To Tweet Or Not To Tweet? Social Media and Professing

LSE posted a set of suggestions for new scholars.  It is a good pretty good guide, but I don't agree with it entirely.  It also raises some questions, so let me pontificate (since this is my blog).

Let me take the recommendations in the order Salma Patel, the author, put them in and then comment along the way:

LinkedIn.  I believe that the neo-classic internet phrase that best applies here is "meh."  Linkedin provides some connectivity, mostly to the private sector, but I have yet to really find it useful.  Perhaps that is my experience, but I really do not know of any academic friends using it much.  It is aimed at networking, and is free, so no harm here.  Just not any real benefit as far as I can tell.

Academia.edu: Yes.  It is a cheap (free) and easy way to have a web presence.  It can serve as one's professional webpage, complete with pubs and cv uploaded.  Here's mine.  It is kind of a nerdy facebook where you can follow people's work, and they can follow yours.  The more of a footprint one can create that makes it clear what one's work is, the better.  Yes, there is a risk that someone may plagiarize your work, but if you get the stuff up on the web, then people will know who you are.  And that is the best defense against plagiarism in the long run.  People can copy you, but if folks know your work, then the plagiarist is just a plagiarist and your rep is intact.  If you hide your work, but someone finds it and copies it, you have less of an ability to claim that you were there first.

Twitter:  At this point, I think it is now a requirement to have a twitter account--I will be suggesting accounts to follow when I teach Civ-Mil Relations in a couple of weeks.  That does not mean that one needs to tweet.  But I do think that following interesting folks and various sources is a very valuable way to get connected and find out what is going on in your areas of interest.  I find so many links to so much interesting stuff to read.  The problem is actually doing the reading, but a lurker can get much out of twitter without ever posting.  I, obviously from my own behavior, think that tweeting is also important.  I have developed some very valuable contacts by engaging people in conversation, debating sometimes, building on other people's tweets and so on.  Of course, it is easy for me since I have tenure, but I find that there are plenty of interesting graduate students and assistant professors who tweet and are making a mark by doing so.  You don't have to be at the center of the academic universe if you can contribute something interesting to the conversation, whether that is a timely re-tweet of a piece one has discovered, an opinion added to the conversation, a link to a blog post that develops something further, or even just interesting pics.
    The funny thing is that I resisted twitter at first because I didn't think I could ever consistently say anything in 140 characters or less or find anyone else's short messages all that interesting.*  Even if we leave aside shortened links, there are plenty of folks who have demonstrated a capacity for insight, perspective, and humor (not just @depresseddarth).  Take a gander at the folks I follow (https://twitter.com/smsaideman/).

* As it turns out, I ended up using this tool and discovered that although it took a couple of years to sign up, I was still ahead of 90% of the people who are on twitter now.  And this tool is super-useful to track one's own twitter account (I don't think I am the only narcissist on twitter) and others.  H/T to @DaveedGR for the link.  

I probably should hashtag more to get my stuff wider attention.  Thus far, the only consistent hashtag I use is: #voterfraudfraud.  I use it when discussing the attempts to restrict the vote in the US with the excuse that there is voter fraud (which there is not).
So, much longer than a tweet, but the essential idea is that it is worth it as long as you avoid two dangers: major time suck and perhaps shooting one's mouth off a bit much.  Yes, do as I say, not as I do.  My new enterprise is launching NPSIA's twitter presence.  Twitter is an excellent way to advertise.

Blogging.  The suggestions that LSE lays out are quite good.  I think blogger/blogspot is easier for someone who wants to put no effort into formatting.  Wordpress is not hard, but not as intuitive as it would like to think it is.  Either way, the keys about blogging are, in my humble opinion:

1. Write what you know. 
2. Don't put too much time into it.  You will get little credit on the job market or by tenure committees for it.  
3. It is valuable.  There are so many complaints about how we don't engage the public, that our funding produces research that never translates beyond our narrow circles.  Blogging is an excellent way to communicate to interested audiences, especially when combined with twitter.  Just follow the annual national security twitter fight club extragavanza to see young'uns more than hold their own against big-time experts.
4. And be more restrained than I am about talking about one's institutions.  I tried not to say too much about the various tribulations I was experiencing in my past job, but it definitely leaked through.  Again, tenure is a beautiful thing.  Junior faculty should feel free to talk about their research and teaching, but perhaps not so much about more political challenges closer to home.

This entire post has been focused on a reaction to the LSE piece, so it has mostly been on the networking side of things.  All of this stuff has heaps of pedagogical dimensions as well.  But this post is long enough.  Remind me to get back to pedagogical stuff (sounds so much better in Russian: педагогический) if I forget.

Revising History

Seventy years after the events, we finally learn a bit of truth about the Dieppe Raid.  It seemed like a typical tale: Canadian troops losing their lives needlessly due to poor British planning.  There is a documentary tonight in Canada that presents a new take.  See here for the newspaper tale.  The essence is that the entire raid was a cover for a commando raid seeking to get German code books and machines.  And it was led by Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond books.

The frustrating thing about the newspaper story, and something I will have to track tonight, is whether the raid, actually worked.  Did they get the codes and machines or not?  If they did, then Dieppe can be re-coded a success, that the Canadians who died there helped to save lives elsewhere as the breaking of German codes was huge and entirely secret for decades.  I am kind of surprised that it took a few decades for this new version of the raid to come out since Enigma lost much of its secrecy in the 1970s if I remember correctly.  Then again, the Brits are generally far better at keeping their secrets. 

Even if the mission did not succeed in getting the codes, at least Dieppe now makes some sort of sense.  Still, it remains a testament to poor planning.  Further history work (or perhaps just watching the documentary) will be required to figure out whether the mistakes made were necessary for the mission or just poor planning--that the distraction could have been better planned.

Good Excuses for Blogging Shortage

I blame global warming.  Ok, perhaps not.  But I have not been writing as much here lately.  The new job has kept me hopping.  In addition to the usual teaching, research and service, I have been named Research Mentor.  Don't know what that is?  Neither do I.  I never heard of such a thing, but it is a Carleton thing, I guess.  The idea is to have a person in each unit help with grant-writing and such. 

In my case, I am going to use the title and all the power (none) that comes with it to try to fund-raise to help NPSIA gain more attention and connectivity especially with the folks in and near government who work in the Foreign Policy/International Security/International Development business.  In addition to grants and other begging, I am to help facilitate the intellectual community via speaker series and such.  The third part is to help NPSIA develop a better web presence through blogging (yes, yet another Steve blog) and twitter and such. 

As a warmup, I have been working on a new website for myself.  It is very much in progress (it needs a heap of work), but here it is: www.stevesaideman.com.  Check it out and give me feedback as I desperately need it.

And I will try to get back to blogging once all of my orientation meetings are past tense.

Economic Protectionism is Theme of the Day

My second post of the day is also on protectionism, but a strange kind.  Apparently, some folks in Washington (the state) are upset that their Costco's parking lot is full of Canadian vehicles because the Canadians are running south for cheap goods and gas.  The locals are frustrated that those who come to put money in the local and national economies are filling up the parking lot.  What to do, what to do?

You could blame Obama, I am sure.  But I think you have to blame America and freedom.  That the big box store that Costco exemplifies is such a celebration of "the pursuit of happiness" via consumption and saving money via buying in bulk that resistance is, indeed, futile.

I am too lazy to run down to northern NY for Costco--we have one in Ottawa twenty minutes from my house.  My neighbors, however, did enjoy the hell out of the outlet shopping they sought as part of their summer vacation near American lakes, beaches and cities.  Low sales taxes, great discounts--the American way.

So, residents of Washington, before you protest your parking difficulties, remember that there is nothing more American than buying stuff you probably do not need as long as it is on sale.

Quebec Protectionism

One of the best lines I ever heard when interviewing folks was when I interviewed an Hungarian general.  He said: "Everyone is a nationalist after a few drinks."

Well, the relevance of this is that in an election, especially in a place like Quebec, everyone is an economic nationalists.  The parties are competing to be the best ones to prevent outsiders (Americans!) from taking over companies based in Quebec.  This was inspired, this time, by Lowe's trying to take over Rona, one of the major hardware store chains.  The really funny thing is that Charest is also promising to set aside $$ to help Quebec companies invest abroad.  Yep, no golden rule here.  I guess Charest never read Keohane's stuff on reciprocity.  Of course, he shouldn't.  Reciprocity does not play in an election, but it does tend to make one look just a bit silly.

Of course, this is really just another serving of distraction sauce.  The key issues of today are the usual, basic ones: good governance, jobs, health care, education.  But the Liberals cannot talk about good governance.  The PQ cannot either, since that is the CAQ's big issue, plus the PQ's record on caring about good governance is lousy.  Economic nationalism does sound like protecting jobs, but generally does not help much, especially if one is expecting foreign markets to respond to Quebec protectionism with open arms to their businesses.  Health care?  Good luck with that.  And education right now is covered in other distraction sauce--the student protests.

Anyhow, the point here is that running against Lowe's makes sense for all of the parties, but is not going to mean much down the road.

Joy Joy

We often over-think and over-criticize athletes because, well, it is easy and is a nice distraction from more complicated and more important stuff.

But this one pic shows us something that we should remember: winning is fun.

And it was such a team effort: LeBron making huge plays at the end, Durant sinking shots all over the place, Chris Paul taking control at a key point, Kobe making some timely shots, Kevin Love is apparently too tired to dance since he owned the boards, and so on.  People will complain that they didn't win by as large margins as the original Dream Team, but the quality of competition has caught up to the US.

Not a perfect game, but a fun one to watch.  And it is hard not to take some pleasure in the joy these millionaires felt as they played hard and represented well.

Obsession, Thy Name is Lost

Do check out this wonderfully insane set of photos.  These expectant parents are rabid lost fans.

I found it via Damon Lindelof's tweet:

This nursery is incredible, but you DO realize that baby's gonna have serious daddy issues, right?bit.ly/RN10VL
— Damon Lindelof (@DamonLindelof) August 13, 2012

Just one photo to give you an idea:

Sunday Sniper Silliness

This may be a first for the Spew but very much an internet tradition since 1873: Cat picture!

But I had to, given the civil-military relations embedded in this embedded video:

Running Against the Wind

The PQ has a great chance to gain power again with an exhausted set of incumbents who inevitably presided over a heap of corruption scandals (not that the PQ would be any less corrupt).  But, imitating perhaps the Republicans to the south, the focus ends up being on symbolic politics rather than substance.  The PQ is promising a harsher version of Bill 101, the law that regulates languages.  Not satisfied with denying immigrants and Francophones access to English K-11 (there is no 12th grade in Quebec), the proposal aims to restrict CEGEPs (the semi-junior colleges between high school and university) along the same lines. 

This law is clearly aimed at the nationalist base. In a three-way battle (or five way with two other separatist parties in the mix as well, this makes more sense than the GOP shifting even further rightward since there is less of a need to get any votes in the center and more of a need to cement the base.

The announcements always aim at the shocking disuse of French in Montreal, where the vast majority of the population do speak French.  However, the challenge is that Montreal is chock full of people for whom French is their second language, that their mother tongue is something else.  This allows the PQ to focus its ire on two targets in one shot: Montreal and immigrants.  Running against Montreal is a grand tradition, as it presents the "other" to the rest of Quebec, whether that other is urban, Anglophone, immigrant, gay, educated, or whatever.  Montreal is the economic engine for the province, but the disproportionate distribution of seats (Montreal is under-represented) combined with the usually politicially irrelevant Anglophone community means that it is politically rational to run against the city.  The realities of underinvestment in infrastructure and social services emanate from this--why send resources to Montreal when voters elsewhere matter more?  Why not blast the city for its cosmopolitan-ness even if it does not threaten the rest of Quebec and might even be good as it helps to feed the economy?

The immigrants are the second target.  The PQ has learned some lessons:

1. appealing to immigrants allows other parties to be better xenophobes (ADQ a few years ago);
2. immigrants will learn French (so many speak three or more languages) but learning French does not convert them into either PQ voters or separatists.  So, some proposals of Quebec citizenship are explictly aimed now at immigrants.
3. xenophobia plays well outside of Montreal.

So, what the PQ does makes sense, but once again, what is good for electoral politics in the short-run is bad for Quebec in the long run.  This election can still be about corruption and good governance, but the more the PQ plays up the language stuff, the more Anglophones and Allophones will vote for the corrupt Liberals.  They fear more the certain consequences of an anti-Anglophone/anti-immigrant government and the disruptions that another referendum would bring than the uneven impact of corruption.  Hence Charest's instance that the PQ will hold a referendum and that the new party, the CAQ, may be closet separatists.

Heaps of distraction sauce abound for the Liberals with the PQ playing to its base.  We shall see if corruption becomes the key issue or not of this election.  If the PQ wins because corruption harmed the Liberals, we might not see any improvement in good governance.  Why? Because the PQ does not really care about it.

Yes, I am so very glad I am out out of Quebec.  Ontario may not be paradise, but at least the parties do not seem focused on the threat I pose as an Anglophone and as an immigrant.

Gun Mania

I love how this strip takes the fear of talking about gun control by politicians and moves it to the next level:

Plagiarism Friday

Fareed Zakaria has been accused of plagiarism (and it is pretty open and shut).  It will not prevent him from becoming President--that was never his aspiration.  But it does remind me of someone who ended his political career due to plagiarizing his dissertation:

Demography of Quebec Politics

No, I am not a demographer, I just play one on TV my blog.  I left Quebec behind when I moved to Ottawa, but I cannot help but pay attention to the election there.  So glad I got out before it was called.

Anyway, the stat of the morning is that apparently only 36% of Francophones think that Anglophones play a constructive role in Quebec politics.  There are many ways to read this, but here is my interpretation of this result. 

1. Because of the nationalist politics of the past thirty or forty years, the Anglophones have had only one real choice--the Provincial Liberals.  The Parti Quebecois is not only separatist but regularly promises policies that threaten the interests of the Anglophones--limiting job opportunities, undermining educational opportunities (always the threat for "proportionate" funding of higher education--which means cutting the money going to McGill, Concordia, and Bishop's), and so on.  It is most clear that Anglophones would not be very welcome in an independent Quebec, given the politics and promises of the past.
2. Third parties have generally been vague about their preferences about a future referendum on independence.  The ADQ was "autonomist" but did not rule out independence.  The new third party, the CAQ, had until yesterday or the day before said that it would not seek a referendum for ten years.  Only in the past couple of days has its leader, Francois Legault ruled out a referendum or the goal of independence entirely.  Given his past stances, one could understand why a federalist might be dubious.
3. Given this reality, Anglophones had only one choice--to vote for the Liberals.  Which means that they can be taken for granted.  That the Anglophones could not and probably still cannot reasonably threaten to take their votes and go to another party.  
4. Which makes it damn hard to be constructive.  How do you induce political change, how do you get politicians to focus on good governance, if your vote really hangs on the nationalist question?  Francophones can swing as much as they want because nationalist issues are just some of their concerns.  They have political power because they can choose any party without fear of new laws being enacted to discriminate and even disenfranchise them.  But with Marois positing policies that redefine Citizenship in ways that marginalize minorities, the Anglos have no place to go.

Of course, not being constructive does not mean one is destructive or considered destructive.  That would be an interesting question to ask: are Anglophones a destructive influence on Quebec politics?  Certainly, the majority of potential voters consider the Liberals to be a bad thing according to current polls (with PQ getting over 30% and CAQ at around 25%).  Given that the Liberals need their Anglophone voters (despite selling them out on a regular basis) to stay in power, it is not hard to see how those opposed to Charest and the Liberal party might identify the key Anglo constituency is not constructive.  Given that they would see Charest losing power as constructive, the Anglos ain't constructive.

So, either way you look at it, this particular finding is not surprising.  It has multiple meanings, of course, and we can draw whatever implications we want.  Which is why polls like this are like Rorschach tests--we see what we want to see.  I see a powerless bloc of voters.  Others see a key constituency of a government that sucks.

Yes, the Charest government sucks.  But a PQ government would suck more, especially for Anglos.  Hence the dilemma.

Demography of US Politics

This piece has a very good take on how changing demographics has altered what it takes to win in the US at the Presidential level.  The gist is that Romney can have a relative landslide among whites and still lose if Obama maintains enough turnout and support among non-whites.  The piece tries to be even handed by saying that the GOP forfeits the White House if it cannot appeal to non-whites, but that the Dems will have problems with Congress until it can get enough white support.  Sure, this makes some sense.  But I have a couple of points that could not fit into a tweet or two:

The piece tends to make equivalent a party failing to get more than 20% of non-whites with a party that might get 40% of whites.  What I mean by this is that the GOP appears to be have far more problems appealing to non-whites than the Dems have of appealing to whites.  In any US election at the national level, the outcome is going, the loser is going to get somewhere around 40-49% of the vote (McGovern and Goldwater were in the high 30's).  So, losing some but not all whites is not so damning as the GOP being so miserable about non-white votes. 

Ok, let me be clearer: I think it is abhorrent but normal for one party to be essentially quite racist in its appeal.  The Democrats may often be feeble and divided, but that comes with being a bigger tent.  The party aims to be a multiethnic party.  This might offend some whites, but the party is not anti-white (at least not if one sees reality as it is, not as they fear it to be). 

To be clear, as a political scientist, I understand that the Republican strategy used to make sense--get enough whites and you can win.  But not anymore.  By alienating Hispanics who often have similar values to Republican voters (especially on social issues like abortion), the Republicans gave up California years ago.  That is bad electoral math.  And that math is going to get worse than this article suggests because the demographic shifts have not stopped.  Whites will not lose their plurality status, but they will lose their majority status in many states.  Texas Republicans understand this a bit better, sort of, that if they alienate the Hispanics there, state elections will start to be competitive. 

I understand that lots of the passion and polemics of the last few years (the Tea Party) are a response to the realization that white folks are going to have to share power with non-whites.  This is not a horrible thing, but actually the continued realization of the American dream and the challenges of diversity.  It used to be the case that folks feared the Irish vote and the Italian vote, and so on, but now those immigrant communities are seen as Americans and as worthy targets of vote-seekers.  The Democrats lost the South in the 1960s by supporting civil rights---it was costly in the short and medium term, but history was on their side.  Obama is the beneficiary of the politicians doing what was right back then. 

The Republicans, unless they change course, will be on the wrong side of history.  When Sarah Palin indicated that she just wanted the support of her "Real America," I was fine with that since white, rural America is not only short of 50% but shrinking.  The Republicans will have to face a reckoning at some point--allow some of its members to move back to the middle and to appeal to minorities or become irrelevant.  Not today but soon.

Finger-pointing After Afghanistan

Actually, my latest CIC post is finger-pointing while folks are still in Afghanistan.  So easy to blame-cast, often misses the point.

It Is All Academi-c!

I posted a while back on the name-changing of the most famous private security company--Blackwater.  Because it had not only embarassed itself, but caused a major politico-military crisis for the US in Fallujah, Blackwater re-named itself Xe.  This did not last long (perhaps copyright problems with the handy website that helps people figure out exchange rates).  So, they renamed themselves Academi.  In my previous post, I suggested alternative names, but Academi seems to be sticking.

What does this mean for the company?  Why this name?  I have a few guesses:

• Perhaps the company sought to get out of the bodyguarding business and focus more on pontificating?
• Perhaps it felt the time was right to open up a PhD program in crisis mis-management and collateral damage maximization?
• Perhaps it felt its skills at getting government contracts with no accountability would be better used in the art of gaining grants?
• Perhaps its leaders felt more comfortable in tweed with elbow patches rather than camoflauge?
• Perhaps the organization thought that profs, despite widely depicted as lechs, would be a reputational step up from out-of-control mercenaries?
• Perhaps recklessly killing bystanders has inspired these folks to pursue the life of the mind instead?  Hard to kill somebody by mistake in my business, although I have done it a few times.

What are your thoughts?

Students Really As Consumers

I am not a big fan of For Profit higher education.  Of course, I have a dog in this fight (sorry), as one could imagine a world where these entities take over higher education, making it harder for me and my kind (that would be my grad students) to get and keep jobs.

Instead of spewing my biased spew, I will let Garry Trudeau take the floor:

These schools have been ripping people (especially Veterans) off big-time.  Not good.

Anyhow, I look forward to the rest of the week as the story continues at Doonesbury.

Curing Writer's Bloc With ...

From here.

Great Moments in Electoral Hypocrisy

Driving back and forth to Quebec this summer to take my daughter to and from her summer camp (multiple sessions) is exhausting.  Today, however, it was somewhat uplifting.  My daughter brought me much joy.  How so?  She spotted a Parti Quebecois poster and was most scornful of the slogan:


Pourquoi?  Because "A Nous de Choisir" is pretty much antithetical to what the PQ stands for.  The phrase means "We Have to Choose" essentially, but this is the PQ, whose program contains heaps of un-choices.  That if they are elected, they will apply Bill 101 rules that prevent Francophones and Immigrants from going to English public schools to younger and older folks.  To day care and to CEGEP (the public/free junior college/pre-university stuff between high school and college).  So, choose the party that is against choice.  Unless by choice, one means never taking yes (getting what you want) or no (nope, folks do not want independence) for answers.

It reminds me, of course, if you decide not to choose, you still have made a choice.

So, my teen found the poster to be most snort-worthy.  I could not be prouder.  

Let the Comedians Lead

Check out this interview with Chris Rock.   He has just a very sane perspective about things, including how to deal with internet hysteria: "Just because there’s an alarm going doesn’t mean it’s a fire."  Just because people are making a lot of noise on twitter or elsewhere does not mean something is a crisis or a storm or whatever.  For Rock, the question is: are the fans of person x (Daniel Tosh, Tracy Morgan, whoever) upset?  If not, then it is not much of a problem.

I am a big fan of putting the panic button just a bit further out of reach, so that we do not smack it too often.  The case of the week is clearly Chik-fil-a.  It is within anyone's right be to homophobic and self-righteous.*  It is within anyone's right to boycott or support a firm run by a guy who is homophobic and self-righteous.**  It is certainly fine for someone to boycott firms that donate to anti-gay causes.

*  I was always put off by the very vocal "hey, we don't work Sundays" policy that reminded me of how narrow-minded people could be since Sabbaths vary, but that is just me.

**  And yes, I think it is homophobic and self-righteous because it requires the usual selective reading of the Bible which has all kinds of obsolete crap in it that we ignore, including slavery and horrific rules of war and so on. 

But it is clearly wrong for Mayors to say that Chick-fil-a is not welcome in their towns since that would be a violation of a homophobic chicken kingpin's rights.  People can boycott because they are offended by someone's speech--the first amendment does not restrict offense.  But it does restrict government from punishing people and firms (since firms are apparently people, too) for saying stupid stuff.


More importantly, this convoluted controversy of the week distracted people from the big story: A Bush appointee ruled that the Defense Against Marriage Act is unconstitutional.  Turns out equal protection under the law means something.

I will try not to use all of Chris Rock's writings as totemic, but the idea that we should chill a bit when folks over-react to stuff is pretty darned good advice.

Update: Not all funny people are professional comedians:

Waking Up to The Nuclear Crisis

Very striking video by an expert on the Cuban Missile Crisis (H/T to Chris Albon for the link):


I am pretty much with it until the end.  Nuclear disarmament is a swell idea, but I am a firmer believer in the security dilemma and the complexity of International Relations.  A world without nukes would be interesting, but getting there from here?  I just don't see it.  I see less, as we move to a world of minimal deterrents, but none?  Nope. 

Fun way to wake up on a Sunday, eh?