Forever War, The – Revisiting
Posted on January 19, 2013
My sabbatical semester-or the functional equivalent, a competitively-awarded research semester-is coming rapidly to a close. In a few days I will leave behind my laptop desk and comfortable chair at Garner Narrative in Louisville, Kentucky for a short visit with my family in (the vicinity of) Portland, Oregon and then return to a hectic teaching schedule in Abu Dhabi. Continue reading Forever War, The – Revisiting
David Nather at Politico has written a nice polemic (” Drones: Tough Talk, Little Scrutiny “) taking American lawmakers to task for posturing and hot air–at best–in response the current moment of awareness regarding drone warfare, indicting them with their own words. Continue reading Droning
Biocultural approaches to the study of human behavior, institutions, and circumstances promise to be among the most powerful tools ever developed. But as the technology for gene sequencing has thus far vastly outstripped the interpretive science of meaningfully mapping genes to human scale outcomes, there is a lot of over-reaching. Continue reading Bad Science
Below is a privately distributed piece of writing by my cousin, Dan Shea, artist, activist and Marine Corps veteran. I was moved by his reflections and put in mind of so many conversations I have had with veterans in recent years, reflecting on war and its human aftermath. Published here on my blog by permission. Continue reading White Noise – Veteran Writing
“If the truth be told, the less the world knows about a place, the easier it is to generalize about. Are not all ethnic and religious conflicts, Muslim societies, underdeveloped economies, terrorist movements, and failed states fundamentally alike, especially in poor countries? Unfortunately they are not, and assuming that they are imposes a uniformity that is deceptively dangerous” (Thomas Barfield 2010, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History, Princeton University Press).
Of all of these, the “terrorist movement” is probably most alien, and thereby easiest to generalize, when if practice the shared use of terror as tactic is almost absolutely devoid of meaningful information.
Sadly, or at least sadly for me, many of my previous Xenophilia posts are more-or-less permanently lost, including some of my commentaries on David Graeber’s brillian book, Debt: The First 5000 Years . I have, in the interim, modified my workflow to make sure this doesn’t happen again, even if the blog itself explodes. Continue reading Renting and Selling
For the last several years robotics companies such as Norway’s Prox Dynamics AS have been developing tiny, helicopter-like drones for military and law enforcement surveillance. Known as personal reconnaissance systems, this new generation of miniature UAVs hit the mediascape the last few hours, as the British army announced the newish technology. Continue reading The Black Hornet
This is my Xenophilia blog where I post various occasional writings as well as links to my publications, and by invitation to current projects. Many of the older posts have been lost and the posts I am reposting are not necessarily in the order they were written. Hopefully, going forward from June 2015 this will be resolved.
The links at the top of the page can be used to navigate to my biography page and to various current projects.
If you are looking for my academic writing, try academic.edu. In the future I will add additional links to ongoing projects, e.g. my work on stand-up comedy and masculinity, as it becomes more developed and interesting.