Slow weekend at the Duck, eh? Some of our bloggers are snowed in. Not sure how to explain the rest of us. I’ve been playing lots of FTL and working on a manuscript review. And the kid’s been sick. So here’s some stuff resembling content:

• More trade networks from Thomas Oatley.
• Did Steve Walt rename “offshore balancing” “a more distant and hands-off strategy?” Hard to tell. But it doesn’t seem like a step forward in the science of branding.
• Jeffrey C. Isaac: “Political Science Departments and Political Advocacy: Some Reflections By an Academic Liberal Who Believes in the Importance of Admittedly Fuzzy Boundaries.”
• Historical institutionalism meets the War on Terror. Okay, that’s not exactly what numerous posts on the subject of Bush-Obama continuity say… but they might as well.
• Richard Samuel’s overviews changing Japanese strategic discourse (PDF).

And also:

• Sex, politics, and Cuba.
• JFK: great American “blank slate.”
• My this-started-out-about-one-thing-and-then-morphed-and-now-I’ve-got-to-go-to-a-meeting-and-I-might-as-well-just-put-it-up post has accrued some good feedback, which means I’ll have to put something coherent up about the “new structuralism” in international-relations scholarship. Or at least reply to comments.
• Another episode in the Chronicles of MOOC.
• “Here’s to the man who drinks water pure and goes to bed quite sober…. He’ll die before October!” (via Dave Schuler).