There's another mention of "dog-whistle politics" over at Political Wire. Taegan Goddard quotes from a recent Congressional Quarterly article by Craig Crawford:Dean and Durbin were trying to rally their faithful with the harsh, red-meat language that partisans enjoy,...
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...
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,...
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...
[cross-posted at ProfPTJ's Course Diaries]One of the things that I find the most fascinating about the game of baseball is the fact that statistical data about the performance of players and teams is actually meaningful. This is so largely because the kinds of things being measured -- whether a team wins or loses, how many balls and strikes a pitcher throws, what percentage of the time a player gets on base as opposed to making an out -- involve a repetition of the same basic actions a sufficient number of times that random fluctuations cancel out. Players do the same basic things enough...
It looks like I'll be the "senior scholar" on this blog. Less formally, that makes me "the old fart," trying to avoid becoming "deadwood." My academic career began in the '70s, as I started college at the University of Kansas in 1979. Back then, Dan and Patrick were probably trading baseball cards, watching "Star Wars" for the 23rd time (though very few people had VCRs then), and reading Robert Heinlein's books. I hate to think about Bill's age in 1979; he was almost surely a toddler. Though I fully intended to become an attorney when I was growing up, by 1983 I knew too many unhappy lawyers...
Cross posted at "Discord and Elaboration"G. John Ikenberry, an esteemed professor of IR at Princeton, had an interesting piece the other day at America Abroad on the seeming shift from a focus on terrorism to democratization by the Bush administration. It was a post in response to one by Anne Marie Slaughter--also of Princeton--who argued that the administration had not foresaken the fight against terrorists for a crusade of democractization, but rather the latter had subsumed the former. Slaughter writes:the Bush Administration doesn't think it has won the war on terror—that war has just...
File this, perhaps, under "musical politics":Bob Geldof is at it again. The chief organizer of the fantastically successful "Live Aid" concerts in 1985 -- concerts that raised more than $100 million for famine relief -- is coordinating a series of five concerts scheduled to take place on 2 July 2005. Taking place "around the world" (which, in practice, means "in several European capitals and in one major American city"), these free concerts are designed to raise awareness about global poverty with a specific emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa. According to the official website, everyone from U2...
Dan Drezner reveals that he was (is?) a Civilization addict:Occasionally, despite my mental efforts, one of these activities sneaks it's way through my defenses. I'm convinced that had I not gotten hooked on Sid Meier's Civilization game, I'd have another article somewhere on my cv. [What about blogging?--ed. A more complex answer -- I'd probably have another article or two, but the articles on outsourcing and blogging would not be there either.]Now, I must admit that I'm a bit dubious about being addicted to Civilization III. Did Dan escape the snares of Civilization I and Civilization II,...
From Anders Stephanson's Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right, pp. 61: "The nation," [Seward] instructed the Senate in 1853, "that draws the most materials and provisions from the earth, fabricates the most, and sells the most productions of fabrics to foreign nations, must be, and will be, the great power of the earth." This was his basic geo-economic premise. Command over the "ultimate empire of the ocean," the only "real empire," was therefore what mattered. Britain offered a glaringly obvious lesson to this effect. Laggard by comparison, the United States...
I am really not the person who ought to be commenting on the Dutch "no" vote, but in the spirit of "we ought to say something," I'll hum a few bars.Dan Drezner has already weighed in with his usual insightful comments. Lots of good coverage over the wires and print media. Time to go track down Dutch bloggers as well.What are the implications? Ivo Daalder is worried:This is bad news for America -- which needs a strong, outward looking partner to meet the many challenges we all now face. Even the Bush administration appeared in recent months to understand that Europe could be that partner. But...
Peter Howard has some interesting comments on my post on bribing North Korea. Peter plugs his International Studies Quarterly article, "Why Not Invade North Korea? Threats, Language Games, and U.S. Foreign Policy". As Peter knows, I believe he downplays the importance of military constraints. Attacking North Korea is a far more dangerous undertaking than attacking Iraq was. The US may have become "discursive entangled" into negotiating with North Korea, but the differing military capabilities of the two states explains a lot about why the Bush administration made the calculation that...