New Sally Ride Book

Lynn Sherr's book about Sally Ride has now been published, but I have not yet seen it. I have read a couple of reviews, including this one in the July/August The American Prospect.

Sally Ride and I were both fellows at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation beginning in September 1987 and Sherr interviewed me about the experience some time ago. Google Books tells me that my interview figured into a page or two of the book (see chapter 9).

I'm not sure if Sherr recounted my favorite story, but Ride really embarrassed a Reagan administration official visiting CISAC and selling a version of the Strategic Defense Initiative. He was talking about elements of a space-based system that would have required payloads larger than the U.S. boosters had. Ride nailed him with a couple of simple questions.


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Saturday dog blogging

It's been over a year since I posted pics of our dogs, Paddy and Robey. The siblings turned 9 years old in July and have spent about half of this August in the kennel thanks to family travel.

According to my youngest daughter, the dogs are quite attentive and photogenic when you say the word "treat" first.

Paddington on the left and Darrowby on the right.

This is the dogs on their return from one of August's three separate kennel visits. They travel back-and-forth in the rear of a Honda Fit, with a bar preventing them from leaping into the backseat:

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Touring Scotland

As you might have noticed in my twitter feed (in the right-hand column), I was in Scotland August 4-8 and again August 12-15. The first week, three-fourths of my family was in Edinburgh attending the annual Fringe Festival. Our youngest daughter, though a recent graduate, was performing in a production with her high school theater company. They staged "Our Town, Louisville" four times over the course of the week.

You can see some photos and a playbill here for their show, cleverly "derived" from Thornton Wilder's "Our Town":

YPAS performs Our Town Louisville #fringefestival pic.twitter.com/wHGS1HVwy7
— Tracy Morrison (@tdmorrison1234) July 26, 2014

In Edinburgh, my wife and I had a busy week. For example, it was exhausting and exhilarating walking the Royal Mile during Fringe:

We also visited the famous castle. The blue seats outside it are for the nightly Royal Military Tattoo, which my daughter's high school group attended:

This was one of the highlights of the National Museum of Scotland. It's one of Jackie Stewart's cars (they had at least two on display):

After a journey south over the weekend to Brighton to attend a baptism for the latest twins in the family, a nephew and niece, I returned to Dundee, Scotland for the Words and Images conference I blogged about last week.

The first night, I visited the BrewDog and had a tasty pint of Punk IPA. I had actually already had a pint in the Hanging Bat, a fine beer cafe in Edinburgh.

The second night, I attended a Scotch tasting organized as an "extra" for the conference. Here's the setup before the event:

After the tasting, we watched Ken Loach's "The Angel's Share" and tasted some beer. I tried the Joker IPA, of course, given that my Batman paper focused on "The Dark Knight." 

Earlier on Wednesday, I visited the "Yes" hub in Dundee. The guy I talked to assured me that "yes" on Scottish independence referendum was going to win in Dundee and he thought it would win in all of Scotland. The vote is September 18. I'm curious as a political scientist, but I obviously don't really know enough to comment about the issues or the predicted victory:

I may blog a bit more about Scottish nationalism if I get a chance. This image hangs in the National Museum in Edinburgh:

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Bat Signal

This week, I'm attending my first Words and Images conference in Dundee, Scotland. Specifically, it is the joint Tenth International Association of Word and Image Studies Conference (I'm now a 3-year member) and Twenty-First Annual Scottish Word and Image Group Conference: "Riddles of Form: Exploration and Discovery in Word and Image" (that links to the full program).

My paper is slated for the film panel Thursday afternoon: "The Dark Knight: Science and the National Security State." Here's the abstract:

The crime-fighting character Batman was created 75 years ago; yet, his age has not been an impediment to achieving tremendous recent successes in popular culture. The two latest “Dark Knight” films, released in 2008 and 2012, rank among the top 20 highest grossing films worldwide. Strangely, Batman is a super-hero without a physical superpower. Indeed, his successes are largely due to the development and application of scientific and technical achievements. This paper analyzes and explains the importance of Batman’s application of various scientific discoveries in “The Dark Knight” and other popular Batman films. Specifically, I argue that the most recent version of the Dark Knight reflects the dubious nature of the war on terror. To counter the threats he encounters in Gotham City, Batman is willing to employ an electronic spying device that appears to emulate the remarkable capabilities of the U.S.  National Security Agency. In addition to secretly monitoring electronic communications, Batman also employs various weapons and transportation technologies that make possible the extrajudicial rendition of foreign nationals and the enhanced interrogation of prisoners. Ultimately, these applications of science challenge the legitimacy of Batman’s crime-fighting efforts, in much the same way the aims of America’s “war on terror” were undercut by similar methods. 

You can find the paper at my Academia.edu webpage.

The paper owes a debt to my blog post about The Dark Knight back in August 2008 and to my recent use of the film in my class on Global Politics Through Film.

While writing the paper, I discovered this similar argument. John Ip, however, primarily argues that the film reveals the practical limits of torture, rendition, and surveillance. My argument is more critical and normative.

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