More thoughtful posts to come. But for starters, here are some tidbits from conference papers I read or heard presented while AWOL at the International Studies Association conference last week:

1) Isaac Kamola: The recent securitization of Somali piracy is a pretty big mystery given how few vital interests are at stake. Peter Andreas points out that it’s therefore also a mystery that no major IR journal has published a serious IR paper on this topic yet.

2) Sebastian Kaempf quoting Charles Law of UC Berkely: “Going to war actually saves US troops’ lives.” (Relative to gun violence, car wrecks etc associated with life on the civilian front.) Still trying to track down the original study that shows this is true to see how the risk assessment is computed.

3) Shorter Iver Neumann: “Battlestar Galactica is all about Mormonism.” (Really. Check out the full paper in the ISA Archive.)

Some more pedestrian insights here.

Can’t wait to hear from Patrick, Dan, Laura, Stephanie, Vikash, Jon, Peter, Rodger and Craig on their conference adventures.