As someone who’ll soon be walking away from the day job to pursue research, writing, and teaching opportunities, I find this sort of thing useful (if terrifying). Pundits like Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Peter Howard have been making some pretty clear points on the vicissitudes of pursuing an academic career. Drezner’s take on their discussion puts things in perspective:

Over at Duck of Minerva, Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Peter Howard have had a lively exchange of blog posts about the decision to become a professor — i.e., is it a calling, or just one of many kinds of symbolic analyst jobs? Start with Patrick’s first post(arguing that the academy is like a religious calling), then Peter’s response(pointing out the structural problems with this analogy), and then Patrick’s reply.

I’m far more sympathetic to Peter’s argument. Indeed, I confess to a visceral distaste for the undercurrent in Patrick’s disquisitions that, “oh, this is just the most special job in the world!” It is to him, to be sure — but there are many aspiring academics who don’t ever get the “good” jobs, and there even more inquisitive souls who possess the intellectual heft and curiosity but feel no need to enter the academy to continue a life of the mind. I also think Patrick completely ignores the powerful socialization effects that take place in graduate school — effects that can thoroughly f*** up people’s priorities in unhealthy ways, to the point where they start sounding like… Patrick.

That said, he still has half a point. There is a certain type of mindset that is well-suited to the academy, and will be happy even if theylive a life of post-doctoral fellowships, adjunct positions,andvisiting positions. And given that higher education might be the next bubble to burst, it would be good if we had some kind of Sorting Hat mechanism to inform people before they entered a doctoral program whether they’re doing the right thing.

For those academic wannabes out there, here’s a simple three-question survey to help guide you through this very important choice:

A) You are happiest when you see your name:

1. Mentioned on television.
2. Tagged on Facebook.
3. Listed in the acknowledgments of an obscure article written by a former professor for whom you were an RA.

B) It is 2 AM on Saturday morning. You are:

1. Asleep.
2. Still out partying.
3. Feeling an odd compulsion to catch up on Arts & Letters Daily.

C) Which of the following phrases gets you the most excited?

1. “This job offer comes with a 401(k).”
2. “I scored two tickets to the Red Sox game.”
3. “Your paper has been accepted without revision.”

If your answer to all of the above was (3), then yeah, you’re pretty much doomed fated to trying out academia.

Or something along those lines. Active participation in blogging  by academics has come a long way over the last few years, but it still has a way to go before it achieves the sort of critical mass of credibility that will satisfy the ivory tower. In some disciplines – like law and architecture – blogging seems to be more prevalent than in others (I write “seem” simply because I’m assuming it to be so, but haven’t really counted the beans, so I don’t actually know on empirical grounds whether blogging predominates in one or the other academic discipline).

This case – holy smokes – looks and feels like a malicious outing of a formerly anonymous blogger who also happens to be a non-tenured law professor. What if, as a result of this, said formerly anonymous blogger could demonstrate that he suffered professional discrimination, was not granted tenure, or suffered other repercussions? as a direct consequence of having his identity revealed against his wishes? 

Robert Kaplan’s recent Foreign Policy essay, The Revenge of Geography, was vintage stuff, entirely consistent with his tried and true essentialist arguments about the world. Whatever you might think of his ideas, Kaplan’s most recent foray also articulates a number of salient and timely points about realism resurgent in international relations. Anyone reading new work on Afghanistan and insurgency will recognize  elements of this trend in recent publications by Thomas Johnson and Chris Mason of the Naval Postgraduate School, and David Kilcullen of David Kilcullen the Center For a New American Security and the Crumpton Group.

Foreign Policy has just published a series of critical responses to Kaplan’s essay. From the FP intro:

Fights over geography have gone on ever since early man first dropped from the trees and started marking the territory he landed on. So it is little surprise that Robert D. Kaplan’s “The Revenge of Geography” has sparked some controversy and a number of smart responses.

In recent decades, talk of a “death of distance” at the hands of globalization has fed hopes that politics, economics, and even humans themselves might once and for all transcend the constraints of the physical world. Not so, Kaplan contends. His article reflects insights gleaned from decades of reporting from some of the most remote parts of the globe, marrying them to his readings of the great geographical determinists of the Victorian age. It is these thinkers, Kaplan argues, who offer the truest guidance to the many ways that geography continues to constrain human action. And “The Revenge of Geography” is his effort to breathe new life into an old way of looking at the world — one that respects the relief map and tries to discern the limits it imposes.

The responses to Kaplan come from academic geographers, students and teachers of geopolitics, and a world-traveling journalist. We decided to continue the discussion here at ForeignPolicy.com. Six responses to Kaplan are published below, and we are sure the debate will only continue to rage. Fights over geography may never end, but at least they now occur in print and in cyberspace, rather than with sticks and stones.

That last line is pretty flip and stupid, and makes me want to throw sticks and stones at FP for printing it, but at least the debate’s happening. Go read the rest: “Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts,” by Gerald Toal; “Back to the Field,” by Christian Caryl; “Imperial Geopolitics,” by John Morrissey; “Rotten Tree, Rotten Apple,” by Gerry Kearns; “The Human Element,” by Simon Dalby; and “The Use and Abuse of Geography,” by David Polansky.

Best. Concept. Development. Ever. Wired UK’s Katie Scott reports that uber-Director Ridley Scott is working up a web series called Purefold, which “will chart the period leading up to the era depicted in Blade Runner.” Quoting an MTV announcement:

“The plot will eventually carry into the film’s era, with the plot being shaped along the way based on audience feedback,” it reports.

MTV says that the series will not be “a continuation of the adventures of Rick Deckard, the doomed Rachel, Gaff, or the workings of the Tyrell Corporation” as RSA Films, the studio making the series, does not own the rights to these characters or the storyline.

Production company Ag8, run by David Bausola and Tom Himpe, has an even funkier description of the project’s inception and architecture:

Purefold is the first product conceived by Ag8 and developed in partnership with Ridley and Tony Scott’s newly launched entertainment division Free Scott. Purefold is an open media franchise designed for brands, platforms, filmmakers, product developers and communities to collaboratively imagine our near future.

With a central theme ‘What does it mean to be human?’, the franchise explores the subject of empathy – a shared theme with Ridley Scott’s most compelling Science Fiction movie, Blade Runner.

The franchise contains infinite interlinked story lines, turned into short-format episodes by Ridley Scott Associate Films’ global talent pool of directors, and informed by real-time online conversations from the audience, which are harvested through FriendFeed, the world’s leading ‘life streaming’ technology.

Taking place in the near future, Purefold enables participating brands to take an alternative route to brand integration than traditional product placement and embrace invention within a narrative framework.

Purefold content will be distributed according to the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license, giving both audiences, brands and platforms unprecedented equal use rights through their participation.

Purefold is supported by commercial and academic pillars, such FriendFeed, Creative Commons, WPP, Aegis, Publicis and Naked Communications.

Incept date for the first episode, according to Wired UK, is sometime “later this summer.”

Well, no one ever accused Charles Taylor of being stable. The nutcase quixotic former President of Liberia, according to several blogs and a BBC interview with one of his wives, has now converted to Judaism. Given the way he’s kicked around the Mandingo, West Africa’s nomadic Muslims, I guess Islam wasn’t really an option, although he was always schizophrenic about dressing himself up as Everyman while picking on various minority groups (and one big majority: civilians). Whichever route he’s chosen, I’m sure there are any number of survivors of the little mischief-maker’s practices who’d like to help him along in his quest to get closer to God.

Maybe ole’ Superglue figures he needs all the help he can get. Maybe he just thought it might be hip. Maybe it’s an icky way of getting closer to pop fame via Madonna. Maybe it’s driven by some bizarro internal calculus involving amnesty, Israel, the Mossad, and a happy place with dwarves on wooden horses prancing around 1980s era video vixens in French lingerie. Or maybe he’s just a basket case fishing for an insanity defense.

In all seriousness, there hasn’t been a lot of work done to really try to explain Taylor’s psychology. He attended college in the Boston area in the late 1970s, around the same time that, according to Peter Novick, Holocaust consciousness was really beginning to flower. There are traces of the latter that show up in his speechifying in the early stages of the Liberian civil war; I always thought there was a potential correlation between the two threads that would explain some of the texture and detail of his radio broadcasts during that period. If anyone can get a look at his academic transcripts, talk to his former teachers, or look at school records for traces of his involvement in student politics, I’m sure there’ll be something in there that would help explain the thinking behind his newfound multi-denominationalism.