My partner used to refer to Worf as the Klingon equivalent of a Kantian. The Klingon-centric episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: DS9 make clear that Worf is committed to a deontological interpretation of Klingon ethics. If you're still reading...
A recent IR Twitter flare-up occurred on a seemingly innocuous topic illustrated by the flow-chart above: what should I call my professor? A PSA from Prof. Megan L. Cook recommended students to...
Last week I purchased a Nintendo handheld (on steep discount) for the express purpose of playing Okamiden. Okami is one of my most favoritist games evah; even though Okamiden is basically more of...
H/T to Jacob Levy for pointing this out on twitter.
I thought, mistakenly, that the Hoth symposium had run its course: Ackerman point, a bunch of us counterpoint both at Danger Room and elsewhere (here at Duck, and, if it's not up yet it will be soon, over at Grand Blog Tarkin), and my tossing a little more fuel on the fire by arguing what I generally take to be a pretty obvious and I thought uncontroversial point: that Star Wars is a story about the struggle between Jedi and Sith about the nature of the Force, with other people and organizations (like the Rebel Alliance, and the Empire itself) getting caught up in the middle of what is,...
Change you can believe in. Or is it a trap? So our little geekfest-in-a-teacup has provoked, among other things, some additional contributions by members of The Duck focusing on additional ways that the Empire's command structure and Imperial strategy towards the Rebel Alliance doesn't make a lot of sense. The Imperial troops are feckless, letting the rebels escape on occasions when they should have been able to stop them easily. Opportunities to wipe out the rebels are missed through various kinds of incompetence, tactical or bureaucratic or otherwise. The Empire as a whole is riddled with...
You can’t win a counter-insurgency with a military like this The Duck has gotten into an excellent debate with Ackerman on the Empire’s blown opportunity to stamp out the Space Vietcong Rebellion at Hoth. Westmoreland spent 5 years trying to nail down the VC in set-piece battles where US firepower could be brought decisively to bear and end the war. Here was the Emperor’s similar chance, but Vader and Admiral Ozzel blew it (mostly because the Empire’s officer corps was filled with grandstanding self-promoters, as Ackerman rightly points out). But as the respondents noted, the larger...
Episode I: Spencer Ackerman over at Danger Room posts this analysis of the Battle of Hoth. Episode II: 90 e-mails and twelve hours later, this symposium goes up on the Danger Room website including a contribution by our own Dan Nexon. Unfortunately, not all of us involved in the furious e-mail thread made the cut or the deadline, so not all of our replies were posted. Which brings us to: Episode III: my piece, sadly not included in the Danger Room symposium. Below the fold. Everybody -- including, I suspect, the official Imperial histories -- acknowledges that Admiral Ozzel's decision to...
 I cannot say for sure, the last we saw of her was running deep towards the endzone looking for a long throw. We are left with a mystery--what happened to the Friday nerd blogging? Thus, I must leap into the fray (since I was the one with the disk looking to throw deep) with this:
Political scientists like fantasy role-playing games. But this does not mean they are simple nerds. They like a particularly elegant and sophisticated escapism called game theory. While it might seem obscure and overly complicated at first, you can grasp game theory and impress your political scientist friends with a very simple insight -- game theory is just like Dungeons & Dragons. Like Dungeons & Dragons, game theory players embark upon imaginary adventures in which they interact with others in situations never before seen in the real world. The game theorist operates as the dungeon...
In a previous post, I puzzled about the popularity of Downton Abbey. It is (was?) a very well-done show, but no different, I thought at the time, than the standard PBS Masterpiece Theater that generally attracts very little viewership. One of the responses was that Downton was a soap opera dressed up as costume drama. I didn’t see it at the time. Downton seemed to hit all the usual British period piece points – the problem of the heir, the declining fortunes of the aristocracy in the modern age. But that comment was prescient. Downton Abbey revealed this week that it is actually a soap opera...
We have gone almost a month without talking about zombies, and you all must be in need of a fix. Instead of thinking how various theories of international relations might expect us to cope with a zombie epidemic, I thought it might be fun to think about how leading public figures – elected officials, pundits, etc. – might respond to a zombie attack. This is in keeping with my general belief that we would see many different responses by individuals in the same structural circumstances, that foreign policy is more important than international relations.Incidentally, I just want you to know...