Ten Years: Then and Now

The Aughts have been a pretty transformative experience (although each decade has been, of course).  I entered the 2000s from my bunker in West Texas and will leave this decade while ensconced in my Igloo in Montreal (I can spend endless threads juxtaposing those two places). 

So what has changed for me (I will consider more global changes perhaps later):

• My daughter is approaching 14, rather than 4.  And that is huge.  I enjoy fatherhood far more now than then.  She was not a horrible four year old, but sleeping and eating were still issues.  She is now far pickier about what she wears than what she eats, and I guess that is better.  More importantly, she sleeps.  No more five o'clock wakeups.  Getting her to go to bed is no longer the problem of her crawling out of her bed, but getting her out of oursas she has become addicted to the same shows that we watch. 
  
• We entered the decade with one middle-aged dog and one somewhat younger one and are leaving the Aughts with one old dog and one middle-aged cat.  Definitely not an improvement, as we miss Flynn, who was the Fonzie of dogs--just exuded cool and who proved to be quite strategic.  Instead, we have a neurotic dog who is still pretty healthy and a cat that is, well, a cat.  I lost the male ally I had in the house and gained a male that I cannot trust (the aforementioned cat).
• My tastes have changed just a bit.  I listen to far more new-ish music now than I did a decade ago.  I discovered grunge and alternative rock in the Aughts.  This was spurred first by the paucity of English radio in Quebec and the availability of one station based in Burlington, Vermont.  So, my best music list of the Aughts actually omits a great deal of music that was kind of new to me, but had been around in the 1990s (Blink-182, Green Day, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, etc.)  I also found myself enjoying more harder rock--Metallica, AC/DC and the like.  My movie tastes have not changed much, although I have less tolerance for romantic comedies unless they are actually good and clever.
• I spend far more time online, thanks to poker, facebook, and blogging (mine and others).
  
• Professionally, my life is completely different:
• My students awe me most of the time with their amazing backgrounds, their critical minds, their enthusiasm for the stuff.  My students back in 2000 mostly just wanted to borrow my pen or my phone or get directions.
• I have herds of graduate students doing all kinds of interesting work, and they have greatly assisted me in my work.  Back then, I had one graduate student and the rest at TTU avoided me (I had standards).
• I am no longer so worried about being left out of various "reindeer games" as Montreal is far less isolated academically than Lubbock, and as I have developed a higher profile than I once had.  The political science rumor mills online spell my name right, so I must be doing ok.  It has been a good decade for publishing (two more books than the previous decade!), but review processes continue to make me work hard.  
• I started out the decade with one research partner (the non-terrorist Bill Ayres) and now I have so many that I have lost track!  Co-authorship has become my usual approach these days, as my research agenda has moved from a single strand to a variety of questions, from just the International Relations of Secession to the impact of institutions on ethnic conflict to the sources and solutions to civil war (just reviewed here) to the limits of irredentism to the dynamics shaping how militaries are controlled in far off operations in Afghanistan.
• I have had significant resources that have allowed me to hire a bunch of students, to travel to Europe and next year to Australia.  The Canadian military flew me to Afghanistan.  So, I have seen far more of the world the past ten years.
• I have far more media experience.  I can still get things wrong, of course, but I say them better, I think.  Not that much interest in Lubbock for those things foreign.  But in Montreal and Canada a great deal, especially since my ten days in Afghanistan make me an expert on the country's foreign policy focus.  Ok, not really an expert on Afghanistan but on NATO's mission.  So, I can be asked questions that I cannot answer, but can answer some of the stuff.
• I am more interested in the policy-relevant side of the business.  Rather than just talking to only academics, I am more interested in getting my messages, whatever they are, out to the folks who make the decisions.  Perhaps a year in the Pentagon made a difference.
• Indeed, one year in the Pentagon made a big dent on me.  I am still a shaggy, frumpled academic, but the jargon I learned has not left me (outstanding!) and I have developed new research interests (civil war, civil-military relations, etc) as a result.  And a deeper appreciation for what others do for the Greater Good.

Consider this post a first draft, as I am sure other stuff will come to me.  How have you changed over the past ten years?

Duck! It's the First Snow!

Today, we are expecting something close to a foot of snow (30cm), after the US has already been hit pretty hard.  I scoffed a bit when some school districts (east of Montreal where I like to go skiing) pre-emptively closed.  It is funny because Canada gets a lot of snow, so these folks should be used to it (unlike DC drivers, for instance), but they are a forgetful lot as the first big snow is always a challenge.  The city seems to forget each year how to remove snow (has to be removed, not just pushed to the side since it will not melt away until April, more or less).  The drivers forget how to drive in the stuff, and pedestrians forget how to manage the snow as well. 

After the first big fall, everybody then remembers and manages to make it through the winter without too much anxiety.  Indeed, I am hoping that people learn quickly as I am headed to Ottawa tomorrow to discuss Australia's participation in the Afghanistan missions with their Defense Attache--it is about 1.5 hour drive that is usually uncrowded and non-eventful.  I am hoping the snow is cleared by then, and it should be.

The good news is that the ski hills might be able to open sooner!

Flying Fish? Not a Good Idea

Interesting piece--argues that the various debates about which fish is best misses the biggest thing we could change.  Fresh fish are much worse for the environment than frozen since they are flown, and that has a bigger impact than anything else. 

Of course, what I really need to know is the environmental impact of twinkies.

Best What Else?

Ok, music, TV, film for the aughts are done.  I have to ponder books next (although just listing HP 1-7 could do it), but what other stuff should I create absurd or ill-considered rankings?

CNNSI has best football stuff.  I am sure other sports stuff can be ranked (best games, best plays) although my selection would be spotty since much of that stuff blends together. 

Best fashion trends?  Not for me since I am not a fashionista.  Best new cuisine?  Um, I have added Lebanese food to my repertoire thanks to my time in Quebec, but otherwise not too much has changed.  I am now better educated about beer.  But best beers of the Aughts?  Probably not. 

Best scandals?  Steve's most egregious mistakes in the Aughts?  

I will, in a few days, consider what I have learned or how I have changed since 2000.

Readers, let me know and I shall be your servant.  In other words, grading is damaging my imagination (although my students will disagree at 9am tomorrow morning when they start their final exam).

Technology plus Anxiety == Amusement for the Professor

My big lecture class is on WebCt, one of several packages that universities install to facilitate the webbing of classes--to store notes, facilitate discussions, to post announcements and syllabi, etc.  I use my webct stuff to post the slides from classes, the system automatically posts recordings of my lectures in the big class (lots of debate among professors about whether this is a good idea or not), and provide a forum for students to engage in discussion.

Tomorrow is the final exam, so  tonight they are posting all kinds of speculation about the final exam question.  It has been entertaining to follow the discussion.  Now I have more ideas for next time, although I will not be accused of lacking imagination after this one.  Insert maniacal laughter here.

Best TV of the Aughts: Doomed by Short Memory?

In my continuing effort to generate comments on my blog, here is my first draft of best TV show's of the Aughts, and, again, the disclaimer is that I only consider shows that I watched (sorry Wired).*

Best Dramas (in order--to gratuitously generate more comments):

1. Mad Men.  Does so much so well.  Instructs me on what life was like just before I was born (kids playing plastic bags); Great Acting; Interesting spin on Advertising and business; Great Character development.  Perhaps it is my favorite now because it is on-going, but I have more enthusiasm for this show than any other.
2. Sopranos.  Great acting, great writing.  Really set the model for all subsequent dramas.
   
3. Deadwood.  Hell if it is accurate at all about the time, but it had a fascinating villain (who was more complex than any other), great characters, a nice depiction of cooperation under anarchy (for the IR geek that I am), some compelling plots.  How did towns spring up out of nothing?  This is one possible story.  The only real downside is that it was only on for three seasons.  And it should have won a special Emmy for most creative swearing
4. Friday Night Lights. Criminally ignored by the Emmys and the public. Great depiction of family/work life/teenagers.  What does a father do when his girl gets drunk or dates his QB?  Everything I know about fatherhood I learned from Coach Eric Taylor.  "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose." Indeed. 
5. Band of Brothers.  Just one season (mini-series or not?) of a moving, accurate, deep portrayal of one unit from the US through Normandy, the Bulge and to Victory.  I am very much looking forward to the "sequel" in 2010 which does for the Pacific what this series did for the American experience in Europe.
6. Lost.  An endless mind@#$.  The fate of this show hangs in its final season, as there are many questions that have yet to be answered, and the potential reboot in the aftermath of last season's finale may or may not make the previous seasons moot.  To do so entirely would be greatly damaging to the entire series (not unlike what happened with BSG).  The show has been a wonderful combination of drama, science, comedy (Hurley in a VW van), mystery and theology perhaps. 

Honorable mentions:  

• Closer and Weeds are both fun shows but my viewing has been disconnected due to the time/space conflicts between the US and Canada.  
• Battlestar Galatica was heaps of fun and most watch TV, but fell short of greatness by how it started and ended.  The characters in the first season were so incredibly stupid that my wife could not watch: hey, let's give the scientist who talks to himself a nuke and then let's forget we gave it to him.  And the last episode--not the angels part but the rest of it--ok, we are in Earth's past and might want to lose our technology, but given how often they fought over other decisions, is this really going to go down that easily?  And they all split up from each other?  Even Lee and his dad?  Still a fun, fun show.
• Rescue Me.  An amazing show in the aftermath of 9/11, but so brutally depressing at times that I could not sustain a commitment to watch.
  

Best Comedies (this was an easier and harder list--not so many great ones in this decade, but not necessarily in order):

• The Office (US version).  I have not seen much of the UK version.  This year's focus on the decline of the American corporation has taken the show beyond mere hijinks to actually just a bit relevant.  They need to get Jim and Pam back to being intelligent and fun again, but otherwise an excellent blend of cringe and laughing.
• How I Met Your Mother: Interesting replacement for Friends and Seinfeld.  New Yorkers, mix of single and married, presenting competing theories of social behavior.  And presenting the best forum for Neil Patrick Harris.  Amazing how they have hung so much on a show with such a potentially limiting premise.
• Big Bang Theory.  I was reluctant to join the fun, but the Spew family compelled me to watch.  And then I had to run out and get the DVDs for the season I missed.  Geek supremacy has arrived.  Perhaps the best display of science on TV (outside of Mythbusters).
• Scrubs. Whimsy.
• South Park.  I watched it less consistently in Canada since new shows were on Friday and then Saturday nights, but still brutally funny, always on target stuff.

I never caught Arrested Development, so I could not rank it.  Again, one I will eventually see on DVD.

Reality TV:
 I don't watch such stuff much, but two shows do stand out: the aforementioned Mythbusters (which I would like more if I didn't have to watch marathons whenever I am in the US in a hotel or house with only one TV--the Spew kid dominates the remote control like Tiger Woods dominates golf and now gossip news); and Joe Schmoe.  Joe Schmoe was actually a parody of the reality TV shows, with one real person and a bunch of actors playing the usual cast of characters.  It was hilarious--the best TV Spike has produced thus far.  And it gave us Kristen Wiig, who is used way too much on SNL but still one of its best talents.

The Most Important TV Show of the Decade:
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  While the Colbert Report can be funny and is a wonderful exercise in who will go along with his routine (and what his followers will vote for), The Daily Show has become the single most important check on the media and on politicians.  Showing 1991 Cheney discussing the difficulties of occupying Iraq vs Cheney 2003 talking about parades, Bush as candidate vs Bush as President on nation-building, etc.  It almost seems like only this show has an archive of what politicians have said and is willing to occasionally compare and contrast.  Very funny, usually insightful, and now expected to be better journalists than a source of fake news, which is the height of irony.

For this, I post the classic Jon Stewart defense of his show and the failures of the rest of the news media:











*I am certain that I will be abused for this, but I will eventually rent the series and can then re-rank.

Recommending with Diminishing Enthusiasm

Grading will always be the less fun part of being a professor, but writing recommendations is clearly #2.  That McGill students are ambitious is cool.  But writing letters, even now that I have ripped off an Oberlin prof to develop rules that make it a bit easier, is just not much fun. 

Now that many admissions processes use web-based systems, I don't have to worry as much about losing envelopes or stuffing the wrong ones.  But there are still a variety of web-sites and they require the same info (my address, like they will ever mail me anything) again and again. 

The harder problem is writing letters for students I barely know.  Because the upper division classes here are still pretty big, I rarely get to know most of my students.  I find it easy to write letters for former research assistants (and writing letters for my phd students is another challenging task, but mostly because they keep needing new ones for different kinds of things), but for a student who took just one of my classes or two big ones, well, hard to say much. 

I have my teaching assistants draft the first version if I don't know the student well, so that is a fun exercise--seeing how different folks write these letters and then revising them. 

I have only refused one student--and not because he was not bright.  I just found him too obnoxious and would never want anyone to blame me for having to put up with him.

Any thoughts by fellow letter-writers?

News in Russian Civil-Military Relations

Interesting piece on the latest on Russia's military.  Most striking is that the current defense minister is the first civilian to occupy that office.  But more disturbing is that the government seems to be betraying its promises to find apartments and other compensation for the officers that lose their jobs.  Demobilizing here is not as risky as demobilizing in Iraq in 2003, but it is still something that should be done with great care.

Grad Student Living

I have had conversations over the past week or two with my grad students about how much work do they have to do to make money and how much that interferes with their efforts to make progress through the graduate program.  I suggested that perhaps spending less might make sense, but this guy has taken this to an extreme that I would not recommend.

And the really bad news about this guy--he is engaged in graduate work in liberal studies. Which I guess is good news--he has developed a set of skills that will help him when he fails to find an academic job.

Strange Days to be in Canada

As the calendar progresses through the year, there are several days where it feels stranger than usual to be outside the US:

• President's 3-day weekend in February.  No classes missed up here.
• Memorial Day: another three day weekend lost.
• June 26th/July 1st/July 4th: Fete Nationale in Quebec, Canada Day and Independence Day--two weeks where I am constantly reminded that I am a stranger in a strange land.
• Columbus Day/CA Thanksgiving.  Not a big holiday here, but I always screw up my syllabus scheduling classes on a day when school is out of session
• US Thanksgiving.  Always tricky to figure out how to ditch school while everyone else is working in Canada.
• Dec 7th.  Pearl Harbor Day.  Not a huge American holiday or anything, but it is a date with weight in the US and none up here.

 On the other hand, there are several days where it does not matter too much whether I am north or south of the border:

• Labor Day is only different by being Labour Day up here.
• Veteran's Day in the US is Remembrance Day up here, and a bit more important up here (since the American gratitude towards its veterans is spent in part on Memorial Day).

Anyhow, so today is the 68th anniversary of the attack upon Pearl Harbor.  While it was a tragic day in many ways, it facilitated American entry into WWII, which was a net good thing.  I was a  Peace Education workshop a couple of years ago, and a person was arguing that nothing good came from World War II.  It was not my turn to speak, but I would suggest that the defeats of Nazi Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Imperial Japan were all net positives.

Gladwell's "What The Dog Saw"

I have been reading Malcolm Gladwell's book of essays for a while now.  Reading these articles reminds me of why I like Gladwell and why he drives me crazy.  He asks really good questions, investigates them in interesting ways, but often provides weak answers.

To illustrate, I will first summarize his first three books:

• Tipping Point:  It basically ponders why things spread.  The book argues that it has to do with the nature of the thing, the attributes of the messenger, and the context.  So, in some ways, everything matters, which is pretty unsatisfying.  But in the course of the book, Gladwell reviews heaps of interesting social science.
• Blink: Your first intuition is correct except when it is not.  Least satisfying of the three books because its conclusion is so banal.
• Outliers:  What causes success?  Context and hard work, not just talent.  The fun stuff here is the context stuff.  That the best hockey players in Canada tend to be those that were born in the first three months of the year, as they would have a physical advantage over the other kids and that would lead to more reps, more coaching, better competition, etc.  In other words, path dependence is huge here.

 I am not going to go through each and every essay, but highlight some of the more fun/provocative:

• "The Pitchman"  Documents the tales of the folks behind Ronco and other kitchen gadgets.  Just a fun bit of history behind the infomercials.
• "The Ketchup Conundrum"  Explains why there is just one dominant Ketchup company and many flavors of mustard.  And how yellow mustard was supplanted by fancier forms.  A nice lesson in the science of taste and how Heinz more or less accidentally found the perfect formula.
• "John Rock's Error"  History of the birth control pill, with the assertion that it did not have to be a monthly rhythm.  Indeed, heaps of interesting stuff on periodic periods.
• "Open Secrets"  A tale of Enron, but addresses an important problem for those who seek intelligence--info about their adversaries--too much info can be as bad as too little.  Not a new idea but well illustrated.
• "Million-Dollar Murray."  Uses the stories of homeless people to illustrate a very interesting problem--most of our work in public policy assumes that the population or problem is distributed by a normal distribution (a bell curve), but power-law distributions tend to mean that most of the stuff is located at one tail or another.  This has powerful implications for social policy, as helping the average person or even most of the people may not make much of a difference since most of the impact (the costs incurred by the society due to homeless individuals is largely due to a small number of the homeless) is concentrated in the extreme ends.  So, policy needs to be re-aimed bigtime. 
• "The Picture Problem"  Addresses the problem of interpretation, especially of complex visual stuff, like mammograms.  This is apparently more art than science, and I was reading this essay when the mammogram protocols were in the news again.  The challenge here is that false positives are incredibly expensive in terms of medical costs but also emotional ones. 
• "Something Borrowed"  A fascinating story about how he was plagiarized and that he didn't mind that much since it was for another medium--a play.  The funny thing is that he person he profiled in the original piece was far more upset about the plagiarism.
• "The Art of Failure"  An interesting discussion of choking vs panicking.  But it does not really tell us why either happens.  Choking refers when people lose their instincts and end up relying on the formal lessons they learned. Panicking is "the reversion to instincts."  Fascinating but frustrating--perfect Gladwell.
• "Blowup"  Summarizes Perrow's Normal Accident stuff.  Some hints of the Traffic stuff by Vanderbilt is here.
•  "Most Likely to Succeed"  The problem of hiring people when we really do not know who becomes a good x.  Like Quarterbacks and teachers.  I was going to suggest that we have the same problem in academia, but probably not as severe. 
• "Dangerous Minds"  That the profiling of serial killers we have heard so much about is, well, perhaps a bunch of hooey.  The original studies were very much products of selection bias, and then Gladwell compares the profilers to huckters--to Mentalists (which was heaps of fun, given my love for the show).  Gladwell cites a variety of tricks from Ian Rowland's The Full Facts Book of Cold Reading: The Rainbow Ruse (where a person  is both x and not x), the Jacques Statement, the Barnum Statement ("the assertion so general that anyone would agree"), and so one.  Fun, fun stuff, and really challenged what I had previously believed.
  

 I have two more essays to go.  Will update when those are done.

Corporations Are Good for the Environment?

In an interesting op-ed at the NY Times, the always controversial Jared Diamond suggests that some firms are actually making a significant effort to improve the environment and that it makes competitive sense.

Let’s start with Wal-Mart. Obviously, a business can save money by finding ways to spend less while maintaining sales. This is what Wal-Mart did with fuel costs, which the company reduced by $26 million per year simply by changing the way it managed its enormous truck fleet. Instead of running a truck’s engine all night to heat or cool the cab during mandatory 10-hour rest stops, the company installed small auxiliary power units to do the job. In addition to lowering fuel costs, the move eliminated the carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to taking 18,300 passenger vehicles off the road.

 The piece also does a nice job busting myths about the economic disincentives to engage in sustainable practices.

I have come to the belief that the world will adjust to the shortage of energy supplies by conserving and coming up with alternatives because companies will see it in their interest to do so--so that they can remain competitive and become even more so.  On the other hand, I think climate change itself, well, we are not going to do so well, as it will require cooperation, extensive cooperation that is not that easy to come by.  This week's meetings in Copenhagen are illustrative, as Canada will face much abuse for its tar sands exploitation.

Harry Potter and the Challenge of College Admissions

I didn't know that American (and perhaps Canadian) colleges and universities were competing with each other to sell themselves to the next generation of students as the most Harry Potter-esque experiences.  I guess it should not be too surprising since HP is a staggeringly popular pop culture phenomenon especially for the college-goers today, and university admisssions types may not have done heaps of research to find out what else these kids like.

I do know that my HP references work better in class than nearly any other--as a result of both Harry being a widely shared experience and the surprise that a prof might be as obsessed by kid/teen books as they are.

Some thoughts on all of this:

• Hogwarts would be a natural parallel to universities since the infrastructure of both are quite ancient.
• Perhaps Hogwarts is a desirable analogy because you can go from 11 year old target of bullies to the hero of one's own world.
• Quidditch of today might be the ultimate of 20 years ago--a sport for silly people with middling athletic skills.
• Hogwarts was a comforting place for people who had been outsiders--orphans, bookworms, middle kids and future mass murderers.  Each college or university knows that many (most?) teenagers identify with outsiders, especially the brainy ones.
• Grabbing onto HP might be cheaper than doing real market research?

 The series ends with the end of high school.  The books refer to education past high school (that aurors need more education), but there does not seem to be a magical world of college and university counterparts.  I guess it makes sense that the universities would like to attract the Harry Potters of the world.  But before they continue the practice, they should remember Cedric Diggory and the death toll around our good friend Harry.

Best (Favorite) Music of the Aughts

Continuing my self-indulgent tour of the decade past, it is time to consider music.  Tastes here are always quite personal.  Far easier to argue over the best film than the best song or album (right, Chuck K?).  So this is really Steve's favorite music of the 2000's.

Here we go:

First, favorite groups/acts of the decade (in order):

1. Weezer: Nice range of songs, always catchy, mostly funny.
2. My Chemical Romance: Almost always nicely bombastic, great played loud.
3. Bowling for Soup: Always silly, relates nicely to my life (1985, Ohio, etc.)
4. Simple Plan: Just fun whining that hits me in the right spots.
6. Panic at the Disco!   Different, change of pace silliness
7. Beyoncé.  Just good songs, good videos consistently and a good sense of humor as well.
   

Second, favorite funny/silly/wacky songs (not in order):

1. Stalker by Goldfinger--has a great beat, funniest lyrics.  Video has the most literal application of the song.
2. Hooray for Beer by Bowling for Soup.  No video yet, but a fun song.
   
3. Stacy's Mom by Fountains of Wayne  .   Great video interpretation (Rachel Hunter!).  Just shows how wonderfully misguided teenage boys are about their choices since Stacy was interested in the boy and she was not unattractive.
4. Sweep the Leg by No More Kings.  Wonderful vision of what happened to the boys from Karate Kid.
5. Pop Goes My Heart, Hugh Grant, the definitive parody (along with Robin Sparkles, Let's Go to the Mall) of the 1980's pop video.  I owe all my dance moves to this video
6. Re: Your Brains, Jonathan Coulton.  Live!  Or Undead!
7. Rock Me Sexy Jesus from Hamlet 2.  Wonderfully inappropriate.
8. I Want an Alien for Christmas, Fountains of Wayne

Third, best secretly good soundtrack: Clockstoppers.

Fourth, the most obviously terrific soundtrack: Avenue Q.

Fifth, the top songs of the decade (aside from those already listed in the various categories above, not in order).

Swiss Missed (cont)

See this piece for a clear-eyed take. 

NYT On a Roll

I abused the New York Times before, but its coverage of the new "surge" into Afghanistan has been very good.  This article shows the parallels of Iraq and Afghanistan and the contrasts AND how the decision-makers thought about them (also see this piece on the challenges of transitioning to the local folks). 

One of the key similarities:

Both surges aimed to knock back an insurgency that had gained territory and caused high casualties, and to buy time and space to train local forces for combat. “Neither one of these surges,” said one officer involved in both decisions, “was born to exploit success. They were designed to reverse momentum.”

Which leads to two other similarities--the surges were and will be accompanied by more violence, more casualties as troops stay put in places where they used to wander through; and politics is key--the outcome really depends on Iraqi and Afghan politicians.

The article then points out that the Iraq surge was successful in large part (almost entirely?) to the Sunni Awakening--when the Sunnis turned on the AQ of Iraq folks who were killing more Sunnis than Shiites.  Also, the surge worked because the Shiite militias stepped down.  And this gets to the criticism that the time limits would just lead to the Taliban laying low for a couple of years.  While there is much to this, if the aim of the surge is not to defeat the Taliban but to reverse momentum, then woo hoo!  I forget who argued this in the last day or two--reading heaps of stuff--but if the Taliban do take a break, then that is a short-term win.  And that is the best we can hope for right now.

The start of a pullout of 2011 is a big risk--that folks will wait for the US to leave, that Afghanistan and Pakistan will freak out over the lack of a long-term commitment.  But fudging is already going on.  So, the next year or so is going to be interesting--how do folks react to the stated timeline....

Best Movies of the Aughts

As I have promised, I am starting to consider the decade from 2000-2009 now that the next one is nigh.  As my past six months of blogging or so have indicated, I am a big fan of movies and my tastes run the gamut.  I like to be entertained and occasionally moved.  My standards are that, nothing more than that, so I may not have high falutin' tastes and most folks should disagree with me!

Two notes: only movies I have seen myself, not movies that everybody thinks is swell; and some clips will have inappropriate language, drug references and the like.

First, the best comedies (not necessarily in order):

• Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz.  Both movies are simply wonderful--they are funny, contain some decent action and play very snarkily with two of the classic genres--the monster movie and the buddy cop movie.  Hot Fuzz actually plays more in my head--the Greater Good--than Shaun but the latter takes the Z and runs with it. 
• Team America:  Trey and Matt engage in a wonderfully profane send up of the action movie and then some.  They show little mercy, and they do it all with marionettes.  And it is a fantastic musical (montage is safe for work). 
• Tropic Thunder: Of all the movies of the past ten years, this one made me laugh the hardest.  It just hurt and hurt.  And Robert Downey Jr was simply amazing as the Australian method actor playing a dude playing a dude.
• Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle:  The best trash movie of the decade.  The basic quest movie with drugs, sex and a career-changing cameo by the now legend-(wait for it)-ary Neil Patrick Harris. 
  
• Best in Show: Dog show, neurotic people, great talented people riffing. 
• Anchorman: 70's San Diego, the best comic fight scene I have ever seen. (although the clip here is very weak but the best I could find).   No commercials, No Mercy!! For that alone, this movie rates top ten status.
• 40 Year Old Virgin: The best of the Apatow gang's efforts, although most of the others rate pretty highly as well (Pineapple Express and Superbad could go here as well).
• Borat.  Very nice.  With Letterman to sell the movie.
• Hoodwinked: Best animated comedy of the decade, wildly underrated with perhaps the best performance by a mountain goat of a decade.  Plus Anne Hathaway and schnitzel on a stick.
• Hangover.  Ok, Harold and Kumar might have been replaced by this movie as the best trash movie of the decade. I mean, Mike Tyson!!  "I don't know they gave out rings at the Holocaust."
• Dodgeball.  I cannot believe I originally forgot this one.  The movie contains the best parody of a 1950's instructional video and the best cameo by an athlete (Lance Armstrong's withering contempt for Vince Vaughn).  Plus the five D's of dodgeball: Dodge, Dip, Duck, Dive and Dodge.  Not to mention the best send of sports coverage--ESPN Ocho!
  

Second, best drama/action (many more movies to consider):

• Spider-man (and the second one as well): Perfectly realized the comic book.  Iron Man is nearly in the same class.  Perfect casting, some nice twists on the old story (webbing!), and a very creepy villain.  Doc Octopus was great in the second. Sam Raimi was given a great responsibility and handled with class.  Plus some Bruce Campbell in each one.  Just amazing.  Dark Knight is a great movie with some fantastic scenes and a phenomenal performance by Heath Ledger.  But the movie has a big flaw--the Joker has too many completely unbelievable traps (the ferries, the hospital, etc) that could not have been done on the fly and would have been detected.  X-Men and X-Men 2 are pretty close as well, but Spidey just rocks.  From Aint It Cool on S-M 2:
  

  And if Mary Jane's "Go get 'em, Tiger" didn't have you walking out of the theater on air, you weren't a Spider-Man fan to begin with.

• The Incredibles.  I think this move is superior to the Pixar flicks likely to make it onto the various lists (Wall-E and Up).  Classic superhero tale with some very nice takes--no capes indeed.
• District 9.  Pretty sharp movie on its own and with the social/political parallels.
• Flags of Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima.  Together, just a great effort to show war from two opposing perspectives. 
• Lord of the Rings.  Seriously in need of editing, but a great realization of a classic tale.  Complete with some wonderful lines (Don't Tell the Elf!)
• Memento.  Insert lost memory joke here.
• Beautiful Mind.  The best depiction of mental illness plus some game theory.
• Gladiator:  Yes, I was entertained.
• Bourne Identity:  Best of the three.  Adrenalin. 
• Brokeback Mountain: Great performances, path-breaking, potentially society-altering movie.

Close calls include Casino Royale, June, Little Miss Sunshine, United 93, 300, Sin City, Hotel Rwanda, Last King of Scotland, Cast Away and the Harry Potter flicks. 

Best Documentaries (I don't see many):

• No End in Sight.  Devastating account of the Iraq War's "planning."
• Fog of War.  Robert McNamara considering the lessons learned through the mistakes he made.  Quite spooky given the parallels to Rumsfeld, including their appearance.

 Other categories?  Omissions? Arguments?

Ask the Reader: Single Dumbest Mistake in US Foreign/Defense Policy?

I asserted this week, as I always do, that disbanding the Iraqi military in 2003 was the single dumbest mistake the US has made in foreign policy.  That is, it was incredibly destructive (making a large and especially bloody insurgency inevitable) and it was obviously not a good idea at the time.  The US interagency process had worked out a bunch of ideas about keeping the guys in uniform (at least a large chunk of the 400,000 or so folks) doing reconstruction, policing, etc.  But Paul Bremer, on his own or under orders from Rumsfeld (the finger-pointing continues, but I would put money on Rummy),* chose instead to fire the entire Iraq army and to stop payments to veterans and war widows and orphans.

In my time in the Pentagon (two years before the fiasco that was the post-war planning and operations in Iraq), one of the things we worked on was getting a few thousand men removed from the various sides of the Bosnian conflict, well aware that demobilization is an inherently risky process.  Creating large groups of unemployed, resentful young men trained in war and knowledgeable about the disposition of the tools of war is and has always been a bad idea.  While some of the folks responsible defend their decisions in No End in Sight, a great documentary (see clip after the break), the decision was considered as incredibly stupid at the time, with members of the US military utterly shocked and appalled (not awed) by the decision.

So, it gets my vote for the dumbest decision ever (perhaps not the worst decision ever, but I might vote for that, too) in US Foreign and Defense Policy.  What say the readers?


*  Either way, it shows how broken the process was that we do not have a clear accounting of responsibility here

End of Teaching in the Aughts

I have taught my last lecture in the 2000's, with the next one coming in the teens or whatever 2010-19 will be called.  Today is my last seminar in the aughts. So a few thoughts are in order.

Before starting, I just checked and I have blogged a lot about teaching--no surprise--so let me just focus on how the aughts were different for me (and perhaps others) in terms of teaching.

• I was teaching at Texas Tech in 2000 and McGill in 2009.  So that probably colors (or colours) much of my thinking.  So consider that a caveat....
• Cell phones went from being a rare nuisance to almost as common as cough in the age of H1N1.  I joke that it used to be only drug dealers who had cell phones and pagers, but that makes me sound really old.
• I would not say that the majority of students bring laptops to lectures and seminars, but it is pretty close.  It was exceptional in 1999.  I have not found them to be distracting in lectures.  They may be distracting the students who have them or those nearby as they facebook or play games like farmville.  Laptops in seminars, I find, are far more distracting as students page through documents online to get the right quote or through their stashed notes to figure out the answer to a question, which impedes the natural conversation and give and take.
• Technology has gotten much, much better.  I used to have frequent problems in launching my slides on the big screen, but that is no longer a problem.
• The internet has been both boon and bane in terms of plagiarism.  That is, it is easier for students to cheat and easier for us to catch them, even if we don't use a site or program designed to catch them. 
• The net has definitely made it far easier to add graphics, check facts, and incorporate videos and other stuff into my teaching.  Does this make me an edu-tainer?  Well, for 600 students every fall, mixing it up keeps them awake and perhaps plays well to different learning styles. 
• Are the students any different?  It may be hard to separate the Tech/McGill differences from the nineties vs aughts.  Certainly, the choice of attire is different--from sweats and baseball hats to, ahem, less than I would expect in a cold climate.  I have not really seen a change in the McGill students over time in terms of how hard they work or in their intelligence.  There may be a creeping entitlement--that students are surprised when slides are not posted ahead of time and get somewhat uppity when the automatic recording system for the big class does not work (usually once or twice a term).  It teaches them moral hazard--that insurance schemes such as secondary sources of notes may lead to unfortunate consequences as they engage in risky behavior (ditching classes).  

Overall, I have found myself loosening up (I ended up youtubing too much and had to pull back a bit) and enjoying teaching more.  I give the occasional extremely biased lecture (like this week's about Iraq--see next post) with a warning that it is biased, but then I can really rip into the material with passion.  Quite cathartic.

So, my teaching has changed over time.  I focus a bit more on policy thanks to my time in the Pentagon, I am more willing to experiment, and I enjoy it far more (well, except for the grading and letters of recommendation).

I do love my job even as I encounter various bumps in the road.  When I was in my first courses in graduate school, I wondered if I was up to this stuff.  I considered my alternatives---policeman, firefighter, astronaut, cowboy.... ok, thinking like a ten year old, but I could not think of anything better than this.  And I still cannot--I have chosen the perfect career for my personality:

1. It allows me to embrace my narcissism by compelling the attention of large groups of young folks;
2. I can talk for almost as much as I want.
3. The students keep forcing me to learn every day.
4. I don't get bored because the world is a fun combination of change and consistency.  And everything changes every few months in an academic environment--the class, the students, etc. 
   
5. I control my time and what I do and how I do it.  The year in the Pentagon taught me that hierarchy is not my natural environment.
   

Close Enough?

Looks like my prior estimate of 34k is closer to the mark than this week's announcements have thus far suggested: see here.  Given that the US, unlike France or Germany, does not have a process by which the legislature can impose a restrictive force cap (specific number of troops in theatre--which can be fudged anyway), any modest reinforcements would be unproblematic.  Indeed, it is even possible that Canada might chip in a few more token troops before the end of 2011 since the Canadian mandate focuses on time and not the size of the force.  Prime Minister Harper could toss in a few more troops and that might not be politically dangerous, although he might not since there are no domestic payoffs for following the US these days.

Endangered?

Too easy not to go with the Tiger theme.  So, what to think of the events surrounding the best golfer on the planet?

Well, I am not surprised by:

• An athlete or celebrity that cheats on his/her spouse.  I was kind of surprised by Tiger since his whole story is about family, but then again, his parents had their own problemos.  I don't condone his behavior, but I am not surprised or outraged.  There are far more outrageous things going on in the world, such as why anybody gives Dick Cheney any platforms these days to blame Obama for Afghanistan when it got to this state via his old boss and underlings. 
  
• That the media is just loving this.  Tiger has not committed any felonies (that we know of), just driving misdemeanors.  But any chance for some salaciousness is welcomed not just by the tabloids but by CNN.  Was this really one of the top stories I should be seeing in airports as I flew to and from DC this week?  Uh, no.  
• I forget who said it, but nothing good ever happens after 2am.
  

What is surprising?  Perhaps that Tiger married a woman whose temper seems to be the equal to his own.

What is interesting?  That the brand that Tiger used to endorse (Buick/GM) is getting heaps of free publicity as the SUV is featured on TV.  Why pay Tiger to endorse your brand when he can get your car on TV for free?

Will this affect his career?  Not much.  His focus is legendary.  But he might retire sooner rather than later (after he surpasses Jack Nicklaus's record of Major championships).

Academics Are Not Alone

We all need deadlines to be motivated.  That is the main purpose, really, of conferences and workshops--to give us deadlines so that we finish our work.  Well, this logic is analyzed and applied to Afghanistan here.

Interesting but perhaps disturbing to know that we tenured folk are not alone in needing artificial deadlines to kick our butts into gear. 

Concussions (continued)

The National Football League is making a modest first step--that players who have concussion like symptoms cannot return to the field that day.  This, of course, still relies on players to report their symptoms to a degree, and the competitive environment, both team vs team and within a team to continue to make the team and to start, will continue to create disincentives towards reporting.

The NFL should have and can still do some stuff that would have a clear impact (oops)--requiring a certain kind of mouthpiece and most advanced helments.  These may not be comfortable, but they would be more likely to make a big difference over the long run. 

So, I am pretty confused--why not take the extra step and go where they need to go now, rather than dither further?  Yes, I have defended Obama's dithering, but the science and technology of helmets is pretty clear on this. 

For previous posts on this stuff, see here and here.

Whither the Weather?

The recent scandal of climate change scientists is well-addressed here.  One set of spoiled research, or perceived spoilage, does not dent the reality that the planet is warming and that humans are to blame (well, that is less clear from the article linked here).

So, what can we conclude?  That the Explainer is a great column, and that I should always read Slate, even when I have limited battery/web access on road.

Clarifying the Speech

This slate piece addresses the first day of hearings about the new "surge." 

First, what did the president mean when he announced that the 30,000 extra troops he's sending to Afghanistan—some of whom won't arrive until the summer of 2010—will begin to come home in July 2011? Second, how many more troops will the NATO allies send, and how much fighting will they do?  The answer to the first question is that 2011 will probably mark neither a deadline nor more than a token withdrawal. The answers to the second question are: not many and not much.

Gates and Mullen repeated time and again that this wasn't going to happen. First, they said, the key word in Obama's speech was that U.S. troops would begin to turn over the lead role in the fight to Afghan security forces. The pace of this process, and the end point of the withdrawal, will be determined by "conditions on the ground."

So, maybe this is conditions-based after all.

Regarding NATO:

However, Gates also said that he hoped the extra NATO troops will be deployed in Afghanistan's northern and western provinces, where the Taliban don't pose as much of a threat. In other words, the most intense fighting will still be left largely to us.

That means that their caveats will not be as problematic as they would be if they were in the riskier places.  But putting lots of folks in the south and east is likely to push the insurgents into the rest of the country.

Will keep tracking, although the amount of stuff on this is going to be another cottage industry.

Flashbacks: Then and Now

During my year in the Pentagon, we regularly reviewed documents going through NATO, and one of the key controversies, when it came to the missions in Bosnia and Kosovo, would be which word would be used: benchmarks or milestones?  Benchmarks would be based on conditions, some that might be awfully hard to satisfy.  Milestones focused more on the passage of time--we have been here long enough.  The Obama plan seems to be more focused on milestones--once we have been here long enough, it is time to go.

And, the speech reminded me of something else--words matter.  In many of our documents in 2001-2002, we used some phrases repeatedly--those uttered by the president:

• "In together, out together"  That the US would not abandon its allies on the Balkans, that the US went in with NATO and would stay until NATO left. 
• This was ultimately fudged--that the US left Bosnia when NATO's SFOR was replaced by the European Union's EUFOR.  But that really meant that the US and Canada were leaving Bosnia to be handled by the European allies.
• Still, the US remains in Kosovo with the rest of its partners.
• "Hasten the day" That we would work hard to make it possible to get out. 
• Did Bosnia improve so significantly that the US could depart and the NATO mission could end?  I guess so, but lots of the conditions were not so hastened. 

Obviously, there are tensions between these two phrases--back then and now.  Obama faces seriously tradeoffs and tried to finesse them.  Jumping in and out quickly may not be the best way to go, but there are no obvious best paths to proceed.

Hope is Not a Plan

NATO seems to be expecting 5,000 Europeans to show up to help the US surge.  Where are these troops going to come from?

• Well, when Albania is one of the first listed, to move from 250 to x, not a good sign.
• Spain will send 200 more, but since its troops are heavily caveated it is not clear that they could do much to add to the mission.
• Italy is going to kick in more.  Lovely.  Given that their sector is a mess, it is not clear what the reinforcements would add.
• Finland is adding to its 165 troops. 

France is not sending anymore troops (although there is some wiggle room), Britain thus far seems to be on the hook for 500 more, and Germany has not made a decision, but any new troops would require approval by the Bundestag. 

So, the math seems off to me, unless Poland is doubling from 2k to 4k.  Plus it does not seem to include the subtractions--the end of the Dutch mission in 2010 and Canadian one in 2011.

Together, NATO may cobble together enough troops to meet the 5k goal, but the original US hope was 10k, and many of the new troops would be coming from countries that are not very useful in a counter-insurgency campaign that requires putting troops into danger by placing them amongst the population. 

Gamble?

To be clear, the US is not going all in.  If everyone else is going to use poker language to discuss this, so will I (and I play poker).  Obama is putting in essentially a half-pot raise.  That is, the US already has 68,000 troops in Afghanistan (see here for US's contribution to NATO and those of other countries).  Half of the current deployment is in NATO, half or so is apparently dedicated to Operation Enduring Freedom (counter-terrorism and training the Afghan National Army).  So, 30k-34k is a meaningful increase.  But it is not everything.

From the coverage thus far, Obama is not the only one in DC not willing to give Gen. McChrystal the full 44,000.  The Joint Staff seems supportive of a lower number, since they have to care about the stress on the military and alternative missions/threats while McChrystal does not. 

The key for the US military is, obviously, getting smaller in Iraq, which should happen quickly after the next Iraqi election, if it happens anytime soon.

Will having more troops on the ground make a difference?  Yes, but the military can only do so much governance work. And this requires a delicate balancing act--to commit to Afghanistan to assure the allies and Pakistan but also not so tied that Karzai can get complacent.  Not easy by any stretch.


[Not more blogging from me today as my schedule is booked until I land tonight in Montreal]

Swiss Missed

Now that I have had a chance to think a bit about the Swiss constitutional change, I have a few thoughts.

• Direct democracy is a bad idea.  Surprisingly, turnout was actually pretty high (53%).  So, this was not just the case of depressed turnout letting the loonies run amok.  Instead, it was a case of rabble-rousing that worked to bring out the less than moderate middle.  Perhaps, just perhaps, a political process where people were accountable for their decisions might have led to a different outcome.  Instead, we get a vote that has no real substantive impact (not too many minarets in Switzerland and they cannot blast calls to prayer due to noise ordinances) but alienates a large chunk of the world, including non-Muslims.  
• The Swiss not only seem to hate Muslims but still love guns and want to sell them abroad, perhaps even to Muslims.  See the figures here.
• It will be interesting to see how constitutional reforms (not all reforms are good reforms) interact with EU law.  

"Especially since Switzerland seems to be leading the EU Court on Human Rights these days."The ban contradicts the European Convention on Human Rights," Zurich daily Blick cited Widmer-Schlumpf as saying. Switzerland currently presides over the European Court of Human Rights, which rules on breaches of the convention."

• Maybe, just maybe this might create a backlash against the Islamophobes.  
• Last year, there were many concerns voiced before the election that people were telling pollsters lies about their real preferences because they didn't want to be seen as racists.  Well, this so-called Bradley effect did not play out much in the US but seems to have mattered a great deal--or things swung very significantly.
• The vote might have been as much about the incumbent government, which opposed the constitutional change, as it was about Muslims.  
• As always, check with www.fivethirtyeight.com for election analysis.  Including the following insight:
• "As it turns out, the percentage of foreigners in a given Swiss canton explains about a third of the variation you see in the percentage of the vote in favor of the minaret ban. Those cantons who have more foreigners were less likely to back the ban, which tends to support the suggestion that the more foreigners you are around, the less xenophobic you are in your voting."
• This is similar to Quebec's xenophobia which is mostly centered off the multiethnic island of Montreal and largely against the city of Montreal.

Sad day for tolerance, for moving beyond us and them.  While entirely non-violent, this vote is probably more destructive to relations with Muslims than the Fort Hood shootings.

This Is Not How We Spent Thanksgiving

To be clear, this is not safe for work, but is highly amusing.  And since I am traveling again, albeit briefly, I thought I would post this here (thanks to Dan Drezner for the link):

A Busy Year

Check out this piece.  I have been pretty frustrated with the coverage of Obama, but I guess this is what happens when expectations are high.  Given the free pass Bush had, it is quite annoying that Obama gets taken to task for minor stuff and we lose sight of what an awful set of cards he inherited.  I don't think he handled everything well, and I wish his economic team had fewer ties to the folks who got us into much of this mess.  Still, his foreign policies have largely been smart, nuanced, and have helped to reverse the slide in American influence. 

Xenophobia Again

So, now the Swiss are over-reacting. 

German Troubles

Figures I was out of the loop when the German experience in Afghanistan blew up in the faces of most of its leadership.  That is, this weekend, the German head of the military, the State Secretary for military stuff and then the former Minister of Defense who became the Minister of Labor, Franz Joseph Jung, after the recent election all lost their jobs.  Not because of the collateral damage caused by air strike ordered by the German ground forces against the stolen tankers, but rather the effort to cover up or poorly convey the real facts to the Parliament.  Once again, it is not the crime but its cover up that has the greatest consequences for the politicians.

And, Markus Kaim, one of the folks I interviewed last summer, was quoted as saying that the Germans on the ground, who had been becoming progressively more pro-active, are now more likely to think twice not only before calling in an airstrike but also when pulling other triggers as well.

Lessons from a Reunion

I had a great time at my 25th high school reunion (makes it pretty easy to figure out how old I am).  I was not the only one there who pondered why they attended, given that high school was not a very enjoyable experience.  And, whenever school is in session, I learn stuff:

• Some folks have a great deal of guts, I think.  One guy, who moved away after 8th grade, showed up.  I would not have been so brave.  But he fit right in.
• Stay at the reunion hotel.  I had the most fun this time since I didn't have to worry about the ride home.  In other words, I could drink.
• The last beer is almost always unnecessary.
• That the organizers did great work to bring back some of our teachers.  It was fun to see them and see if they recognized me.
• That I apparently not only did not change much (except the beard) since 12th grade but apparently not since 8th either, thanks to the aforementioned guy who missed our high school.
• That cantors really can talk.  A friend, who works as a cantor in real life, spoke for a few minutes about someone we lost in 8th grade due to cystic fibrosis.  I wish my friend had been my cantor--I might have done a decent job at the Bar Mitvah, although the rest of my life would not have changed much.
• That the reunions get better each time with greater distance from the shared experience we had.  What does that say?
• I am far pickier about my beer now than ever so I had to drink mixed drinks during the reception but good beer before and after.  
• About 50% of the people do not change a lick in terms of looks and personality, and about 50% change pretty radically in either or both. And yes, these statistics are completely made up, and I have no clue as to the real %'s.  But the former 8th grader was a real good barometer.  He seemed to remember that I was a smartass way back then.  So, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
  

A warning to movie-goers

In the new Robin Williams-John Travolta movie, there is apparently a scene of ultimate, but the previews suggest that just as this movie might be a sad effort to extract some laughs from poop jokes, the frisbee scene is a pale imitation of the real game.  It would be nice if my favorite sport made it into mainstream media (although it was prominently mentioned during last week's SNL skit of mellow musicians), but instead we get this drek.

This is not the sport we play.  You have been warned.

Selling the Mission--Not So Easy

Good piece on the various challenges Obama faces as he must sell the new deployment decision to audiences at home, in Europe and in Afghanistan. Obama did not inherit too many easy policy decisions. 

Or to say it in political science-ese, path dependence is a b@#$#

Semi-Required Season Post: Thanks

As I will be traveling to family and then a reunion this weekend (with the homeland guarded fiercely by cat, dog and house-sitter), I may not be blogging much over the next few days.  So, here is the season ritual--giving thanks:

1. Thanks to friends and family, especially given the hard knocks of late.
2. Thanks to the associate professors at McGill here are not only wise but also good humored so that they can poke at me until I giggle.  Metaphorically speaking.  
3. Thanks to the undergrads of McGill.  My 600 person class, although knocked on its heals by H1N1 and other maladies, has been a blast to teach as they consistently ask sharp questions, making me think about things I have taken for granted.
4. Thanks to the grad students of McGill for doing my work, most as TAs these days.  Also, for pushing me to think and for being excellent post-talk, pre-dinner with speaker beer companions.  Well, it makes sense to them, if not you.
5. I am pretty thankful that I have a pretty good job in this nasty economy.  While things are not perfect, I do know that I am lucky not be entering this current academic job market as an ABD without any pubs, like I did a decade and a half ago (sorry to my current Phds who are entering the job market).
6. I am thankful that I am no longer embarrassed by my President, although the extremists in his opposition should embarrass all Americans.
7. I am grateful to all of my ultimate teammates for making my throws look good, for covering my guy when I fall behind, and for occasionally throwing the disk at the end of my reach so that I can lay out for it (I wish I had a picture of my moo-dive).  I am grateful to my opponents for challenging me and for their great spirit.  I am amazed that I am still playing after all of these years and that I am still learning.
8. I am actually grateful for the Montreal winters because skiing with my kid is just bliss.
9. I am grateful that my family enjoys my humor--as I love a good audience and 600 kids for a couple of hours a week apparently is not sufficient.
10. I am grateful that folks have read my blog and pushed me with their comments to think a bit more about some of the stuff about which I blather.  
11. I am grateful for the other bloggers out there whose ideas I steal/borrow/build upon.  I get heaps of links from facebook friends as well.  I am definitely reading more stuff, even if it makes me fall behind in my book reading.
12. I am grateful for the internet, which has been both boon and bane for my productivity as a scholar but has consistently provided me with much edutainment.

Yet More Reason to Leave Texas

The race between Perry and Hutchison reminds me, yet again, why I left Texas.  I kind of do wish that Perry's threat to secede (last April) became fact.  The US could do without Texas although I am still pretty sure that Texas is not going be a solidly Red state for much longer.

Taking the Over in Afghanistan [updated]

I wonder where Vegas would put the over/under line on the US decision to send more troops to Afghanistan?  20k?  30k?  If the former, I would certainly bet the over.  If the latter, then probably, because the worst I would do is a push.  So, perhaps Vegas would set the line at 35k as the real question right now is whether Obama takes a symbolic but materially significant stand that is independent of McChrystal (30k) or does he buy into the estimates given to him that 40k is the magic number for giving the US/NATO a chance of success?

The idea that going short and hoping that Europe kicks in the rest is just that--a hope.  As National Football Post's Mike Lombardi always says (as well as many others apparently): "Hope is not a plan" or  "Hope is not a strategy."  Either way, the US should not be expecting significant reinforcements from its allies, especially with the Dutch pulling out in 2010 and the Canadians in 2011.  It is far more like that their examples will be emulated than the American one.

The good news is that soon we will have our answer, and then we can start talking about the next big decision.  Any bets on what that might be?

Updated: The latest leaks suggest the number is going to be 34k, which means that 35k was the perfect line.  And that I would have lost some cash, I guess. 

Walmart vs Amazon

A big battle is underway between Walmart and Amazon.  Apparently, Amazon is still growing at a significant rate and the future of may be at stake.  See here for an update.  Competition is a good thing, and anyone that gives Walmart a challenge is doing good work, in my eyes.

While I am rooting for Amazon, I would not be surprised of Walmart weathered this assault.

Freak Says High Tuition Rocks

The Freakonomics guys say that high tuition for public schools is good, if matched by support for low and middle incomes.  Well, the UC system is going to rock their world.  And we shall see more of the same across the country as states continue to cut their budgets.

Financial aid is, at its core, a price-discrimination scheme. Consumers pay different prices (net of financial aid) for the same service. Higher education is the very rare market where the seller says “Tell me in detail about your ability to pay, and I’ll tell you what your (net) price will be.” But instead of maximizing firm revenue, the goal is to enhance equity. By increasing the effective tuition for some of our wealthier students, we might be able to reduce the price for some of the less wealthy.

As a self-interested professor, all I can say is: whoo hoo!

Teaching Philosophy

I don't think a student ever asked me about my teaching philosophy until today.  What am I trying to do?  It depends on the course, as my aims for grad classes are different.  But this question was about my Intro to IR class.  So the answer was and is, to sound immodest, create better citizens:

• It is unlikely that the world will be the same in x number of years, so teaching facts (which I have never really been that precise about) seems like a waste of time.
• I want the students to be exposed to a variety of ideas about how to think about international relations, so that they can figure stuff out, even if an event or process does not fit their preferred way of thinking.  
• The idea is that if they understand what causes countries to behave as they do, then they can figure out whether proposed remedies, responses, and/or alternatives make sense.  Then, they can vote, donate, protest or whatever. 
• The folks supporting Palin and Beck have demonstrated the dangers of an ill-informed, uncritical citizenry.
• So, my students usually leave the class at the end of the semester confused.  They have multiple theories presented, but no answers provided. 
  

Durn Fererner (Darn Foreigner)!!

Seems that Canadian is the new "N-word" in Texas (HT to Jacob L for the link).  Apparently, one prosecutor was commenting to another one (via email, oops) that he managed to navigate a tough jury due to the Canadians on it.  Canadian may have been used as a codeword for African-American.

In his own defense, Trent said he honestly thought there had been Canadians on the jury and did not understand the negative connotation of the word.

Other interpretations do not make any sense, since Canadians cannot serve on American juries unless they are American citizens (no jury duty for me in Canada!) and it would be unlikely that there would be more than one in any case. 

So, if anyone is still wondering why I left Texas for Quebec, it may be because I am a Canadian sympathizer!?

Questionable Ad Campaign of the Week

Blackberry (at least in Canada) has an ad campaign that plays the Beatles "All You Need is Love" while showing an aspiring band rise.  This is strange to me because the message of the song is, well, obvious, so if all you need is love, you don't need a Blackberry.  There was nothing in the ad that suggested that the Blackberry was useful for attaining and/or maintaining love.  So, it seems to suggest that you don't need a blackberry or any other technology as long as you have love. 



Of course, Blackberry is a Canadian success story, so I probably should not pooh-pooh its ad campaign, especially since its founder has created a school of IR and has endowed a huge number of chairs.  But they seem to be filled, so never mind.

Projection in the 21st Century

All the rabble-rousing that Glen Beck does, accusing Obama of being a Nazi, screams of projection.  That he is really the racist, nationalist, fascist demagogue.  Indeed, as it turns out:

Earlier this week, Sam Stein of the Huffington Post detailed several instances in which Beck has welcomed onto his shows guests with ties to groups that traffic in white supremacy, neo-Confederate secession, and anti-Semitism. Stein's reporting was a good start, but it would take a chalkboard the size of Idaho to fully map out Beck's racially paranoid guest list.

One can forget the hyperbole and just focus on who Beck is "pal-ing around with." 

ZOG or no ZOG, Beck is clearly doing something right from the point of view of the average white nationalist.
"By no means do I think [Beck] is aware of the racial issue, and for the moment that is ok," wrote Stormfront member QHelios. "He is stirring the pot, and I thank him for that."

It just amazes me that this guy gets so much attention.  It may, indeed, be the 1990's all over again.  And when the next Timothy McVeigh commits some domestic, white-style terrorism, I am sure FOX will blame the White House, rather than the cheerleaders of racism they televise.

Impatient? Get a Grip

Good post criticizing the folks demanding that Obama jump when they say jump. 

Let's hurry a critical decision, shall we?

Agenda-Setting--Never Overlook It

General Stanley McChrystal presented Obama with three options--80k, 40k or 10-15k.  I am pretty sure that the 80k was there to make the 40k look reasonable.  Given the articles already written about what an additional 40k would mean in terms of strain on the US armed forces, 80k was never really in play.  But it gave Obama room to look like he was rejecting the extreme choices and could safely choose the middle option.  But the problem for McChrystal is that the 80k dropped out so fast that the 40k ended up being the extreme option, facilitating temptations to split the difference. 

But as this article suggests, each choice has a significant impact on what can be done on the ground.  And again, this is just about the military side of things.  But these military constraints/tradeoffs have huge implications.  Under any scenario, it looks increasingly likely that the US and its NATO partners are going to write off large hunks of the country and focus the effort on ten or so population centers.  Choosing which centers are to be defended and developed and which ones are not--that is the stuff of politics and will have significant and long-lasting implications for Afghanistan. 

So, the choice may be 30k--enough to make a difference, but also different enough to send a message that Obama is not going to blindly follow the military.  And he has support for this option:

This way encompasses a number of mid-range options under discussion at the Pentagon and the White House. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton; and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have coalesced around a plan to send 30,000 or more troops to Afghanistan, although there are variations in their positions and they are not working in lock step.

During the original surge, there was tension between what Petraeus and the other COIN guys wanted and what the military establishment wanted to do--in large part because of a concern that additional troops would stress the army beyond the breaking point.  And we see this happening again--intra-military differences focused on the requirements of the mission vs. the needs of the military.

Just makes it easier to understand why this decision is taking time--it is an incredibly difficult set of tradeoffs.

Equal Time for the Undead

The International Blog Police have complained that I have focused too much on Zombies and not on other undead.  So, here's a link to a Slate post on Vampires, sparkly or not.  Handy advice here on where to bite, for instance.

You Mess With One of Us, You Mess With All of Us

Charles Blow responds very much like a New Yorker to the idea that NY cannot handle a trial of a major terrorist. 

It reminds me of how New Yorkers were depicted in the first two Spider-Man movies--much more favorably, ironically enough, than in the comic books, even though Marvel is based in NYC.

Truisms

Nice list of truisms here that are true.

My favorites are:
3. Bad decisions make good stories.
4. How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?
5. I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.
12. Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".
14. Every time I have to spell a word over the phone using 'as in' examples, I will undoubtedly draw a blank and sound like a complete idiot. Today I had to spell my boss's last name to an attorney and said "Yes that's G as in...(10 second lapse)..ummm...Goonies"

• I was a complete idiot on the phone at the Pentagon--"Saideman: S as in Sam, A as in Apple ... "easily gave away that I was not a military guy--Sierra Alpha Indigo etc.

22. Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem....
25. There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

• I used do this all the time in middle and high school, even after the French teacher with whom I shared mutual loathing pulled out the desk behind me upon which I was leaning.

Any suggested additions?

Day Care Kids or College Kids: Who Should We Alienate?

The Parti Quebecois is now considering what to propose: extending Bill 101 to Day Care or to CEGEP.  Bill 101 is the law that compels children of Francophone parents to go to French public schools, children of Anglophone parents to go English public schools, and immigrants to go to French public schools.*  Or parents can send their kids to private schools of whatever language.  This issue has heated up as the Canadian Supreme Court just killed Bill 104 which was an attempt to get rid of a loophole that allowed kids to go private school in English for a period of time and then be eligible for the English Public schools (this bill was passed after I accepted the McGill job but before we arrived). 

The justification for all of this is to save French and encourage immigrants to assimilate into Quebec (and possibly make them more favorable towards separatism?).  This, along with symbolic politics and intra-party outbidding/posturing, has led to the next step: where to go from here?  The PQ is now considering advocating Bill 101 to be extended.

• If it is applied to publicly subsidized day care, then kids of Francophones and of immigrants would have to go to French day care, and English kids would presumably have to go to English day care.  Of course, it is not so clear that the day care places are so easily divided into categories.
• CEGEPs are the alternative focus.  These are entirely free schools that bridge high school and university (high school here ends after 11th grade) for two years--a cross between  junior colleges, prep schools, and vocational schools (I think).  There are some English ones and more than a few French ones.  As it stands, immigrants tend to go to English CEGEPs and there are more than a few French folks who go to them as well, hoping to improve their English so that they can go to McGill, Concordia, Bishops (all English universities in Quebec) or outside Quebec to the rest of Canada or the US or some place else.  

Neither one really makes much sense as a target of Bill 101.  The day cares are not neatly separated nor is it clear that immersion into French a year or two earlier would really "save" French (particularly as it is not really endangered). 
Extending to CEGEP would have a variety of bad effects, including:

• continuing the segregation of the French and English speaking folks of Canada, whereas they serve now as a place for the two to meet.
• reducing the competitiveness of Francophones in the world economy since the education in English in the French public school system is notoriously lousy and the English CEGEPs have served as an important means for catching up.
• further alienating immigrants who would  prefer not to be the subject of nationalist agendas.

 It is unlikely that these possible policies will be enacted in the near future, but they do a nice job of distracting us from the fact that all of the parties in Quebec are tied to corruption in one way or another.

Better Evidence than Mayan Calendar

That the end is nigh: there are now folks making money preparing 3-4 years old for Kindergarten entrance exams.

Ask The Readers: Aughts Ending Alert!!

In the next six weeks, we are going to get hit hard by tons of reviews of the past decade--the best TV shows of the '00's, best movies, etc.  I am already reviewing one list of best TV shows of the 00's that asserts this past decade has been a golden age of TV.  Despite the glut of reality TV, there has been much to enjoy, so I will take a whack at that list soon.  And I welcome suggestions for other lists that I can ponder instead of grading.

The Marines Get It

Check out the slides here (HT to Clancy Z).  The slides are most instructive and show the "non-kinetic" side of COIN.  I wonder if the Army units are as consistently thinking along these lines.

You Get What You Pay For

The UC System is hiking tuition by 32%, although it will still be a bargain compared to private schools.  This is an unsurprising step, since the Regents both want to pay for operations and send a signal to the state legislature that sharp budget cuts have consequences--ones that are painful to middle class voters.

The cuts thus far:

The impact on the University of California campuses has been dramatic: faculty hiring is not keeping up with enrollment demand, and many course sections have been eliminated. Instructional budgets are being reduced by $139 million, with 1,900 employees laid off, 3,800 positions eliminated and hiring deferred for nearly 1,600 positions, most of them faculty.

California's budget process is so seriously messed up that it is impossible to adjust to downward economic shocks and it is difficult to adjust to boomtimes either.

News like this convinces me that we are likely to have a double-dip recession as states cut their budgets, leading to new waves of unemployment and denied opportunities. 

Timely Etiquette Guide for the Family Holiday

The NYT has a good spirited set of suggestions for managing the Thanksgiving (or other) holiday where the families meet and tend to re-create old battles.

Mark Smaller, who heads the public information committee of the American Psychoanalytic Association, said he believes that holidays can provoke “temporary regressions,” in which parents, adult children and siblings, once reunited, revert to decades-old patterns of behavior. “The worst I’ve heard is when a parent says to an adult child, ‘See, when you come you spoil the whole holiday,’ ” Dr. Smaller said. “These kinds of remarks actually keep me and people like me in business.”

Aside from providing entirely too much unsolicited advice to the chef, our family is pretty good about such stuff.  I am just thankful this year for Obama's election so that we will not have to spend Thanksgiving re-hashing the 2000 election.  That has been the favorite topic each year, despite the fact that there is complete consensus (Gore was robbed).  Indeed, I ended up teaching the herd of niece poker precisely because I had ducked down to another room and was watching a broadcast of the World Series of Poker, and one thing led to another.

Best Line By a Columnist of the Week

I had breast cancer back in 2000, and I am trying to come up with a way that I can use that experience to shed some light on these new findings. I have never believed that everything happens for a reason. But I do feel very strongly that everything happens so that it can be turned into a column.

Gail Collins has a particularly punchy column today about the mammogram controversy, and she speaks from a direct cancer experience.  Mostly, she is poking at the medical community and at the Republicans.  Always good fun. 

Anyhow, it is a good read as it puts some of the current news in context.

Reading is Fundamental

Seems to be a critical tipping point on mammograms lately.   Gladwell has one essay on the difficulties of reading mammograms in his new book of old essays, that reading of them is as much art as science.  Plenty of newspaper articles on the controversy plus one spiffy Slate post that takes the Belichick 4 and 2 decision and turns it into a decision about the probabilities of breast cancer and detection.

How does mammography improve these stats? Researchers generally agree that mammograms save lives, but—this is critical—catching breast cancer early changes the outcome in only 15 percent of cases. So consider the actual numbers: For the average 40-year-old woman, annual mammography for a decade increases one's overall chance of breast cancer survival from roughly 99.7 percent to 99.8 percent. That is, it increases the final batting average by only 0.001. According to the National Cancer Institute, there's also a downside. During this time, half of all screened women will have at least one suspicious mammogram, and one-quarter of them will end up getting a biopsy. Mammograms in women from 40 to 50 years old cause a huge number of false positives, resulting in about 100 biopsies for every life saved. Even more worrisome: It's possible the radiation from those mammograms may end up causing more cancers than they prevent.

The false positives discussed here and in the Gladwell piece seem to be the real key--that mammograms before 50 do a very slight bit of good in detecting some cancer but the false positives may create a great deal of unnecessary havoc.  The Slate piece recommends approaches that focus on a less blunt indicator than age but other risk factors instead.  Would seem to be obvious, but after years of preaching one set of recommendations, it is hard to turn the ship around.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise ... Or Not

Strange that Canadian MP's would be surprised that the Canadian military is starting the process of withdrawing from Afghanistan.  The MP argues that the military's job is not to set policy--that is the government's job.  Sure, but the military has been told that Canada is withdrawing from Afghanistan--that is the essence of the last mandate.  So, the military must prepare for its departure.  If the Harper government is afraid to utter the word Afghanistan, then the military must go by the existing guidance--a withdrawal.

It may be the case that the Chief of the Defense Staff, General Natynczyk is forcing the decision by making it clear that he is preparing to reduce the number of troops on the ground to zero.  I had previously speculated that the Canadians would keep several hundred troops at the Provincial Reconstruction Team base so that Canadian aid and governance types could continue to do their work without having to ask for an American escort every time they left the base; and I thought that Canada would still provide 40-100 troops to staff one or two Observer Mentor Liaison Teams [OMLTs or Omelets] that are embedded in the Afghan National Army.  But over the past few months, various noises made by the Minister of Defence and others suggested that no Canadian military types would be in harm's way--which means no escorts for the civvies and no OMLTs. 

So, I guess I am as confused as the MPs.

Civilian Trials of 9/11 Terrorists

I was hoping that someone else would make a good, cogent argument defending the decision to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in New York in a civilian trial, so that I would not have to do so.  And someone has.

The whole idea that we should not treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem is backwards.  Make these guys criminals and not politicians/leaders/martyrs.  Successful law enforcement is something that reinforces the legitimacy of government and especially of democratic ones.  Time to trot out the rule of law and show these @#$@#$ what we are made of.  While eight years ago I wanted to put all of those responsible for 9/11 on a plane and have it crash, time and distance and the egregious errors of the Bush administration make it clear that a NY jury and judge should put these guys in the appropriate place--a high security prison somewhere in the US and perhaps on death row (a debate for another time).

As Much As I Would Like to Ignore Palin ....

I mentioned yesterday in my post on Evil that I could imagine voting for Palin.  Fivethirtyeight.com's Nate Silver has ten reasons why she might win the Republican nomination (HT to Chip Gagnon).  He forgets to include one of the key factors that produced Jesse "The Body" Ventura as Governor of Minnesota a few years ago--the drunk frat boy vote [DFBV].  That is, there might just be enough people out there to swing a multi-candidate election just because it would amuse them (also see California's recall election).  This would not help Palin win against Obama as the DFBV is likely to face the sobering effects of the electoral college. 

As I have posted before, having two responsible parties is better than having one (or a semi-one).  If the Republicans completely lose their grip on reality and become a marginal party, then American democracy will suffer--whether they achieve California-levels of blocking reasonable action or not.

Subway Psychology

Tom Vanderbilt (of the previously mentioned book, Traffic) provides a nice summary of the existing psychological studies of behavior in the NY Subway.  Mostly, these studies use the subway as a place to test theories of social behavior, rather than trying to figure out the culture of ridership.  Interesting stuff.

Despite Hollywood's Warnings, We Are Unprepared

Great article at The Onion.

"I just renovated my house with cantilevered leaden cofferdams for increased earthquake and radiation protection, and I'm working on a pantheistic altar to appease the god or gods most likely to return to this world with an insatiable wrath," said Seattle resident Tim Hanson, whose actions were praised in the study as a "highly rare display of prescience and vigilance."
"I installed solar panels and a generator so I could live off the grid for a while," Hanson added. "But it cost so much that now I might not be able to have the altar properly gilded. At least not in time."

Trends in Words

I guess it is not just me.  The NYT has noticed that the word "douche" is being used far more frequently on TV these days.  It is not just TV, however, as I have frequently heard the word used (is art imitating life or vice versa) and online in various blogs/bulletin boards.

I am not a linguist nor have I studied anything like this, but I have long been curious about how words and phrases rise and fall.  I point out in my class when teaching constructivism that my students know what is cool and what is not cool, but then I point out that as an aging prof, I do not even know if cool is the correct word.  Chill?  Hip?  Smooth? Rad?  Phat?  I have no idea.  It is clear that douche is back.  I am pretty sure it left and but has returned. 

For more insight, see this: