Your humble blogger has occasionally been asked to give speeches and/or presentations at other campuses.  Most of the time this comes with an economy-class air ticket and a very modest honorarium.  After reading Sarah Palin's standard speaking contract*, however, I realize I have been far too modest in my demands.  So, from now on, any university that wants to bring me out needs to meet the following criteria: 

1)  The host is responsible for providing a first-class airline ticket between Boston and the event city.  The host is further responsible for ensuring that Courtney Love is seated next to me so I can have her thrown off the plane.  If neither a first-class airline ticket nor Ms. Love is available, Wonder Woman's invisible jet will suffice -- but only if Wonder Woman herself is piloting the craft. 

2)  The host is also responsible for travel within the event city.  The host will provide a jetpack, a Batmobile, or that Aston-Martin DB5 with the ejector seat for local travel.  No giant ants -- so not cool. 

3)  The host will make sure that the following items are available backstage at his speaking engagement: 

1 six-pack of Diet Coke 

1 jar of Ba-Tampte Half-Sour Pickles

6 boxes of frozen Thin Mints

1 bullwhip

1 light saber

1 complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.  None of those condensed/abridged versions, either  -- it's the whole smash or nothing.

4)  Twenty minutes before the speaker's talk, the host will ensure a student walks out to the podium, wearing an incredible sexy ballroom gown, and reads Book One of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War.  Note:  the gender of the student doesn't matter, but that ballroom gown had better be damn sexy.   

5)  The host shall ensure that the following is located on the speakers' podium:

1 bottle of water

1 bag of Funyuns 

1 t-shirt launcher -- those things really do look like they're a lot of fun.

6)  The host shall ensure a moderator asks all of the questions from the audience.  The host shall further ensure that the moderator only asks these questions after inhaling lots of helium.

7)  At the end of the talk, the host shall ensure that this music is played as the speaker leaves the building. 

8)  Under no circumstances is Jay Leno to precede or follow the speaker. 

Readers are encouraged to list their own demands  to be a speaker in the comments. 

*Which, while perhaps at odds with her populism, don't seem all that strange given the surging demand for her services at the moment. 

Believing that this killer whale acted alone is a fool's errand.  This is clearly a harbinger of future killer whale attacks.  I demand that the Department of Homeland Security launch a Killer Whale Division immediately.  These killer mammals of the theme park ocean must be brought to heed. 

Some analysts might argue that this is simply a misunderstanding, and that better communication would help.  This is national security naivite at its most extreme.  Indeed, according to the Los Angeles Times, this whale "had been involved in two previous deaths, including one at the water park in 1999."  I bet authorities are Mirandizing the whale as I type this. 

Negotiating with killer whales will accomplish nothing -- after all, they are killer whales.  We cannot rest unless we have put the largest mammals in the world in their proper place. 

Later today I promise to mock the Obama administration's National Export Initiative to within an inch of its life; on a Friday morning, however,  FP readers deserve a dose of whimsy. 

With pitchers and catchers due to report later this month, I bring you the greatest nexus between sports, world politics, and Web 2.0 technologies yet discovered:  Ichiro Suzuki as a both a precision-guided munition and a weapon of mass destruction. 

Hat tip:  ESPN's Rob Neyer. 

Can we all just acknowledge that James Cameron is, in all likelihood, the mastermind responsible for this discovery? 

I see that after seeing 2012, Blake Hounshell as assigned me with a blog task: 

What is the proper forum for secret doomsday planning? The G-20? The U.N. Security Council? The P5+1 or the EU3 +3? Every country for itself? Mssrs. Drezner and Walt, I'm counting on you to chime in here.

I certainly can't speak for Steve, but it's worth pointing out here how big the mismatch is between how movies think end-of-the-world global governance looks like as compared to what would happen in the real world. 

When the movies do it -- and here I'm thinking about Deep Impact, The Core, Children of Men, etc. -- there's usually a coterie of Really Smart People, or a Council of Elders, or some other expert-driven body that devises a risky but brilliant plan to solve the problem. 

In the real world... well, I suspect the following would be true:

• There would be initial and profound disagreement among experts over what precisely to do;
• After a scientific consensus began to emerge, dissenters would go back to their home governments to lobby for political support 
• There would be rampant suspicion of any multilateral effort by those asked to make an outsized contribution;
• The cost overruns... oh, the cost overruns;
• Conspiracy theories would pop up all over the friggin' place
• The plan wouldn't work.

That said, I suspect the answer to Blake's question is "none of the above."  Unless the End of the World matched perfectly onto a pre-existing international organization, my hunch is that the great powers would start up something de novo. 

Of course, if I actually knew the answer and was one of those Really Smart Persons tapped to solve the problem... well, then you'e all royally screwed. 

UPDATE:  Given my pessimism about the global governance of the End of Days, what can you do to prepare?  Click here to find out.  My favorite quote:  "Make a list of friends and family who live nearby, then decide who you want with you."

When someone publishes an op-ed, longer essay, or book, they have to write a tagline.  It's usually two sentences describing their title and affiliation, and whatever big projects are associated with them. 

After watching the preview for The Invention of Lying, however, I began to wonder what these tag lines would look like if they were brutally honest.  With a nod to Megan Mcardle's "Full Disclosure" post from a few years ago, here's fifteen examples I came up with: 

• Jack Silver is a fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies.  He has been Henry Kissinger's bitch for something like three decades, so when Henry passed on writing something for us, he was the next logical choice.     

• Suzie Wong has never been to the country about which she is writing.  What's in this op-ed is culled from a quick perusal of the Economist and a few phone calls.     

• Cass Bunstein is a law professor.  He dashed off this essay in his head while commuting to work this morning, wrote it in under thirty minutes, and it's still smarter than anything, my dear reader, that will ever pop into your brain. 

• Augustine Cornington has been teaching at an obscure state school for two decades, lying in the tall grass, waiting for her archnemesis to make a mistake in print.  This book review is her chance to completely eviscerate him. 

• Joe Schlub Jr. is a law professor.  This essay is a badly mangled version of an interesting idea he heard Cass Bunstein riff on at a cocktail party last week. 

• Andrew McClutchen is a former governor.  He hopes that this op-ed is the first step in getting beyond that horrible sex scandal from a few years ago. 

• Madeleine McFadden is a former cabinet secretary, and did not write a single word of this policy essay.  It is possible she read the first few paragraphs of it, but that's being really optimistic.

• Jane Babbington has no extraordinary policy expertise.  She does have an awesome book jacket photo, however, and will have better hair and skin than you do until the day she dies.  

• Lou Marston is a very smart professor at Princeton University.  This op-ed is woefully underplaced because he took his own sweet time writing it, and this issue is from last week's news cycle.  

• Robert Knaus lost the capacity to write long-form essays years ago - what you just read is what an intern scraped together from one year's worth of Twitter tweets. 

• Ann Stoneham is the foremost expert on this topic, and cannot write her way out of a paper bag.  Her uber-competent editor busted her ass for the last 48 hours to try and convert this essay into semi-readable prose

• Gwen Pollard is an area expert at a prominent DC think tank.  She fervently hopes that everyone has forgotten how completely wrong she was about this topic just five short years ago.

• C. Thomas Pope is a professor at the University of Chicago, and his worldview hardened into an inpenetrable black mass the day he turned twenty-four.  As no amount of contradictory evidence will cause him to change his mind, he is perfectly willing to make absurd, idiotic statements without worrying that he is wrong. 

• Richard Jensen is a professor at Harvard University.  He has the Mother of All Balloon Payments due on his mortgage next year, so any extra income helps. 

And, of course.....

• Daniel Drezner is a professor at Tufts University, and is publishing the fifth version of exact same idea with this essay.  Seriously, the man would be nothing without the cut and paste function.

Readers are warmly welcomed to come up with their own brutally honest tag lines in the comments. 

The Daily Telegraph reports scientific confirmation of something I have known deep, deep down in my psyche for going on three decades: 

Talking to an attractive woman really can make a man lose his mind, according to a new study.

The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.

Researchers who carried out the study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or 'cognitive resources' trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.

The findings have implications for the performance of men who flirt with women in the workplace, or even exam results in mixed-sex schools.

Women, however, were not affected by chatting to a handsome man.

Well, beyond proof that there's a very fine line between the truth and The Onion, I think there are several fascinating implications from this finding. 

1)  You gotta admit, this explains a lot about Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.  He is the foreign policy leader who seems most determined to be close to attractive women.  If you think about it, it's nothing short of miraculous that Berlusconi hasn't screwed up more than he actually has. 

2)  Attractive first ladies are trouble.  The closest the United States came to a nuclear confrontation was the Cuban Missile Crisis -- which just happens to be when Jackie Kennedy is first lady.  A coincidence?  Oh, I think not! 

One can only hope that Presidents Obama and Sarkozy will recognize this and prevent Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni from being the 21st century equivalents of Helen of Troy. 

3)  Suddenly my Britney Spears suggestion is making a lot more sense. 

4)  Add another explanation to Angelina Jolie's relative success as a celebrity activist.  Semi-seriously, it would be interesting if gender was a determining factor in the ability of celebrity activists to move the agenda. 

5)  Whichever country makes Salma Hayek their queen will have finally chosen the One Woman to Rule Them All!!!

Dd I miss anything? 

Today, your humble blogger will be furiously trying to finish a draft paper before the friggin' students come back to campus hard at work at his day job, preparing for the fall semester.  So I'm outsourcing today's blog content to two videos.

The first has been making the rounds, but it's still funny.  And it's funny because, as Alex Massie observes, "this is horribly close to being a verbatim report from some ghastly cable TV "news" shoutfest.... proving once again that the "fake" news is often better than the so-called "real" news." 

I give you, from the Onion, the Minotaur debate:

Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

And, sometime this month is the three-year annivesary of the funniest bit Denis Leary as ever done anywhere at any time.  It's not easy to find this video, but for your viewing pleasure:

[NOTE TO 2011 AND BEYOND READERS OF THIS POST:  If you like what you read here, then trust me, you'll love the book that came from it:  Theories of International Politics and Zombies, (Princeton University Press, 2011).  This post is where it all began!!]

Alex Massie alerts us to this BBC story about modeling who would win if the dead actually did rise from the grave: 

If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.

That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.

They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures....

To give the living a fighting chance, the researchers chose "classic" slow-moving zombies as our opponents rather than the nimble, intelligent creatures portrayed in some recent films....

[T]heir analysis revealed that a strategy of capturing or curing the zombies would only put off the inevitable.

In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity's only hope is to "hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often".

They added: "It's imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else... we are all in a great deal of trouble."  

Now, one could argue that this finding represents a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious. On the other hand, the report has clear freaked out Alex Massie:

[The researchers] are cheating. It's like something out of Dad's Army: You can't fight like that, it's not in the rules... Then again, if we can be destroyed by Zombie 1.0, just think how powerless we'd be when confronted by Next Generation Zombies...

To try to make Massie feel better let's have some fun with this and ask a different question -- what would different systemic international relations theories* predict regarding the effects of a zombie outbreak? Would the result be inconsequential -- or World War Z? 

A structural realist would argue that, because of the uneven distribution of capabilities, some governments will be better placed to repulse the zombies than others. Furthermore, anyone who has seen Land of the Dead knows that zombies are not deterred by the stopping power of water. So that's the bad news. 

The good news is that these same realists would argue that there is no inherent difference between human states and zombie states.  Regardless of individual traits or domestic instiutions, human and zombie actors alike are subject to the same powerful constraint of anarchy. Therefore, the fundamental character of world politics would not be changed. Indeed, it might even be tactically wise to fashion temporary alliances with certain zonbie states as a way to balance against human states that try to exploit the situation with some kind of idealistic power grab made under the guise of "anti-zombieism." So, according to realism, the introduction of zombies would not fundamentally alter the character of world politics. 

A liberal institutionalist would argue that zombies represent a classic externality problem of... dying and then existing in an undead state and trying to cause others to do the same. Clearly, the zombie issue would cross borders and affect all states -- so the benefits from policy coordination would be pretty massive.

This would give states a great opportunity to cooperate on the issue by quickly fashioning a World Zombie Organization (WZO) that would codify and promnulgate rules on how to deal with zombies. Alas, the effectiveness of the WZO would be uncertain. If the zombies had standing and appealed any WZO decision to wipe them out, we could be talking about an 18-month window when zombies could run amok without any effective regulation whatsoever. 

Fortunately, the United States would likely respond by creating the North American F*** Zombies Agreement -- or NAFZA -- to handle the problem regionally. Similarly, one would expect the European Union to issue one mother of a EU Directive to cope with the issue, and handle questions of zombie comitology. Indeed, given that zombies would likely be covered under genetically modified organisms, the EU would trumpet the Catragena Protocol on Biosafety in an "I told you so" kind of way. Inevitably, Andrew Moravcsik would author an essay about the inherent superiority of the EU approach to zombie regulation, and why so many countries in Africa prefer the EU approach over the American approach of "die, motherf***ers, die!!"  Oh, and British beef would once again be banned as a matter of principle. 

Now, avid followers of social constructivism might think that Wendt and Duvall (2008) have developed a model that would be useful for this kind of event... but you would be wrong. Back when this paper was in draft stage, I specifically queried them about wther their argument about UFOs could be generalized to zombies, vampires, ghosts, the Loch Ness monster, Elvis, etc.  Their answer was an emphatic "no":  aliens would be possessors of superior technology, while our classic sci-fi canon tells us that the zombies, while resistant to dying, are not technologically superior to humans. So that's a dead end.

Instead, constructivists would posit that the zombie problem is what we make of it.  That is to say, there are a number of possible emergent norms in response to zombies. Sure, there's the Hobbesian "kill or be killed" end game that does seem to be quite popular in the movies.  But there could be a Kantian "pluralistic anti-Zombie" community that bands together and breaks down nationalist divides in an effort to establish a world state. Another way of thinking about this is that the introduction of zombies creates a stronger feeling of ontological security among remaining humans -- i.e., they are not flesh-eaters (alas, those bitten by zombies are now both physically and ontologically screwed). 

Unfortunately, I fear that constructivists would predict a norm cascade from the rise of zombies. As more and more people embrace the zombie way of undead life, as it were, the remaining humans would feel social pressure to conform and eventually internalize the norms and practices of zombies -- kind of like the early-to-middle section of Shaun of the Dead. In the end, even humans would adopt zombie-constructed perceptions of right and wrong, and when it's apprpriate to grunt in a menacing manner. 

Now, some would dispute whether neoconservatism is a systemic argument, but let's posit that it's a coherent IR theory.  To its credit, the neoconservatives would recognize the zombie threat as an existential threat to the human way of life.  Humans are from Earth, whereas zombies are from Hades -- clearly, neoconservatives would argue, zombies hate us for our freedom not to eat other humans' brains.   

While the threat might be existential, accomodation or recognition are not options.  Instead, neocons would quickly gear up an aggressive response to ensure human hegemony.  However, the response would likely be to invade and occupy the central state in the zombie-affected area.  After creating a human outpost in that place, humans in neighboring zombie-affected countries would be inspired to rise up and overthrow their own zombie overlords.  Alas, while this could happen, a more likely outcone would be that, after the initial "Mission Accomplished" banner had been raised, a fresh wave of zombies would rise up, enmeshing the initial landing force -- which went in too light and was drawn down too quickly -- in a protracted, bloody stalemate. 

Readers are hereby encouraged in the comments to posit other IR theoretical prediction of the response to a zombie uprising. For example, would the zombie uprising confirm Marxist predictions about the revolt of the proletariat? 

*Alas, your humble blogger does not have the time to puzzle out the zombie effect on two-level games. 

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

This clip from last night's Daily Show offers confirming evidence for a pet theory of mine -- economists are the best straight men in comedy history. 

 Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Yale's Robert Schiller:

Next up:  trying to persuade Paul Krugman and Robert Barro to reprise the "Who's on First?" routine. 

I've blogged before about the awesome and misplaced power of headline editors.  They can erroneously move markets and piss off bloggers who don't read through to the end of an article -- confuse readers. 

Well, USA Today let me down.  Google News sent me to this USA Today story (really a blog post) with the headline, "Obama says nation needs more nerds."

And I thought to myself, "Yes!!!  Finally, we can expand our power from out current base of Hollywood comic book movie franchises and start to dominate the real corridors of power." 

Alas, there's nothing in the actual story to suggest that Obama said those words.  Indeed, there's nothing in the fact sheet on the Cyberspace Policy Review report where Obama says that either. 

Now I must go back to my regularly scheduled work, while adding another headline editor to my list. 

Oh, yes, there's a list. 

From Steve Walt: 

For some reason, AIPAC didn't invite me to speak at its policy conference this year.

Your humble blogger has learned that, in an amazing reversal of fortune, the leaders of the G-20 have heeded President Obama's call to embrace a "responsiblity to co-ordinate our action and find our common ground."  The result will be a communique that actually addresses the current crisis on concrete terms. 

Recognizing the need for a "grand bargain," French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel pledged to offer a combined $400 billion in fiscal stimulus in return for a United States agreement to allow for enhanced regulation of large financial institutions.  China agreed to match U.S. and European commitments to the International Monetary Fund, in return for a doubling of its voting quota within the Fund.  Furthermore, all parties agreed on their joint responsibility in unwinding the macroeconomic imbalances that contributed to the current crisis, thereby pleasing Martin Wolf to no end. 

The G-20 leaders summit will have an immediate follow-up of a meeting of the G-20 trade negotiators, with the stated intent of completing the Doha round before the end of the year.  The Obama administration, in line with attempts to reduce the budget deficit, have taken the first concrete step, pledging to slash agricultural subsidies by more than 80% over the next four years. 

In related news, France and the United Kingdom agreed to relinquish their Security Council seats in return for an "EU" seat, paving the way for Japan, India and Brazil to join as permanent members, creating a new "P-7" in the Security Council. 

These breakthroughs were achieved on the same day that a mysterious chemical attack was unleashed in Washington DC that rendered Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olbermann, Glenn Beck, Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity, James Carville, Paul Begala and Bill Bennett permanently and irrevocably mute.   

After bailouts designed to pump up the flagging finance and auto sectors, you knew that this was going to come at some point: 

As the 2009 AVN Adult Expo opens in Las Vegas this week, Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis and HUSTLER magazine publisher Larry Flynt are petitioning the newly convened 111th Congress to provide a financial bailout for the adult entertainment industry along the lines of what is being sought by the Big Three automakers, a spokesperson for Francis announced today.

Adult industry leaders Flynt and Francis sent a joint request to Congress asking for $5 billion in federal assistance, "Just to see us through hard times," Francis said. "Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation's most important businesses, we feel we deserve the same consideration. In difficult economic times, Americans turn to entertainment for relief. More and more, the kind of entertainment they turn to is adult entertainment."

But according to Flynt the recession has acted like a national cold shower. "People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt says, "This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex."

While not to the degree felt by banks and automakers, the Adult Entertainment industry has been hit by the effects of the economic downturn. DVD sales and rentals have decreased by 22 percent in the past year as viewers turn to the internet for adult entertainment.

Crazy as this sounds, Flynt and Francis do make one penetrating insight in their complaint -- adult entertainment sales and rentals are shrinking much more quickly than overall DVD sales and rentals.  So it would be fair to say that compared to mainstream Hollywood, the adult entertainment sector is getting pounded.  Unless the economy can manage to mount a robust and vigorous upturn sometime soon, it makes sense for the adult entertainment industry to beg for a more direct and forceful stimulus package. 

Hat tip:  Free Exchange