With the tale end of this semester bearing down on me, this Duck is barely keeping his head above water. Fortunately, time has stopped and nothing has happened in the world. Ukraine is fine (no more Russian incursions). The global environment has put the threat of...
What's right and wrong in the world this holiday season? This is a sundry list related to recent interests of mine, mostly related to humanitarian assistance. UN seeks record $13 billion for...
Mandela's memorial service was yesterday, and the speeches and coverage were laudatory, as they should be, and the crowd was raucous, celebratory, despite the rain. Obama in his speech challenged...
This week's stories have no unifying theme other than they kind of capture the end of term mood, a certain grumpiness on the part of the writer (Bjorn Lomborg's tsk tsking of clean energy advocates,...
Good morning... Jarrod Hayes discusses his new book, Constructing National Security: US Relations with India and China. Mark Safranski (i.e. zen of Zenpundit) points us to Lt. General Prakash Katosh's "Optimising the Potential of Special Forces." [Original Article] Shyam Saran argues that India's new role as an observer on the Arctic Council should be used to restrain the headlong rush into an ecological catastrophe. Steve Aftergood notes that the Obama Administration does not disclose most Presidential Policy Directives even when they are not classified. A reason for the lack of...
The current issue of the International Journal of Comparative Sociology has a special issue on trade and travel. In it, sociologists apply network analysis in domains familiar to international-relations scholars. I haven't read the articles yet, but I thought the cross-disciplinary dimension was interesting enough to ask SAGE to make the contents available. You can download them through July. I'm about halfway through Aliette de Bodard's Obsidian and Blood trilogy, and am enjoying it immensely. If the concept of Tenochtitlan Noir Fantasy isn't enough to interest you, then I'm not sure why...
The American retailer response to Bangladesh worker safety -- American firms will monitor and report, but not much else. For those who want to become more socially informed consumers -- missed this last month when Forbes tested the Buycott app. The Oil Drum shuts down: It seems peak oil peaked before oil did. But, did the rise in fracking contribute to its death? Joshua Goldstein looks at the new Uppsala data on Syria and global battle deaths. Eric Reeves warns that "Darfur teeters on the edge of a complete humanitarian collapse and uncontrollable violence." and... Can an organization...
“Of course this is risky,” Mr. Logulov said, “but risk is everywhere in life. A brick could fall on your head in the street, for example. And this is just a small risk.” - on the practice of having Russian children take their pictures with circus animals (WTF!?) Here is your morning linkage with a return to form, conservation concerns and pollution in Asia loom large: Worries about China's resumption of the trade in tiger parts Yao Ming urges Chinese to give up on shark fin soup And good news, big drop in demand for shark fin soup record 4,000 missing in recent India floods Massive flooding...
Good morning ducks... Here's your linkage... The Jerusalem Post reviews World War Z. Is this the most pro-Israeli film ever made? ... Probably not - even the trailer shows the wall being breached. A Majinot mentality can't work in a film whose motto is: "movement is life." The terrorist attack on Sunday in Bodh Gaya is a big deal, even if the Western press is slow on the uptake. This isn't just the holiest Buddhist site in India; it is the holiest Buddhist site in the world without a doubt. (I've been there twice in the last twelve months and the security was pretty lax even though...
Daniel Bier counters fear-mongering about the world's first genetically engineered babies, another fascinating case study of global normative ferment. But in truly weird science, humans can now transplant whole heads (or rather, bodies). Too bad this important advance comes too late for Ned Stark. -> William Beaty writes about the physics of traffic jams, proposing a simple solution ordinary citizens can use to escape to de-clutter highways. Cyber-war, nano-weapons, and killer robots, oh my! International Review of the Red Cross has finally published a long-awaited special issue on...
In the spirit of the dramatic events of yesterday, we at the Duck want to bring your morning linkage with news of the Zimmerman trial. Err, scratch that, we'll leave that to CNN. Lots of attention being directed to the dramatic events in Egypt, plus some obligatory posts below about conservation, including reports that Joseph Kony has turned to poaching elephants (what unsavory s--t will that guy not do?). On Egypt, for me the requisite judgment is, at this stage, ambivalence. I can't see how the events unfold in a positive way. You have the ouster of a democratically elected leader but one...
Welcome to Wednesday's linkage. We've delayed posting until the situation of one major world leader and head of state was resolved, and we can now definitely confirm: King Albert of the Belgians has abdicated. He joins Queen Beatrix and target="_blank">Sheikh Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani in this year's parade of former crowned heads. Why? Did something else happen today? In more substantive news, Jay Ulfelder makes an obvious but important point: Today's events do constitute a coup, whether they were "polite" or not. In the APSA Comparative Democratization section newsletter, Ben Smith lays...