Good morning to the western hemisphere. Today brings with it a whole slew of stuff from the Duck of Minerva. First, I've made some progress in updating the academia page -- our one-stop shop for our ever-popular posts on the academic life. Second, I have a general query about awards. As you may know, the voters have clicked and we now have finalists for the 2013 OAIS Awards. The winners will be selected via a pool of judges. The internal consensus seems to be to keep that pool classified this year--not for nefarious reasons, but because the blogging community is small and we want our judges...

I guess Chuck Hagel's going to be confirmed, so we can return to an all-international edition of linkage. And mostly Asia. Papua New Guinea could finally give us a test of the institutions strain of the resource-curse hypothesis; unlike rich and democratic oil titan Norway, Papua New Guinea is poor and democratic(ish). The news that it might have natural gas and other deposits sufficient to bring its resource exports in 2030 to three times the country's current GDP. (Of course, much depends for resource curse-testing purposes on how much of that comes from natural gas and copper, compared to...

Photo: Bahraini women chant anti-government slogans during a mourning procession for Qassim Habib, 8, in Manama, Bahrain on Jan. 30, 2013. Clashes erupted after the procession for the boy, who opposition groups say died from respiratory problems triggered by heavy tear gas. [Credit : Hasan Jamali/AP] Good mornin' here's your linkage... West Asia style: Manama: Sheikh Ali Salman, the leader of the Al-Wefaq opposition party, is "hopeful" about the appointment of John Kerry as Secretary of State.  Salman was optimistic that Kerry would "do more than his predecessor."  Could he do less? Doha: So...

I am sitting in a David's Bridal while my daughter picks out a flower-girl dress. If I were looking at ESPN.com then the stereotype would be complete. We are anxiously (and by "anxiously," I mean "not very anxiously") awaiting the results of the first-round voting for the OAIS blogging awards. Once our crack guy-with-a-survey-account sends them to me, we will post. No podcast this week. I am working on transcoding all of them to mp3 format and lining up some interviews. FWIW, I've followed up on most of the suggestions I got some months ago, and have some commitments for "eventual"...

Given the growing debate surrounding "Zero Dark Thirty", it is now mandatory to have a strong opinion on the movie. In addition to the excellent posts on this blog, including "Zero Dark Thirty" Debate Needs and Interrogation and "Zero Dark Thirty": Touchstone Par Exemplar by Jeffrey Stacey the internet is awash with excellent commentary on the movie. Why does it matter? The vast divide between those who love it and those who hate it tells us something about the politics of war movie-making and the way we look back on the war on terror. The New York Film Critics Circle named 0DT the best...

> Anyone have good recommendations for following developments in Iraq? Yeah, remember Iraq? I hear things aren't exactly ice-cream and puppies there. Dan Brumberg and Steve Heydemann have a new Wilson Center report: "Global Authoritarians and the Arab Spring: New Challenges for U.S. Diplomacy." The Russian MOD looks to return to defense-industry autarky. I wonder if there are any implications for the claim that the globalization of defense production accounts for the end of the Cold War? Video of the PRC's AMB system test. "China and Central Asia in 2013" at Jamestown's China Brief. Jonathan...

Let's get to the news and the comments: Tim Burke talks about the real intersection of science fiction, the great convergence, and international governance [Easily Distracted] Surowiecki talks Boeing and outsourcing [The New Yorker] Have Malian rebels destroyed ancient texts? [The New Yorker] Maybe intercepting a Taepo-dong is illegal [The Diplomat] I like reading about Mongolia and I don't think I have to justify it [The Diplomat] And also: This profile of former NFL coach Bill Walsh's quest for perfection mirrors many academics' lives [ESPN: The Magazine] IRB Horror Stories [Institutional...

North Korea Bruce Cumings' 2005 LRB article "We Look at It and See Ourselves" surely remains one of the best short articles on the Korean peninsula ever written.  It is probably worth a revisit as tensions ramp up again. Paul Gottinger provided a good background piece on "South Korea's New Boss" in Counterpunch. Charles Armstrong, the Director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia, blogs at CNN's GPS on "Why Sticks Don't Work With North Korea" Afghanistan A US Marine Captain reflects: "I killed people in Afghanistan. Was I right or wrong?" A review of Dalrymple's Return of a King:...