Jeffrey LewisThe Ubiquitous Wonk

Jacqueline Shire has has a written a kind profile of our little blog at ABC News.com:

Policy wonks come in all varieties, and those who follow arms control and weapons proliferation comprise their own unique tribe.

Armscontrolwonk.com is the blog for this subculture. It’s the brainchild of Jeffrey Lewis, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Maryland and confessed “obsessive about ferreting out the minute, overlooked details of an issue.”

In a world of blogging rich in the hunt for an inside scoop or little known fact, it was only a matter of time before a blog emerged to chronicle developments in arms control. Lewis and his occasional collaborator, Paul Kerr, revel in shining a bright light onto the issues that dominate this gravely serious world with irreverence and a wry sense of humor.

Shire focused on my recent post estimating the mass of the physics package launched on a DF-2 ballistic missile in China’s fourth nuclear test.


July 2006
ISBN 0-262-62202-5
6×9, 200 pp.
$23.00/£14.95 (PAPER)

That analysis, some radiochemistry work on China’s 4-5 MT warhead and some new seismic estimates on China’s last round of nuclear tests are just a few of the goodies that I am hoping to pack into the forthcoming book version of my dissertation, The Minimum Means of Reprisal (MIT Press, July 2006).

As far as I know, I am still awaiting the results of peer review—but MIT is apparently willing to accept a deposit on a future copy.

PS: On a related note, am I the only person who notes an eery similarity between the MIT Press logo and that of seminal 80’s punk rockers, Black Flag?