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Please, Mr. Postman: Why the new mediasphere isn't waiting for anyone
Today's NY Times reported the death of Gladys Horton, lead singer of the Marvelettes, whose recording of "Please Mr. Postman" was Motown Records first No. 1 hit. I first heard the song in the...
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A Realist Celebration of St. Patrick's Day
This is a guest post by Sean Kay of Ohio Wesleyan University. As the world goes green for St. Patrick' Day, it is good to reflect on what Ireland's experiences teach us. We might ask, why should a...
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Unanswerable question of the day: Who uttered the first pun?
There's a fascinating piece in today's New York Times, summarizing the findings of a recent Science article on the origins of human language. Based on a mathematical analysis of phonetic diversity...
View ArticleWho are the most entertaining IR scholars?
I was at a book party last night, and a colleague and I started talking about our favorite books in the field. I remarked that one of the odd things about IR (and most social science, for that matter)...
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Berlin diary
I've been in Berlin since last Thursday, and it's been an interesting exercise in slightly rueful nostalgia. I lived in West Berlin for a semester in 1976, as part of an undergraduate overseas study...
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Back to the Beach
I'm off on vacation starting tomorrow and this time I intend to go cold turkey and not blog while I'm away. I really mean it this time. I've lined up a stellar group of guest bloggers to fill in on...
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Back from the beach: A book report
I had a relaxing vacation out on Fire Island, though of course I didn't get quite as much accomplished as I intended. But I did do a lot of reading, and I thought I'd pass a bit of what I learned on...
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Musings on music: Why are there no popular political songs?
I saw the documentary film "Searching for Sugarman" over the weekend, and it got me thinking again about the dearth of popular, mass-market political protest music these days. In case you haven't seen...
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What the America's Cup tells you about globalization
I was watching some of the America's Cup World Series races going on out in San Francisco, and it occurred to me that the evolution of the Cup is a perfect illustration of globalization at work. Back...
View ArticleTop ten things to be thankful for this year
Thanksgiving is a quintessentially American holiday, even though its origins can be traced back to Old World harvest festivals. It is based in part on a romanticized story of the Pilgrims, which took...
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A new paradigm for international relations: Confusionism
If you read this blog, you've probably heard about the various "isms" in the field of international relations. There's realism, of course, but also liberalism, idealism, and social constructivism. And...
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Time for another round of hypothetical holiday gifts
I've finished my holiday shopping (at last), which means it's time for another round of hypothetical gift-giving for some important world leaders and political figures. If it were in my power, here's...
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Top 5 parties in world history
So 2012 is coming to an end and you're busy planning how to ring in 2013. Are you aiming to host a world-historical event? If so, you might want to think about the impact that some past festivities...
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Some inconvenient truths
Here's a little fantasy for you to ponder: what if one of our senior foreign policy officials accidentally swallowed some sodium pentothal (aka "truth serum") before some public hearing or press...
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The eclipse of American (electrical) power
I've made this point before -- here and here -- and I suspect I'll have to make it again. But whatever you think of the outcome of yesterday's Super Bowl, the unexpected second half power outage was a...
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Time for a break …
Privacy under siege here in the USA. Turmoil in Turkey. A grinding civil war in Syria. Obama and Xi making nice out in California. Bond markets queasy. The fate of the eurozone is still anyone's...
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The Difference Between Realists and Liberals
We tend to think that scholars embrace particular theoretical orientations simply because they conclude that certain theories fit the empirical evidence better than others do. But if we're honest, we...
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Short Takes on Recent Events
If you're anything like me, you find it hard to keep up with the Niagara of events and information with which you're deluged every day. It used to be a challenge just to keep track of a half-dozen or...
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Flying Down to Rio
Now that the flap over Syria has been settled (not really...), I guess it's safe for me to get back on the road. Translated: I'm off to Brazil this evening to give a series of lectures at Fundação...
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If the Number of Foreign-Policy Staff Were Cut in Half, What Would Happen?
The U.S. government shutdown got me thinking: How much of the foreign policy-related activity of the federal government is truly necessary? If you waved a magic wand and cut the number of people...
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