Slightly Brainier Notes from ISA

Some initial tidbits from conference papers I read or heard presented while AWOL:

1) At a panel on pirates: Isaac Kamola: The recent securitization of Somali piracy is a pretty big mystery given how few vital interests are at stake. Peter Andreas pointed out that it's therefore also a mystery that no major IR journal has published a serious IR paper on this topic yet.

2) At a panel on war law: Sebastian Kaempf quoting Charles Law of UC Berkely: "Going to war actually saves US troops' lives." (Relative to gun violence, car wrecks etc associated with life on the civilian front.) Still trying to track down the original study that shows this is true to see how the risk assessment is computed.

3) At the Battlestar Galactica panel: Iver Neumann has written a paper arguing Battlestar Galactica is all about Mormonism. (Check out the full paper in the ISA Archive.)

[cross-posted at the Duck]