Funny 8-bit video-game style Game of Thrones Season 1 recap via College Humor. H/T YouBentMyWookie. Warning: spoilers and crudity.
Friday Nerd Blogging
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The Duck of Minerva
Charli Carpenter
Charli Carpenter is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She is the author of 'Innocent Women and Children': Gender, Norms and the Protection of Civilians (Ashgate, 2006), Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond (Columbia, 2010), and ‘Lost’ Causes: Agenda-Setting in Global Issue Networks and the Shaping of Human Security (Cornell, 2014). Her main research interests include national security ethics, the protection of civilians, the laws of war, global agenda-setting, gender and political violence, humanitarian affairs, the role of information technology in human security, and the gap between intentions and outcomes among advocates of human security.
Recent Posts
Friday Nerd Blogging: Robopo-collapse
by Charli Carpenter | 22 July, 2011 |
I am less impressed with Daniel Wilson’s new book than my frenemy Drezner appears, and quite possibly because I so wanted it to be what Wilson admits, at the end of this diavlog, that it is certainly not: World War Z for anti-zombites, a fictionalized near-future scenario that throws lights on present-day socio-political conditions through the metaphor of killer robots rather than supernatural threats. How Wilson fails so spectacularly is the subject of my latest essay in Current Intelligence:In my view, there is almost no politics involved: nothing about how political institutions or...
Observations on Traffic Safety From Indonesia
by Charli Carpenter | 20 July, 2011 |
A few days ago this startling report hit the newsstands in Jakarta, proclaiming Bali to have surpassed Phuket in highway "carnage":Bali’s roads have become the scene of unprecedented carnage, with 758 people dying in traffic accidents in just three months, 200 more fatalities than all of last year, police said on Friday. An average of more than eight people a day died on the resort island’s roads in March, April and May...May was the deadliest month, with 286 deaths and 360 injuries, followed by March with 248 dead and 302 injured. The death toll in April was 224, with another 281 injured. I...
Friday Nugget Blogging
by Charli Carpenter | 17 July, 2011 |
Since I see Dan is kindly filling in on Friday Nerd Blogging while I'm on vacation, my casual Fridays post this week (if it is indeed Friday, I really have no idea...) takes a different tack, following on an old tradition from my days at Lawyers, Guns and Money... Quote of the week is from my youngest little nugget, quoted in an NPR story on how American kids are reacting to the Women's World Cup:"I've watched every one of their games. I'm pretty intense about it, because I don't usually see the U.S. men's team do very well."Now on Twitter, James Joyner objects to my son's big-hearted,...
Friday Nerd Blogging
by Charli Carpenter | 8 July, 2011 |
minor spoiler alert Besides some time on the paintball field, one thing my son and I did this week before my trip with his sister was watch the latest installment in one of our favorite sci-fi series. What it lacks in character development and plot, Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon certainly makes up for with some of the most intense techno-masculine violence ever to land in a PG-13 film. But what struck both of us ("Mom, why haven't her heels fallen off by now?") was the gender imagery. I mean, when a hero's girlfriend can survive a collapsing skyscraper with her high heels on, looking...
What Should I Read While I’m in Indonesia?
by Charli Carpenter | 7 July, 2011 |
Sorry for going AWOL for a couple of weeks - my lame excuse despite fascinating things happening in all my usual areas is the craziness of preparing for both a move and international travel with a teenager. Paradoxically, as of Saturday the situation reverses: I'll be on vacation abroad meaning both more time to blog and possibly less inclination. If I do pop in after this week, it will most likely be with book reviews of what I'm reading on the beach. So, Duck readers are encouraged to make suggestions/requests! Besides the obvious (Storm of Swords and Robopocalypse) I am so far planning to...
Friday Nerd Blogging: GoT IR?
by Charli Carpenter | 24 June, 2011 |
I was recently asked whether Game of Thrones was going to become "the cult IR series of 2011." My initial response, spouted on a FB update was, "it remains to be seen," not least since by next Spring GoT will of course be competing with Blood and Chrome.)As of today, however, "seen" it has clearly been, with multiple IR bloggers posting on various "IRGoT" themes. So I guess that answers that. We can look forward to a veritable bevy of GoT-blogging among IR types for the foreseeable future.OK, let's see, Steve suspects the show can best be viewed through the lens of cognitive psychology, and...
Book Review: “The Possibilities of Transnational Activism”
by Charli Carpenter | 20 June, 2011 |
Among the books I'm digesting this month as I work on my manuscript is this gem from Thomas Richard Davies - a case study of the transnational disarmament movement in the interwar period. I especially like two things about this book. First, it deals with a case of campaign failure, as the movement clearly did not meet its goals of general disarmament. This sets Davies' book apart from most of the transnational advocacy literature that focuses on successful campaign. But secondly, he uses his case very self-consciously as a lever to explore the merit of extant hypotheses about campaign...
Friday Nerd Blogging
by Charli Carpenter | 17 June, 2011 |
1: A mysterious little Father's Day gift for certain Dads among us. Speculation here.2: Your GoT satirical post of the week. (H/T Steve.)3: No, I haven't read it yet, though this is definitely on my summer beach-book-list. Judging by the critical reviews (Robopocalypse is being compared to World War Z) my immediate sense is that the zombie craze of which Drezner speaks may be coming to its end, and that Glen Weldon's new novel may be the start of the latest greatest trend in " post-apocalyptic chronicle of decimated humanity" fiction. It may be the presence of this beating human heart...
What We Talk About When We Talk About Neoconservatism
by Charli Carpenter | 17 June, 2011 | Featured
A Guest Post by Jonathan Caverley in reply to Dan NexonThe irony of being accused of taking texts in directions their original authors might not have intended by the scholar behind Harry Potter and International Relations is too delicious to pass up. Plus I am sensitive to accusations like Nexon’s (might as well confront that elephant head on).I am not slighting Professor Nexon’s excellent TNR piece and book. In fact our approaches are quite similar; we both drag a body of writing into a discipline to which the original authors evinced little desire to enter. There are always problems...