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.
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.
Especially considering that I recently criticized the human security community for failing to pay enough attention to urban violence, I'm delighted to hear of this upcoming web seminar on the topic...
Maybe we should have named the blog the "Seal of Minerva."Photo: Dan NexonThe US exit strategy in Afghanistan is in shambles; Josh Foust explains. Jing Gao describes condemnations of the anti-Japan...
With the loss of the drinking intellectual stimulation that comes from APSA, I'm in need of some inspiration to kick start the semester that begins next week. We all know that academic life is full...
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 about the international system, and the labels we apply to the resulting groups. I thought I'd take the cue to air my grievances on the topic and make a couple of simple suggestions.Taxonomies require organizing principles, and the kernel of the classification system Americans usually use in international politics comes from modernization theory. Modernization theory's core idea is...
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 instrumentalization of education and the vocational turn. Whatever. I'll just say that this should take care of my presentation at new faculty orientation next month.... From Department of Omnishambles: Karl Marx's end of year department assessment:ht: Sherrill Stroschein
With Obama's proposed $487bn cuts in defense spending over the next ten years and the potential for another $500bn in cuts through sequestration set to kick in next January if Republicans and Democrats fail to reach the grand bargain compromise on the budget, lots of folks are now harping about the looming threat to American national security if the cuts take hold. Earlier this month, General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., assistant commandant, U.S. Marine Corps concluded that: “We have a tendency to view sequestration as a budget issue, but it’s really not a budget issue. It’s a re-ordering of our...
I'm totally not bitter that Tom Friedman'selementary correlations have 165citations on Google Scholar!Kindred Winecoff, who is both very smart and possessed of good taste in linking, discusses the value of social science.Winecoff discusses a recent splenetic venting by a philosopher claiming that social science has no role to play in policy debates, unlike physics or biology. I am unaware of any particular policy implications that flow obviously from any hard science. True, the atom bomb matters for policy, but the fact of the atomic bomb does not tell us what it means for international...
This video is part of an advocacy strategy launched by a new NGO, Article36, whose focus is the humanitarian control of weapons technology. The organization takes its name from the provision in the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions that requires governments to consider the humanitarian impacts of new weapons.Article 36 operates from a principle that practical, policy and legal controls over weapons should be founded on publicly transparent and evidence-based analysis. Such controls should aim for prevention of unintended, unnecessary or unacceptable harm, and should be open...
This is me with Rick Allen, the drummer for Def Leppard who lost his arm in the 1980s but retooled his drum kit and life to adjust to his injury. He now runs the Raven Drum Foundation, which focuses on helping veterans with PTSD and other mental and physical injuries heal as they return home. Through drumming. Pounding the hell out of something and not someone seems like a brilliant idea. It inspired me to write a post on the virtues of heavy metal. And it makes me look cool to people who like “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” which I am sure is a huge part of the clientele of this blog. That’s...
David Birtley's to-die-for posts chronicling HBO's deviations from the Song of Ice and Fire book series get longer each week over at Wired.Some fans are annoyed at the significant and at times random plot innovations in Game of Thrones (in Season 2 Tywin has come off as a loving grandfather, Arya is killing all the wrong characters, and Dany's dragons have mysteriously vanished!)But I actually think this is nothing short of brilliant precisely because it solves one of the key issues plaguing the series: the spoiler problem.You see, every week the latest episode is disected in the fan...