The Alternative is Worse

Either you age or you die.  No other choice so far.

From basicinstructions.net.

I have measured my aging mostly by the age of my students and of my frisbee opponents:

• I knew I passed key markers in time when my undergrads were born in the 1980's and their first international political memories were of Iran-Contra, bombing Libya (the first time), the Berlin Wall falling.
• The second major marker was when I realized that I was playing against a team where I could have fathered every single player after I had graduated college.
• The third marker was when I realized my students were less than half my age, so that they were born when I was in college or after (late 80's).
• Now, my undergrads were born after Yugoslavia fell apart and 9/11 is their first major memory.  

Good thing the 40s are the new 30s, right?  I don't mind aging as the alternative is undesirable to say the least.  But I do understand now why there are so very few professional athletes who play past 40.  I can but prefer not to play ultimate on consecutive nights.  Well, I wouldn't mind playing every day, but my body prefers to space things out. 

Mostly, I agree with the cartoon above--things are better now, despite the best efforts of politicians and media to tell us otherwise: less crime, less violence, less tolerance of intolerance (despite 25% of Iowa caucus voters choosing Santorum), and so on.  The glass is always half-filled, but looking back reminds me that it looks half-full to me, not half-empty.

On the other hand, due to a friend's facebook challenge, I learned that the #1 song when I was born was:

Holiday Regrets

We were in the Boston area over Thanksgiving and could have stopped by Lowell to see this:



Alas, we did not, as my daughter was focused on another show at the time.  If only we had ditched the kid.....  Maybe down the road.  I would say the Reduced Shakespeare Company is not going anywhere, but, of course, they are.  So, perhaps our paths will intersect again.

Not Romney Chronicles, Episode 37

Last spring and summer, I blogged quite frequently and chatted elsewhere that the outbidding in the GOP would be very entertaining.  I had no idea how right I was going to be.  Iowa has produced three "leaders" if one means by leader someone who has somewhat more votes than the rest.  In all other definitions of the word, the pack of three lacks heaps of leadership. 

Anyhow, we now have a politician that seems most electable but most reviled by the base: Romney.  So that, the past few months we have seen a rotation of "Not Romney's" soar and then decline in the polls. 

We have a candidate who has the most appealing personality but has a track record of insane and racist views: Ron Paul.

And we have a candidate so homophobic and now so anti-sex (banning contrasceptives?) that to think of Santorum as a serious candidate is often seen as a prelude to a joke.  Yep, Dan Savage has provided the gift that keeps on giving.  If that were not bad enough, Santorum's foreign policy positions seem aimed to produce war, as if we have not had enough of that lately. 

What can make sense of the outcome last night?  Well, here is a pretty sensible analysis--that Santorum was the only one left remaining who had solid credentials on social policy for the hard, hard right wing of the Republican party.  Caucuses are entirely about who shows up, since it involves meetings and waiting.  If you are passionate, you will wait around for your chance to have a say.  If you are not passionate, you stay home.  Voting is far easier than caucus attendance. 

So, who is passionate?  Those who hate sex.  Oops, I don't really mean that.  So, who is passionate?  Those who are in denial about their homosexual inclinations?  Oops, just because many gay-hating Republicans have been caught in various gay sex-seeking eefforts does not mean that all homophobia is driven by denial.  Anyhow, the point is that Santorum played better than thrice divorced Gingrich, than the seriously bat-@#$#@ crazy Bachmann, and the fatally stupid Perry.  I mean, Cain also played well for a while, and his foreign policy stances made only marginally less sense than Santorum's. 

The Iowa high school musical that we call the first bellwether process (of about two or twenty) of the 2012 election produced a very close race where no candidate received heaps of support, so three are left bragging about not being fourth or fifth.  What did this really show?  That the GOP is so messed up that 1/4 of those who showed up supported an unelectable individual with a lousy record in the Senate and a history of saying incredibly hateful stuff.  That Santorum did so well (again 25% is well) is an indictment of the party.  But then again, this is not the average voter, not the average Iowan voter, not the average Iowan Republican voter, but the folks on the outer third (Santorum is not getting the median voter) of the Iowan Republican voter who shows up at a caucus. 

The truly funny thing is that Romney is clearly the choice of the "left wing," if you will, of the GOP in Iowa, then Ron Paul is the candidate of the median voter.  Raises heaps of questions of the meaning of median.  Oy!   The closeness of the outcome and the cycling before it reveal one consistency--that the Repubicans really do not like their candidates very much and have a hard time figuring out which one is least unattractive.  Sure, you had some enthused supporters last night on TV, but that was selection bias in the extreme.

I have tried not to pay attention to this race, but I also rubber-neck when I see a car crash on the side of the road.  Same thing.

The Video Challenge

Dan Drezner tweeted a challenge today: come up with a video that best captures American grand strategy.  I posted this one:


Why did I choose this one? Because a simplistic characterization of American grand strategy would, of course, focus on the threat of force, rather than something more complex about managing the slings and arrows of outrageous globalization.  The new or not so new defense strategy of having enough of a military to fight one war while deterring or spoiling an adversary's plans requires a "bigger knife" not to use but to dissuade challengers.

Such a grand strategy also plays to the US's current strength--dominating conventional war through bigger and better weapons.  In the video, Croc Dundee is confronted not by one mugger but several (and one can read race into this if one wants, since the mugger was African-American, and most threats to the US are by non-white folks).*  His big knife spoils the plans of each of them.  Sounds like a good use of resources.

* Of course, if one thinks of GOP candidates with outrageously poor judgment as the biggest threats to American security, then things change a bit now that Cain is out of the mix.

The video also illustrates the stakes: leggy model types with mediocre acting skills but with heaps of loyalty (Linda K is still married, apparently, to Paul Hogan).  The parallel in US grand strategy is what?  A cool knife, a nice jacket, a neat hat, and a beautiful woman?  To have it all?  Tis the American dream.

So, that was my first shot at a youtube clip that would exemplify the new American grand strategy.  And yes, this is completely out of character since I am not relying on Harry Potter nor Star Wars (um, the US is either the Old Republic or the Empire, and neither are desirable models).

I am looking forward to seeing what Dan collects.
Updated:  This is what Dan collected.

Delaying the Inevitable

This post, about how doctors treat their own serious medical challenges, is most instructive.  It makes sense to look at how the experts treat themselves (although considering how political scientists do politics within their departments or within political systems might cause us to think otherwise).

Doctors, at least anecdotally, are not enthusiastic about prolonging their own lives with extensive treatment.  I am not sure how mainstream this guy's views really are; is CPR really that bad?

Still, doctors seem to accept death when the time comes.  I hope I am that brave since I do not believe in an afterlife.  It is all or nothing, but I think prolonging the all is probably worse than the nothing.  I do know that we spend far more money on medical care on the last couple of years rather than we should, that more $$ should go to prevention and early medical intervention.  As long as old people vote more than kids, that probably will not change much.  But, if we educate people better about their choices and ignore the idiots who talk about death panels, we might get less painful processes for some.

Not Alone in Narcissism

The folks at William and Mary have had a series of surveys about the IR profession for the past decade or so, know as the TRIP project.  The most recent results for the US were released on Foreignpolicy.com today.  Happy New Year of Navel-Gazing!  I was a big fan of TRIP even before I got drafted to help with the Canadian franchise. I will report the survey results of Canada once I have them. Pre-draft, I was on a panel at last year's ISA that did all kinds of fun stuff with the data they had collected. 

I don't have any comments on their rankings of MA programs since I have no clue about them (but will next year once I have a year teaching at an MA program).

But let me take a few issues with the rankings of PhD programs and the stuff that either the TRIP people or the FP folks put with the list.

In brief, the list is:

1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. Yale
6. Chicago
7. UC San Diego
8. UC Berkeley
9. Michigan, MIT

Some qualifiers here--this seems not to be about Poli Sci programs but about IR programs (the giveaway is the listing of IRPS at UCSD and not the poli sci dept), but I am sure the folks surveyed probably did not consistently make that distinction.  So, you can read this as top Poli Sci/IR programs.

A Discourse on Degrees

M.A, Ph.D, M.Phil?  No, of course not.  It is time for the annual Fahrenheit was right post.  I had to go downtown today because I had to pick up my new Permanent Residency card (every five years or until I go full Canadian, eh?).  So, I went to school as well to do some paperwork (see aforementioned blogpost on recommendations).

And ... yuck! Today was the first semi-brutally cold day of the winter, and we were poorly adjusted since winter has been quite warm here (more ice than snow on the slopes).  Sure, it did not duck down below 0F (-18C), but it got close.  And, as Mr. Fahrenheit set 0 at the temp where things get damned uncomfotable, I felt pretty darned uncomfy today. 

Sure, it allowed me to test out my new jeans with flannel on in the inside (thanks to Mrs. Spew's mom's holiday gift),* but it also reminded me that the winters here in Canada have a surprising impact: I wear out the zippers on my winter coats.  This time, both the metal holding the tag one uses to pull on the zipper and the zipper itself are damaged.  The zipper keeps unzipping from the top back to 3/4s, which, in weather like this, ain't good.  Do North Face or other brands have more reliable zippers than Columbia or does Canada's winter defeat them all?

*  Mrs. Spew noted on the previous word could that she did not appear, but I am pretty sure she would rather not appear often than be discussed in my blog on a regular basis (plus the way the word cloud worked, discussion of her would be Mrs. and Spew but not Mrs. Spew). 

Yes, I am looking forward to my next job, which should allow me to go from my house to my garage to a parking garage to a tunnel to my office, with very little walking in near or sub 0F.  Of course, that would leave poorly adjusted for skiing, but then again, there is less skiing near Ottawa, one of the big downsides of the move.

Letters of Pain and Suffering

Grading remains the worst part of the job of being a prof (which, of course, is a great job).  But writing letters of recommendation comes in second.  They come in two flavors--for PhD students looking for academic jobs and undergrads applying for grad school.*

*  Next year, I will have to start to learn how to write letters for MA students looking for real jobs.

Grad schools have mostly gone to electronic submissions (with several Canadian schools still stuck in the past including my present and future employers!  aargh!).  So, now we profs whine about the different web-based systems:

• Why ask us each time for our mailing address and phone numbers?  No one ever calls us for these kinds of recommendations (real jobs, academic jobs sometimes).
• Why email us a password and then make us set up a new password?  GWU and Georgetown have the exact same web-based system, but I had to do this twice.
• Menus for the ritual "is this student top 5% or top 10% or whatever for attribute x" are inferior to buttons, which we can zip through.

Am I forgetting anything?  Well, besides pondering whether these letters actually have heaps of meaning down the line?

What do my academic readers think?

Update:
My commenters (thanks, Ron!) hate the online systems much more than I do.  I hate how they are implemented, but I much, much prefer even these annoying systems to doing it all by paper.  Paper gets lost, paper forms may not make into the correct envelope, it means envelops are part of the process, signing the back of envelopes to prove that the letter is mine can be awkward, and one has to write on the form lots of the same stuff that is annoying to type into a web-form.  I got into the habit of stapling business cards to the part of the form asking for address, phone number and such.  So, yes, we hate the web-forms, but I still prefer them to the old system (which I still have to do, especially when some Canadian schools are involved).

Spew Point of Pride: Few Extra Clicks

One of the things I will never do with this blog: purposely come up with a list that requires heaps of pageviews to get the complete list.  I only insert a break and compel clicks to see more for two reasons:

1. The post is really long, and I want to break it up so that readers of my blog can see multiple posts at the same time.
2. The post involves a spoiler for some book/movie/television program.

Of course, it is easy for me to have some principles on this since I am not making money per pageview.  Indeed, I am not making any money at all.  Yes, blogspot makes easy to have ads attached, but I have refrained.  I don't need the pennies.  I guess if there was some money being made, then I might feel the need to increase the click-rate by coming up with slideshows and lists that require eleven clicks for a top-ten list.  Until I succumb to temptation, the Spew will remain a minimal click zone.

My easiest New Year's Resolution--not to page through the gratuitous slideshows at Foreignpolicy.com (otherwise, one of my favorite sites) and other places.

Narcissism in 2012

I do like a good word cloud.  This may not be a good one.

I am not clear how much (how far back) of my blog is included in this.  Funny that Netherlands is larger than Libya.    I need to do more work to get rid of the ordinary words.  Your thoughts?

Predictions for 2012

What the heck!  No one will check at the end of the year to see if I was right about any of my predictions.  So, what do I expect in 2012 for myself, for poli sci, for civil-military dynamics, for civil war and ethnic conflict, for tv and movies?  Hmmm, tall order.

Personal predictions:

• I will blog less in 2012 than in 2011.  Preparing to and then actually moving is going to take a lot of time.  Plus I am already over-committed for the first several months of the new year.
• I will whine a lot less about Quebec after the summer.  I will no longer subscribe to the Montreal Gazette, so the only Quebec-based news will be filtered through Ottawa and Canadian outlets.  Plus I will no longer be driving on roads that are similar to Vimy Ridge.
• The Dave and Steve book on NATO and Afghanistan will be submitted by the spring (but probably not published until 2013).  As long as NATO does not start another intervention, this should be feasible.
• I will travel less than the past couple of years.  Transition to Carleton, the end of research for the book, new projects that require less fieldwork all will mean less time on airplanes and in hotels.  It was a good run but I fell just short of the next status level of frequently flyer.  Oh, but one big exception--taking the family to Harry Potter land (Orlando) to compensate them for all of the cool trips they missed.
• I will struggle in my teaching at Carleton initially since I have not taught a class smaller than 80 in a few years and will also need to figure out how to teach more policy-oriented stuff to MA students looking to move into the policy world.  Oh, and the pop culture and other razzle dazzle will not be as useful.