Primarily Cats and Dogs

Separation as a concept has a tainted history in America. It immediately brings to mind memories of segregation all too fresh in our national memory. But despite this gag-reflex of revulsion from the word separation, sometimes it's not a bad thing. In fact, it is very often a very good thing. Lets be totally honest, it's better if some things and some people are just kept apart, some things should just never be together because when they are the results are horrific.

You brought this upon yourself, America. Now you must live with what you have done

If you need any more proof as to the necessity of separation (which you really shouldn't, I mean come on guys, Cats and Dogs. If you're still not convinced you obviously haven't seen it, and its sequel), look at the conflict between the State of Israel and a conglomeration of terrorist organization that claim loyalty to an ancient tract of land called "Palestine." The root of the bloody conflict that rages to this day there is that neither side will just leave. Anyone who has ever run away from a fight can tell you that, the easiest way to have peace is just to leave.

So to make a short ramble even shorter, when Rosenblum says

"The only way to keep them safe is to be separate. A nation with the power to protect its own."

I can only agree. Sometimes it's for the best of everyone for one party to just stop causing problems and leave.

Thanksgiving Reflection

Here is a list of fun things that happened over my Thanksgiving break; I slept 14 hours a day, I nearly ate myself into a diabetic coma, I bought a bunch of things I don't really need at reduced yet still astronomical prices, and I developed a nice case of bronchitis. Some of these things were more enjoyable than others, you can guess which ones are which.

What I feel like

Getting back to school I was smacked square in the face with a bludgeoning of work, including my world politics major simulation. It hurt. By in the way of my gladiatorial ancestors (my ancestors weren't actually gladiators but wouldn't it be cool if they were?), I rolled with the hit and came up fighting like a champion.

See the family resemblance?

From the moment the doors of Letts hall closed behind me, I was thinking like a Chinese banker, quite a change in mindset I assure you. My world was dominated by interest rates and loan caps, all in Yuan of course. I still haven't quite put that behind me yet so don't be surprised if I answer any questions directed my way with Chinese interest rate liberalization graphs.

This is what I think like

Reflective Post: Week 13

I didn't like the American Indian museum. Not for high minded moral reasons like the objectification of a people, I just thought it was boring. Sorry, I'm shallow like that. Ever since I was a little kid I had an almost overwhelming distain for most thing Native American related. I have no problem with the people, I just think that looking at mud huts and sinew-bound spears interspersed with an occasional cave painting isn't my idea of a good time. There are so very many captivating histories of so many fascinating cultures, I have no inclination whatsoever to study the Native Americans.

Which one would you rather study? Honestly...

Unfortunately, we sent the majority of the week in early colonial so, I have to admit, I spent most of the week in silence. I knew classes like this would come, where I could not and would not want to participate, but I can't say I enjoyed it.

The Alternative Perspective One

This question reminds me of an exercise we have done a few times in my College Writing class. In said exercise each member of the class is given an academic field and we have to look at whatever article/book we are discussing from the perspective of that discipline. The objective of this is to make us see what we're learning in a different light and it works surprisingly well. Moral of the story? Looking at anything from alternative perspectives is always beneficial no matter what you're examining.

World politics is no exception. In fact in many cases alternative perspectives are even more important in world politics than other fields. Why, you ask? So much with the questions...

But in all seriousness, no matter how hard we all try, everyone has an inherent bias when it comes to world politics (some more pronounced than others) whether that's simply a bias towards the country of our origin or residence or something more. Due to this it is crucial to step back from our own partialities and reanalyze the issues that get us all so worked up from a different perspective.

Reflective Post: Week 11

I have never felt more proud to be American than I did this Wednesday at The Pentagon. Walking through the halls of that fortress built to protect our way of life my veins were pumping red white and blue. Luckily there was no Army recruitment center by the exit because I'm pretty sure I would have enlisted on the spot and shipped off to Afghanistan to die for our country.

After the tour was over, instead of dashing back to campus like everyone else, me and Mr. Christian T. R. Cavender had a leisurely stroll around the majestic building, were asked to "step back and take your hands out of your pockets" by a assault rifle wielding Pentagon security officer (I was honored), and ended up at the our-door 9/11 memorial. The memorial was breathtaking and wandering between the benches of the fallen, I realized just how amazing this country is and how unequivocally lucky we are to live here. So many have given their lives to make our lives the way they are today and we can never let them be forgotten.

So the moral of this blog post is a solemn homage to those who died, willingly or unknowingly, for the freedoms we enjoy.

זיכרונו לברכה

Zikhrono livrakha

May their memories be a blessing.

Reflective Post: Week 10

This week we talked a lot about national security so I suppose I should talk about that in this post as well. The nation faces threats from all sides and even from inside our golden gates of opportunity. Trust no one. Shoot first, ask questions later. Ok I talked about it.

Apparently everyone else in the class just talked about The Rally in their reflective posts so I suppose, in the resigned-sheep nature of this post, that I'll talk about that too. First of all, I did not go to The Rally nor did I have any desire to go. From what I've gleaned about The Rally it was an oversized comedy show that flaunted pseudo-political jabber as real activism. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about standing up for what you believe in and making a statement, but a bunch of kids laughing at a couple comedians and musicians make fools of themselves and their country on the national mall is not social activism. John Stewart and Steven Colbert are funny men, but that' about it. In case your forgot their shows are on Comedy Central, not CNN or FOX or any other organization even claiming to be legitimate news or political commentary.

But congratulations are in order to the two gentlemen mentioned above for pulling off the biggest farce to be called political action since Woodstock.

Dude, I just solved all America's problems...wait...nope...I lost it. Let's just do some acid and maybe I'll remember it again

The Boundaries One

In a world with planes that break the sound barrier and missiles that can pilot themselves halfway around the globe in mere hours, there are no physical boundaries a country can put on its national security. In a simpler time, a ruler could keep a strong perimeter and never have to worry about his national security until someone broke it. But now not only do we have to worry about being nuked from across the Pacific, we have to worry about being bombed from inside our own country, and apparently they're telling us the debt is a threat to national security now too.

Pictured above: The National Debt

Who can keep track of all that threat? Not I. So I'm going to break it down nice and simple: anything and anyone that threatens the safety and security of the nation as a whole, is national security. This does not include things that are only threatening to a small, select group of Americans, only things that threaten us all or our national identity. In that respect national security has no limits, no matter what, no matter where, if it was a threat to us all, national security would take care of it. But in another sense, it would have boundaries of who/how many it could protect. Another boundary of national security must be personal freedoms. For example, if smoking related deaths were considered a matter of national security, we would risk losing that identity that we work so hard to protect.

Reflective Post: Week 9 (ZOMBIES!!)

Hmmm...on what to reflect on a week such as this? I could write another post about Diplomatic Risk, what we did in class all week, but a) I already did that, and b) I was killed in a plane crash about halfway through the game and the undead have very little interest in the breakdown of power between nations. They tend to be more occupied with destroying society, or at least reducing it to a ragtag band of unlikely and diverse survivors who will probably have to overcome some preconceived notions about each other (and maybe even themselves) to survive the onslaught of flesh-eating corpses.

All the peoples of the world singing in perfect harmony...with a shotgun

But the impending zombie apocalypse has nothing to do with IR. Or does it? If you ask Daniel W. Drezner, international politics professor at Tufts University, zombies have quite a lot to do with IR theory. So much in fact that he's writing a book about it. Unfortunately, his website containing most of the information on the forthcoming book, Theories of International Politics and Zombies, is currently incapacitated but I was able to find an article summarizing three major strains of IR theories likely approaches to the zombie plague.

Realists would carry on like everything was normal, treating zombies like any other infectious plague. They would mostly leave it to the people to deal with the zombies themselves and expect the problem to fizzle out like all the other great plagues we've weathered as a society.

It's ok, they're just a societal phase. They will go away if we wait it out on this ledge

Liberals would take the problem somewhat more seriously but expect nations to deal with the problem on their own, never really expecting the zombies to be completely wiped out but accepting it as a fun opportunity to make some new governmental agencies and maybe a new UN sub-comittee solely for zombie killin'.

"You could say I'm in international diplomacy"

My personal favorite though, has to be the neoconservative approach. As Robert Kagan aptly said, "Humans are from earth, zombies are from hell." Rehabilitation would not be considered. Zombies threatened human hegemony. They would be completely, utterly and mercilessly annihilated. It would basically be like the end of Shaun of the Dead times a million.

HEADSHOT!

So there you have it. Enjoy your IR theory debates, but when the zombie apocalypse comes around, I'm a neoconservative.

Source: http://www.graspingforthewind.com/2010/07/27/international-relations-theory-and-zombies/

Risk Vs. Li/Statham

Diplomatic Risk and real life international relations differ most significantly in the fact that Risk is played on a cardboard map of the world with armies consisting of tiny plastic soldiers and cannons whereas in the real world war looks more like this....

Note the marked absence of Jet Li and Jason Statham in Risk, a staple of any real-world war

But all joking aside, Risk and real life are similar in many ways. Both involve a powerful/powerhungry ruler or ruling class striving to gain more power in the mercantilist sense, by taking it from others. Diplomatic Risk brings the element of diplomacy (surprise surprise) tot he Risk board which basically entails making treaties and alliances with other nations/armies and only allowing a nation to attack a notion that it is at war with.

Diplomatic Risk does a pretty good job in demonstrating realist IR theory, but when it comes to the other theories, it misses the subtleties of relationships between states both in wartime and in peacetime. The other ways in which Diplomatic Risk can never give a truly accurate representation of real-world war is morality and self preservation. There is no morality in Risk. If you send 10 units into a massacre it has no lasting moral side effects of your conscience that those little plastic markers were removed from the board, however if you send 10,000 men to their death...well suffice it to say I wouldn't want to meet the man who is unaffected by that. As far as self preservation goes, when you're gambling with real armies and real lives, there is always an element of danger, no matter how far you are from the action. Defeat in Risk means a rematch. Defeat on the field of battle could mean the end of your way of life or just your life in general.

FIRE EVERYTHING!

Of course to accurately simulate all these things would take a "game" of astronomical complexity, something that probably could not be called a "game" at all, but would be more appropriately labeled as a society.

Reflective Post: Week 8

Risk takes a long time to play. It's lengthiness has become almost mythical with tales of games lasting days if not weeks. But in all the stories, nay legends, I've heard, never has it taken an hour and a half to play a mere two turns. Never in the history of ever.

In ever you say? But that's a statistical impossibility! CHECK THE NUMBERS AGAIN!!

But of course this wasn't your Dad's Risk, this was PTJ'd out Risk which basically means it's a lot more political and has crazy twists every few minutes to throw everyone off when they just started to get the rules down in the first place. Despite (and probably in some part, due to) this, IR Risk was awesome and although I can't speak for the rest of the class, I know I walked out of class wishing we could play it all year long.

Get it?

In other breaking news from week 8, there was a paper. We were lulled into a complacent sense of false security by 7 weeks of paperlessness but then, lo and behold, there it was and it couldn't have been a more fitting subject. If any of you read my other blog (The Incubator, Technological), which you al should, or talked to me for any extended period of time, you know I'm a huge sci-fi nerd so writing a paper on blasting space rocks out of the sky with giant lasers and other things straight out of Star Wars, was a dream come true.

NEO threat? Neutralized, Lord Vader

Reflective Post: Week 7

This week we didn't really have "class" so to speak so I'm not exactly sure what to write this on therefore it will most likely be short and possibly sweet, but don't get you're hopes up.

He's disappointed in me too

My group for the simulation met and discussed how to best argue our point. We made a video and I researched hybrid cars. That's basically it. All I have to say on the matter is that I wish we could have chose our own side to argue instead of being assigned, I think it would've made for a more stimulating simulation.

That's about it for this horribly unsatisfactory post. At least you got an adorable baby picture out of the deal and according to what I learned in my Understanding Media class, a baby is still the best image for inciting emotional reaction so just let the tears flow....

Reflective Post: Week 6

Has it been a month and a half already? Part of me feels like I've been here a week and yet another part feels like I've been here for a lifetime.

This reflective post is not going to be my best work, I wasn't in class on Friday and I didn't do the blog this week (I think this was my first skip but I should probably double check that). The most interesting thing I did all week was caption a picture of Yoda plunging his comically short lightsaber through the chest of a clone trooper failing to "execute order 66" which I will include below.

But that is totally unrelated to world politics which is a theme I find repeating itself in this blog. But something I did do this week (actually tonight) that is very related to world politics is read a fascinating paper on social vs. natural sciences, ideal-types vs. value-commitments, critical humanism, Max Weber and how it all relates to Battlestar Galactica. It explored the way social sciences are unfairly forced into boxes by the standards of the natural sciences and the definition of humanity and how that was stretched in Battlestar Galactica among many other things. In short, an engrossing paper which I hope will grace the general public with a speedy and far reaching publication.

Gentlemen, I give you IR theory

Reflective Post: Week 5

I don't want to write a reflective blog post. In fact I don't want to write anything at all. I want to sleep. But desire is irrelevant in the face academic betterment which is in turn made irrelevant because academic betterment is what I desire so this entire statement is in turn made irrelevant.

My brian right now

This week started interestingly with a simulation to illustrate power. Specifically how PTJ has all the power and we have none, like the Russian peasants under the Tsarist reign of terror (sorry about that reference, I just finished writing a paper on the Russian Revolution). The esteemed professor started off class sitting in the back of the room, dressed uncharacteristically in a T-shirt, jeans and a baseball hat with Erin teaching the class. But in a pivotal moment, he cleared his throat and the room went silent as we remembered who had the real power and it had nothing to do with who is wearing the suit and holding a lightsaber.

You're not fooling anyone in those khaki's and Oxford, Star Wars kid

Later that same class (or maybe it was the next class, my mind is to overloaded with knowledge and snark to save any room for a linear sense of time), we did another experiment in power when we scrapped the good old foam baseball and hand raising in favor of anarchical discussion form. In my opinion, this worked better, nothing against the baseball, but it forced people to speak up and make themselves heard when they had something to say. Of course this is coming from me who has never had a problem opening my big mouth (I may even have the opposite problem).

We also went to the French Embassy and for that I will include a French military joke for your reading pleasure:

Q: How many Frenchmen does it take to defend Paris?

A: We don't know, they never tried

Steve Jobs, Walt Disney and Limitless Power

I spent the last 10 minutes of my valuable time scouring the internet for an appropriate quote to start this blog post off right but apparently no one of importance has ever said what I'm about to say so I guess I'll have to make my own quote: a state has no limit to how far it can stretch its power so long as it does so with great care and finesse. There it is, a completely original idea. Now I know how it feels to be Steve Jobs.

A rare window into the inner workings of Apple

Unfortunately this blog is not about Steve Jobs and Apple so I must digress. People inherently want to trust those whom they put in power, it makes them feel safe. This something instilled in us as babies when those leaders are our parents. So when the government starts making some subtle changes in law, the people want to believe it's for their best interests, even if it is not. For example, during the period of Vladimir Lenin's rule in Russia know as the "Red Terror" claimed to be protecting the people through their terrorist acts against "enemies of the revolution." In fact governments many established through revolution are prime examples of how leaders can turn from freedom fighting champions of the people to tyrannical oppressor without the people ever realizing it, the most famous and well executed example of this being Mao Zedong.

Also Walt Disney

Like Machiavelli said, if you get all of your "evil acts" out of the way in the beginning of your rule or very subtly, there is no limit to how far you can stretch your power. Not to be "that guy," but one needs to look no further than Nazi Germany to see how a horrific tyrant can commit unspeakable acts and still have the unconditional support of his people through the calculated exploitation of nationalism and cover-up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin

Reflective Post: Week 4

This week I started listening to the It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia soundtrack while I work. I find that the easy natured andante holds the stress at bay, like a sunbeam cutting through storm clouds (get it? It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia? Sunny? Yeah I went there). Why am I telling you this, you might ask? Because I want to and this is my blog. That's why. Also I didn't have a good opener and while I still don't, I have created a sufficient diversion to throw you off my trail of witty-opening-line-less-ness.

Do you know what a Kansas City Shuffle is?

This week in class we discussed voting and whether it's better to vote without knowing who or what you're voting for, or to not vote at all. This was a topic I had a got a great deal of enjoyment from in both writing the blog and in class. I think that this week's discussion really exemplified the way in which a good discussion will arc and eventually come full circle. Although it started out predictably, as people opened up more and more and their true beliefs came out, it got fun.

On Wednesday we went to the state department. My first impression was that it was a rather unimpressive building for all the importance it houses. But as it turned out, the majesty of that place lay not in the architecture of the building, but the stories of the people inside.

Like this person

The foreign service officer who spoke to us, David Bame, told us amazing stories about negotiating hostages out of prison and dramatic run in's with the Iraqi military. They only made a brief internship pitch, but the tales Bame spun for us were enough to make anyone starting studying for their foreign service officer exam straight away, myself included. That being said, I have to go study up on my Jeopardy trivia. Catch you next time, loyal reader

Don't Be A Communist

I'm gonna get right to the point with this one: Don't vote if you don't know what or who you're voting for. It's pretty simple. We live in a disgustingly partisan country where it has become perfectly acceptable for someone to walk into a voting booth and push all the buttons for their party without ever having heard the names of the people they're voting for before.

Political research at its finest. You are now an informed voter

What is the point of having the choice of who to put in power if we don't make educated decisions about how to use that right? If the people of America are going to make uninformed votes exclusively along party lines why not just vote for parties and let them appoint whomever they want? Better yet, don't vote at all. Let the two parties switch off every 4 years appointing their people to run the country. And since you lazy voters obviously don't even care enough to stop them, why doesn't one party just take control for good? Why not one man? Not to bring this back to the Cold War, but if you don't want to do the research and actually figure out who you're voting for and why, you might as well be a communist.

IS THIS WHAT YOU WANT?!

But never fear all ye Marxists, there is a simple 2 step process to regaining your recently lost Americanliness (yeah it's not a word, but neither was "Road" the first time Shakespeare used it and who's laughing now?). Step 1: go on Google and type in the name of your candidates or district. Step 2: Read literally anything about them. Wikipedia is a good start. Boom. You're an American again and thus happy again because no one wants to be a communist.

Share the wealth, share the PUNCH IN THE FACE FROM ROCKY BALBOA PINKO DOGS!!

The Final Frontier

Attention denizens of Earth: it’s time to give up the losing battle for saving the environment. The planet has already lost 80% of its forests and continues to be destroyed at the horrifying rate of 375 kilometers cubed per DAY (for those of you who like me are more confused than horrified by that number, it is approximately equal to the total area of the northeastern strip of states from New Jersey to Vermont not counting Pennsylvania, New York.) And just in case forests don’t really float your boat and you’re more of an oceans person, don’t fret, there are hope-abandonment inducing facts for you as well. 27% of coral reefs are already dead and 70% more will join them in their watery demise over by the year 2050.

So now that we have ruined our own planet in a less-than-apocalypse-film-worthy fashion,

Sorry Will Smith, no zombies for you to kill this round

we have one option before us: find a new planet and try our luck again. You live and you learn right? Unfortunately Earth is far to tied up in its political, social and religious conflicts to focus on the most important problem facing us all, our feeble lack of any real progress in space exploration since we stuck it to those Russians in 1969.

Even in the most conservative science fiction, we (at the very least) have lunar colonies by the year 2010. And the worst part of our failure to even attempt further space exploration, is that it isn’t as much from a lack of technology as from a lack of budget (AKA the government not taking space exploration seriously). NASA’s general consensus is that "Human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit is not viable under the FY (fiscal year) 2010 budget guideline."

While NASA is busy ironing out their financial woes and helping Toyota with their “Moving Forward” problems*, the heavy lifting in space exploration has fallen to the private sector. Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, the South African CEO of Tesla Motors, co-founder of Pay-Pal and Jon Favreau’s inspiration for the character of Tony Stark, have started private space exploration contractors. Musk’s is called SpaceX and it’s Dragon spacecraft successfully completed it’s final high altitude drop test a mere 5 days ago and will be demonstrating it’s first fully operational flight in the near future.

Personally, I don't see it

SpaceX is not the only private space contractor, Virgin Galactic is currently working on its famous passenger spacecrafts and selling tickets to space for the bargain price of $200,000 (monopoly is a beautiful thing, isn’t it Branson?). Even with innovations like these, we are still eons behind in our “continuing mission to explore strange new worlds...to seek out new life; new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before”

And we should probably hurry it up, before this happens

*http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/29/AR2010032903784.html

Other references:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/020310-layer8-nasa-future-challenges.html

http://www.networkworld.com/slideshows/2009/091809-layer8-nasa.html#slide1

http://www.spacex.com/press.php?page=20100820

http://www.worldcentric.org/conscious-living/environmental-destruction

http://www.virgingalactic.com/