A weak "contrarian" post from Daveed Gartenstein-Ross on Tom Rick's appearance on Fox News. Watch Daveed flail further in comments.  Defence Talk: Pakistan test fires a nuclear-capable ballistic missile and hackers target IAEA. More on the latter from Jeffrey Lewis. Vitalist metaphors for the PhD thesis.  Terranova: two posts -- on virtual currencies (and the 'real world') and virtual economies. Misadventures in guest blogging at OrgTheory. Daniel Little on "Marketing Wittgenstein."  BLTN: Michael C. Allen (at Quantitate Peace) looks at mapping leadership tenure. Danya Greenfield provides...

Jeffrey Lewis analyzes evidence that Burma seeks nuclear weapons.  Juan Cole discusses shifting positions on the status of Palestine at the UN. And some good pre-vote analysis from Erik Voeten.  More on PTSD and drone pilots.  Brendan Keefe highlights advances in artificial intelligence. The aforementioned Foust-Drezner exchange on policy-oriented political-science PhDs.  And also: The growing space-junk threat impacts military planning.

Spent the morning recording a podcast. Except that we just chatted and never got around to the actual interview. Then it was off to job talks and child chauffeuring.... Tom Z. Collina doesn't like the idea of a BMD system for the US east coast. Dan Drezner says that China is involved in a security dilemma with ASEAN. I'm not so sure: it looks to me like Beijing is being expansionist and that's provoking its neighbors. Noorjahan Akbar reports on civil-society building in Afghanistan. Australia will abstain on the Palestine recognition vote at the UN. Robert McMillan and Spencer Ackerman...

Nominations (and voting registrations) are really starting to come in. I've updated the most recent post to reflect yesterday's additions. Linkage: Leslie Dwyer: "After Aceh's Peace." Foreign People Policy is out with its "Top 100 Global Policy Celebs Thinkers" list, so I suppose we now have to slavishly dissect it.  Or, we could read Audrey Waters' "top 100 reasons why I hate lists" (which isn't super-relevant, but whatever...) BLTN: The Disorder of Things had a symposium on open-access journals in the social sciences. Pablo K., Colin Wight, David Mainwaring, Nivi Manchanda, Nathan Coombs,...

Robert Gallucci, head of the MacArthur Foundation and former Dean of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, lays out his view of "How Scholars Can Improve International Relations." Adam Elkus scores the "winners and losers" in the Gaza conflict. Matt Fay answers Max Boot's response to his criticisms of comparisons between Iron Dome and US BMD. China's successful aircraft carrier flight landing at China Defense Blog. More from Rob Farley on the PRC's "fully armed and operational aircraft carrier." At 3QD, Elisabeth Rehn argues for better integrating women into peace processes. And also:...

I got back from an extended trip to London last night. To all the people who hosted me for talks, entertained me, and generally made the trip both fun and productive: a big thanks! I also bought some sweet rubber ducks at the British Museum. I'm going to start repeatedly flogging the nomination process and voting registration for the academic international-studies blogging awards. You can reduce the annoyance factor by submitting nominations soonest possible. Note that just because you don't register doesn't mean that you won't receive a ballot, but registration ensures that you will. I will...

I'm at the end of a rather long trip to London, which is why I haven't been able to process or upload either Duck of Minerva or NBN podcasts yet. Nevertheless, I've got some good stuff coming on both fronts. So stay tuned. Today's linkage focuses on Gaza. Al-Jazera reports that 92 Palestinians have now been killed by Israeli attacks. The Washington Post leads with essentially the same story. CNN is certainly paying attention to the civilian death toll, even as it reports on the "success" of Iron Dome in protecting Israeli cities. Wired has an interesting report on the "social media" war with...

From our infatuation with swing states to the pageantry of the Chinese Communist Catwalk -- great night of TV in China as Xi Jingping steps out first from behind the curtain.  I miss the old days when it was a surprise.... This isn't going to end well.  This morning's Jerusalem Post editorial: "Operation Pillar of Defense – like Operation Cast Lead – will not change the fundamental dynamics in Gaza." Twitter goes to war.   Aren't there Twitter rules?  Open thread A fundamental transformation?  Competition over the rescaling of governance.  Shahar Hameiri and Lee Jones on the Politics and...