Transport Debate

Last night's Big Bang Theory had Sheldon asserting definitively that the order of cool-ness is thus:

Jet-Pack > Hoverboard > Transporter > Bat-mobile > Giant Ant

EW's recap suggested that Transporter > Hoverboard.

And, this raises all kinds of questions. 

• Isn't the transporter coolest of all since it can move you anywhere instantaneously, even possibly onto a ship traveling at warp?  If we ignore the massive energy requirements and the risks of just a minor screw up aside, it is hard to find a better way to move from place to place.  
• Disapparation is similar but poses its own challenges of splinching and unresolved questions of range (Voldemort seems to have a range that simply convenient for certain parts of the books).  Still, disapparation is pretty convenient and much better for the environment, but can only be performed by Wizards and Witches.
• Is the Bat-mobile really that cool?  Sorry, but being carried by a giant ant, rat or kangaroo seems just more interesting than a pimped up ride.  
• Is there a cooler ride in Comic-book-dom?  The Fantastic Four fantisticar is pretty lame.  The X-Men have a modified XR-71 Blackbird, which is pretty cool.   What am I forgetting?  Well, web-swinging is actually one of the coolest ways to travel.  
• Which giant animal would be coolest?  Ant?  Rat? Kangaroo?  I guess the hopping would make a Kangaroo pretty uncomfortable.  I guess I would go with Rat since it would be hard to hold onto the Ant.   
• And we can put Iron-Man's suit within the jet-pack category as its coolest form.  Check out who is producing jet-packs!!

 So, I guess I would have it as:
Transporter > Jet-Pack > Hoverboard >  Web-Swinging > Giant Rat > Bat-mobile

More importantly, it seems like the hoverboard is something one can make right now!!!

So, if one focuses on just that which can be accomplished right now, Jet-pack > Hoverboard >>> Bat-Mobile

Especially if it can go on water!  

Alas, no, it cannot.  Marty McFly has not yet been topped.  And, yes, this hoverboard question proves once and for all that google and youtube make our lives much, much better!

H1N1 Update

Very interesting op-ed at NYT on a year after the outbreak started.  Interesting facts plus a good perspective on it all.

But the struggle between people and pathogens is a part of life itself. We cannot continue to be surprised every time a new virus emerges. Instead, we must use the lessons we’ve learned during the year since H1N1 arrived to develop more effective public health responses.

 Some highlights

• Mexico took a big risk and hit--it reported the possible epidemic quickly despite the likelihood of a steep penalty economically.  The cost--one percent of GDP!  Pretty significant for a country beset by all kinds of problems.
• Much better than China and SARS
• Demonstrates a need for perhaps providing incentives for countries to be as swift as Mexico.
• Health officials screwed up: kids were contagious up to three ways after fever disappeared (if it appeared at all), and adults were contagious between 5-7 days.  So, folks were going back to school and work to spread the disease.
• What is it about kids that make them contagious longer?  Just a funky reality to note.
• The article takes seriously that a "mild" epidemic in a developed country does not mean the pandemic was mild across the globe.  Of course, the US faced a less nasty outcome.
• We really have no clue about how many people were infected since not everyone got a fever.
• 1/3 of British kids in a survey showed antibodies--which meant they had been infected, which was ten times more than the estimates.

We need more international cooperation to head off the next one, as there will surely be a next one.

I guess this leaves me a bit uncertain about whether we are better prepared or not for an outbreak of the Z virus.

Germany Gets Tired?

“Germany is no longer, as a matter of course or of principle, the motor, heart and savior of Europe,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. “This isn’t the Europe we signed up for. It’s much larger, much poorer, and we have to take care of our own.” NYT

Germany is apparently tired of being the guarantor of European economic stability, with not just Greece free-riding.  Germany has been reluctant to help out the Greeks, and spurned more moderate packages. 

Why do I feel just a bit of glee in all of this?  Sorry, schadenfreude. Well, I have long argued that domestic interests triumph the gloss of transnational identities, so that when push comes to shove, politicians look home rather than thinking of the folks across the border as brothers/sisters/cousins.  This combined with the optimistic reports about an American recovery suggest that:

plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose: the more things change, the more it remains the same.

So, I am a continued Euro-skeptic (see Kin or Country for more on that), although I dip my hat with a blog post using both German and French.  Ironic, n'est-ce pas?

Judicial Justice

Judicial stuff is about as far from my area of expertise as pretty anything in the realm of Political Science, but I love a good kabuki dance:

Democrats and Republicans have mastered the Kabuki dance: The president picks a nominee who has been cautious enough on contested social issues so as not to be plausibly characterized as outside the mainstream. Senators from the opposition party complain that the nominee has not been forthcoming, or is ideologically radical; staff digs for dirt on the nominee's past but finds none. Senators from the president's party rally around the nominee. During the confirmation hearings, the nominee gives milquetoast, noncommittal answers, and comes across as likeable enough with a heartfelt personal narrative. The opposing senators decline to filibuster. The nominee joins the court.  [Slate]

 I do find the piece interesting as it suggests that Obama has a longer game in mind--replacing Scalia after the next election.  That would be most cool.  Does Obama look that far into the future?

It was no accident that the president called out the Supreme Court at the State of the Union, as the justices sat before him, on the controversial decision in Citizens United opening up the corporate spending spigot. It was another Citizens United jab when Obama declared in a Rose Garden statement, upon Justice Stevens' retirement announcement, that he wants a justice who "knows that in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens." The president is actively running against the Supreme Court.

 Oh my.  I wonder if people will vote in 2012 on this issue?  I am not an Americanist either, so I don't know the voting lit here, but my guess would be no (or else Nader voters would not have been Nader voters).

What Should a Retired Officer Do?

Tom Ricks was at a conference this weekend with a bunch of military officers, discussing various issues of civil-military relations.  Check out the blog entries as they are most interesting.  I found one of them to be, well, wrong-headed.  It had several officers, retired and active, basically arguing that retired senior officers should largely disappear.  That they should not  enter the public debate at all.  It messes up civil-military relations, they say. 
I disagree and posted this entry on the comments section:

There is much to disagree with here. Yes, having retired military officers line up behind one or other candidate is problematic.
But so too is it problematic that the folks with the most military experience, especially the most politico-military experience, might be silenced. Retired generals and admirals have much expertise. If they cannot provide it to the public and the government, then they can only help who? Defense contractors?
And MG Mattis is clearly wrong on one part of civil-military relations. If an officer feels a policy is so destructive to the country's national interest that he or she feels compelled to resign, then that very costly act should not have to be a private one. Otherwise, there is no real signal sent.
Yes, there are delicate questions of civil-military relations here, and it takes both "sides" to make it work. But eliminating the experts who have less at stake from the field is a mistake. The case of General Myers demonstrates that, as his inability to provide an independent voice from that of Rumsfeld testifies to the need for experts who are not tied by career interests/mind-melds.

And we should remember, one of thing that finally pushed Rumsfeld out of power was when a series of retired Generals condemned Rummy's handling of Iraq.  Getting rid of Rumsfeld was the best decision Bush made, and a necessary step for making progress in Iraq.

Yes, there are difficult tradeoffs, but I would rather have a cacophony of voices than silence. 

Learning Is Hard

There continues to be a lot of ink spilled about the Catholic Church and its policies towards priests who molest kids.  You would think that they would start to learn that fighting the public on this would be a bad idea, but no.  Lesson has not been learned yet.  Connecticut is in the process of passing a law that would remove the statute of limitations on child abuse. 
The Church insists:

The "legislation would undermine the mission of the Catholic Church in Connecticut, threatening our parishes, our schools, and our Catholic Charities," the letter says.

Unless their mission is to condone or cover up child abuse, I am not sure how letting 50 year olds (the existing law says that folks must file their charges before 30 years have passed since they turned 18) file complaints against anyone (not just priests) would threaten the Catholic Church.  Unless they are hiding more pedophiles, that is.

Once again, it seems to be the case that the cover up is doing as much or more damage to the institution than the crimes themselves.  Since this new law is not explicitly aimed at the Catholic Church and has measures to prevent frivolous complaints, the Catholic Church should be stepping aside rather than trying to block the bill.  But it seems to be the case that the Church has no clue about public relations.  Its learning curve is mighty flat.

Another Manic Monday

One of the last things I would want to see first thing on a Monday morning is anything that has to do with Pakistan and its nuclear weapons program.  Talk about a rude awakening.  Not surprising, just rude.  Pakistan always has been and always will be more important than Afghanistan.  One of the better arguments (not necessarily a good one, but better than others) for sticking around in Afghanistan is the uncertainty about what a pullout would mean for Pakistan. 

Just an ugly way to start the week.

Optimistic Economics?

Check this article out.  It essentially argues that we are in for a big boom, as the US adjusts faster than most countries to changes in the marketplace.  If this guy is half-right, I would be happy.  I think we might have a chance if the states don't drag it all down with budget cuts in the sectors that promote growth (that would education). 

Social Science From the Other Side

We were just called and asked to participate in a survey about languages in Quebec.  I agreed, as I try to support the social science effort.  However, after two questions, the survey ended because they had already reached their quota of folks whose mother tongue is English. 

Anyway, I found the list of languages interesting: Creole and Romanian?  I am less surprised by Arab, Italian, Greek and Portuguese since I have seen evidence of large communities in Montreal. And to be clear, whatever diversity there is in Quebec, nearly all of it will be in Montreal. 

The frustrating thing is that I am most curious about the rest of the survey--what were the questions?  How do you feel about the language of education (or here)?  How do you feel about access to hospital care in the language of your choice?  Do politicians use language as a distraction from their incredible incompetence and/or corruption?

Alas, I will never know.  

Civil War Revisited

With the Virginia Governor seeking to remember a war for States' Rights but omitting what the states sought rights over (slaves), we enter a new round of that fun old American game--re-defining the Civil War as something positive. Let me preface by saying that I am not an expert on the American Civil War (although I do have un-read books on my shelves on this topic that I have been meaning to get to).

The funny thing is that my classes in Lubbock at Texas Tech would be startled and appalled that Serbs would look fondly back 600 years to a battle they lost, but they were blind to the reality that many of them seemed to view the Civil War in a somewhat similar light--as a noble defeat, mostly forgetting about the defeat part.  There are three parts to this issue (well more than that, but three I want to focus on now): the South lost; that the stakes very much included slavery; and that the civil war was incredibly costly.

Perhaps the American Civil War is part of the long tradition of poor loser-ness.  Why did the South lose the war?  Wars are won and lost by a combination of things, including demography, economics, allies and leadership.  In terms of military leadership, the record is fairly clear that the South had far more depth and breadth.  Demography disadvantaged the South since the North had more people and a significant part of the South's population were not going to be reliable fighters since they were enslaved.  Economics favored the North as well since it was in the middle of the industrial revolution, while the South was agrarian/feudal.  Finally, despite much sympathy abroad, the South had a hard time getting significant assistance because of its essential identity--as an aspiring country that sought to keep alive slavery.  So, in many ways, the South was doomed to fail precisely because of its essential core political grievance--the right to perpetuate slavery. 

I am not going to go into the weeds on the role of Slavery as the stakes, but the history is clear on this--there were many differences between north and south, but slavery was at the heart of it.

Finally, the Civil War was no walk in the woods.  Somewhere around 620,000 American soldiers died during the war, representing almost half of all Americans who died in combat in its entire history.  And this does not include civilians who lost their lives along the way. 

So, spare me any notion that the Civil War was a noble war fought for States' Rights.  It was a supreme act of Treason, inflicting tremendous damage upon the South and the rest of the country.  Ironically, the war forced the Union to develop capacities to fight the war, ultimately strengthening the Federal Government at the cost of "state's rights."  We might have had a weaker federal government until the depression or beyond, if the South had not forced Washington, DC to develop more tools, more resources, more ways to intervene in the affairs of states and the lives of citizens. 

If we want to take the "heritage" folks at their word--that it is not about slavery, but about a war for state's rights, then we can still find their "heritage" something that is not worth commemorating.  Celebrating self-inflicting defeat for the sake of a cause that the effort actually undermined?  At least the Serbs can say that they tried to stop an invasion of an alien culture.  All the South did was kill lots of Americans for a cause that was part of the source of its defeat.  

In other words:

We cannot allow the story of the emancipation of a people and the expiation of America’s original sin to become fodder for conservative politicians playing to their right-wing base. [NYT Op-ed]

Polish Disaster Reveals Indeterminacy of Realism

Ok, ugly post title, but while reading about the horrific plane crash that killed much of Poland's leadership, I was somewhat surprised to learn that President Kaczynski had been pushing NATO to admit Georgia and the Ukraine.  I found this strange because expanding NATO to include these countries strained the credibility of the central promise at the heart of the alliance--that an attack on one is equal to an attack on all.  Of course, my research over the past few years has raised some questions about that, but still the point remains that NATO, for most of its history and still for East European countries, is a defense alliance based on a single deterrent threat. 

“It was obvious to us that this was the only tough security structure there was in the world, and that the membership of NATO would only mean benefits for Poland,” Mr. Kaczynski said in an interview last year.  NYT

But threats need to be credible to work--one has to believe that the allies will come to the defense of the attacked, and, of course, many wars occur precisely because folks do not believe that this will happen (see Glenn Snyder's Alliance Politics).  Expanding NATO to include countries that have little, if any, ties to NATO members and ones where NATO could do little in terms of conventional military activities to help would raise questions not just about the commitment to those countries but to the rest of NATO.  Commitments can be seen as interdependent--that credibility and reputation in one spot just might be related to credibility and reputation elsewhere (although academics debate this). 

And who in NATO should care most about the credibility of NATO's defensive commitments?  Not Belgium.  Not Germany after 1991.  Poland.  Particularly given its pre-WWII experience, Polish leaders should be most concerned about cementing alliance ties so their country does not get hung out to dry again.  Instead, the late President saw Poland's security based on containing Russia via alliances with Georgia and Ukraine.  This is not entirely unreasonable, but shows that there are multiple ways that countries can pursue their security, even if one is just focused on alliances (putting aside other means like arms buildups, economic development, supporting secessionists in one's adversary, etc). 

Rather than pondering how the Katyn massacre continues to haunt Poland, I thought I would ponder how realism's indeterminacy continues to haunt me.

Beer Me, Please!

Tactical Nuclear Penguin.  That pretty much says it all.  But the label elaborates.

A warning label on the Tactical Nuclear Penguin bottle does state: "This is an extremely strong beer; it should be enjoyed in small servings and with an air of aristocratic nonchalance. It is exactly the same manner you would enjoy a fine whiskey, a Frank Zappa album or a visit from a friendly yet anxious ghost." [Time website]

If you drink enough, you will probably see the ghost they mention.  32% Alcohol by volume. Yowza.  I guess the taste does not matter since the taste buds are immediately knocked out.

These guys are a snarky bunch:

In December BrewDog received a wrist-slap from a British alcohol regulatory body, the Portman Group, which ordered that retailers pull the company's 18.2% Tokyo beer brand off the shelves because of the its marketing tactics. A note on the Tokyo label says: "It is all about moderation. Everything in moderation, including moderation itself. What logically follows is that you must, from time, have excess. This beer is for those times." After the beer was pulled, BrewDog came out with a 1.1% alcohol by volume brew meant to tame the critics. Its name: Nanny State

But at $53 per bottle, Tac Nuke Penguin probably is not going to sell too many bottles.  But I would buy one if it was convenient.  And, yes, I am shocked and dismayed that I found this before Pete T.

 

Tactical Nuclear Penguin from BrewDog on Vimeo.

 

Rights? What Rights?

While I was gone, the language debate flared up yet again.  Immigrants (and also those Canadians who were educated outside of Canada in English or inside Canada in French) are not eligible for the English school system in Quebec (K-11, no 12).  There was a loophole that going briefly to private school in English would allow a kid to go to an English public school, but was closed by bill 104 (funnily enough, passed between the time I took the job here and when I arrived).  Bill 104 was tossed out recently by the Canadian Supreme Court.  Why?  In part, there is something about parents having the rights to choose their kid's language of education.  So, the debate in Quebec has now focused on how to remedy the situation since the Court said that Quebec had to figure out a replacement.  

So, of course, the PQ and various government bodies stocked with partisans have advocated eliminating any possibility for immigrants to send their kids to any private school (our solution).  This is strange since the Court ruled already:

This legislative response seems excessive in relation to the seriousness of the identified problem and its impact on school clientele and, potentially, on the situation of the French language in Quebec," wrote Justice Louis LeBel in the judgment. "The absolute prohibition on considering an educational pathway in a (unsubsidized private school) seems overly drastic."

The PQ and other nationalists want to pass another law that the Court would reject, and then invoke a strange Canadian process--the notwithstanding clause. This is a process by which the national parliament or any provincial assembly can decide by a simple majority vote that they can ignore the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  Which really means that the Charter is not worth that much if it can be so easily by-passed.

[It figures, by the way, that something that so confounds the English language (literally and symbolically) involved Jean Chretien.]

They are really just looking to provoke a crisis to energize their base.

 It is likely that the provincial Liberals, the party in power in Quebec, will cave into the language hawks because the Anglophones and the immigrants have no other place to go.  

And then what?  I would hope that eight years of education in Quebec in English would give my daughter some grandfathering, but who knows?  I just hope the process plays out slowly enough that we do not have to sue or flee.  But those would be our options, as putting my daughter in to a French public school in 9th grade would be pretty damaging to her chances of getting the grades she would otherwise earn to get into the US colleges that she may be interested in. [Yes, she can read and write in French, but she is not perfectly fluent.  Plus her teachers would almost certainly only communicate to her parents in French.  So much for oversight.]

It reminds me of my daughter's response when she was eight or so and spotted a piece in the paper I had written about Quebec separatism.  Upon learning what that meant, her instant reaction was: "we would move to Ontario, right."  Um, yes.  Given the current job market, my response to a referendum would be moving out of Quebec somewhere.  My response to a revision of the educational system would be slightly less drastic--I would stay at McGill but we might have to move to just across the border of Quebec--Cornwall?  Holy long commutes, Batman!

Give the Base Some Red Meat

With the retirement of Justice Stevens (for some context, see lil' Steve), the question becomes--does Obama try to moderate the partisan storms or should he play to his base?  As the title of my post suggests, I think Obama should put up a Liberal with a capital L.

Why?  First, to reward the Republicans for being obstinate.  Obama has tried to work with the GOP, but has been repeatedly snubbed even by the moderate ones from Maine.  If they want Obama to compromise, they need to as well.  And that seems unlikely in the leadup to the mid-term elections, especially given what I said in my earlier post.

“No matter who he sends up,” Ms. Aron said, “I think Republicans are loaded for bear and will oppose.”

Second, Obama has been frustrating the left for the entire year in office--reinforcing in Afghanistan, bailing out the banks, being slow on gays in the military, passing a health care bill that didn't have a public option, etc.  This would be the one big win they could get, and they would care far more about the "correct" selection here than pretty much anyone else that might vote for Obama and the Democrats.  Moderates are unlikely to vote on this issue in the fall, but turnout on the left will be deflated or energized based on this choice. 

Third, the court is in the balance (as it always is).  Replacing Stevens with a moderate would be bad for the long-run.

So, Mr. President, give your supporters when they want and teach your opponents that reciprocity works both ways.

Closed Conservative Thinking

This blog post provides a variety of explanations for why conservative minds have "closed."  Lots of interesting explanations are put forth, including the dominance of the south, a narrow demographic base, geographically isolated areas now forcibly exposed to the world via technology, responses to Iraq, or perhaps it is the natural life cycle of intellectual movements.  The piece concludes:

I have a lot of sympathy for this kind of explanation, simply because I’m temperamentally conservative. I think it’s very hard for people to change once they are set, and so the formative experiences of a generation have a lasting political and intellectual impact. Intellectually, the children of the Bush Administration on the right are a lost generation. They may grow in wisdom, chastened by experience, but this will come at a price of lost confidence; or they may retain their confidence, but this will come at the greater price of never attaining wisdom.

An open mind seeks wisdom, first and last.

The last explanation is the only when then can explain the "why now" well.  But there is another development--the ironic impact of media dominance.  While Rush Limbaugh and talk radio have been around for a while, it seems that he has become more powerful of late, in his effort to exclude "deviant" Republicans from the party.  Likewise (if my impression is correct since I cannot stomach it), Fox News may have been presenting a more strident, narrow variant of conservativism.  Together, these two forces have made it very hard for reasoned debate to exist within the GOP. 

Perhaps I am wrong as I do not listen nor watch to this stuff, so perhaps these guys can and do encourage thoughtful discussions of different ideas of how to be a good conservative.  Yeah, right.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

Is it better to treat Karzai sweetly or with tough love?  This piece suggests a soft touch--which explains why McChrystal has a good relationship????  Perhaps being openly frustrated is a bad idea, but this whole episode shows how thoroughly unreliable Karzai is.  He gets upset easily and has been buddying up with Iran.  The timing is also a bit backwards on this:

• Step 1: Karzai spends his entire re-election campaign trashing ISAF for collateral damage, winning points for the Taliban.
• Step 2: Karzai either allows or supports a law to be passed, the so-called rape law, that is sure to alienate key constituencies in ISAF-donating countries.
• Step 3: Karzai completely subverts the election--a two-fer: undermining the effort on the ground and support within the ISAF-donating countries.
• Step 4:  Then the US gets publicly upset--which is not only natural but necessary.  Just condoning the systematic destruction of the election would have been bad for all kinds of business.

Maybe Karzai was initially upset because he didn't get a video teleconference with Obama like he had with Bush.  But we cannot really blame a year of systematically undermining the COIN effort on that.

Perhaps the "tough love" has not been working, but neither has anything else.  The behavior is a constant and the strategies have varied.  So, I blame that which has remained the same--Karzai.

Reading Stuff I Agree With

Probably a bad habit, but Ricks has a fun post and exchange on American Generalship.  The starting premise is: is Tommy Franks the worst senior Army general since the American Civil War?  Since I found/find Franks to be such an amazing disaster, I like the way this is pitched.  And, the answer seems to be no, we had a worse general in Korea--Ned Almond (although I am surprised MacArthur didn't come up).  And Westmoreland got raked over a few coals as well.  Few commenters disagreed that Franks belongs in this debate.

A Modest Proposal?

Peter Feaver has an op-ed in the NYT addressing  Obama's change in Nuclear Posture.  Feaver has served in both Clinton and Bush National Security Councils, has written on civil-military relations and nuclear weapons, and is one of the few prominent political scientists who is out of the Republican closet.  Indeed, he notes his GOP-ness early in this piece.  And he argues here that the change in posture is modest with heaps of outs for the administration.  Thus, he thinks that both sides are over-selling the change--that Obama is not changing that much and the critics are over-criticizing.  In my post, a couple of days ago, I suggested that Obama's course of action was likely to alienate both sides as it is pretty moderate.  Feaver read the document more closely than I did and found more loopholes.  But he also largely overlooks two things:

• That Obama had to put a new gloss on the Posture if he wanted to make progress on proliferation agreements with the rest of the planet.  This new posture has an audience other than North Korea and Iran: countries that might be considering the development of new weapons of mass destruction.  This Posture does two things--it tells them how they fit into the picture and they make it easier for countries to sign onto a new proliferation treaty since the US is showing some progress.  Similarly, the new START agreement with Russia is not a huge change, but mostly ratifies each country's decisions to downsize their forces.  But it meets the condition that most folks at proliferation meetings demand--that the US and Russia make some progress towards zero.  
• The other thing that Feaver overlooked was that the clarifications made by Obama can only increase the credibility of the deterrent.  We may be promising to deter less stuff--not to respond with nuclear weapons to certain kinds of attacks.  But that makes the promise to deter the other stuff more credible.  All encompassing threats are less credible than more proportionate, tailored threats.  The most important thing about a deterrent threat is that it is credible, more so than the total kinds of behavior it is seeking to prevent.  Preventing nothing because one has over-threatened is obviously worse than preventing much but not all unwanted behavior.  

Still, Feaver is largely right--the change here is mostly cosmetic, but not entirely so.  It has some strategic purpose--to do better at international meetings to negotiate the future of non-proliferation and to make US threats more credible.  

On Second Thought, I Plead Diplomatic Immunity

I was mildly critical of the press and of the government concerning the Qatar smoker.  The NYT already has a piece considering whether it was an over-reaction or not.  I think we can parse things out a bit--that the air marshal(s) acted appropriately.  Was it necessary to alert all planes at the time?  Perhaps as ignorance on 9/11 did very much cost lives.  Was it necessary to scramble a couple of fighters?  Again, the marginal cost is probably low, given how much money we are spending on defense, but the absolute cost must have been significant.  More importantly, for a situation such as this where no hijacking threat seems imminent, it is not clear what the fighters could do. 

And the press probably could have waited a bit or at least moderated their headlines so that they were not so alarmist.  

One thing is clear--the Qatari diplomat was an idiot--to compound his smoking with a bad joke.  He showed incredibly poor judgment, which is supposed to be the primary skill of a diplomat.

One last note--Ian Lustick was quoted in the piece briefly, and he seemed not to be very critical.  I wonder if there was a lot of his interview left out, as he has been very critical of the War on Terrorism. 

Hayek and Keynes Throw Down

Um, here you go:

Narcisstic Navel-Gazing

Every once in a while, I check out where my blog's visitors are coming from.  Here now is the top ten with some surprises:

1. 1.  Canada
2. 2.  US
3. 3. Australia
4. 4. Spain
5. 5.  UK
6. 6.  India
7. 7. France
8. 8. New Zealand
9. 9. Italy
10. 10.  Uganda

I imagine that my hits are up in Aus/NZ due to the recent trip--that folks might have been checking out my spewage as they prepared to meet with me or in the aftermath, wondering who the hell is this guy. 

I am more surprised that Spain is number four on the list and that Uganda squeaks into the top ten.  To be fair, Uganda is actually tied with Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Greece and Philippines.  Once the numbers get low enough (say, below five hits), the meaning is less in the relative ranking (2 vs 3 visitors) and just more about how global this whole internet thing is.  Yep, I am the first to say that the internet is global!  Ok, that is not news, but I must admit it is kind of funky that my rants have been read by folks in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Austria and Yemen.

The Downside of Addiction

Get this guy a patch or two!  So, a Qatari diplomat tries invoke immunity after smoking on a plane--at the very end of the flight.  Talking about getting the shakes!

This produces a bunch of questions:

• Did we really need to scramble a couple of fighters?  What were they supposed to do? If the threat is a shoe bomb, they have no role to play.  On the other hand, one could view this as practice.
• This, of course, led to a morning debate with the wife about whether we should be prepared to shoot down hijacked planes.  I vote for, my wife votes against in the hypothetical replay of 9/11.  
• The plane took off from DC--the usual target--so I guess it is not surprising that it had an air marshal on the flight. Some reports had two marshals on the flight--which would seem to be a bit much.  
• First news reports were, of course, alarmist.  The first casualty of war is the truth, it has been said.  And smart generals know to view the first reports from the field with some suspicion as it usually takes a second or third or fourth report to get it right.  It would be nice if the US media would not be so quick to pull the alarm, but with competition among them, the lack of patience and judgment here is not surprising.
• I guess correcting the news within an hour is progress.
• The report that I linked to is a bit too sympathetic with the press.  That if a Qatari diplomat was a terrorist, what would that signify?  But he was not, so Shakespeare has the best line on it, right?

"it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

The Future of One Professioriate

I pondered just yesterday where the professing profession is going.  Here is McGill's projections:

What can we make of it? 
First, our hiring freeze is really more than that--it is not just a cap on the growth of positions but a cap on hiring, so that there is actually a decrease in the number of tenure track spots.  McGill peaked in 2008 in terms of tenure track slots.  For the next few years, the plan is to hire less than the number of folks leaving. 

Second, for some reason, they expect a big spike in departures this year and then again next year.  I have not seen any announcement of any kind of early retirement program or on-time retirement program or belated retirement program (McGill has a bunch of people beyond the normal retirement age).  And the departures have to be retirements, because it is not like there are tons of jobs out there to which disgruntled McGillians can move.

Third, at no point in the future do they plan to hire as many faculty as they were in the Aughts. After 2011, they expect retirement/departure patterns to go back to their average.  Indeed, looking at this figure and the biggest puzzle is this: what were they thinking in the Aughts?  Especially the second half?  This kind of growth was clearly unsustainable.  Not to mention the free rides that are doing to end in the next five-seven years (the Canada Research Chair funding will end for the tier 2 folks like myself as it is a ten year gig).  I also would not be surprised if the slope of the line after 2011 is flatter than this figure suggests.  Quebec, I think, is not yet done with its budget cuts.

I guess I am glad that I got in when the going was good, and that we did a great job of hiring a whole mess of Assistant Professors and a few Associates.  We are unlikely to see any additions in the near or distant future.  We will be lucky to get replacements when we have folks retire. 

Finally, this figure indicates that the Canadian academic market is not going to recover anytime soon.

It could be worse--I could work for the Kyrgyzstan government.

Supplemental Lost Thoughts

Reading Doc Jensen at EW and he raises a great question:

Speaking of Austrians

We need to take care of our heroes:
Drunk Rocketeer

Atom.com: Funny Videos | Spoofs | Funny Animations

HT to Mrs. Spew

We Don't Need No Education

The bad news is that California is gutting all levels of education.  

The good news?  That Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green are fighting for the kids:

Hot for Teachers w/ Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green from Megan Fox

 I don't know whether to laugh or cry.  Please, Megan, sign the DVD!

Irony Du Jour

Jacques Parizeau, former leader of the Parti Quebecois and passionate separatist, was admitted to Jewish General Hospital in Montreal yesterday.  This is highly ironic or perhaps merely hypocritical since he famously (infamously) blamed the ethnic vote and moneyed interests (Jews) for the failure of the 1995 referendum.  And his party has been hostile to the building of a new Anglophone (but really bilingual) hospital. 

So, Jews are subversive in the political system, but as doctors, they are ok?  And patronizing a hospital system that he has opposed?  I don't want him to die or be denied treatment, but I do find this all somewhat amusing.

Lost in Love

Geez, it is all about love, huh?  The guys behind Lost are super sappy, and it was sweet!

The Future of My Profession

Does it have a future?  Is it bleak?

This story alone suggests "Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!!"  That's right--outsourcing grading to South Asia!  Lovely.  I hate it when I have folks grading my classes that don't attend the lectures, but how about folks who don't attend the country?  Hmmmm.   The tradeoffs probably vary, depending on the field, with business ethics classes, like those discussed in the article, as less problematic than political science, where more knowledge of particular places might matter.  And where more creativity might be possible.

A second story is also depressing.  It is entitled "We Must Acknowledge the Realities of Employment in the Humanities" and by extension in other fields of inquiry.  Among other recommendations, it suggests we should have a warning label on our programs--academic job market is a risky business, and a PhD is no guarantee of success.  A quick look at the political science rumor mill will testify to the high levels of anxiety out there as newly minted PhDs have hard times finding jobs.

Several forces are combining:

• deep budget crises by states and provinces, leading to significant cuts in university budgets.
• McGill is cutting its TA budget by a big percentage so my undergrad intro to IR class is losing 1/3 of its enrollment since I am losing three TAs (at least, that is the plan for now)
• the drop in stocks has affected the availability of positions
• Because of diminished stock portfolios, boomers are not retiring, creating a huge wave of resentment, in part because each generation of grad students is lied to about the likely departure of a wave of profs.
• Usually well-endowed universities have lost a big hunk of their savings and their income so they are not hiring.
• The drying up of equity markets probably means that it is harder for parents to get loans to cover their kids' education (in the US anyway.  Canadian parents seem not to be as committed to their kids' education nor do they need to be since tuition is less).
• Universities are shifting their hiring, focusing more on cheaper (sans benefits) short term appointments than tenure track positions.

I have always maintained that we are a bad guild as we bring in too many students so that there are lots of cheap folks around to replace us, keeping wages down.  But we like having lots of  grad students.  Why?  Because our grad classes would become uncomfortably small.  Because we like having lots of teaching assistants (and given their union-imposed time limitations, I need a bunch for a 600 person class).  And because we like having lots of RAs.  So, we overproduce, like any tragedy of the commons situation.

Should I start warning students away from grad school in poli sci?  I have been doing that for years for students going to law school.  I ask them if they understand supply and demand.  They always have a niche argument--that some part of the law community is under-served.  More likely, they don't really know what next to do and law school is a good way to kick the can down the road.  But it isn't, of course.  And grad school is not either.  I guess I will start telling students who seek letters of recommendation that I will only recommend the very best students for grad school since the market is swamped.

I am not sure whether we will see a real structural change, like online classes taking over.  I do think that the college experience itself is important for personal growth, and that the North American educational system, particularly the combination of teaching colleges and research-intensive universities, is a real strength that fosters economic growth.  But we are in for some bumpy years ahead.  I guess I am glad I have tenure at a fine institution, for all of its warts and its fools.

Lost Exasperation

Colbert did it quite well:

International Hacking and Guaranteed Grants

Fascinating story about a team of Toronto scholars helping to reveal a Chinese group of hackers who penetrated Indian security. My reactions:

• Not surprised at all that China is implicated in another hacking/spying effort.  This is likely to be a continuing story for quite some time.
• Interdependence of security is much tighter than I thought--some of the secrets that were captured by the hacking spies and by the Toronto group involved travel of NATO officials through India on the way to Afghanistan.  So, as one of the folks interviewed put it, your secrets are only as secure as the weakest link.
• The Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto is not going to have to worry much the next time it has to apply for funding from Toronto or from any grant agency.  Its relevance has been identified across the frontpage of the NY Times and in the highest levels of governments around the world.  Well done. 

Rethinking Nukes

Apparently, Obama likes to have a dozen plates spinning at any one time.  Some random NYT reporters* get a chance to interview him, and Obama talks about re-thinking nuclear weapons. 

Mr. Obama argued for a slower course, saying, “We are going to want to make sure that we can continue to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons,” and, he added, to “make sure that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances.” 

Typical Obama--taking a course that is sure to alienate both sides of the spectrum, although probably coming closer to the left than the middle.  Nuclear weapons will no longer be used as threats against non-nuclear states except in the case of proliferators (Iran, NK) or in case bio weapons become so dangerous that a nuclear threat seems proportionate. 

The new policy:

But Mr. Bush’s document also reserved the right to use nuclear weapons “to deter a wide range of threats,” including banned chemical and biological weapons and large-scale conventional attacks. Mr. Obama’s strategy abandons that option — except if the attack is by a nuclear state, or a nonsignatory or violator of the nonproliferation treaty.

This step makes a great deal of sense as the threat to use nuclear weapons has always been limited in its credibility.  It seems to me that this is part of an evolution in strategic nuclear thought since the end of massive retaliation.  Using nuclear weapons as threats in situations where that threat is hardly credible (you launch a cyber-attack that hurts my country for a week or a month, and I will devastate your country for several generations) only diminishes the credibility of threats that are more appropriate--self defense, defense of allies from mass destruction.  It seems clear from Obama's statement that he seeks to maintain something like what the old nuclear gurus called escalation dominance but via conventional weapons--the ability to respond at every step of the escalation ladder.  This allows one to not have to jump from economic sanctions or a pin-prick conventional strike to all-out nuclear wear, which, again tends to be unbelievable.  Instead, one can threaten to escalate to the next step along the way, giving time for the crisis to play out and hopefully lead to somebody backing down before it is too late.

Obama's stance on Iran is similarly reasonable but not uncontroversial:

Mr. Obama said he wanted a new United Nations sanctions resolution against Iran “that has bite,” but he would not embrace the phrase “crippling sanctions” once used by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. And he acknowledged the limitations of United Nations action. “We’re not naïve that any single set of sanctions automatically is going to change Iranian behavior,” he said, adding “there’s no light switch in this process.”

It is pretty clear that Iran is not going to back down in response to anything really.  Does not make sense to issue threats that cannot be followed or back Iran into a corner.  My take on this is that the best we can do is make it hard on the Iranians enough so that others do not follow their example.  Just as we could not dissuade North Korea, I doubt that we can deter Iran.  While Israel is rightly troubled by a nuclear Iran, we simply do not have any real threat to play, other than Iran's nuclear destruction if they use their nascent capability.  Pre-emption is not going to work until, ironically, Iran deploys a handful of nukes that could be targeted.  Right now, their production capability is dispersed and underground.  The most dangerous time will be when they enter a "use them or lose them" situation--when they have a few weapons that might be vulnerable in a first strike.  It is, of course, easier to take unrealistic and extreme positions on this issue, but Obama is actually in office, so he has to be reasonable.  Bush never did launch that war on Iran that so many expected (yes, you, Erin), so a more thoughtful Obama is even less likely to do so.








*  Random indeed.  It has been fun following a college roommate (that I have not talked to in more than twenty years) via his journalism. 

Basketball Jones, Indeed

Courtesy of Deadspin, a flashback to my youth and appropriate, given the end of March Madness:


My ability to do a hookshot with my eyebrows has gotten much better on this side of 40.

Talking to Gen. Dave

See here for an interview with Petraeus by Tom Ricks, his former Iraq traveling partner/fan.

Highlights:

• BD: In Afghanistan, is it time for something like a "night of the long knives" where we simply give President Karzai a list of his officials with whom we no longer will deal or fund in any form?
  GP: I'll avoid that minefield; however, I would observe that situations in places like Afghanistan and Iraq are seldom as straight forward or as black and white as they sometimes appear to be in news stories. Rather, they tend to be very complex and in varying shades of gray...
  Spew: Obviously, he would duck this, but I like how Ricks asked the question.  In the follow up, Petraeus then says that he and Holbrooke will be headed to Kabul to review the strategic concept with McChrystal and others.  Perhaps that review might suggest re-thinking the partner.
  
  
  BD: Speaking of President Obama, how is it different dealing with him than when he was a senator?
  GP: At the risk of stating the obvious, he's the commander in chief now. Beyond that, he's still as focused and engaged as ever, he doesn't shrink from making tough calls, and he and the First Lady are genuinely concerned about our troopers and their families. 
  Spew:  But what else is the guy going to say?
  
  BD: You keep on saying you are not running for president. Why do you think people seem to believe you are?
  GP: Beats me. I've been as categorical as one could be. 
  Spew: Given that Petraeus is either a Democrat or a moderate Republican, there is place for him to run.  The Republican Party is too crazy now for a reality-based kind of guy.  Plus his personality may be, hmm, how do I say it, a tad uptight for running for office.  And he may be self-aware enough to know of his limitations.  And perhaps the job does not interest him.  There are still a few spots left for him within the military (Chairman, SACEUR, Army Chief of Staff) as well as other positions (SecDef if Gates retires, NSC after Jones takes off) plus he could go back to teaching anywhere.  Being president is not always the best or most desired job.  On the other hand, he is reading books about U.S. Grant and what a great President he might have been. Hmmmmn.
  
  Oh, and he liked Blind Side, so perhaps he is a Republican after all?
  
  
  
  
  
  

Instead of Informed Thought

Due to interrupted sleep (old dog and carpets are not a good combination), the only entry I can post is this:

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Harry Potter Dodges a Bludger

Apparently, some of the crew of the film of HP and the Deathly Hallows, part 1, were drinking at a pub and left behind one of the scripts.  Oooops!  They were able to get it back without too much drama. 

Of course, since the book has been out for awhile, there really is only one big spoiler for the movie--where do the break the book into two?  How does the first movie end to set up the second?

My guess is below:

Drone Warfare Intensifies

The use of drones in Pakistan presents a lot of serious tradeoffs, so take this article with a large grain of salt.  There are two pieces of information here that are pretty suggestive:

• That the locals are trying to distance themselves from the militants because they don't want their houses bombed.  Obviously, civilian casualties are wrong in themselves and could alienate them further, but the realization that these outsiders (which many of them are) are bringing harm with them is not a bad thing.
• The drones have created a good deal of suspicion so that new Arabs from outside are not welcomed immediately due to fears that they are US agents.  Whether they are or not, this means that recruitment and replacement are far less assured and even present significant vulnerabilities. 

I do not want to be too optimistic or positive about these developments, but the sad reality is that the US faces few good options.  Karzai is unreliable.  The Pakistanis have been unreliable over the course of time, as they see Afghanistan as "strategic depth" against the Indian threat, and as their control over their own military and intelligence agencies is suspect.  Are drone attacks THE answer?  No, but they make be making a dent where other means are unavailable.  

Favorite Ipad reviews thus far

Check out the slate summary.

And Doctorow is still harsher, enlisting an extremely un-pretty image from the sci-fi writer William Gibson: "The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a 'consumer,' what William Gibson memorably described as 'something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth ... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote.' "

 Yow.  Of course, I have to delight in such reviews since I am too cheap to buy one even though I would love me some apps.  APPS!  But it seems to be the consensus that iPads are great for consumption, not so good for creation.  And I do love to consume, but typing on it looks painful.  My current laptop is getting a bit old, but until Apple invests in an iPad that can direct my thoughts into the machine with no need for fingers to input, I will be buying another laptop and not an iPad.

Is the Clock Ticking?

 KARZAI: “I could be compelled to join the Taliban”

And perhaps Obama might be compelled to do one of the following:

1. 1. Facilitate a coup and see if the strategy works better in Afghanistan than in Vietnam.

   2. Pull the troops out in 2011 or sooner and see what happens to Mr. Karzai.

   3. See if the CIA can do better trying a Cuban strategy, and then let the democratic process of Afghanistan replace the dearly departed Karzai.

Exactly how much leverage does Karzai think he has?  Perhaps the Wall Street Journal got the quote or translation wrong, but I guess Karzai really is in the Tyson (copyright to Bill Simmons) Zone--that nothing Karzai does should surprise us.

This is upsetting even this domestic allies:

"We will have to take powerful action to fix the situation, to go against the government," said Mr. Majidi, who ran Mr. Karzai's re-election campaign in the eastern province of Paktia.

In the board game Junta, there is a card one can play which is simply entitled "coup excuse," which means that the players can then launch a coup.  Other activities in the game can also provide the pretext for a coup.  Seems like Karzai is playing this card, although the President in such scenarios does not usually wind up holding any leverage that the end of the game. 

Remember, counter-insurgency hangs not just on the military side, but on the political side, and Karzai seems most interested in undermining the West.  Either he can change his stands, he can be replaced or marginalized, or we can leave.  It is very hard to build Afghan institutions if the President is set on ripping them down. 

Once again, Obama has been dealt a very difficult hand.  Perhaps Karzai is upset since Bush was so nice to him and Obama is so mean.  That is, Obama expects some kind of performance.

Interesting times ahead.

42 Years Ago

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” – Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., April 3, 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tenn.

The funny thing is that I found this quote this morning on Mike Lombardi's football blog. Lombardi likes to think and write about leadership.  In today's blog, Lombardi focuses on how MLK had become pretty unpopular after his 1967 stand against Vietnam--a position that was ahead of the rest of the population.  By the time of his death, MLK had been joined by the majority of Americans after the Tet offensive.   And the idea that a civil rights activist should not take a position on a foreign war died with MLK.  Obviously, the issues were tied given the unequal way the draft played out and the higher rate of casualties faced by minorities and the poor.

True leadership is taking a stance that is ahead of its time--being willing to be ostracized for taking an unpopular position because it is the right position.

How Obies Might Be Like Penguins

None of my Obie friends, who apparently marry each other more than other college folks (myth or fact?), are divorced.  Are we stubborn?  Who knows?  But a late Sunday morning observation before I do my Canadian taxes.

It's Been a John Cusack Weekend (spoilers)

With the kid away, we have been seeing stuff my daughter did not want to see or should not.  So, we saw Hot Tub Time Machine last night on the big screen and 2012 at home on DVD.

Back to Google Games

Or is it Loogle (Hot Tub Time Machine reference)?  Having blitzed my brain working through the US taxes, and inspired by a friend's facebook reference, I see that typing "am I j" into google gets the following responses:

People want to know if they are Jewish or Jesus?  Well, they could be both, I suppose, but that is interesting--that people suspect that they might be Jewish and look to the internet for clarity.  Seems like many google inquiries focus on whether celebrity x is Jewish or whether oneself is.  Not much concern about being a Muslim?  Mermaid, yes.  Mesomorph, yes. Minority, yes.  But not so much concern about being a Muslim.  "Am I c?" does not bring up Catholic or Christian, but crazy and cute, contagious and codependent, cool and cursed.

Ok, one more

Verrrrry interesting.  Am I a vampire?  Good thing the internet is around to help people out with that.  Attractive or annoying?  Sociopath?  If the answer is yes, would one care?  Getting a political identity from the web (dem or rep)?  Guess that they didn't learn that in poli sci 101. 

I can do this all day.  But the grocery stores are closed here tomorrow, so I need to get some milk.

Anyhow, that is your tax-form-induced craziness for the day.  Check back tomorrow after I do the Canadian and Quebec taxes, which will make me angry more than crazy.

Hypocrisy Du Jour

it’s not girls who have gotten more violent faster — it’s middle-aged men and women, the age groups of the many authors and commentators disparaging girls

 Interesting piece indicating that the stories of violent girls are over-rated.  That crime by and against teenage girls is down.  But that is not as interesting as one or two inflammatory anecdotes.

I am not sure what this says about middle-aged folks that they must write about the "trends" they perceive among the youths.  I mean, who does that?

Serbia Learns the Hard Realities of Conditionality

Tim Judah has a good op-ed (perhaps too sympathetic to the Serbs) about Serbia's parliament passing a resolution, apologizing for Srebenica.  The Serbs are finding that they did not do enough to satisfy the Bosnians or other critics.  But satisfaction is unlikely both because politics prevents Serbia from doing much more and because people are going to read a lot into the motives.

This is one of the challenges of conditionality--you can make people meet conditions for things like membership into international institutions but that coercive element means that people will think that the effort made to meet the conditions is insincere.  Ooops.  So, this might be symbolically significant, and perhaps necessary to move the relationships a bit further down the road. 

But it is only a small step, and its significance pales in compared to other, more substantive stuff, like sending Ratko Mladic to The Hague, discouraging the Bosnian Serbs from acting up, etc.

The Gang That Cannot Shoot Straight

No, this is not about the Republicans, but about the Taliban--that other group of folks with closed minds and nostalgia for a past that never existed.

The NYT is running a blog about the war in Afghanistan, and apparently the Taliban are lousy shots, despite myths of being terrific fighters.  They may be brave and tactically smart, but they seem to miss the target much of the time.  This helps to explain something that I have been curious about and is quite relevant for my research--that casualties have been quite low, even as we acknowledge that each person harmed or killed in this war is serious and should not be diminished. 

Canada has lost a bit more than 140 soldiers over eight years or so, with half of those in one of the toughest provinces and the most heated battles.  That is a lot by contemporary standards, but given the high operational tempo (optempo as the jargon goes), it is somewhat surprisingly low.  Some of the explanation goes to superior equipment (flak jackets, etc), to better tactics, to better intel (UAV's make a big difference here), and to restrictions on the deployment of troops (hard to explain how Australia had zero deaths in its deployments to Iraq). 

But the enemy, as they say, gets a vote, and it seems to be the case that the Taliban cannot shoot too well.

limited Taliban knowledge of marksmanship fundamentals, a frequent reliance on automatic fire from assault rifles, the poor condition of many of those rifles, old and mismatched ammunition that is also in poor condition, widespread eye problems and uncorrected vision, and the difficulties faced by a scattered force in organizing quality training.

The article does not even mention another reality--that a good number of the Taliban's foot soldiers are locals they rent for the day or whatever.  These guys would have no training at all.

This leads to good news:

the Taliban – absent major shifts in training, equipment and logistics – are likely to remain mediocre or worse at one of the central skills of modern war

The Bad: the folks we are training--Afghan army and police--suffer from some of the same problems.

The article concludes with a reality check--bad shooting does not mean an entirely ineffective force.  The Taliban place IED's (or mines as they used to be called) where their opponents are likely to seek cover, so the shooting does not kill them but herds them to the explosives that will.  Poses heaps of dilemmas for the soldiers and marines.

This blog on the war is fascinating, although its detail is perhaps more than many folks need.  Do check it out, as it does have not just tactical and operational implications (yes, I am starting to talk like these guys I interview) but strategic ones as well. 

I am left with one last thought--does this blog provide too much intel to the enemy?  That is, the most important info any team or military unit requires is about itself--its strengths and weaknesses (thanks Mike Lombardi), and the NYT is spreading the word about the Taliban's.  The good news is that the article also discusses the reasons for these weaknesses, and these are not so easy to train.  The Taliban is unlikely to develop the organized training that develops good shooting habits nor the infrastructure to have cleaned weapons and quality ammo.

Questioning the Survey

I just filled out a 66 question survey from my employer about my job satisfaction, and it was pretty thorough, but a few things stood out:

• The timing--just a day or two after it was announced that the current budget crisis (induced by Quebec's own budgetary mismanagement) has produced a big cut in teaching assistantships and will also starve us of administrative support.  
• So many questions, but none that really allow us to consider how happy we are with the explosion of senior admin positions (Vice Principals [Vice Chancellors/Presidents], Vice Provosts, Associate VPs, etc) and all the admin costs that come with those positions.  I wonder if any of those are getting cut?  Probably not since people who make the decisions will not cut their own budgets--a universal problem.
• A very small comment box at the end.  It might be an infinite box in terms of how much can be squeezed into it, but the way it looks on a webpage discourages extensive commenting.

However, it was pretty good otherwise.  Asking about a lot of things that are challenges for McGill, like how much stress educational choice is here.  And that is HUGE right now, as the parties are battling over how best to exclude immigrants from English-speaking schools.  Much of this recent storm happened while I was out of town, but I am just catching up now.  Paying for private school to get my daughter into English schools (with a heavy French component) may not be within my rights in the next year or two, depending on how much the Liberal party wants to alienate a core constituency that cannot go anywhere else.  And, of course, we have no access to the public English system because we are immigrants.  But that is a rant for another Spew.

Given my current circumstances, it was actually fun to answer the survey.  But it was pretty striking that the final questions (demographic ones) could make it quite clear to the survey-processes exactly who I am (what department? age? gender?).  Good thing I have tenure. 

Generation Text

While conversing with my wife over dinner (amazing how much we can converse when Spew Jr is on a class trip!), and the topic became what to call the current generation of youthful folks.  My wife is a baby boomer in denial, I am part of the leading edge of generation X, but what do we call the next one?

 Generation Y is pretty lame, as it reduces them to mere followers and does not provide any sense of what might bind them together, keeping in mind that speaking of generations as groups of folks in common is pretty silly.  Indeed, I tend to think of grouping people by 10-20 year hunks is pretty useless in general.  But, the trons here are free, so why not?

I propose Generation Text. 

• Plays on Gen X, but without being just the next letter in the alphapbet.
• It focuses attention on the fact these folks didn't wait to learn to type until high school, but have been attached to keyboards since they were kids.  That they grew up in houses that had at least one computer, in schools where computer time was expected.
• My school gained regional notice because it had paper computers--simulated computers.  In high school, I did work on a Wang wordprocessing station for the high school paper.  And this was a school in an upper-middle area so it was ahead of many other schools.  Just illustrating a) how things have changed; and b) that I am an old fart.
• This generation has not only learned touch typing at an early age so that they can play and communicate online, but they have also learned to thumb type and text each other in micro bursts of text.  I am not saying this is bad or good (and my previous post on this was just silliness), just that this is a relatively unifying aspect of this generation.  And it separates them from gen x, as we (or at least I) don't text that much and am certainly not speedy when we do text.
• They (old folks) used to complain about gen X multitasking--that would be watching TV and doing homework at the same time.  These kids have got us beat by a mile--listening on their ipod whilst browsing the web whilst texting or chatting on their phone whilst doing homework whilst ignoring their parents. 

To be clear, I do not want to cast aspersions about "the kids today."  Every generation thinks that the next one is a bunch of slackers.  The only exception would perhaps have been the parents of those who grew up in the Great Depression and then fought in World War II.  Hard to accuse those folks of slacking.  I don't think these kids do or will have it any easier or any harder.  It will just be different.  It is a post 9/11 environment, but also an internet-connected one.  It is not post-racial, but it is the generation that has seen Obama win.

What binds an entire generation together?  Not the labels applied by their elders, but shared experiences.  The new technologies may undermine the sharing of some experiences--the number of people who watch the same TV show is much, much smaller as television has splintered.  But technology can work in the other direction--twitter, youtube, itunes, blogs and all the rest facilitate sharing.  We can now all see the same stuff, just not at the same time.  People didn't all stop and watch Leno, Letterman and Conan, but many of us caught much of it via clips. 

Anyhow, I prefer to think of these folks as Generation Text, rather than the Post-9/11 generation or the generation of fear or generation Y or generation me. 

So, what do my readers, Generation Text, Gen X, Baby boomers (all three of you), think?

With Friends Like These

Karzai continues to sell Obama on the idea of splitting sooner rather than later.

Reasonable Gun Nuts?

A new piece of the Hutaree story is that these guys sought help from the Michigan Militia, which apparently is not as extreme as it used to be.  And the Michigan Militia refused to help. Or at least key members of it.  Just leads me to the following conclusion--America is a strange place.

We Have Not Run Out of Scary Sauce

One of the problems with the health care reform debate has been the ability of its opponents to cover the various reforms in what I call "scary sauce."  Myths, hyperbole, and extremely unlikely extensions of aspects to make the bill sound like a dramatic invasion into people's lives and the destruction of their current health care.  Slate does a nice job of clearing away some of the scary sauce:

• There will be no chip inserted into our brains.  Good news.  For some, that would be very hard anyway due to dense skulls and microscopic brains.  (Sorry, too easy)
• No jungle gyms.  I saw the video of Jason Mattera ambushing Al Franken.  This one example really shows how we all have confirmation bias.  The right sees it as Franken avoiding the conversation.  The left and reasonable folks in the center see the video as one of a rude person ignoring the reality that Franken points out--no jungle gyms in the act.  And no $7 billion clearly committed to the building of anything like jungle gyms.  
• Firms will not be forces to have babies breastfed in the front office.  The language in the bill is about allowing women a short period of time to express their breast milk in private--and only for businesses over 50 people.  This is akin to providing a space and time for smoking, except breast-feeding is probably a bit better for one's health than smoking.  But I am sure that Mattera's fans might disagree.
• No forced vaccinations.  Of course, prevention is cheaper than treatment so one could imagine the government might provide more incentives for prevention, as a way to handle costs.  

Once again, to opponents of the reform act, I say suck it up.  You lost.  Move on.  You can try to reform the reform act, but repeal is not in the cards.  It might be a winning political strategy--for primaries and perhaps for some districts, but it is not going to play that well.  But as David Frum has already noted, the Republicans seem pretty committed to finding a cliff and then drive off of it.

We're Going to Need a Bigger Boat/Truck/Train

"My logisticians are a humorless lot...they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay."--Alexander the Great

This one map shows how difficult it is to wage war in Afghanistan.  It comes from a NYT piece that discusses the challenges of moving much of the stuff out of Iraq and a fair amount of it to Afghanistan.  Two decisions are driving this--the implementation of the Status of Forces Agreement [SOFA] with Iraq and the Obama surge into Afghanistan.  The US has to halve its commitment to Iraq as there are about 100k troops there now, and they need to get down to 50k, while Obama is reinforcing the US commitment to Afghanistan with an additional thirty thousand troops, in addition to reinforcements Bush and then Obama already sent.


Oy!  And it gets worse.  That is, the US military feels very committed to the US Congress not to waste anything.  One of the key memories I have of my time on the Joint Staff was a base closing in Bosnia.  We, the JS folks, wanted to leave equipment in place to encourage the Bosnian militaries (one for each ethnic group, more or less at the time) to work together as a single army.  The US Army folks wanted to rip pretty much everything out of the ground except the concrete and bring back home, as part of their obligation not to waste taxpayer dollars.  This was just one base, as US forces reduced from perhaps five digits to four.  But moving from surge levels of 150,000 to 50,000 troops in Iraq  requires a great deal more effort, taking apart that which was built up over six years or so.  This effort would be challenging enough without the additional requirement of moving some of it to Afghanistan.  The good news is that the roads of Iraq are much safer now than they were a couple of years ago.  The bad news is that the roads of Afghanistan are much more dangerous. 

I just wanted to highlight this story to indicate the complex processes imposed by politicians whose timelines are more focused on things like elections.