Fun and Games and Not
April 20th, 2008First we will get to the fun: Tuesday, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, inside Stevenson Hall’s Humanities Institute, will be a conference on international relations (theme is: “The Global in the Local — The Local in the Global”) from 9:30 to 6:00, with breaks here and there as time allows. My panel will be at 9:45, going until noon, and I am thoroughly looking forward to presenting my paper: “The Importance of Appearance: A Paper on Legitimacy and Elections in Non-Democratic States.” On another, different fun note, the Nintendo Wii, which I once wrote an opinion piece on praising Nintendo for its refusal to conform to societal norms, continues to sit atop videogames. I don’t particularly care, but I do admire Nintendo and I did just return from gaming with a good friend I haven’t seen in awhile. Besides, if I didn’t link to that article, would my headline make sense?
Here’s the bad news: Zimbabwe is still in crisis, and now their opposition is calling on the western world to intervene and help ensure their victory. I would certainly like to see that, but I am worried that we won’t and that is a shame. My paper is, in large part, a look at how vote monitors judge elections and what effects they have in those countries from within and without. But at least the opposition is winning in Paraguay and as far as I’m concerned, anytime a party has been in power for sixty years it deserves to be booted.