by Anonymous US National Security expert, as part of a new series of posts providing insights into the policy-making process
Continue readingby Anonymous US National Security expert, as part of a new series of posts providing insights into the policy-making process
Continue readingA guest post by Layna Mosley,* Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
(*with contributions from Jeff Colgan, Beth Copelovitch, Mark Copelovitch, Artie G, Anna Grzymala-Busse, Roger Halchin, Andrew Herring , Steph Jeffries, Julia Lynch, Jon Pevehouse, Milada Vachudova, Erik Voeten and Christopher Zorn)
President Trump’s proposed economic policies may be bad news for some businesses, like US firms with international supply chains, but if my behavior is any indication of broader trends, Trump has generated a boom for the beverage industry. While I’ve so far stuck to whatever happens to be on hand at home – IPA, stout, rosé, lighter fluid – it promises to be a long four years (hopefully, the 21st Amendment will endure, even if the rest of the Constitution does not). It’s time to diversify one’s drink choices.
Having been newly promoted to permanent contributor, I’m delighted to join the esteemed Duck blogging crew (pictured above) on a more long-term basis. I’m looking forward to more lengthy substantive blog posts beyond the Thursday updates. I feel like I’ve been trapped in reviewer hell for weeks, just as it looked like I was clearing my inbox of book and article reviews, I kept getting another one in and the pieces always looked vaguely interesting. Taking note of Dan Nexon’s recent post about the difficulty journals have in getting reviews (let alone quality ones), I determined that I had to do my civic duty. Continue reading
I think my toaster has more computing power than that guidance system…
As the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association may face cancellation due to Hurricane Isaac, there is only one thing to do: wildly speculate how APSAHungerGames would play out in 2012.* Spawned on twitter by @whinecough, an ABD (all but dissertation) on the job market, the idea is that in a hurricane-swept New Orleans, the APSA convention-goers must compete to survive.
* We honestly hope that all folks make it to and from New Orleans with the smallest amount of tribulations as we violate the classic comedic equation of pain plus time = funny.
The best line of the night, but the most inside baseball might be this one:
#APSA2012HungerGames Short break in carnage so everyone can agree that Thomas Friedman has no idea what he’s talking about.
— W. K. Winecoff (@whinecough) August 27, 2012
or
Ken Waltz thinks
#APSA2012HungerGames wld be more peaceful if we gave *everyone* poison darts.
— W. K. Winecoff (@whinecough) August 27, 2012
While some would think the Neo-Realists would do well, since they focus on security or power (depending on the time of day), they might get distracted by blaming some heretofore ignored domestic actor for the policy failures.
Much of the money by the “sharps” in Vegas moved to favor the comparativists who have fieldwork experience and study contentious politics. Will Reno, with much experience hanging out with warlords, working in places like Somalia, and known to have the biggest biceps in the profession, is currently the favorite at 4 to 1. But he does have some challenges as there is a whole new generation of hip kids who not only study insurgency and have done fieldwork in Afghanistan, but also have survived the worst academic job market in history. And they do not lack confidence:
@texasinafrica@danatgu@smsaideman I have 2 kids under 2.5 years so I’ve been training for#APSA2012HungerGames for years. Reno is mine.
— Jason Lyall (@jaylyall_red5) August 27, 2012
The longest odds? Post-materialists. They will find that in the Hunger Games that it is not so much the intersubjective meanings applied to arrows and bullets but the accuracy and power of the weapons launching them. Blood may have all kinds of symbolism, but when it drains out of a post-modernist, the logic of consequences will dominate the logic of appropriateness.
Alas, the formal theorists will be killed first. Why? Because they will have very difficult time getting their LaTex to work in all of the rain and wind. Plus they will find that working on complicated appendixes is a dangerous distraction.
I am not going to the conference, so I can only grieve the losses and then participate in the next twenty years of study, where we fight about:
So, the bad news is that the profession may lose some of its best and its brightest in #APSA2012HungerGames. On the bright side, the next job market might be a bit better and there will be new cottage industries of scholarship.
If academia’s taught me anything taught me, it’s that the real world is flawed, not theory, and that facts should change for me, not the other way around. As Marxists would say, ‘future is certain; it’s the past that keeps changing,’ and Orwell famously quipped that academics would love to get their hands on the lash to force the world fit theory. (I guess Heinlein agreed; check the vid.) So I am pleased to say that the world meet its obligations to abstraction this week a little: Japan and Korea edged a little closer toward a defense agreement (here and here). A little more of this, and I can safely ignore – whoops, I mean ‘bracket’ – any real case knowledge…
Last week I argued that Korea and Japan seem like they’d be allies according to IR theory, but weren’t. I wrote, “Koreans stubbornly refuse to do what social science tells them;” obviously they don’t realize that abstraction overrules their sovereignty. I thought this was fairly puzzling, but I got an earful from the Korea/Asia studies crowd about how I was living in the clouds of theory. I also learned that area studies folks don’t really like it when you throw stuff like ‘exogenous’ and ‘epiphenomenal’ at them. Once they figure what ‘nomothetic’ actually means, they think you’re conning them. D’oh!
So for those of you argued I didn’t know anything about Korea or Japan (a fair point) but was just blathering on about theory that had no necessary time-space application to this case, I thought I’d put up this bit from Starship Troopers. It’s hysterical – when PhDs rule the world, apparently the military has to step in to prevent us from running it over a cliff. Didn’t Buckley once say he’d rather the first 2000 names of the Boston phone book run the US government than the faculty of Harvard?
Cross-posted at Asian Security Blog.
Last week I posted the trailer. Yesterday, Volkswagen released its much awaited sequel to its “Vader Kid” Super Bowl Commercial from last year.
The original:
Which do readers think is funnier? Personally I think the “The Bark Side” wins. NPR considers what this ad strategy tells us about the future of marketing.
I was shocked, shocked to read Brian Rathbun’s characterization of me in a recent Canard as a “robot” who has only been posing as a Battlestar Galactica addict as part of my cover (!):
The academic and foreign policy worlds were rocked today by the news that Charli Carpenter — prolific academic, policy wonk, and mom — is in fact a robot. An anonymous source told this paper: “There were the academic writings, then all the policy work, the grant writing and management. She never missed her son’s soccer games though… it was just too much. Her makers made a mistake by not giving her any weaknesses.”
The revelation replaces the previous rumor among academics that Carpenter was actually an alien from the series Battlestar Galactica that she loves so much. That appears to have just been a hobby for the robot… Our CIA source said, “There is no room in this country for relentlessly hard-working academic robots raising well-adjusted families, no matter who it turns out they work for.”
This bit of yellow journalism, peppered with conjecture and misinformation, regurgitates a malicious leak from the alleged intelligence community without corroboration, and ill-befits a blogger of Rathbun’s caliber. The saddest part is that colleagues I know and love (to watch sci-fi with) have apparently taken these rumors at face value and are now doubting my status as a bona-fide nerd:
Friends were shocked, but not necessarily surprised. Dan Nexon, a professor at Georgetown University, said, “We always joked that Charli was a machine. She writes like a book a week. And good ones, too. Not the usual schlock we turn out.” He added, “She was always so good with technology. And she really likes science fiction. We all hoped she was just a nerd though. I guess we were fooling ourselves. I feel so betrayed.”
Well, to Dan and to anyone who has fallen victim to this conspiracy theory, I offer up the following as proof of both my humanity and my authentic nerd-dom:
1) Rathbun’s source is mistaken in claiming that I never miss a soccer game. In fact, I missed one in April 2011 to attend a panel on Zombies and International Relations and one the previous year to attend a panel on Battlestar Galactica, both at the yearly geek-fest known as the International Studies Association Annual Convention and both about as nerdy as one can get.
2) Rathbun erred in taking Dan’s statement that I write “good” books (that is, serious works of political science) every week at face value. A quick fact-check would have shown that I’ve written exactly three books since 2006, and one of those was only an edited volume – a weekly book-production rate of only .0096 even if you consider an edited book a book. In fact a comparison of my publishing record to those of my Duck colleagues suggests that if I’m an academic robot, they probably all are too, especially Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Rodger Payne (and these numbers do not even include their ‘other publications’):*
Note however that my publications in the less-than-serious area of science fiction and politics outweigh those of several Duck colleagues, placing me firmly within the Duck nerd block – PROOF OF MY NERD CREDENTIALS.**
3) Regarding the robot conspiracy, nothing could be farther from the truth. While Rathbun unblinkingly echoes the CIA’s claim that I’m heralding a robot takeover, I have in fact been constantly at the vanguard against such a threat, studiously tracking developments in autonomous lethal systems, training my son in weaponry and small-unit tactics in preparation for Judgment Day, and even sounding the alarm when powerful members of our own profession exhibit cyborg-like tendencies.
4) Additionally, I most emphatically dispute Rathbun’s claim that “Battlestar Galactica is just a hobby” for me. This would be like saying that Star Trek, Star Wars, Firefly or Game of Thrones are “just hobbies” for me, or that Harry Potter is “just a hobby” for Dan Nexon. Perhaps if Rathbun would spend more time watching Portlandia and less wasting brain-cells on Downton Abbey, he would understand.
5) Finally, Rathbun might have thought twice about his source’s credibility when s/he referred to my children as “well-adjusted.” Clearly this is not a person who has ever had a look at my Friday Nugget Blogging posts from my days at Lawyers, Guns and Money.
Indeed this piece of writing is so far beneath the quality of Rathbun’s usual astute investigative journalism that one wonders whether Rathbun himself is actually the author. I suggest instead that this particular Canard may be a politically motivated attempt by actual undercover robots within the (artificial) intelligence community to divert the general population from their impending takeover.
Note how the author of this post (whoever it is) makes it sound as if the Cylons of Battlestar Galactica are mere “aliens” rather than themselves lethal autonomous robots. I suspect government elements (including possibly Dan Drezner, a known CIA schill), are behind this blatant attempt at misinformation and mass distraction. I urge my good friend and co-blogger Brian Rathbun to check his anti-virus software, reinforce his fire-walls, and change his passwords. Networked computers will be the death of us all, and this Canard is likely just one more sign of the looming apocalypse.
___________________________
*Data includes only those Ducks whose complete CV I could find online; it excludes those who list only ‘selected publications’ on their websites.
**Of course, I’m clearly not as nerdy as Dan, but remember this is someone who named his child after a character in a fantasy novel so frankly I’d be out of my league trying to compete with him.
Blackwater, the infamous private security contractor (that is, 21st century mercenaries), changed its name to Xe, but that didn’t work. So now: ACADEMI. Really. I am not kidding. This seems to be a focus group mistake. After all, if you want to have the image of being decisive, forceful, reliable, and assertive, do you really want to identify yourself with academics who dither, passive, and cannot meet a deadline to save their lives? Sure, we are good at attacking strawmen (strawpersons?), but real people with guns shooting back? I didn’t think so.
So, let’s ask the interwebs: what should be the new name of Blackwater Xe ACADEMI?
Here are a couple of suggestions to get us going:
What say you?
The other day I briefly pondered what a Political Science Store would look like, after hearing about Anthropologie–a national chain of clothing stores.*
I received a bunch of ideas via facebook, twitter, and my blog, so I had to come up with different sections of the store:
* Yes, I usually let Brian take the funny Monday slot, but figured we could share the post-Thanksgiving silly slot just this one time.
Funny 8-bit video-game style Game of Thrones Season 1 recap via College Humor. H/T YouBentMyWookie. Warning: spoilers and crudity.
Anyhow, I am always reminded of a simple fact when I see any political science ranking of journals, presses, departments whatever: that whenever a ranking is suggested or revised, it is always suggested by someone who benefits from the new ranking. Nobody ever proposes a ranking that puts their department lower. So, Godwin’s Law–that the longer any internet discussion, the probability of Hitler/Nazis/Holocaust being mentioned approaches one–has inspired me to propose a new law.
Snow day again — I watched Al Jazeera, read up on the current US debates about whether or not (and how) to support the democratic revolution in Egypt, and then turned to watch one of my favorite episodes of Yes Minister, “A Victory for Democracy.”
Classic and informative — on so many levels. The real fun starts at the 4:00 minute mark and runs for the duration:
You can watch the whole episode — parts 1 and 3 here and here. It’s a great break.
Thanks to Erik Voeten, I have just discovered a fabulous blog, Better Book Titles:
This blog is for people who do not have thousands of hours to read book reviews or blurbs or first sentences. I will cut through all the cryptic crap, and give you the meat of the story in one condensed image. Now you can read the greatest literary works of all time in mere seconds!
Some of my other favorites from the site:
blink
the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime
the very hungry caterpillar, and
the elements of style.
And both Erik and Jeff Ely have a little more to say about the political economy of book titles, especially in academic publishing.
And Kieran Healy is collecting suggestions for a political science contribution to the Better Book Titles site, where Friday entries are submitted by readers. I’d love to come up with a snappy version of Dan Drezner‘s new Theory of International Politics and Zombies, which I’m supposed to roast at the International Studies Association Conference in March. [“I Am Too Funny For My Half-Eaten Shirt,” perhaps. Or “I Will Claim To Describe IR Theory While Completely Ignoring Feminism, Post-Colonialism and Critical Theory. Bwa Ha Ha!!”]
Add in your own suggestions for this or other books below.
Ah, August 15 NSF target dates! This time of year makes the image above ring truer than ever. Hat Tip to Stu Shulman.
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