Disqus - Latest Comments for Funkypants

Re: Climate change and the mission of higher education

Ed Webb — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 23:16:10 -0000

I agree with most/all of the above. If I may, I'll toot the horn of my own, much smaller and less wealthy institution, where we've been doing integrated stuff on this for some time, including internationally as well as at home in Central PA. Sustainability and, particularly, climate issues are taught across the curriculum, cooked into our residence life, study abroad, and co-curricular work, and anchored in the local community through civic engagement, the work of our organic college farm, and other initiatives. Maybe the big schools could learn from experiments like ours. See: https://www.dickinson.edu/sustainability

Re: Episode #088: Conference Call

Ed Webb — Sat, 23 Feb 2019 13:38:49 -0000

Productive discussion of the Trump admin's shenanigans vis-à-vis Iran. One error I noted: Binyamin Netanyahu is not Israel's head of state. In parliamentary systems, the Prime Minister is head of government, but the head of state is a president (in Israel or Germany, for example) or a monarch (in the UK or Jordan, for instance).

Re: Withdrawal Debate Prompts Question: Why Were U.S. Troops Deployed To Afghanistan And Syria?

Ed Webb — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 13:51:32 -0000

Robin said Bin Laden was Shiite, a shocking error.

Re: Insatiable Quester: Vergessen: Pome of the Month

Ed Webb — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 17:12:35 -0000

Ich gratuliere Dich!

Re: What’s Going On in the Sinai?

Ed Webb — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 15:50:34 -0000

I don't think we have enough information yet, alas. But I agree that ISIS don't have much to gain and potentially have a lot to lose by an operation of this sort, for reasons you've covered.

If I were drawing up a list of suspects with motive, means, and opportunity, I'd probably put AQ near the top, probably AQAP as the most capable and nearest affiliate. Egypt has supported Russia's intervention in Syria, so driving a wedge there is helpful in their eyes. Egypt is also backing GCC intervention in Yemen which is at best ambiguous from an AQAP perspective. Hitting Egypt's economy in the Sisi era sits well with a strategy of weakening Far Enemy assets. But the target is probably Russia more than Egypt here, due to their hitting Jabhat al-Nusra in Syria.

Far less likely would be the intelligence service of some Gulf state angered by Egypt aligning with Russia in Syria. They have an interest in Egypt remaining reasonably stable, and the economic fallout of this will be considerable. Moreover, the consequences of getting caught would just not be worth it. But who knows who's calling the shots there? Wacky things sometimes happen, such as the invasion of Yemen...

Long shots include Houthis (Egypt backing GCC in Yemen), a hitherto unknown radical breakaway group of disaffected Muslim Brothers, a radical Palestinian faction trying to raise the siege of Gaza...

I'm sure some in Egypt are already blaming SIS, the CIA, Mossad, or all three.

Re: Win this Stunning Knaggs Kenai T3 Sunflower!

Ed Webb — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 13:46:36 -0000

Beautiful guitar. But I have a special hatred for competitions that require you to post on Facebook to enter. Don't use Facebook, can't enter. Too bad.

Re: Russia’s Coercive Diplomacy against Ukraine: The Power Politics Story

Ed Webb — Mon, 03 Mar 2014 09:53:27 -0000

You use "in lieu of" incorrectly and, therefore, confusingly. What do you mean the couple of times you use it? "In light of"? "As a consequence of"?

Re: Women and the residential fellowship: a few thoughts

Ed Webb — Sun, 22 Sep 2013 11:05:43 -0000

As the father of a child with special needs, I have never felt able to apply to residential fellowship programs: I can't disrupt my family by either being away for such a period or by moving them. A periodic seminar structure with online interactions in-between strikes me as a very workable substitute.

Re: Dangerous Minds | Islamic group issues fatwā on croissants!

Ed Webb — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 17:29:03 -0000

When this popped up on twitter a couple of days ago it was quickly debunked as Arabiya falling for a satirical post/site.

Re: What are the “Big Issues” of International Politics, and How Should Journals Address Them?

Ed Webb — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 19:23:22 -0000

A "big" question that IR should surely be paying more attention to (unless I'm missing a significant corpus of work out there somewhere) is how climate change is affecting and will affect international politics. I'm mainly Middle East/North Africa focused, so I'm interested in water and food security, desertification and climate refugees: when I teach on these issues in an IR class I tend to assign articles from outside the subdiscipline, usually outside political science altogether, which is not very satisfying. But it's not just a MENA issue, of course. Sub-saharan Africa and South Asia, among others, face the same issues. Arctic melt and the scramble for resources is also going to be huge, I would have thought.

Re: teaching (comparative) politics — Here’s an interesting question that I find myself...

Ed Webb — Sun, 14 Jul 2013 15:12:46 -0000

Were I a young, black male, the lesson I would draw from this incident and verdict is that I should arm myself and carry a weapon at all times. Would I be wrong? Florida's law and US gun culture point in only one direction, it seems.

Re: Scripting News: Sexism in tech reporting

Ed Webb — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 00:47:12 -0000

Thanks for this, Dave. It caused me to recall my favorite Dilbert cartoon: http://search.dilbert.com/c...

Re: Generals Have Sex!

Ed Webb — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:36:22 -0000

US popular & media prurience is nothing new. The more fascinating elements of this story are not the soap opera elements so much as the electronic communications angles. Then again, I agree with your general point that there are very many more substantive stories the media should be devoting their resources to.

Re: blizzy blog : commentable now?

Ed Webb — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:23:34 -0000

I may or may not be leaving a comment.

Re: The 5 Pillars of Mitt Romney's Foreign Policy

Ed Webb — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:55:37 -0000

"shaped and led by Washington" - you're welcome.

Nice post otherwise. Point five is particularly on the money.

Re: Scheduling 101: Appointment Slots in Google Calendar

Ed Webb — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 11:26:07 -0000

Tungle, which I have been using for years, just announced they will be shutting down the service in December. I'm looking at alternatives for next semester. The Google Calendar native stuff is less useful for me because our campus apps are not Google, so students don't all have accounts or use GCal themselves. Tungle recommend looking at doodle, which I use for scheduling one-off events, but I don't see as a replacement for Tungle for scheduling appointments more generally.

Why do they keep taking away the most useful apps? *shakes fist at "them"*

Re: Afghan Lord: A de facto partition for Afghanistan

Ed Webb — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:01:36 -0000

An interesting use of alternative history to project possible futures! http://althistory.wikia.com...

Re: Afghan Lord: A de facto partition for Afghanistan

Ed Webb — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:16:50 -0000

Did you make the map yourself, or find it somewhere else?

Re: http://macguffin.marthaburtis.net/post/27236582780

Ed Webb — Sat, 14 Jul 2012 23:52:25 -0000

:D Loved the period slang!

Re: Choose Your Own Adventure Books Now Available in the iBookstore!

Ed Webb — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 23:20:54 -0000

I picked up a copy of the very first Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone Fighting Fantasy choose your own adventure book - Warlock of Firetop Mountain - at our local library's free books stand today. It has the U.S. cover rather than the U.K. one I remember, but still - an important slice of '80s childhood. There's an interview with Steve & Ian here: http://www.vice.com/read/st...

Re: An Arab Citizen - مواطن عربي: Why Al-Nour Chose Abul-Fotouh?

Ed Webb — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 12:24:49 -0000

Could it be a socio-economic thing? Are the MB seen as more elitist, while the Salafists are populist, and Abul Fotouh is just more popular at street level?

Re: Kofi Annan Can't Admit He Failed in Syria - Global - The Atlantic Wire

Ed Webb — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:56:31 -0000

The way I read it, the Friends of Syria process, including Annan's mission, is designed to wear down Russian & Chinese opposition to more direct intervention, by showing that diplomatic routes have been exhausted. It is not actually expected or even intended to succeed. See also my commentary after attending the first FoS meeting in Tunisia:
http://worldwideedwebb.word...

Re: Fighting censorship on principle - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Ed Webb — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:27:21 -0000

Chakchouk is doing a great job, so far as I can tell, not only fighting this in the courts but taking the time to explain his stand in the media.

One minor correction: Sussex is a county, not a town.

Re: Outrage over Egypt's arrest of NGO workers, but US would have done the same - CSMonitor.com

Ed Webb — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:03:02 -0000

What would be different in the west, almost certainly, is that any such organizations would not be permitted to work in a legal gray zone for so long. The absence of consistently applied rule of law is a serious complication in this case. Egyptian and foreign observers are right to be skeptical about the manner in which the legal action has unfolded now, after years of NGOs (local and international) being allowed to operate but denied formal registration. A democratic Egypt needs a real separation of powers and consistent rule of law, rather than the arbitrary exercise of power that has been the rule.

The broader political point is clear and valid.

Re: Georgia Tech Invokes FERPA, Cripples School’s Wikis

Ed Webb — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:19:19 -0000

I hope faculty and others at G Tech are challenging this.