between Iraq 3 years ago and Iran today--particularly when it comes to Iran's capacity to damage...
...a few stories worth your time as you begin your holiday weekend:The Christian Science Monitor has a great article discussing the multiple motives and objectives behind Israel's recent Gaza operations.Great Britain sought the services of the US nuclear deterrent to help protect Hong Kong during the Cold War, recently released documents suggest. What is of interest for me is the recognition that the colony was "strategically irrelevant", but that the British government "decided that it did have a vital symbolic role as the country's sole frontier with the Communist world", coming to the...
A bit of good... well maybe just decent news today burried on page 15 of the Post, behind all the goings on in Gaza and the Supreme Court Ruling on Gitmo.The Bush administration is expected to announce today that it has dismantled the last of the most powerful nuclear missile warheads left over from the Cold War.... The warhead at the center of today's announcement, the W-56, was put into operation in 1963 atop the Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It had the explosive power of 1.2 megatons or "roughly 100 times greater" than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan,...
Apparently, he is also an expert on Central Asia. That is what I like about Rall, he never lets facts or logic get in the way.Nathan over at the excellent Registan has the story.Filed as: Ted Rall
As most are aware, Baseball commentator Peter Gammons suffered a brain aneurysm at his home in Cape Cod, MA. As of this morning he is out of surgery but still in the ICU. He has been listed in good condition.My colleagues and I here at the Duck are avid baseball fans. Speaking for myself, I can honestly say that Gammons’ Hall of Fame reporting over the last 15 years has made me both a more passionate and informed fan of the game. Always fair and balanced, Gammons never let the passion for his hometown Red Sox color his analysis. He always gave credit where it was due and would not hesitate...
Russian President Vladamir Putin announced today that he has ordered the Russian Federal Security Service to “find and destroy” those responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Russian diplomats in Iraq (for background on the story, see here).The announcement by Putin was followed by a statement passed in the lower house of the Russian parliament criticizing the “occupying countries” (i.e. the United States), noting that they have lost control of Iraq.I haven’t been able to find out much more at this point (so far, the Guardian seems to have the best coverage), but it will be interesting...