While Amanda is a glutton for punishment with both ISA and Midwest appearances, my wife and I are tag-teaming it - ISA for me and Midwest for her. In between diaper changes, Finding Nemo, and oatmeal, here is what I'm reading. Cambridge refuses to publish book on...
Here are a few articles for your consideration. For those of you interested in conservation, we have had a disturbing pattern of stories about rapid declines in species around the world, some of...
This is my first time doing the Duck linkage, as I will be alternating with Charli on Tuesdays. I may eventually figure out a style, a pattern, a focus, but my first shot at this will be either...
Here is your morning linkage with stories on energy and the environment, Â conservation, conflict in Africa, and health. Energy and Environment Alex Wang on the really bad air in the Chinese city of...
The "debate on missile defense" leaves Robert Farley feeling very, very tired. Sean Kay wants the US to go cold turkey on European troop deployments. Heh. Heh. "Snowden Crash." Heh. "The Strangelove Caucus." Cute. And also: Virtual transitions: The World SF Blog ends, The Smoked-Filled Room celebrates one year of correctly hyphenating a compound-adjective.
Above, I've posted another photo of the crack Duck blogging team (that's me upper left, my dissertation advisor is lower right). Right now, I'm en route to a conference in Norway so my 22 month old son has prepared the following post of Thursday Morning Linkage. (Well, if he had, there would be lots of posts about dogs. He loves dogs.) In any case, you're stuck with my persistent interest in conservation, energy, and health issues. More polio vaccination workers killed in Pakistan, twenty this year A long expose on poaching, even more troubling news about the criminal syndicates involved in...
David Silbey on the long century of the US surveillance state. Don't throw the espionage baby out with the domestic-surveillance bathwater? Tom Nichols throws the gauntlet down at opponents of more active US involvement in the Syrian civil war. Dan Trombly ruminates on the concept of "blowback" in light of recent domestic terror attacks in the west. Developments in Arabic translation. Many people in my circles are gleefully forwarding a proposal for Massively Open Online Administration (MOOA). The e-magazine responsible is itself kind of interesting in of itself -- a product of the...
Good morning. Â Here are some loosely connected articles on development, bureaucracy, and state power... I am quite taken by James Ferguson's metaphor of "swarming state power" as an alternative to James Scott's "controlling state power" and thus as a way of understanding contemporary "development" (a discourse whose objects have apparently all but abandoned progress for the "hope of egress"). Â Ferguson helps us to understand both why so many development projects "fail" and what development projects are actually (i.e. functionally) doing even as they fail repeatedly and spectacularly. Â ...
Contrasting views on Obama foreign-policy and realism from Daniel Drezner and Sean Kay. The BBC's profile of Iranian President-elect, Hassan Rouhani. Michael J. Geary and Kevin A. Lees examine how the NSA scandal might impact Obama's trip to Europe. Chris Fair's testimony at the Hearing on “Protecting the Homeland Against Mumbai-Style Attacks and the Threat from Lashkar-e-Taiba" (PDF). Vladmir Putin: the most powerful man in Russia, sex symbol, former spy, and sports-memorabilia thief. And also: Gerard Toal discusses his new co-authored article, "Cartographic Exhibitionism? Visualizing the...
Are we headed to war in Syria?  The media seems to be going all in on the chemical weapons "red line" justification. How close are we to moving to implement a no-fly zone? Hezbollah is the real Red Line. Drezner:  realism trumps liberalism again. Behind yesterday's UN Syrian Casualty Count. Sunni clerics call for jihad against Assad and Egyptian government says Egyptians have freedom to travel to Syria if they'd like. Meanwhile: Did Erdogan blink? How the protests in Taksim Square have derailed Erdogan's plans to transform Turkey into a presidential system. This week in...
Phil Schrodt's very smart thoughts about the NSA and surveillance. [A Second Mouse] Anton Strezhnev analyzes the prospects for Snowden's extradition. Strezhnev's take is very smart, but I wonder if he overestimates the degree to which this will be a normal case in which Beijing would not choose to intervene. After all, Snowden fled to Hong Kong because of its reputation for freedom--which is something that Beijing might find convenient in underlining one country, two systems. [Causal Loop] Ben Schmidt has a more interesting and nuanced view on the "crisis in the humanities" than we normally...
Jeffrey Toobin's "Edward Snowden is no Hero" has generated some very sprited debate in my Facebook circles. Most of my online interlocutors fall into the left civil-libertarian camp, so readers might imagine their consensus view of Snowden's action. I'm much less sanguine. I take the ethical, moral, and legal obligations of holding a high-level security clearance very seriously. You better have a damn good reason for violating those obligations, and it isn't at all clear to me that disclosing a legal intelligence-gathering program subject to active congressional oversight crosses that...