Concussions continued some more

Two bills head through the US House of Representatives committees dealing with the problem of sports and concussions.  One calls for more study, the other actually would put into place requirements for all public school districts:

to develop and put in place their own plans for sports concussion management, would explicitly require that any athlete suspected of concussion must be removed from play until cleared by an appropriate health-care professional, and calls for special scholastic services for athletes in recovery.

This effort makes more sense than just calling for an elite panel to make recommendations (the first bill) since we already have heaps of recommendations out there: better mouthpieces, better helmets, existing state laws (Washington state is apparently the role model), etc.  But, as Gregg Easterbrook, ESPN's Tuesday Morning Quarterback and public policy writer, argued, we need to change the incentives.  The NFL, despite its own new policies, continues to make the same old mistakes:

What penalty did Andy Reid suffer for sending Bradley back into the game? None. Nor did the Eagles organization pay any price for skirting commissioner Roger Goodell's 2009 order that players with concussion symptoms sit down until evaluated by an independent neurologist. Eagles spokesperson Derek Boyko told me that because Bradley merely came out of the game, rather than being "removed," the policy did not apply.*

 Coaches, as Easterbrook, need to be the ones who put the brakes on, as players who just got a big hit to the head are in no position to judge.  Plus, as he rightly notes, for sports for kids under 18 (and perhaps even under 21), the coach is supposed to be responsible.  But they need to win to keep their jobs.  So, how do we create incentives for coaches to do the right thing and sit players who could be concussed?  Perhaps Andy Reid should have to play $100k for returning Bradley to the field?  Is that not enough?  Should we put people on the field akin to Bill Simmons' VP of Common Sense to throw a purple flag onto the field to stop the action if a player is on the field who should not be?  As Easterbrook discusses, that would not be enough as much of the (brain) damage is done during practices.  He goes on with more info about concussions, with some terrific critiques of the NFL's own network and other broadcasters, and what can be done in his column for this week, although he still leaves unanswered the incentives problem.


And this is not just a football problem--girls basketball produces the second highest number of concussions apparently.  I would never have guessed that.  Soccer, yes.  Basketball?

For those scoring at home, this is when government intervention is necessary--when market competition produces behavior that is suboptimal.  




*  Bradley was the player I mentioned in a recent post--that he was a guy who clearly had a serious head injury but got back into the game, if only briefly, afterward.

Talking About Smart Sanctions [updated]

There has been much debate the past few years about how to develop sanctions that hit key political actors rather than entire societies, partly as the sanctions against Iraq, North Korea and others were devastating the wrong people--the powerless.  So, it is kind of funny that the latest sanction-ers on the scene have developed very specific sanctions.  Yep, the Chinese are not selling rare earth metals to Japan as a result of their dispute over a few islands and the arrest of a Chinese captain.

These metals are necessary for advanced products, like electronics.  So, the sanctions are hitting an important industry in Japan and the impact may be relatively immediate if the companies do not have a pile of the stuff laying around and if other countries cannot replace China as a producer.  Given their name, rare earth metals, I am thinking that China has a pretty significant lever here and is using it.

China mines 93 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals, and more than 99 percent of the world’s supply of some of the most prized rare earths, which sell for several hundred dollars a pound.

Uh oh.  People have been worried about China using access to its market as leverage (google anyone?) and its holdings of American debt, but this seems to be a very significant source of power and coercion.  And the Chinese seem to have no problem embracing this power.  While much of the stuff flows to Japan, the products that Japan makes that rely on this stuff are important elsewhere, like the US.  So, China's coercion here will not just affect Japan but the US eventually as well.  And more immediately, a US ally is being coerced.

It will not lead to a fighting war, as the stakes are still pretty low and each side has other tools to use in this dispute.  The big question is: does Japan submit or retaliate?  My guess is that for this dispute, Japan will soon discover a face-saving way to get out of it.  That the captain of the ship will not be tried for a crime.  And people will learn from this crisis what they want.  The Chinese will learn that they have great power and can use it.  The Japanese will re-learn the lesson of vulnerability, but will find it hard to develop substitutes.  The US will find its concerns about rising China reinforced.  And lobbyists in the US will push for government subsidizes to re-open old mines and de-regulate the mining of rare earth metals.

Despite the name, rare earths are actually fairly common; they are expensive and seldom mined elsewhere because the processing equipment to separate them from the ore is expensive and because rare earths almost always occur naturally in deposits mixed with radioactive thorium and uranium. Processing runs the risk of radiation leaks, — a small leak was one reason the last American mine was unable to renew its operating license and closed in 2002 — and disposing of the radioactive thorium is difficult and costly.

The irony may just be that by using smart sanctions over a relatively minor issue, China may actually be doing something pretty dumb--causing others to develop alternative sources of rare earth metals and other resources that China may monopolize.  Not only is this crisis drawing the US and Japan closer together, but it may end up undermining China's economic strategies.  Too soon to tell, of course.  But Newton may be right here--every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Update: See Drezner's post as he wrote a book on economic sanctions.  He seeks China's actions here as part of a broader backlash-producing effort that indicates that China has a shallow learning curve on how to use its power.

A New College Subplot, Please?

Mild spoiler for the final season of Friday Night Lights:

Two Rants Are Enough

My second rant of the day about the students at McGill.*  First, they stop bottled war from being sold on campus.  Today, they protested the closing of the Architecture Cafe, the last bastion of student-run food service on campus.  I understand their plight--that the student-run businesses were cheaper, and McGill sold them out by agreeing to a contractor that insisted in a monopoly for food stuff on campus.  But this is the loudest protest I have seen at McGill other than random student unions marching on campus to get the students to protest modest tuition increases.  For a modest dent in food choice. 

I guess I am miffed at their priorities.  I do think students should protest about stuff that offends them--that is a key part of the college experience.  But having spent the first several weeks of the term fending off students who could not get into a senior level lecture class of 80 students, I find the class size/class choice problem to be a bigger issue.  Partly this is a problem we have caused, as course reductions mean fewer classes, bigger classes, so I should not be pushing them to protest.  But aside from a small number of honors seminars, in poli sci, we end up having more than a few 80 person classes at the 400 level--courses for juniors and seniors.  That, um, sucks.  It is good for me since I can get a TA to do the grading, but they have been here long enough to have a non-lecture experience at the advanced level.  I need to learn from Mills Kelly how to run an 80 person class with few or any lectures, I guess. 

And I guess the students are on to something as protesting something as complicated as class size and choice is probably not going to be effective, given all of the constraints under which McGill is operating.  Plus it might mean me teaching more classes.....




*  To be clear, I have the highest respect for the students here, as my blog has repeatedly asserted. They are curious, smart, interesting, interested, dynamic and do not complain much about grades.  They do the work really well and make me think. 

Zombie Discrimination

Don't Ask, Don't Tell is the bad law that cannot be killed.  I guess Zombie is the wrong word since DADT is hard to kill, rather than being killed and coming back (like the B-1 bomber).  Is it surprising that moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats took the easy course of action, rather than following what is best for the country, both in terms of its values and in terms of deploying most capable people?  Hardly.  Are we disappointed by John McCain's obstruction?  No, we have now come to expect him to pander to the worst instincts of the rightest right wing.

Jeff Pearlman, a sports journalist, nicely conveys the outrage directed against Harry Reid, who helped to sabotage this effort.  I am not sure if I agree that we should put the onus on the gays in the military all come out simultaneously to get the right policy, but I guess African-Americans did put themselves in harm's way in the various protests in the 1960's, so perhaps Pearlman is not entirely unfair or wrong with his proposal. 

It is abundantly clear that we are hurting, not helping, unit cohesion with this policy that discriminates on the basis of sexuality, not merit.  If the American dream is about opportunity and ambition, then DADT is about as un-American as it can get.  Congressional congestion does seem to be the American way of the 21st century.

Green is Simple But Is It Good?

Took me about three weeks to realize that bottles of water are no longer stocked at McGill.  The student association apparently voted against bottled water in the student union (named after William Shatner who never gave any cash for such a privilege).  I was not teaching last winter, so I don't know when this decision took effect.  I guess the idea is that bottles from purchased water are bad for the environment.  Yet, I guess the bottles from coke, powerade, and other colored drinks are ok for the environment as they are still available.  Yep, McGill discriminates against beverages of non-color.  It is better to drink various forms of sugar water in plastic bottles than plain water in plastic bottles.  I understand the impetus here, and so students may decide to carry water bottles around (although we have plenty of stories about the non-trivial health consequences of various kinds of bottles).  Or they may buy more soda, pop, soda pop, or coke, depending on what part of North America you are from.

Anyhow, I did tend to re-use the bottles, but now find myself having to buy powerade (since sodas make me burp in the middle of lecture, not a good thing) or apple juice when I forget to bring a bottle to carry water.  I guess this helps us prepare for the great Zombie wars, but as an environmental measure, it seems that symbolism cuts against health as sugared beverages will be consumed in greater quantities.

Waiting at a Table

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

I have long joked with my family about the need for a new invention--table flares.  That tables at restaurants would have one flare each, so that you can push a button and the flare shoots up just above the table and then floats down to get the attention of the waitstaff.  Perhaps even color coded, green for check, red for ketchup/other condiments, white for silverware, perhaps.  At least just the one flare.  Anyhow, glad to see that great minds think alike.

Stop the Facts! They Are Inconvenient

Ok, so this conveniently omits the first year of the Obama administration.  Yet, it is pretty darned striking that tax cuts surprisingly lead to less revenues (oh, and Republicans tend to have nasty recessions while the stats show Democratic Presidents have higher growth and employment).

And of course, I got it from the facebook page for the March to Keep Fear Alive.

I Have An Announcement: No More Announcement

Teaching the very large (600 students) Intro to IR class as both advantages and disadvantages.  The topic is fun, the students are smart and engaged, it is always relevant and always just a bit different.  But the size tends to generate a few challenges.  Managing eight teaching assistants is one.  The ten percent problem is another.  The market share problem has been increasingly a source of stress.

Market share?  Yes, just like the US wields a great deal of power because firms and countries want to sell to such a large market of consumers, just as the European Union deliberately sought an internal market that would increase bargaining power at international fora, and just as China is now using its market as leverage in international negotiations, my class of 600 students is now seen as a market for announcements.  It is the one room on campus where charities, student groups, experimental psychologists and others can direct their messages, their pleas, whatever to a very large captured audience.

At first, I restricted announcements to the relatively non-partisan charities and to university groups/departments.  So, students asked but were denied the ability to announce to the class their favorite candidate in a student election, for instance.  I didn't feel I could give equal time to everyone unless the time was set at zero.  But each time I taught this course, I received more and more requests.  This kind of gets in the way of my teaching the course.  Last year (or perhaps the time before that), I restricted announcements to only those related to my department (the Poli Sci Studies Association) and the psych experiments (they wanted lots of subjects).

I still get requests, and they seem to get stranger.  Last year, a kid stood up in the middle of class, seemingly to ask a question, but was really trying to do a stunt to impress a girl.  As my daughter would say, DOUBLE FAIL!  This fall, I had one student who asked permission, fully aware of my policy on no annoucements (except for the Poli Sci stuff) policy, to sing Happy Birthday to his friend who was turning 19.  19?!!  What is the significance of that particular year?  Sure, when I was in college, 19 meant being able to drink beer (not wine or harder liquor, so there were beer-based coolers) in Ohio.  But here?  Anyhow, I said no, of course.

The funny thing is that some students get really, really upset--that I have denied them a forum that they deserve.  One student a couple of years ago complained that he/she came all the way from Australia to work hard for this charity and announce stuff in my class.  I almost felt bad about wasting his/her trip, but I was pretty sure that the student's life was not so centered around my audience.  But the strange entitlement was not unique to this one student.

It is a pretty strange development, one that I would have never expected, that one of the big hassles of teaching 600 students is protecting our time from poachers.

Speaking of our time, check out this horribly poached take on "our time."

TV Season Starts Off Slowly

Two days in, only one new show added to my roster of shows that I follow: Boardwalk Empire.  BE has tremendous production values, and the actors are terrific.  Whether I start to care about the characters will only tell over time. 

On Monday, the Spew family has kept its old patterns but using new technology--DVR-ing How I Met Your Mother to watch Chuck.  And then later on Castle--which we cannot resist due to the combination of Nathan Fillion and jokes about writing (Mrs. Spew has been in the writing business for a couple of decades now).  Yes, we like our comedy especially silly.  These shows started the season well, and now I understand the source of "dibs!" 

I have taken heed of warnings about The Event from Alan Sepinwall and others that The Event is mostly folks teasing about this so-called event and not really moving the plot or characters forward much.  I am also burned by Flashforward, which I gave up after about four episodes or so.  I didn't watch or record Lone Star--sounds like fun, but I am not sure it can go anywhere either.  I did DVR Hawaii 5-0, as I do have memories of the old show.  I loved that the old show was led by a tough Steve, but I remember little else from it other than the theme song.

I am looking forward to No Ordinary Family as I am a sucker for superhero stuff, Walking Dead will be an interesting replacement on AMC after Mad Men finishes.  Most of the other new shows do not interest me too much.  Most of the sitcoms do not seem too promising.  I will keep up more consistently with Community, and I will wonder all year long why I am continuing to follow Smallville.  But with the end of the series at hand, it seems strange to stop now.

Yep, I am serious TV addict, but you already know this if you have been following this blog.

Random Islands, Not So Random Conflict

This is the first I have heard of this dispute: China and Japan squaring off over some disputed islands.  It is not clear that the islands have any intrinsic value, but it appears to be the case that the realists do have some insights here--rising power and declining power have friction as one wants to take advantage of its new status and the other is concerned about precisely that process.  Sprinkle in some Chinese nationalism and voila: territorial conflict over random islands.  This will not lead to war, but it bodes poorly for the future. Chinese leaders are definitely none too shy about stretching the country's muscles.  At some point, misperceptions of capability and resolve may lead to more than just friction.

Mad about Sally and all the Beautiful Girls

Oh, what can do we do to help Sally?  Not much as the show is fictional and set in the past, but she is so desperate.

Is Bob Dylan Over-rated?

Thanks to a Doc Jensen-inspired facebook conversation about Mad Men, as well as hearing a Dylan song yesterday while I was running over to a hardware store to replace an outdoor electrical cord (I tend to chop them with a powertool once every 12 years), I was reminded how annoyed I am not so much by Dylan but by Dylan worship.  I think this is perhaps one of the most fundamental divides between baby boomers and the generations after them (you know, those marginalized in the political system): boomers love Dylan, post-boomers find his music to be ok. 

Perhaps you had to live through the 60's to get it, but Dylan's songs are ok, his voice is grating, and his guitar work is adequate. 

So, to my boomer readers (just my relatives, I think), flame away.  Do my post-boomer readers agree that Dylan is over-rated?

Line of the Times

I love how this article on Republicans and the Tea Party starts:

So you’re a Republican candidate and you want to take advantage of the Tea Party energy that jolted once-sleepy primaries. But you aren’t sure whether that means you have to take a stand against masturbation or urge your supporters to gather their bayonets — tactics that seem to have worked for a few Tea Party candidates so far.

Please.  Clearly, O'Donnell did well in Delaware despite her anti-masturbation positions, not because of them.  Throwing the bums out and seeking a more extreme stand against government are the stances that are working.  The masturbation stuff is just .... a silly distraction that critics can use to get more hits to their website.*  It certainly works for the Daily Show/Colbert, but I am pretty sure that a poll of Delaware GOP primary voters (notice how those modifiers shrink down the set of people to be surveyed) would not have masturbation on the top five reasons they voted for O'Donnell.  Of course, those opposed to masturbation might have an edge--that their opponents might be otherwise engaged rather than voting.







* Not me.  I have been reluctant to post on this issue precisely because it might lead to traffic/spam I really do not seek.

The Cost of Justice

Interesting new policy in Missouri--judges get info on the costs of different sentences.  Prosecutors do not like it:

“Justice isn’t subject to a mathematical formula,” said Robert P. McCulloch, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County.

Isn't it though?  Having relatively fixed terms for different kinds of crimes, that is mandatory sentencing, is using math to calculate justice, right?  Ah, but prosecutors like math when it reduces the discretion of judges, and hate it when it might actually cause some judges to consider the bigger picture. 

It is becoming increasingly clear that putting people away is a very costly activity for states.  Even the Governator has figured out that it is bad for California that more $$ go to prisons than to higher education (pushing for a constitutional amendment to limit prison spending to less than higher ed).

To be clear, this does not seem to be new.  I had a relative (an ex-relative now, thankfully) who kept on breaking the law and kept getting no prison time or little prison time because it was/is a recession and the state didn't want to spend money on putting his ass in jail.  It was clearly not about justice or protecting the public (since one of his repeated crimes involved DUI), but about spending the money on this loser.

The policy, imposed by a commission of lawyers, judges and other folks, produced this:

The concept is simple: fill in an offender’s conviction code, criminal history and other background, and the program spits out a range of recommended sentences, new statistical information about the likelihood that Missouri criminals with similar profiles (and the sentences they received) might commit more crimes, and the various options’ price tags.

Using data to make decisions?  Why do that?  Information could only serve as an obstacle to ignorance.  Of course, the legislature of Missouri created this commission precisely so that decisions would be out of their hands.  If a commission makes things easier for criminals (and any effort to reduce prison populations will likely benefit the innocent and the guilty), the politicians can blame them, rather than taking the heat.  Standard legislative practice--like the military base closing commission.

Overall, this seems like a good idea to me.  Using information to make decisions is better than the alternative of using no information to make decisions.

Tennis Anyone?

I watched far more tennis as a kid than I have since.  I was, predictably, a big fan of Chris Evert.  So, I looked forward to the new 30 for 30 ESPN doc on her rivalry/friendship with Martina Navratilova. It really was a blast to see the old footage, not just the hairstyles that have come and gone, but to watch some fun tennis and remember crushing on Chris.  I didn't hate Martina for being a lesbian and one of the first athletes to be out of the closet.  I hated her for beating Chris Evert.  The doc was really interesting to see how competitive both were and yet how much they relied on each other during most of their rivalry.  I had forgotten that Chris had dominated Martina early, but remembered Martina's later reign. 

I don't watch much tennis these days.  Men's tennis is pretty boring with few long rallies.  Women's tennis may be good to watch, but I have not found it compelling.  I do think a rivalry like Chris/Martina would get my eyes on the screen again.

Jon Stewart Uber Alles

Take It Down a Notch?  This is really an interesting test of Jon Stewart's ability to frame the political discourse.  Can a reasonable person pull the US back from the brink of polarization?  Can one comedian overcome the incentives of the political system?  It will be interesting to see how it plays out.  I understand why he needs to frame it as "both extreme left and extreme right" are guilty of going to far, but, really, the extreme right is far more powerful both in the Republican Party and in the Fox News editorial offices than the far left.  This year, the key memes have been those of the right--that Obama is a socialist, Muslim, and Kenyan traitor, essentially. 

But I don't mind a bit of marginalizing the far left who equated Gore with Bush (hey, that worked great, didn't it?) if it means that the rabid anti-conservatives of the right (Palin, Cheney, Beck) face some competition for framing the choices. 

I admire what Stewart is trying to do, besides sell more books.  I am not sure it will work, but as the saying goes:

"It's so crazy, it just might work."

France vs the Roma and vs. the EU

France has responded to an influx of Roma from Eastern Europe by expelling them, and then French leaders get upset when parallels are drawn to Nazi Germany.  The EU Commission has ruled against France, but it remains to be seen what the EU can do.  Its toothlessness is underscored by the fact that the Roma are on the move in part because Romania (and probably Bulgaria) did not meet the promises it made when it applied for membership.

Pie crust promises (a band?), indeed.  Bill Ayres and I argued that the EU's membership process was not nearly as influential as folks argued for many reasons including two that matter here: that applicants would not implement their promises (Romania not funding Roma assistance programs) and that the standards did not seem to apply to members.  While lots of the stuff on treatment of minorities only applied to applicants, France is tripping over something that did apply to all members--free movement of the folks within the EU.  This is one of the essential pieces of the European Union (not so much the EEC).  But it is damned inconvenient when some people are willing to embrace their European identity and mosey to better situations.

The question now is whether the EU will punish France or not in a meaningful way.  I doubt it will go much beyond rhetoric as France has heaps of votes in the organization and has been one of its main enthusiasts.

The timing could not have been better for either of my classes.  Intro to IR: what is a great power?  How does the EU fit into the scheme of things--as a larger state, as a new entity, or as an international organization limited by the sovereignty of its members?  For my IR of Ethnic Conflict class: multiple identities in play: are the French French or are they Europeans?

Is the future of Europe its past after all?

Advancements in Book Advertising

Perhaps books are not dead yet.  Perhaps the phrase "viral" was never more appropriate:

Canada Will Get Out of Afghanistan in a Hurry

Well, with this skill set:

The Irony of Updates

Last night, I allowed Microsoft to update my computer.  This morning, my network adapter seems to have disappeared.  Pretty strange update.  Blogging may decline until I get my computer fixed.  On the bright side, I feel pretty good about the laptop we got for my daughter, as it is a handy backup for me.  Plus with dropbox, I can go right to work.

Figuring Out the Right Reaction

This story of a teen who was booted out of the US despite having good documents on him makes me wonder how I should react?

• Appalled that this kid was badgered into essentially confessing to a lie?
• Appalled that the immigration folks spent more than eight hours on this case when they might just have better things to do?  How much of a threat was this kid compared to other border issues?
• Appalled that these guys gave a pass on his brother and then didn't stop to think that since his brother was kosher, maybe he is, too?

Finally Getting It Or Not

“The discussion on corruption, in essence, is really a discussion about our relationship with Karzai,” said one senior Obama administration official.

The piece is about whether to make Karzai a more central player in the anti-corruption effort in Afghanistan since the government's popularity and legitimacy, not to mention the counter-insurgency war, hangs on the issue of corruption.  The question is really to how to appear to be fighting corruption while leaving Karzai and his major supporters in place or try to be sincere and end up fighting Karzai.  

The reason that the US and its allies have struggled over this issue is that there are, once again, no good options.  Just like in The Wire, following the money will lead into dangerous places, so the folks higher up will often choose not to follow the money.  Giving Karzai more power over anti-corruption will be a significant choice--for sovereignty, for his domestic political survival, but at the expense of a real effort to fight corruption.  Do the people of Afghanistan care?  Probably.  But perhaps they do care more about the local delivery of services, like electricity and garbage pickup than the kickbacks. 

Perhaps we are missing the point--can we develop better public services while there are still shenanigans behind the scenes?  If we end the most visible and most endangering abuses of power, then perhaps we can let the money flow?  Again, I have asked Canadian military types to include in their surveys questions about which forms of corruption are most galling.  But I don't have access to the surveys or the results.

But giving Karzai keys to the process may not help either the delivery of services or the perception problem that does abet the Taliban.

Schadenfreude or Not?

Republican mainstream candidates lost to Tea Party folks last night, including a NY multimillionaire who has the gall to say he is upsetting the ruling class (umm, usually millions of $$ make you part of the ruling class, dude).  Of course, such claims are buried by the stories of his racist jokes.  In Delaware, Chrisine O'Donnell won over a moderate Republican, and her main claim to fame before now was as an abstinence counselor.*

So, should we (that means us, dare I say it, progressives or liberals or moderates or whatever pejorative label the center-left types should be called) rejoice in the fragmentation of the Republican Party?  A little schadenfreude about a party reaping what it sows?  Um, only a little bit because some of these primary candidates may win in November thanks to the economy that is stalled. 

Still, in the long run, the GOP is in for a reckoning.  If they get pushed further and further to the right or to the incoherent (as the political positions of some of these folks is all over the map, but not in a moderate, reasonable way), they may do well in these darkest of times.  But if they manage to avoid blocking an economic rebound, it is hard to see how popular the TP message is going to be when people are not quite so angry.  Plus the country is becoming increasingly non-white, so they may get some seats in some places, and alienate the rest of the country producing a back-backlash.  Our double backlash or double secret backlash.

If Quebec's politics were semi-reasonable, this would be the place where I am thankful I am not in the US right now.  Oh well.



*  And that is not much of a claim since abstinence policies have failed rather dramatically, leaving some populations with higher rates of teen pregnancy (you can put your own Palin daughter joke here).

Discretion, Tolerance and Perspective

Bill James, who single-handedly revolutionized the analysis of baseball has a great column in State (still catching up from several weeks of travel, conferences, the new term, etc.) on rules, rule-breakers and rule enforcement.  His starting point is that Babe Ruth was as much of a rulebreaker as Barry Bonds, and runs from there to this:
 There are two lousy answers here:

1) That we need to become a nation like Germany in which people respect and obey the rules, whether they make sense or not.
2) That we have to tolerate the violence and the being-sprayed-with-pesticides and the being-hit-by-trains that come from living in a society in which people don't pay a lot of attention to rules that they don't like.
The answer is not No. 1 or No. 2; it is tolerance and vigilance, and it is a sense of perspective. The people who sent Martha Stewart to jail were the people who were supposed to be watching Wall Street. They went after Martha Stewart because she was an easy target. Also, they didn't understand financial derivatives. Nobody did; as it turned out, the people who were trading in them didn't understand them, either. That's why Lehman Bros. went bankrupt; they were trading in something they didn't understand.
So now it is Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds in the crosshairs of the prosecutors, and the question I would urge you to think about is not only "Are these people guilty?" It is also, "Is this prosecution necessary and appropriate?"

I have blogged before about the zero tolerance society, how we often see decisions made by the fear of making a mistake, rather than using discretion to decide when a rule should be applied.  Nice to see a really smart person articulate the same idea really well.

Sometimes Science is Just Stupid

Teaching robots to lie?  This cannot possibly end well.  I teased my students the past week about how we identify ourselves, as human is rarely a choice chosen because there is no relevant other.  Well, not until the aliens arrive, the apes take over, or when the machines arise.  Sooner rather than later?  The Terminator movies show how the scientists are shocked that their creations might cause the demise of humanity, but reality is a bit different--precisely because these scientists have seen the Terminator movies.  Yet they still try to invent ways to get robots to become deceptive??  Who is giving them the grant money?  Where is the research ethics board to ask about the implications down the road?

Time to stock up on supplies for the end of days, eh?



HT to Will Leitch.

Holy Military-University Complex, Batman!

Very interesting how life (or killing) imitations art: the guys designing wearable military technology not only are inspired by Batman, but use the name and related images (Dark Knight).*  The piece has interviews with the folks inventing the next generation of equipment for Special Forces types.  See if you can spot the hidden link to my grad school of UCSD.






*  Hat tip to Jason Ferrell 

Next One to Fall?

Cuba is now firing public sector employees.  It reminds me of a title of a great book on the disintegration of Yugoslavia: Socialist Unemployment by Susan Woodward.  Surprisingly readable for a book that contains the words "socialist" and "unemployment" in the title, Woodward essentially argues that the existence of significant unemployment undermined the promise of Socialism and thus its legitimacy. 

“The Cuban government is going to allow and by definition encourage people to go into private sector opportunities,” he said. “What happens when some people get rich?”
“The government is going to have to determine whether it will allow and embrace success, not just opportunity,” he said.

I think that success is the least of the problems ahead.  So, Cuba is in for some hard times even if it does not have deep ethnic cleavages that are ripe for opportunistic politicians.  There are storms ahead, not just the usual hurricane season.

Justice Meets Science, Justice Loses

The more we know about stuff, the less confident we can have in past decisions in the courts.  DNA has revolutionized the courts, so that we can rule people in and out pretty effectively revealing past miscarriages of justice.

New research shows how people who were apparently uninvolved in a crime could provide such a detailed account of what occurred, allowing prosecutors to claim that only the defendant could have committed the crime.

So, we have people--the mentally ill or impaired, kids, the pressured--confessing to crimes they did not commit.  And they do so believably because the facts of the crime enter the conversation via the police during the interrogation.

Instead, he said, “almost all of these confessions looked uncannily reliable,” rich in telling detail that almost inevitably had to come from the police. “I had known that in a couple of these cases, contamination could have occurred,” he said, using a term in police circles for introducing facts into the interrogation process. “I didn’t expect to see that almost all of them had been contaminated.”

 This again reminds of the disparate outcomes in the US justice system, that whites do far better than African-Americans and that the race of the victims matter a great deal.  We now have some more info to understand these outcomes, as the police might just press suspects more in such situations than white on white or black on black crimes.  And this is where the wealth of the suspect matters as well--defense attorneys that cost $$ are probably going to be better armed to prevent or undermine a confession than a public attorney.  Especially in a place like Texas where the attorneys used to be (and perhaps still are?) appointed by judges who took campaign contributions from the aforementioned attorneys (even Lee Child, the novelist, found this problematic in one of his books).*

Gee, I wonder what would have happened if they had DNA evidence for the OJ trial.  Oh, they did?  Never mind. 

DNA is not a panacea:

Proving innocence after a confession, however, is rare. Eight of the defendants in Professor Garrett’s study had actually been cleared by DNA evidence before trial, but the courts convicted them anyway.

Jim Trainum, a former policeman who now advises police departments on training officers to avoid false confessions, explained that few of them intend to contaminate an interrogation or convict the innocent.
“You become so fixated on ‘This is the right person, this is the guilty person’ that you tend to ignore everything else,” he said. The problem with false confessions, he said, is “the wrong person is still out there, and he’s able to reoffend.”

The key, of course, is getting representation before interrogation is underway.  And another key is better information like this piece about the reality that confessions may not be that much more reliable than witnesses.

The most important lesson: invest in social science--it can save lives.  Ok, that was self-serving but true nonetheless.




*  Indeed, I knew that GW Bush was severely flawed when I found out he vetoed a bill that would have changed how Texas picked its public defenders so you would not have folks who fell asleep in court and put up sham defenses when awake.

Watching Football, Feeling Conflicted [updated]

Ok, football (American-style, that is) is an incredibly violent sport.  The stories over the past year or two about concussions have definitely put a dent in my enjoyment of the game.  I saw part of the Eagles-Green Bay, where a linebacker hit someone else hard with his helmet, producing a concussion.  I thought he was gone for the game, but he came back for a few plays at least.  And then gone.  How did he ever make it back onto the field after all of the stories and new policies is beyond me.

But that was perhaps a distraction from the fact that Michael Vick was being cheered for giving his team some energy and momentum after replacing the starting QB, Kevin Kolb, who had been ineffective before getting his own concussion (and the NFL really wants to move to 18 regular season games???).  And, of course, this Vick is the same one who was deeply involved in dog-fighting.  I still find it problematic that he could come back so soon, despite some prison time.

Of course, this very violent sport (and the non-violent ones) also has plenty of other folks who commit serious crimes or at least accused of such.  Pittsburgh is going to have to deal with their QB, Ben Roethlisberger (my first attempt at his lastname produced a spellcheck that came up with Misbegotten!), who seems to be a serial harasser, borderline rapist. 

Kind of hard to tune this stuff out and just enjoy the strategy and athleticism.  I wonder if, at some point, it will get to be too much.

Update: I have only started reading the discussion among various folks, including an ex-football player, at Slate.  They consider the concussion issue immediately and then the discussion moves on from there.  Interesting stuff, proving there is way too much stuff to read and listen to on the web.

Mad Men on the Rebound

Not the show, just the man?

Summer Pop Culture Homework

I planned two projects this summer and happened to almost complete a third.  I wanted to watch The Wire and Freaks and Geeks.  I did not know that I was going to make my way nearly through all of the Lee Child library.  I was curious about Child's book, and read the first one.  The rest I managed to finish the first two seasons of The Wire, and my family ended up joining me in the F&G effort. 

Now I know why everyone raves about The Wire.  Each season is like a great novel, where the pieces are displayed early in the season and then come together towards the end.  The characters are all very interesting and complex.  You end up rooting for a very nasty thug, who happens to rob from the drug dealers.  The good guys are severely flawed, and they are embedded in a dysfunctional police department that is more focused on image than on making real progress.  And if an investigation follows the money to politicians, well, that is not good.  The show depicts the decline of the American city, not just a cops and robbers procedural.  It did not have to be Baltimore, but that resonates with me as Baltimore was the homeland of many of my camp friends.  I cannot wait to watch the next three seasons, but I probably will have to do so as the summer is over.

Freaks & Geeks turned out to be, like The Wire, an amazing depiction of life at a certain age and place.  This time, 1980 in the midwest.  The show was both incredibly funny and incredibly touching.  You end up rooting for all of the freaks (which we called burnouts in my school), not just the geeks (yes, you can guess which group I was closer to in high school).  The show took a lot of conventional plots and sent them in unexpected directions.  It is clear that the network (Fox) completed messed up this show, broadcasting episodes out of order, preventing at least one crucial one from being seen at the time.  It is funny that the 1970's Show, which was also enjoyable, was able to play with many of the same stuff later without as much restraint (drugs, sex). The show
ended up generating heaps of talent for future shows and movies, with Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen being the most obvious, but also Jason Segal, James Franco, Linda Cardinelli, among others. 

I started reading Lee Child because Stephen King recommended him in an EW column: "Lee Child's tough but humane Jack Reacher is the coolest continuing series character now on offer."  His books are like crack, yo!  I bought two books that day, and have barely glanced at the non-Lee Child book, as I have been buying or borrowing all of the rest of the Jack Reacher series since.  Jack Reacher is a retired Military Policeman, who is a drifter.  He hates staying in one place, and so he goes from town to town with just the clothes on his back and his toothbrush in his pocket.  Not much else.  And he, of course, finds trouble wherever he goes.  His essential code is simple--don't mess with him, and he will not mess with you.  But if you do mess with him, then he will be unstoppable.  Each book just builds and builds the tension.  I have three books left in the series to read (one has just come out or is coming out soon, I have two books at home [why am I blogging when I can be reading another LC book?].  Once I am through with those, then I will just have to wait for a yearly allotment of action/tension/some humor as Jack Reacher fights the fight without remorse, with mercy only for the victims, and with a tenacity that is most impressive.

I could not recommend with more enthusiasm these two shows and this one series for your next summer of watching and reading.  This is the best stuff our culture has to offer, even if these things go under-appreciated--The Wire won no Emmys, F&G had low ratings and was cancelled, Lee Child's books sell well, but thus far no movies and not heaps of attention.

One Last 9/11 Thought

I have long wondered whether it was a good or bad thing that Bush was President on 9/11.  Sure, he was an incredibly crappy president who got the US stuck in a war in Iraq, which ultimately made it harder to succeed in Afghanistan.  But I wondered what the Republicans would have done with a Democrat in the White House.  Would they have rallied around the flag, and supported Gore if he had only focused on Afghanistan and not Iraq?  Would they have tried to impeach him for failing to protect the US? 

I ponder this because the past two years has indicated to me, anyway, that the current GOP is much more interested in seeing Obama fail, even if it means that the US is diminished in the process.  Would the GOP have been so bitter back then as they are now? 

So, the question is whether the reality of Bush is better or worse than the hypothetical situation of a divided country in the aftermath of 9/11? 

Sign of the Times continued

There are some interesting developments contained within this piece about declining security in Afghanistan.

• Oxfam no longer has any signs in Afghanistan.  My reaction: isn't local ownership the goal, rather than advertising Western organizations?
• Most NGOs now use Afghans for most of their operations.  My reaction: isn't employing the indigenous population the way ahead?

What is less interesting is the "news" that the parliamentary elections are going to be challenged by the decline in security around the country.  We knew that long ago.  And, to be clear, not winning is losing for NATO.  Unless there are discernible ways to show progress, the locals will still sit on the fence or bet the other way while folks in the home countries lose patience.  So, the general quoted at the end does not quite get it:

A top coalition general bristled recently when asked about views among some critics that NATO was losing the fight. “How do they know we’re losing? I can lay out rhyme and reason about where we’re making progress. We’re building, they’re destroying. I say to them, prove it.”

 The onus is not on the Taliban to prove it is winning.  The onus is on the Karzai government to show improvement, and the onus is on NATO to protect the people of Afghanistan.  Sure, we knew violence was going to increase as troops surged into areas that had not be challenged lately.  If the violence subsides as NATO establishes some control, then we can make the claim that there is progress.  Again, the problem is that we have lost patience because of so much wasted time from 2002-2007.

Bill 103 Suffers from Loneliness

Nobody but nobody likes the effort to reform Quebec's education laws to comply with a Canadian Supreme Court ruling yet deny most folks language choice.  Yep, that is what the Quebec government must do--thread the narrow passage between the Scylla of unconstitutional legislation and the Charybdis of French nationalism.  The Court had crushed the "fix" made earlier--just after I took my job here at McGill and before we moved in--that an immigrant sending a kid to private English school would then be eligible for the public English system.

The Parti Quebecois and its fellow travelers including the union representing CEGEP students [those in the unique post-high school, pre-university free two years of junior/vocational/whatever education), a member of the New Democratic Party (essentially betraying its ideology to pander to French nationalism), among others have spoke up at hearings and filed briefs saying that French is in danger and the changes here do not go far enough.  What they want is to prevent any and all immigrants from going to any and all English schools, including unsubsidized private ones.  Right now, people can send their kids to unsubsidized private ones, as my family does. 

The sovereignist "intellectuals," whose brief was presented by former PQ MNA Gilbert Paquette, argued that the government measure is based on false premises. It maintained that contrary to government assertions, applying Bill 101 access rules to all schools in Quebec, including unsubsidized ones, does not violate any universal rights recognized by the United Nations or even the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that there would be no need to invoke the notwithstanding clause.

Well, this "intellectuals" are, well, idiots, since the very fact that the Supreme Court has already ruled against the prior bill indicates that the Charter applies and that there would be a need to invoke the notwithstanding clause (which allows a province or the Federal government to say that the Charter and Supreme Court are not relevant--with a simple majority vote).*

The English associations are opposed to Bill 103 because it really does not provide much real access to English public schools, which have been in decline for some time now thanks to Bill 101 and the flight of many Anglophones in and around 1995.

So, who likes this bill?  Um, no one.  I am sure the party in power, the provincial Liberals, would have much preferred for there to be no Supreme Court ruling that forced a response.  The Liberals would prefer to sell out the Anglophone minority (who have no other party that can really claim their votes) quietly rather than loudly.  Instead, they are forced to try to pass a bill that antagonizes everyone. 







*  Does this mean that my bet with Jacob Levy is still on?  Hmm, I will wait until the deadline made by the Court is up and this legislation passes to call it.

Required 9/11 Anniversary Post: Don't Forget the Pentagon

Nine years ago, I was starting my second week at the Pentagon.  I was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, where the CFR takes academics among other folks and places them into policy positions.  I ended up working on the Bosnian desk of the US Joint Staff's Strategic Planning and Policy Directorate because I told my interviewers I wanted to see the sausage of US foreign policy get made.  And because a previous IAF Fellow, Condi Rice, apparently was not taking fellows onto the National Security Council.

Despite the fact that my building became a target, I am glad that I was placed on the Joint Staff, rather than the NSC.  I guess a year at the NSC would have been as interesting, but the JS was a great experience because it was the nexus between the civilian and military worlds and between the US and its allies.  Plus the folks in the "mosh pit of Balkan policy" were terrific people.  I learned much from the submariners, artillery officers, pilots, infantry, and civilians from all over government who worked in that part of the JS.  Plus I was able to deploy my crap receiving and delivering skills.  They teased me from the first day, and I fired back.*

This experience has been driving my research since then--how do countries operate in multilateral military efforts--as NATO's mission in Bosnia was job #1 even after 9/11.  Of course, our job #1 became a much lower priority for the rest of the US foreign policy apparatus after that day.  I got to see US foreign policy re-orient during my year--from very frequent top level meetings on the Balkans (as was the case my first week) to decision-making at a lower level with only the occasional glance from the superiors.

I also got to see how a bureaucracy can be broken.  The folks in the Office of the Secretary of Defense [OSD] worked under Rumsfeld, who created a climate of fear, paralyzing these guys.  This was not an entirely bad thing for a while as it meant that the more reality-based, more multilaterally-inclined JS could drive policy a bit more.  This, of course, changed as Rummy learned how to marginalize the JS so that he could make bad decisions without worrying about complications like the consequences of such bad decisions [not that I am bitter or anything].

Anyhow, as we remember 9/11 and the thousands of people who lost their lives in NYC, we should also remember that people were killed at the Pentagon, that the folks who worked there returned to their jobs even as the flames were still smoldering,* and that nine years later Muslims are still holding services in the building.  Ah yes, the other lasting impression made by my year was how the JS was the most multi-ethnic environment in which I have ever worked.  It was Colbert's ideal of not seeing race.  I have posted before that not all parts of the military are tolerant of diversity, but, as I was always reminded, the JS had the military's best folks.  Despite my narrow sample, I had no problem believing it.


* One of my favorite memories was being told by my boss, a Colonel, that I would be transformed by the experience: that I would be clean-shaven, have shined shoes, a short haircut, and pressed clothes by the time I left.  So, when he retired towards the end of my year, I showed up at his retirement party with my beard gone, with a crewcut, and in a borrowed uniform.  Not a bad gag.
** Indeed, as my story of that day (first link) indicates, we went back into the building on September 11th to return classified documents to a secure facility.

McGill Math Sucks

Or we do a bad job of teaching politics.  Heather Monroe-Blum, McGill's principal (the chancellor or president in other systems), has been calling upon Quebec to let McGill increase its tuition.  The basic gripe is that as Quebec has decreased funding for its public institutions (all universities in the province, pretty much), it has kept a tight rein on tuition, meaning that universities are crunched.  So, the students predictably get upset. 

But they get upset because they do not understand math and depreciation and appreciation.  The student unions have done a great job of maintaining their organizations and their belligerence, but the reality is that the students actually should let the universities increase their tuition within reason (the rates are now around $1-2k per year for everyone regardless of ability to pay).  Why?  Because the tuition increase would largely and perhaps entirely hit the next generation of students, so they really do not have much of a financial risk immediately.  And, more importantly, the value of their degree is not fixed, but will vary.  If professors flee McGill because it falls behind in offering salaries, if the students cannot get into classes simply because McGill takes the easy route and lets in more students but keeps the number of profs constant, if better students go elsewhere because the infrastructure falls apart, then McGill's reputation will suffer and that will impact perceptions of the degrees of students have graduated in the past.  Students today have an interest in the well-being of their institution down the road.  Student unions apparently do not. 

The hearing had a marvelous moment where McGill was accused of wanting to imitate the North American model of higher education (whatever that is), gasp!!!!!  Monroe-Blum ran away from that quickly, not wanting to be tarred with the North American brush.  But this, like talking about the American health care system when discussing the limits of Canada's health care, is a good strategy for covering the entire debate in denial sauce.™©  Perhaps the N.A. model is broken, but the European one is not looking too good right now at all, yet folks here seem to idealize the European and demonize the American systems--with no real information actually deployed. 


PS:  I am thinking of opening up a new line of products: secret sauce and now denial sauce.  Any other sauces I should add to my new line?

News of the Non-Weird

Today's NYT seems a bit bizarre.  Rather than all the news fit to print, it is now all (or at least some) the news that should be blindly obvious:

• Judge Rules That Military Policy Violates Rigths of Gays:  Well, there is that whole equal protection under the law thing (in that unpopular 14th amendment), so this ruling was due, long overdue really.  Actually, turns out the key amendments were 1st and 5th, but the key is that the government failed to prove that gays don't threaten military readiness and unit cohesion.  Indeed, plenty of stories have shown exemplars, including in areas that are of high need like translators, have been kicked out of the military, making it less capable.  The story contains a few anecdotes that the mistrust that this policy created was more of a threat to unit cohesion.  Don't Ask Don't Tell is clearly on its deathbed, but mercy-killing it may take some time yet.  This injunction should help.
• Coverage of Koran Case Stirs Questions on Media Role.  I blogged a bit yesterday about this.  I always enjoy it when the media gets to double-dip--being irresponsible and then chastising itself for being irresponsible.  Good times. 
• Secret Tape has Police Pressing Ticket Quotas.  To steal from Saturday Night Live: really? Really!?  Really?!  Police have targets for ticket levels?  I am shocked.  Next, someone will tell me that people gamble online. 

Just seemed like a front page (front webpage) chock full of dog bit man stories.  I guess those are better than the reverse.

Harper the Warrior?

The Economist has a piece suggesting that Stephen Harper is quite the warrior.  I am still trying to figure this all out.  Yes, Harper did not pull the Canadians out of Kandahar after Paul Martin put them in, and he did not impose restrictions upon the Canadian commanders.  Or at least, he did not restrict what they did, but did restrict the military's communications about its efforts.  Perhaps less than the aid and foreign affairs types, but it has been clear to me that the Prime Minister's Office has tried to control the messaging of the military.  This piece suggests that the opposition is the only thing restraining Harper in Afghanistan, but it ignores the reality that Harper has taken the Parliamentary mandates as a shield, deflecting any suggestions about sticking it out at little bit or re-deploying only a hunk of the troops but not all of them.

The piece also suggests that Arctic Sovereignty is just about hardware.  I think that is partially true, but not entirely so.  I think the initial proposal to worry more about Northern threats (US, Russia, the pesky Danes) was as much about using nationalism to get support as it was to get money to defense contractors.  After all, there are lots of defense programs that could fund the arms industry--boats and planes for the cold white north is only way to go about it.

Anyhow, Harper has taken some heat for keeping the Canadians in Afghanistan as the popularity of the mission declined, bearing more of the burden then most NATO countries.  But it was not his decision to stay and it was not his decision to leave.  So, it may be the case that Harper is not as big a shaper of Canada's destiny as it would appear to be.  Pretty passive for a warrior.

5% Crazy?

Gail Collins talks about how 5% of Americans are going to be crazy, talking about the Koran burning proposed by a teeny tiny church.  This reminds me of one of my oldest posts, where I explain how Academic Politics is similar to Ethnic Politics: the key issue is not the presence of insane (or evil or stupid or lazy) people but whether the rest of the society treats them as relevant.

When this sort of thing happens, it is important to remember that about 5 percent of our population is and always will be totally crazy. I don’t mean mentally ill. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, 26 percent of American adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year. So, basically, that’s just normal life. I mean crazy in the sense of “Thinks it is a good plan to joke with the flight attendant about seeing a bomb in the restroom.”
There is nothing you can do about the crazy 5 percent except ask the police to keep an eye on them during large public events, where they sometimes appear carrying machine guns just to make a political point about the Second Amendment. And, in situations like a Koran-burning, make it clear that the rest of us disagree.

The reality is that most of our models of politics focus on the middle and the mainstream, on how dissenters mobilize to become big enough to be politically relevant.  Most of our work does not focus on the anomalies, the folks way outside the mainstream.  I spotted a Larouche Democrat (that is a non-democrat) outside the gates of McGill yesterday.  I doubt that we have a good general explanation for a) folks who follow Lyndon Larouche [I am wondering/regretting who will link to my blog with this name in it]; or b) why such folks would be in Canada since Larouche and his ilk "compete" in US elections. 

Collins concludes her piece with a quote about crazy people in every society.  But the question really is not their existence, but how do the sane folks marginalize the insane?  A recurring theme in this blog has been that folks who have bad ideas/have been responsible for policy failures (Cheney, that would be you) and so forth get more attention than folks with good ideas and good policy histories.  Is this the result of 24/7 media channels that find the most outrageous stuff is what gets attention?  Is this the Fox-ization of the news?  Is it a product of the Republican party shifting to the right and having an outbidding type process that will push it further and further to the loony side? 

I do think that the recent days have seen folks distance themselves and even attack the potential Koran burners.  This is progress.  But in the aftermath of Mosque Madness, it may be too little, too late.  The 50 nuts will seem like all Americans given the cacophony over the Muslim community center in NY.

Kandahar as a Sign of the Times

“It’s not perfect, but it’s a good news story,” said Lt. Col. John Voorhees of the United States Army’s 504th Military Police Battalion, who commanded the American task force that backed up the Afghan police in Mehlajat.

 The offensive, such as it is, is underway in Kandahar.  A success story when no coalition casualties and few Taliban killed but some folks arrested.  Much delayed, much derided, it seems that ISAF and the Afghan National Army [ANA] are now moving ahead.  Much of this feels a bit familiar although the scope is larger. 

The missing ingredient in the NYT story is ... Canada.  Kandahar used to be Canada's territory, and other countries, including the US, served under Canadians.  Ordinarily, you could chalk up the lack of Canadians in a US news story to the usual American first/only blinders of American media.  But this story actually does indicate something else is in play--the movement of the pieces on the board, including focusing Canadians in some areas of Kandahar with the Americans now leading the effort.  This is normal for NATO operations--that the largest contingents in an area usually lead to that country getting command, especially if it is the US.  Still, Canadians who pay attention to these things might notice that Canada is indeed moving to the side and eventually the rear.  Most Canadians will be pleased by this, but these changes are more than symbolic.  Canadian leadership peaked and is now ebbing. 

My friends will ask what Canada got out of this role, and I guess my conclusion is that they temporarily had a higher profile.  Whether that led to any policy outcomes on other issues in other places closer to Canada's preferred positions than otherwise would have been the case, I am not sure.

Sucking Up Is Sucking More

Just a handy note for the kids out there in cyberland: trying to suck up is probably not a good idea.  If done poorly, it hurts.  If not done at all, there is no risk.  And doing it right usually does not pay off much.

Today, I had a student offer me a happy Jewish New Year after class ended.  Well, as those who read the Spew here probably have guessed, my identification with the people of the book (no, not that one--the other one) is not so good.  Regardless, it came off more as: hey, you and I are both part of the same club, wink, wink.  Well, even if I identified strongly with that club, I think I would still mind the injection of kinship in a non-kin situation.  If we were shopping for bagels, it would make sense--hey, these Montreal bagels suck, right?  If I was looking for a good moyel (is that how it is spelled?), I could use some advice from a co-religionist.  But since I teach at a secular school, I guess I don't really want religion brought in, unless it is for the subject, which it often is (why religion might cause more ethnic conflict than language, for instance). 

Anyhow, that was my annoyance du jour.  And I think it is less about religion and more about suck up strategies that, well, suck.

When a Fire Drill Makes Sense

Not a metaphorical or analogical one, but a real fire drill actually made sense today.  Sure, I whined because it was semi-drizzly, but the firefolks needed to test how accessible my building is.  You see, McGill has closed the closest road to traffic as part of the greening of the campus.  The road still exists, but now is painted green in some spots and has some rather ugly planters and bike racks semi-randomly tossed around the street (which is straight up a steep hill).  Not only has this made biking near campus more difficult, but we learned pretty quickly while watching the fire trucks move around, that the planters impede them. 

So, this new "greening" which really never was the subject of proper consultation nor any real thought (at least, in my humble opinion), is now a threat to my safety and those who inhabit a building named after the most prominent Canadian humorist.  I am sure Stephen Leacock would have something witty to say about this.  I must merely sigh, blog, and then get my receipts processed from last week's trip.

Another Book I Have Read But Not Myself

A running theme here is my take on stuff that I haven't read.  Well, I spewed recently about tenure and here is a review of a book that castigates this holy institution.  So, now I can say this is a book I have read not a book I myself have read.
Speaking of spew-age, here is a nice rant:

The syndrome has become all too common. A provocative op-ed piece appears in a major newspaper (for preference, The New York Times). Its logic is fragile and its evidence is thin, but the writing is crisp and the examples are pungent, and the assault on sacred cows arouses a storm of discussion (much of it sharply critical, but no matter). It goes viral. And almost immediately, publishers comes calling. “This should be a book,” they coo, and the author, entranced by a bit of sudden fame (not to mention, perhaps, a decent advance), eagerly agrees. He or she sets to work, and soon enough the original 800 words expand to 50,000. But far from reinforcing the original logic and evidence, the new accretions of text only strain them further, while smothering the original provocations under thick layers of padded anecdote, pop sociology and oracular pronouncement. Call the syndrome Friedmanitis, after a prominent early victim, the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

Zombies Are Coming

Dan Drezner's book is going to be relevant pretty soon:


Oh, and Dan did share the book's promo sheet with me at the APSA meeting.  The book have some illustrations!!!

Mad Men Fights the Fight

A bit late with my take on the recent Mad Men--was in an American hotel with heaps of channels but not AMC on Sunday night.

Disappointing Summer Movie Season?

Yes, but not in the way expressed by the NYT story on the summer box office.  For the Spew family, it was a summer where we saw some of the movies we want to see but missed out on others, critically reviled or loved or not.  We tragically missed Toy Story 3, so we will be waiting for DVD.  We didn't skip it due to 3D, but we are now avoiding 3D movies unless there is a real added value.

Sharply higher prices for tickets across the board, but especially for 3-D presentations, drove the increase. The worry, as seen in poor results for recent 3-D releases like “Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore,” is that theater chains and studios have overreached on pricing. “We suspect some consumers are choosing 2-D movies solely to reduce the cost of their moviegoing experience,” wrote Richard Greenfield, an analyst at the financial services company BTIG, in an Aug. 23 research note.

Indeed.  For Harry Potter, which will be in 3D, we will try to find the 2D version.  HP does not need 3D.

We also missed Sorcerer's Apprentice, Expendables, Salt, Dinner for/with Schmucks, and Prince of Persia--they might have been fun for us, even if the reviews were not great or worse. 

I did enjoy a great deal the movies we did see.

• Scott Pilgrim was clearly the most enjoyable film of the summer.  It had the nice combo of heart and silliness.  The Vegan Academy!!!  The comic book come to life aspect was great.  I really enjoyed the role played by Culkin, which also helped to demonstrate how far we have come in terms of gay characters.  The Seven evil exes were distinctly funny.  Mary Beth Winstead was great as the love interest with some significant fight in her, and Cera was not that annoying.  Just a wildly entertaining movie and the one this summer that I instantly said: gotta get the DVD.  And the soundtrack.
• Inception was the most involving.  I went into it thinking it was going to be ok, but really got sucked in.  It was tense, funny in parts, and I marveled at how the layers fit together.  I love a good Bond-like combat on skis scene.  And the battle in zero G made me think that these guys could/should do the next Spidey movie (since Sam Rammi is not).  And now, when someone body says "am I dreaming?", I know have a solution--kicking the chair they are in. 
• Other Guys was very, very funny.  The best part was the Sam Jackson/Rock bit of a superteam of cops doing outrageous stuff.  They could do a prequel with just those two guys and I would be in line for it.  The rest of the movie was fun, as well.  Not all Will Ferrell stuff works, but this one did, big-time.
• Iron Man 2 was fun as well, but not as much as the first one.  Key indicator--when flying to and from Europe, I did not choose to re-watch.  It had good bits and lines, but it just was not as involving or as memorable as the first one. 
• We did enjoy the A-team as it was outrageously unrealistic and tapped into some fun memories.  Not a great movie by any stretch but was fun nonetheless.

The American and Machete just came out, so I hope to catch up before the fall season hits us with Harry Potter and the two part finale and Easy A (which looks to be the funniest movie of the fall).

Don't Let Your Kids Become a PhD

Another article showing that the job market in political science has been quite awful.  Good news--most find some kind of job or post-doc, but only 48% get tenure track positions.  What does it take?  A done dissertation?  Actually, I am not sure:

Stimson strongly backed the trend of political science graduate students holding back -- and not going out on the market until they were making real progress on their dissertations. "Whatever job you could get will be less than the job you could get the next year," he said. At North Carolina, he said, his department has a specific rule and works with students on jobs only after they have written and had approved one analytic chapter of their dissertations.

One chapter is not much of a threshold.  I would prefer that my students wait until they are close to done, but most tend not to want to wait.  The problem, of course, is one of timing.  Since they will finish by the end of next summer, they want a job in hand by next fall.  So, I lower expectations and consider this year as practice until convinced otherwise.  I have four students actively seeking jobs this fall.  Each is fantastic in his/her own way.

The article indicates that IR is a hard subfield for employment, linked to political philosophy.  I am not sure that is quite true--historically, theory has been the hardest and IR has been the second easiest (or least hard), as comparative can be quite difficult, depending on whether one's area is faddish or not (Mideast is hot, Russia much less so).

About Time or Just Another Pie Crust Promise

Basque separatist group, ETA, says they are now engaged in a ceasefire.  Well, they broke their previously announced ceasefire, so it is hard to tell if this will stick.  The announcement, complete with masks and an old version of Basque used, does not fill one with heaps of assurances.  But it bears following.  They have had no momentum and have been quite marginal as of late with France taking a more serious effort to arrest those who flee/reside in France.

Perhaps they have realized the limits of their appeal.  Or not.

What Have I Learned at This Year's APSA?

As the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association comes to an end, what have I learned?

• I was reminded that it has been a great ride thus far--heaps of friends all over the place, whom I met at previous jobs, in grad school, conferences, workshops, etc.  Despite my frequent complaints about the profession, I am very glad that I made the big choice that I did and nearly all of the sub-choices (going to UCSD, taking a visiting job at Vermont, working at TTU, moving to McGill, etc.)
• That it is ok to wear shorts at the conference, although it did make me stand out.
• That people have an infinite capacity to come up with interesting projects.
• That the next generation of UCSD grad students is as sharp as the last few generations.  I am always reminded that I might not have gotten into that program today.
• That the job market might be turning a bit.  UC schools are hiring and the furloughs are ending.  It is still early yet and other states may be behind.  I wish the stimulus money went to higher ed as it is a big multiplier.  The latest job figures have losses because of governments shedding jobs.  Giving $$ to higher ed might help there.  Not that I am self-interested or anything.
• That I enjoy how surprised people are at my current situation--that there is something that just does not make sense.  And I concur.
• That I need to go to more panels, but that would mean fewer meetings with friends, colleagues, students, former students, and random folks who become friends.  Somebody told me that time is elastic--I will need to figure that out as this fall becomes increasingly stacked with commitments.

Jumping the Shark

Here is a piece by the guy who wrote the classic episode of Happy Days.  I think he doth protest too much.  While Happy Days did still perform well for quite a while, that season did mark the turning point from top 3 show to something less than that.  And, of course, the effect of that show may be exaggerated, but the phrase itself is what sticks, which probably does speak to the stupidity of the stunt.


I just hope this blog has not yet jumped the shark.

The Upside to Wikileaks

Amazing video created by some folks who used data from the wikileaks.

Visualisation of Activity in Afghanistan using the Wikileaks data from Mike Dewar on Vimeo.

It shows where and when incidents occurred.  Could be very deceptive since what counts as an incident is not entirely clear from the website.  Not really surprising--most violence in South and East, with increases over time and some spread as well.  But still a nice illustration.  Pay attention to mid-2006 as Canadians engaged in Op Medusa, Canada's most intense combat since Korea.

Where is Mary Poppins When You Need Her?

One of the classic movie moments of collectively irrational behavior is a run on a bank in Mary Poppins.  And I always thing of it when I see any other banking crisis like the one in Afghanistan.  In the movie, a kid seeking his money back after not being pleased by the lending practices triggers a panic.  In Afghanistan, a bank that has been poorly administered and apparently tied to Karzai is having problemos.  And in a brief conversation at the APSA meeting with an expert on Afghanistan, the bank run may be more of a bank theft.  Oy.  Too big to fail?  No.  Is Afghanistan too important to fail?  I am having my doubts.

Aargh, Matey, Where Are Your Loyalties?

We should not be surprised that the Somali pirates take both sides (or don't take sides at all).  The folks involved in trafficking drugs, cigarettes, guns, women, etc. tend not to be terribly ideological, but capitalists in the purest form.  A dollar is a dollar is a dollar.  So, we should not be surprised by such stories.  This development should also remind us of two things about the funding of conflict:

• there are many ways to fund a civil war/insurgent organization, not just diamonds and lootable resources;
• that the presence of such resources probably do not cause conflicts but perhaps make them harder to end.

Off to my first APSA appointment--my first PhD student who is now a prof.

Surf City, Baby

I love that the NYT story on Hurricane Earl has a picture of surfers.  We have to have priorities, and the surfers demonstrate that quite well. 

Of course, my self-centered question is: will the hurricane hit DC during the APSA?  It would not be the first conference disrupted by a hurricane but the first one I was attending.  Blogging is likely to be light, not because of an evacuation (the hurricane is likely to miss us), but due to the long hours of schmoozing with old friends, ex-colleagues, the Obama kids, former students, new acquaintances, random Congressional Pages, and whoever else that crosses my path over the next several days.

I will say it was fun to be back to lecturing yesterday for the first time in eight months (I had course releases lasts winter/spring).  Ambivalence on the first day: nice to see standing room only but hard to keep telling students that there is little I can do to add students to my classes.  McGill simply does not offer enough upper division classes, plus the topic of my 400-level (senior) lecture is pretty interesting: the International Relations of Ethnic Conflict.  I have not taught it in about five years, having developed a course on Civil-Military Relations.  Back to my roots. And my intro class of 612 is a gateway to upper division classes, so it is not only inherently interesting (IR is more interesting than the other subfields), but also a requirement.  But only 612 fit into the room and I have a finite number of TAs with a finite number of hours they can work.

Anyhow, I will try to post about this conference and what I am learning here, but it may be difficult especially as I sweat all over the computer in the tropical heat and humidity that is DC in early Sept. 

Making Progress on Our Stigmatic Labels?

I don't watch much Glenn Beck for the obvious reasons, but I saw him via Jon Stewart using "Progressive" as a nasty label. Is that because Obama has made Liberal hip?  Is using the liberal label as a pejorative no longer the Right thing to do?  I am confused. 

Because, if one is against progress, does that mean one is for regression?  I guess progressive can be made to sound intellectual (Jewish), snobbish (ahem, more of that), and elite, so it works for pandering/confusing the masses. 

But it just means that Beck is more like Dolores Umbridge than I would have guessed.  "But progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged."  Once again, I am on the side of J.K. Rowling, and this gives me a bit of hope because I am pretty sure that more folks have bought her books than Beck's.

Best Laugh fo the Day: Canadian Air Force To Defend Against Iran

Talking about grasping for straws, but the head of the Canadian flying folks, Lt. Gen Deschamps is undermining the case for the expensive purchase of F-35's, arguing that their stealthy characteristics will facilitate defense against all threats to Canadian sovereignty, including perhaps the North Koreans or Iranians down the road. 

Um, sure.  Grand strategy is the matching of threats with capabilities and commitments, and it seems that the F35 is a capability poorly matched to the threats if one has to summon North Korea or Iran as the threats to Canadian sovereignty.  Sure, the military is playing to the Conservative government that has played the nationalism card about Arctic Sovereignty, but the big threats to CA sovereignty are the Russians and the Americans.  Buying an American plane is probably not going to help deter the Americans--just a guess.  And the Russians are not going to be deterred by a handful of semi-visible Canadian planes any more than they would be deterred by a handful of completely visible Canadian planes.  The key here is handful.  And Russian.  And guess what?  For the foreseeable future, the US and Canada have a deal where they jointly defend North American air space via NORAD.  So, Canada needs to kick in some capability to keep the US happy about the deal, but that is not a way to sell an expensive plane to the Canadian public. 

The general goes on to talk about how useful such planes are against insurgencies if no drones are around.  Well, duh, as SecDef Gates pointed out to his Air Force (by firing a bunch of folks), you can buy a lot of drones for the price of one manned semi-stealthy fighter.

So, perhaps the real reason is this:

Mr. Lagassé* said. “It doesn’t fit with the threat environment. Let’s be frank: The real value of this aircraft is inter-operability with allies overseas.”

But selling a plane to the CA parliament based on future missions with the US and NATO does not work when one has been hammering away at Canada First.  Even though the best defense of Canada remains its alliance with the US.  Talk about inconvenient truths.



* This dubious Lagassé character is none other than Phillipe Lagassé of U of Ottawa and known to be a fellow traveler of mine. 

Bully, Bully

Apparently, being against bullies is un-Christian.  Guess I am glad that I am not Christian.  Focus on the Family sees the movement against bullying as part of a larger agenda to tolerate gay people and not to tolerate intolerant people.  This is not the first time that a supposed defender of Christianity seems to forget that Jesus's message was about love, right?

I do see their point--that fighting against bullies is likely to mean, in part, challenging those who threaten, discriminate and/or beat up on people because they are gay, thought to be gay or simply identified as gay because that is a convenient tag to marginalize someone.  And since their view of Christianity means marginalizing and discriminating against gay folks, fighting bullying means marginalizing those Christians that are entitled to intolerance due to their religious beliefs.  I do love the irony that these groups tend to want values taught in schools (prayer in schools) but are really selective about which values. 

Once again, I am reminded that any text or speech or code can be read however anyone wants to read it, whether it is On War by Clausewitz, the Bible, or the US Constitution.  It would seem to me that oppressing gays would not be the highest priority of Christianity.  Indeed, given how much of the New Testament is about loving neighbors and about the meek and poor, the priority would be on helping the poor and aiding Haitians and Pakistanis rather than focusing on a few key clauses here or there that focus on gay folks.

Which reminds me of my view that religion is a political and social construction--that ye olde religions were anti-gay and pro-marriage to facilitate the growth of the group, improving its market share and its ability to survive and thrive.  Perhaps the same motivation exists today as the need for WASPs to produce more white kids to stave off the minority status of whites for another day.  Nah, that is going too far. 

All I know is that over the course of my life, my reactions to "that's so gay" has changed from being fearful of such an accusation to being intolerant of those who use such a phrase.  If you are older than fourteen, it simply does not belong in your vocabulary, even if you are unaware of the suicide rate of teenage gays and lesbians.  This is not political correctness but simply good manners and evidence of maturity.

The good news is that the US is changing faster than we might have expected, with polls showing acceptance of gays in the military and now even gay marriage.  The stridency of the intolerant is exactly the last gasps from a defeated and obsolete set of attitudes, whose demise has been hastened by repeated revelations of gays among their leadership.

Update:  Apparently, the gay-dar of these folks is pretty bad, so they need instructions on spotting gay spouses.  I think my lack of fastidiousness will assure my wife despite my inherent sassiness.