Publishing

Quick Link: The Top 10 Worst Graphs in Science

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Karl Bowman offers a list of the top 10 worst graphs in the scientific literature. Bowman not only critiques each graph, but also offers suggestions to improve the graph in the future. For this list, the social sciences were not included. I imagine that we have some relatively uninformative displays in our articles, but I have … Read more

Free Access to Early 20th century and 19th century articles via JSTOR

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Estranged academics, individuals in the private sector, and the public at large can rejoice (a bit) as JSTOR has officially announced that it will make American articles and journals published before 1923 publicly available. Journals published prior to 1870 in other countries will also be made available. The official announcement states: I am writing to … Read more

Aid to Pakistan

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Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy has a piece up regarding the changes to US-Pakistani relations that may be coming out of this week's events.  Rogin is specifically discussing the debate in Congress over cutting military assistance to Pakistan.  Clearly this discussion has a long way to go, and the article indicates that significant divisions are emerging in both houses of Congress over what the appropriate response is. 

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Healthcare Incentives

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I've apparently been sitting on this post for a while, so this might be (is quite literally) old news for many out there.  It's an op-ed piece from The New York Times from a few months back on the healthcare legislation (No, this it not about IR).    What caught my eye was at the end of … Read more

Finally Choosing Sides, Huh?

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This isn't terribly surprising, but it seems that some NATO states have finally made their preferences publicly known.  The UK is sending a small group of military advisors to Libya to…well, advise, and train Libyan rebels.  This is apparently part of a joint British and French operation.   I don't think it was a secret … Read more

Mr. Y. is no Mr. X.

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I've been meaning to say something about this for a while now, but happen to be a little late to the show.  A couple of weeks ago two Marine Corps officers, whom I presume are members of the joint staff, released an article under the pseudonym "Mr. Y.," harkening back to George Kennan's "X" article in Foreign Affairs.  In a nutshell, their article attempts to provide a broad conceptual framework through which America's role in global affairs can be viewed through the next century.  John Norris at FP has some comments on the piece for those who are interested.  I have a few thoughts of my own…

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Chinese Military Capabilities

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Interesting article from Defense News on US-Chinese relations.  The US CINC of Pacific Command has noted that Chinese naval forces have seemed less aggressive this year than they were last year, and offers a couple of explanations for why.  I have some thoughts on these explanations, but there is one other point that I also find particularly interesting:

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Another Word on Libya

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So, it appears that the issue of just who the rebels in Libya are is finally beginning to receive greater attention.  Good for the policymakers and the press!  Even before the question of arming the rebels came into question, this should have been front and center.  The presumption up until this point seems to have made is that the ouster if Ghadaffi is a good thing for regional stability.  A solo-act rebel takeover would leave us in fundamentally the same situation that a western-backed ouster would leave us in.  Specifically, we are left with the destruction of a regime, and little idea as to what sort of institutional arrangements would take its place, and who would occupy those institutions, which (in my mind) does not sound like a recipe for enhancing regional stability.   

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Stupid people doing their stupid jobs

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Dan Drezner has a good post that is worth a read.  Again, I think the issue he's discussing raises the question on how some of these lower-level actors fit into the policymaking process.  This piece also sort of raises the issue of how these actors should fit into the broader public discourse over policies as … Read more

Maps Maps Maps, Part Deux

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I posted a few days ago about openheatmap.com, a website that will convert your csv files into fancy thermal maps.  One problem with our initial attempts to map out the presence of American military forces abroad was that the data are highly skewed.  Some countries host upwards of 50,000–60,000 American military personnel in the year … Read more