Where is a Cult of Personality When You Need One?

Exactly a year ago, I discovered that I had a cult of personality.  Alas, no such cult exists in the frozen wastelands of Ottawa.  As a narcissist, nothing could please me more than to have such a cult.  But with the end of teaching 600 impressionable students at a time, my cult was doomed. 

I did ponder this cult and this post last year so I will not get deep into it this year.  I just wanted to mark the anniversary of the day that the cult broke its first rule--do not talk about fight club the cult.

Of course, there was other evidence that such a cult existed:








Anyhow, I just want to know where I can get a t-shirt or other merch.

Yank My Chain If You Will

I guess there is probably one thing that will get me to react faster and more vociferously than anything else: giving credence to a conspiracy theory.  Today, Salon ran an utterly idiotic piece on giving conspiracy theories a chance.   It is such crap that I refuse to link to it (even though it is easy to find).

It was trying to distinguish unworthy conspiracy theory (Sandy Hook) from more worthy (JFK, 9/11).  While the article is fully flawed, the two big logic bombs are these:

• "“Conspiracy” theories develop, first and foremost, because the official version is obviously bogus."
• That they develop and are relatively credible when there are people out there who can gain from the event--the defense contractors after 9/11 for example.

First things first: conspiracy theories develop not because the conventional wisdom is bogus but because some people do not want to believe the conventional wisdom.  They are motivated by their prior beliefs to disbelieve events/policies/whatever that challenge their views.*  In retrospect, I am not surprised about Sandy Hook conspiracy stuff because this was a family that fit the general model of the NRA--Mom was a fan of guns, taught the kids, worried about losing the guns, etc and then the kid killed the  Mom and shot up a school, pretty much verifying the idea that guns in "good homes" are dangerous, too.  So, rather than believe that view of events, which would be ... the reality, the truth, the folks who do not want this to be true, make something up.

Same goes for 9/11.  This is about people not wanting it to be true that government failed to protect us, that Arabs/Muslims could be so clever to pull this off, and all the rest.

The second hunk of illogic is arguing that if someone benefited by something, they wanted it to happen.  Americans wanted World War II to happen since it made the US a world power with no equals?  Yes, Haliburton and the rest of the Bush Administration gained heaps of influence and such in the aftermath of 9/11, but that does not mean that they caused it.

I know I am wasting my time with this, as most of my readers are reasonable folks who see conspiracy theories for what they are: distraction sauce.  The folks who buy into them tend to be reality-averse so logic, facts, etc. will not persuade.

*  I am sure there is a heap of psychology and sociology on this but I only have time to rant, not read.

Following the Wrong Role Models

I posted at CIC two weeks ago about the Canadian Forces and Department of National Defence falling back on denials rather than answering question so often that it has become the first response.  Well, my old employer, McGill, seems to be using the Canadian government as a role model.  Students, student journalists and others have ramped up the number of access to information requests that they have made of McGill, and now McGill is essentially asking for permission to deny these folks their rights to get access. 

Sure, some of it may be gratuitous or abusing the system, but a university is supposed to be a creator and disseminator of information.  It should have little to hide and be more transparent than pretty much any other public institution.  Carleton, my current employer, resisted the attempts of newspapers to get info about their Political Management program.  Once they released the info and revised the agreement with the donor, the problem went away. 

McGill should respond to the access requests, provide the docs and move on.  Covering up/resisting becomes the story and not one that is going to be favorable to the university.  If it uses heaps of staff time, then revise/fix how information is stored.

I am familiar with ATIP processes as I have asked the Canadian government for documents and have been mostly pleased by the responses.  Sure, lots of stuff in the Canadian docs on Afghanistan have been redacted, but I could see most of the stuff I was looking for.  It took awhile at times.  I am currently waiting for a Privy Council document, and I am curious as to how long it will take. 

Anyhow, McGill, Carleton and other public universities are government institutions in both good ways and bad--they are obligated to be transparent, they are run by people who want to evade the spotlight, and when they try, the spotlight gets stronger.  This is a lesson that people never seem to learn.  On this one thing, the Borg were right: resistance is futile.

Different Outlets, Different Responses

My piece on Canada and its support of the French efforts in Mali got tweaked and reposted at the Globe and Mail website yesterday.  While CIC has become the go-to site for Canadians interested in the world and the world interested in Canadian foreign policy, it gets less traffic than the Globe and Mail, perhaps Canada's premier newspaper.  This leads to the second big difference--comments on my CIC pieces are few but often quite sharp and incisive.  The comments at G&M? Well, not so much.  They fit into the following categories?:

• Canada is not obliged by its alliances/Canada owes France nada (despite my writing that France's moves into a more dangerous spot in Afghanistan allowed US to reinforce Canadians in Kandahar;
• It is all about the oil companies (suitable for all occasions);
• I am just out to cause mischief;
• While I am mildly critical of Stephen Harper in the piece, it gives folks with an anti-Harper view an axe to grind.
•  I need to put my money where my mouth is and join the Canadian Forces--because only those who serve have authority to speak?

 The big lesson: confirmation bias is bad for reading comprehension. There were a few comments that were pretty thoughtful and raised issues about the context.  But many of these comments will appear in anything I write in a newspapers, regardless of the stance I take.  I tend to see myself as a Liberal, not in Canadian terms, but in IR terms--that policy is caused by interests and institutions, those interests are primarily domestic, that international institutions matter.  In terms of how I see Canada in the world, I tend to emphasize things like: its alliances matter, that its power is limited, and that war is neither bad nor good, but (dare I say it?) an instrument of policy that can sometimes achieve ends (such as addressing the direct problem or exerting influence or enhancing influence) and sometimes not so much.

People will want to accuse me of being a fan of Harper, whereas this piece indicates that I think the policy is ok but I don't like how Harper handled it.  I am not anti-military (which offends people), I am critical of the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence (which bothers other folks) but perhaps not sufficiently so at times.  The fact that I am neither forcefully pro or anti makes it easier, I suppose, for people to make me their strawman.   Which is fine.  After all, the only utilities I really want to maximize are being read and getting cited.

Annoying Canadian nationalism

Yes, there are Canadian nationalists.  And one strand in Canadian nationalism can get tiresome: the smug part about how Canada is better than the US because of American crime or inequality or the rest.  This morning, I woke up to not just various reviews of the Inauguration but to this piece.  The title itself, which may not be the writer's fault, is annoying enough--that we could brag, but will not and then the article goes ahead and does so.

Yes, there is a bit less hoopla at the American parties and the Canadian party still rocks out because everything is wonderful in Canada.  Hmmm, why no austerity programs in Canada?  Oh wait, there are some significant budget cuts--talk to the teachers and students in Ontario.  I am still wondering how my daughter will have any extracurriculars on her colleague applications next year when the teachers are refraining from supporting such activities this year due to their strife with the province.  Oh, and perhaps Canada's good situation is partly/largely funded by its oil wealth?  Which is fine except that it makes Canada a leader in climate change--causing, not fighting.

One can go back and forth about the respective virtues and vices of the US and Canada.  Both do tremendous good in the world, and both do some bad stuff as well. The US does more bad stuff because, well, as a much more powerful country, it can.  The US has heaps of stains in its history--slavery and treatment of the Native Americans stand out; but Canada still has some problems with its First Nations, does it not?  In some ways, American institutions are failing--the political parties (especially the Republicans) have turned checks and balances into deadlock.  But Canadian institutions are a mystery to many Canadians--what is the role of the Governor General and the Queen?  And Westminster systems generally mean that they have the opposite problem of the US--instead of tyranny of the minority, they have tyranny of the majority.  Which one is better?  Depends on what you expect to be, I guess.

Any nationalism will have multiple strands and people will disagree about the relative weight and meaning of each strand.  Canadian nationalism is more than "the US sucks more than we do" but sometimes that particular strand stands out and actually diminishes all that is good in Canada--its multiculturalism, its multilingualism, its good public spirit, its positive role in the world via both peacekeeping and warfighting, its role in banning landmines, and so on.  I have enjoyed the past ten plus years here, having been most welcomed, even in Montreal when my ability to speak in French was insufficient.  So, I don't want to rain all over the Canadian parade, but it would be nice if the Canadian nationalists did not try to sleet on yesterday's parade in DC.

I Cannot Help Myself

Of all the pics I have seen (aside from the great gif on my previous post), I think I like this one best:



Why?  Thomas looks miserable, Scalia seems quite unhappy, and Roberts is thinking of being somewhere else.   Meanwhile, Kagan seems quite happy while Sotomayer is, what?, impressed by the moment?  Probably reading too much into this, but the Thomas face and Scalia's are just so very, very appropriate....

H/T to Erin Simpson for the tweeted link.

Just Another Day?

In the US, it is both Martin Luther King day and Obama's 2nd inauguration.   In Canada, it is just a very cold day.  No day off, so I missed the speech, Beyonce, and much twitter snark.  Some complain that the event is too much like a coronation, but I don't mind because it really represents the peaceful transfer of power.  Yes, Obama I to Obama II rather than Bush to Obama or whatever, but the potential was there last fall. And when there is a dispute, we litigate.

This day, because of Obama's previous emphasis on perfecting the union, reminds me of the preamble of the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

When I read this, that this is the purpose of the Constitution and of American government, I think that the founders, for all of their sins, did have some good ideas.  This document is really the thing that binds and unites Americans (white, black, red, blue), not despite but because it is subject to interpretation (thanks to an interpretation in 1803: Marbury vs. Madison if I remember correctly) and revision (amendments).

Today is as much a celebration of the Constitution as it is of this particular President.  As a distant American, I am pretty proud today.  Tomorrow, I can go back to whining about this and that.

Hypocrites or Class Warfare: Universities, Adjuncts and the Tenurish Folks

I posted last week about the idea that the IRS is perhaps the best hope of adjuncts.  This week, folks on the right have noticed the same story and suggest that the blue universities are hypocrites:

But beyond alerting us to one of the many problems that implementing Obamacare will cause, this news provides a depressing look at the underbelly of the academy. Universities are citadels of blue model thinking and most faculty members are relentlessly liberal in their politics. But the reality is that these same universities are some of the nastiest and most exploitative employers in America. The exploitation of adjuncts is an ugly feature of contemporary American academic life, and the smug complacency about it among many beneficiaries of the two tier system should remind us all that moral hypocrisy can co-exist with impressive degrees.

  The funny thing is that many (not all, we are not as uniform as the right wing often suggests) university profs have been advocating for health care reform that would not benefit profs.  How so?  Profs have tended to have excellent (compared to other folks) insurance provided by their employers, but many professors understood that the status quo ante sucked for the populace. 

Anyhow, the real oversight here is that tenured folks like myself have long been upset at the increased reliance on adjuncts.  This is not just about job security and job markets for PhDs but that the reliance on adjuncts has been a deliberate cost-cutting measure, that universities do not give adjuncts benefits.  Professors have long recognized that having a bunch of adjuncts work in the place of a tenure-track faculty member due to cost savings is not good for the tenure track folks, is not good for the students, and is pretty lousy for the adjuncts.  This is not really "news."  That universities would act like the businesses for which many profs have contempt as they alter hours to evade Obamacare regs is not that surprising.  Appalling, sure.  Surprising?  No.  And I wonder what the right wing would suggest in lieu of Obamacare for the adjuncts, whose situation sucked before the advent of Obamacare . 

Sure, there are problems with implementing Obamacare, but perhaps if folks were not so dedicated to returning to the past, they might work on improving it so that folks do not have these nasty incentives.  Oh, and for most of these business that are doing this--they are doing it more out of spite than due to the 50 cents they might have to add to their pizzas.  Me? I prefer to have the folks in the service industry get health care--since they touch our food, interact with our kids, and do all kinds of things that would expose us to their health challenges.  Not to mention it is simply the right thing to do.

Political Cartoon of the Week

Yes, I pad my number of posts by throwing in a cartoon from Brian McFadden on a regular basis, but this one is too good to drop the habit now.:

It definitely puts the crimes of Lance Armstrong into sharp relief.  Jon Stewart had a great bit addressing the various claims and showing that the NRA says--hey, enforce existing laws while simultaneously pushing their friends in Congress to limit enforcement.  Is the NRA the most mendacious lobbying group?  Hard to think of another one, now that the tobacco industry has been on its heels for a while.

Anyhow, better to use this cartoon than to ponder the ironies and lessons to be drawn by the number of people shot at gun shows yesterday during Gun Appreciation Day.  Isn't always Gun Appreciation Day at American emergency rooms?

Contrasting and Contesting 2nd and 3rd Order Effects

The events this past week in Algeria plus Mali's civil war have made it clear that (despite my first publications) stuff does spread.  Arab Spring not only spread across boundaries (well, sort of), but fed dynamics that have caused conflict to spread throughout the region.  The Libyan intervention fostered the flow of arms and people to Mali.

The questions this is currently raising are: did the Obama administration and others know that their actions would cause such second order consequences (side effects)?  Should they have acted in 2011 to stop Qaddafi's attack on his people?  The answers are: probably and probably.  That is, the various folks probably did consider a bit that acting in Libya would have effects on the neighborhood--both positive and negative.  We are noticing the negative ones.  Perhaps positive ones might include restraint by some but not all threatened autocrats (this impact is probably lessened by the selective support for some autocrats--Bahrain, Saudi Arabia).  It is not clear that not acting in Libya would have been better than the current status quo.  Mass killings in Benghazi would have also had second and third order effects--refugee flows to Egypt and Algeria (not to mention more to increasingly xenophobic Europe), and so on.

The reality is that the Western governments were reacting to Arab Spring, not causing it, so the choices were quite limited: (A) support dictator x, (B) stand aside, (C) help depose dictator x.  The policies have been inconsistent, with some of a, some of b and some of c. We do know that in the past that choosing A has consequences sometimes decades later (Argo!).  Each of these choices has second and third order effects that may or may not outweigh the initial policy.

My favorite example, of course, is when the US invaded Iraq, it achieved its goal as narrowly defined as toppling Hussein.  The second and third order effects included undermining the effort in Afghanistan, undermining the American economy, weakening the US standing in the world, and empowering Iran.  Now those are some knowable, anticipated consequences that could have been avoided.  Of course, we do not know how the world would have been different otherwise.  Would Libya have given up its chemical weapons or would have faced a Syria in Libya?  Not sure.

But the point is that the Bush Administration, which I admittedly love to pick on, had more choices and could have taken more seriously the possible downsides of invading Iraq.  The Obama administration was faced with allowing a humanitarian disaster to occur on the edge of Europe (which matters more, of course, since Europe cares more about refugee flows that affect it) and with allies putting significant pressure to do something.  Could they have done a better job in limiting the flow of arms and people beyond Libya?  Not so sure.  Our efforts at controlling borders has been lousy in places where we have 100k troops (Afghanistan).  And the US was involved in trying to strengthen the Mali government's ability to deal with armed extremists.  It didn't work out too well.

What this really demonstrates are two uncomfortable realities: that American power is and always has been limited--the US cannot just impose its preferences upon the world--it cannot always get what it wants or needs; and that governments are often faced with lousy choices and picking the least lousy is very hard.  

When the Arts are Not So Liberal

It has been an interesting hour on twitter.  First, Jon Western posts a great piece on how teaching at a Liberal Arts college is different from that at a research university.  While I think he underestimates the time-sucks at research universities (we fall behind on the current lit, too), it is a strong piece about how teaching at a small, teaching-focused place is different.  Funny that he starts it with the "If you went to a place Oberlin ...., you would want to end up at a liberal arts college...."  As that is exactly what I thought about 25 years ago.  I wanted to go to grad school and then teach at a liberal arts college.  The job market had other plans.  I did interview at a couple but over my career I had many more interviews at research schools.  Oh well.

Anyhow, the second tweet referred to this article at the Montreal Gazette.  My old place, McGill, is cutting 100 courses in the Faculty of Arts (that would be the equivalent of an American school's College of Arts and Sciences minus those pesky sciences).  So, the Dean in the story, Chris Manfredi was my dean, and, before that, my department chair.  So, the tale is this:

Manfredi said the decision was taken in order to respond to student interest in having more courses taught by full-time instructors.
“We’ve always believed that the quality of teaching programs is better when they’re taught by full-time, permanent teaching staff, as opposed to part-time, temporary teachers – that’s well documented in the literature on the university pedagogy,” Manfredi said.

Um, sure.  The funny thing is that before I left, the poli sci department, and others, were cutting the the number of courses taught by non-tenured/tenure-track profs due to budget cuts, not because of a renewed interest in being a better teaching environment.  That this cut comes at a time where Quebec is cutting its funding of the universities quite drastically in the wake of backtracking on the previous provincial government's efforts to increase tuition is probably not an accident. 

I tweeted "you get what you pay for."  That if tuition remains very, very low, and if the province cuts back on its financing of universities, the universities have to make hard choices.  Ditching the temporary profs is an "easy" choice since they do not have much of a voice, that their contracts are usually year to year, and it does not hurt very much other folks on campus--professors and administrators. 

The story says that the aim is to cut the smallest classes, which sounds fine.  The idea of keeping every classroom full at all hours was something in motion before I left.  But the students I knew already had a hard time meeting their graduation requirements because they could not get into crowded classes.  It was not my popularity that made my classes full every year (perhaps my rep as an easy grader?), but that the big intro class of 612 students was a prerequisite, and the senior level classes I taught always maxed out at the 80 student limit because we offered so few of them.  Indeed, I had banked enough "credits" that I could have taught one less class my last year, but I chose not to, knowing that there was a decent chance I would never use them, because I felt guilty about how little we offered our undergrads. 

For a variety of reasons, I only taught undergraduate classes my last few years at McGill, and had no regrets doing so--I was filling a need and they were a heap of fun.  It sucks that the province and the politics means that they will have fewer and fewer options down the road.  I don't blame the McG students since they didn't protest like those elsewhere.  While I joked here that the McG students sucked at math, they got it, and they understood that less money means something.  And that there would not be a magical source of more money that would compensate. 

Sensible Comparisons for a Better Tomorrow

Funny or Die apparently does not need to take a course in comparative analysis:

NRA - Stand and Fight Parody - watch more funny videos     

Over-Confidence Will Be Your Un-Doing

I am mighty miffed right now about a 21st century problem that really should not be that big of a deal.  I almost could not check out of the grocery store this evening because my credit cards with chips were not working well.  A new policy means that the store cannot swipe the magnetic strip (why have one anymore if you are not going to use it?).  I had to resort to my debit card, which I don't like to use for groceries. 

What frustrates me is that the chips in the cards have yet to reach any level of reliability that would make me think that they should be REQUIRED for a purchase.  I have two cards with chips, one has never worked and the second one worked until today (although it could be the new chip readers at the store).  So, I get to call the card companies and get new cards,  and we shall see how long the new chips last.

Just very frustrating that the banks are overly hopeful that their technology works so well that they eliminate flexibility/discretion.  I almost left a cart full of groceries at the store--which would have done the bank and the store no favors. 

What is Wrong with Ottawa?

To be specific, what is wrong with Ottawa football teams?  First, the old Canadian Football League had two teams, including Ottawa's, named the Roughriders.  Really.  One eight-team league, two teams with the same name.*

*Yes, South Park played with this as well.

I don't know what happened old Ottawa Roughriders, but they are gone.  Now, there will be a new Ottawa CFL team.  And the name?  It is likely to be The Red Blacks.  Yes, really.  Apparently they cannot go back to Roughriders since the remaining RR franchise now has a veto on a new team's name, so the old colors instead?

What is it about Ottawa that produces entirely unimaginative names for their football franchise?  Again, Red Blacks?

This inability to give an Ottawa football team a decent name approaches bags of milk as the least sensible/most confusing aspect of Canadian life. 

Snow is Cold, Sky is Blue, College Sports Are Expensive

This story demonstrates something that we have known for quite some time--that despite the argument that universities make money from the big sports, the reality is that the big sports are often huge money pits.  I have long been annoyed at how much the athletics tail can often wag the academic dog.

This was most obvious two stops ago on my academic journey at Texas Tech.  I never did feel pressure to pass failing athletes, but it was obvious that the big sports were sucking money away from the rest of the poorly managed institution.  But it is not just TTU--it is endemic.

Between 2005 and 2010, on a per-capita basis, the report found, athletic costs increased at least twice as fast as academic spending at institutions with top-tier athletic programs.

Yow.  And, of course, the most expensive sport is football:

Football consumes much of the athletic budget. At institutions competing in the top-tier Football Bowl Subdivision, the report found, median athletic spending per athlete was $92,000 in 2010, compared with median academic spending per full-time student of less than $14,000. In the other Division I subdivisions, median athletic spending per athlete ranged from $37,000 to $39,000, compared with median academic spending per full-time student of about $11,800. 

And this does not even build into the budget the costs of the concussions the student-athletes are accumulating.

One of the nice things about Canadian universities, even though they have significant sports programs, is that the sports programs do not seem to have much power or influence, at least not when compared to those in the U.S.

When the IRS is Your Best Hope

When the IRS is your best ally, then you know you are in a world of hurt.  The IRS is now pushing universities to more accurately count the hours adjunct faculty work.  Why?  Because universities seem to be as scummy as some of the big businesses that are cutting back on the hours of workers to evade the requirements of Obamacare. 

Of course, this should not be surprising since the proliferation of adjunct positions is in large part due to the strategies of universities to avoid paying the expenses (that would be benefits) that accrue to tenured and tenure track faculty. 

A series of companies have announced that they would be firing workers or cutting hours to avoid Obama care, and my reaction has been to say: well, I guess that is the last time I eat at Wendy's or whatever.  The problem here is two-fold: I don't know which universities are and are not manipulating hours to evade Obamacare; and the only threat I really possess is not sending my daughter to such a place.  That is a one shot threat.  On the other hand, I already have a strong preference to send my daughter to a school that is less reliant on adjuncts.  Why?  A) Because of my preferences as a professor--I do not want to encourage schools to rely on the non-tenure track; B) I have a belief that adjuncts have much less time to do their job well.  If they get paid, on average, less than $3k per class, then they need to teach how many classes to get by?  A heap of them.  Sure, tenure track folks care about research and have to do service, and big classes can mean that profs do not learn students' names, but I still think that folks like myself can pay more attention to the students with our two or three course load, compared to someone teaching five courses and driving all over the place to teach them. 

I do wish that universities, when promoting themselves to potential applicants, would not just list the %  of teachers who have terminal degrees (PhDs, MFA's, whatever) but list % of tenure and tenure track folks.  That is the 21st century signal that the place cares about the quality of education.  Hiring adjuncts to fill in gaps is one thing, but when they become the modal way to deliver classes, then it is clear that cost structures are a higher priority than the creation/dissemination of knowledge.

Again, I am biased in all of this, so take what I say with a grain of salt.  Instead, consider that the adjuncts need to rely on the IRS.  That says it all.

Credible? Only Sometimes

This article is quite disturbing for all kinds of reasons--a guy who helped give solace to some of the kids who escaped the gunfire at Newtown now faces attacks because he is providing evidence that conspiracy theorists do not like. Yes, there are folks who argue that nothing happened at Sandy Hook or that it was the creation of the gun-hating government.

I just want to highlight one thing--that among the conspiracy nuts (I hate the word truther since it suggests that truth might somehow be involved) is at least one professor trying to lend legitimacy to the claims.

To be absolutely clear, while profs are supposed to be experts in the areas they study (something we have addressed before), just because any single prof or a small collection of profs says something means not too much.  You can always find a crazy, stupid, mis-directed, or evil professor spewing lies/false information/utter b.s. because profs are ... people.  Yes, hard to believe, but true.  And in any group of people, there will be a few who do not see reality but see the world in a very different way, such as seeing the Sandy Hook massacres as anything but a mass killing by a disturbed person.

There are more than a few profs who are 9/11 conspiracy theorists--does not make that movement any more credible.  So, while we profs like to be seen as credible and want to have whatever expertise we got to come into play when it is relevant, be warned--not all profs are reliable.  The people that understand this best, of course, are professors  as we have all had to work with the reality averse.  I have had colleagues that see conspiracies everywhere, and others that admired North Korea as a political/economic system. 

Anyhow, be wary of professors making absurd claims and beware of newspaper articles and the like dropping the fact that a prof supports a particular claim. We are not all reliable.  Indeed, some of us are quite unreliable.

Is Canada Going to War in Mali?

I got into a twitter conversation last night about this topic and it got me thinking, so here is my CIC column of the week.

Short Afghan-a-thon

Just a couple of thoughts on recent news about Afghanistan:

• First, Hamid Karzai returned to Afghanistan after assuring the Americans that he would work to get immunity for American troops present in Afghanistan after 2014, and then when arriving in Afghanistan said it would be up to the elders.  This is actually not as contradictory as Karzai often can be.  He didn't say that he would decide when he was in the US, unless I missed something.  So, he basically made the same kind of commitment that an American President might make when negotiating something--well, you know, Congress might have to act as well ...  So, not such a big deal.
• Second, ah, but now we are surprising our European allies with the "zero option" that the US might have no troops in Afghanistan after 2014.  Well, this should be of surprise only to those who didn't notice what happend in Iraq in 2011.  The US left entirely when it could not get a Status of Forces Agreement [SOFA] to its liking--mostly about immunity of American soldiers.  Well, guess what, the US might not stick around in Afghanistan if Karzai cannot commit his successors (since he is term limited, well, sort of) to provide immunity to American soldiers.  
• Second, part B: The US often surprises its allies by changing its mind.  They are used to it.
• Second, part C: One could argue that the zero option is just a ploy to get Karzai to compromise. If so, two things can happen.  The bluff works or it does not.    Interesting times.

Anyhow, it is increasingly likely that the US stance in Afghanistan after 2014 will be much smaller than folks anticipated a year or two ago.  Given the green on blue stuff and the budget crisis back home, this really should not be much of a surprise.

X-(Wo)Men

Yep, Marvel is going with a version of the X-Men that has only female leads.  This would be swell and interesting if not for a few things:

1. I hate re-launches.  If the writers wrote themselves into a corner, then write themselves out of it.  If nothing is ever at stake because everything is re-launched again and again, well, who cares who lives/dies/romances/whatever.
2. Seems like an excuse to have just another X-book per month so that sales go up.  I stopped collecting 17 years ago precisely because I didn't want to pay a heap of dollars every month to follow one group (X) or hero (Spidey) if the tales required six books per month to tell.  
3. If they were handing over the comic to a female creator, that would be kind of cool.  But not, just a male with female characters.  The drawing of the cover makes me feel a bit more optimistic since it is a bit less boob-a-licious than many comic book covers that feature female body parts more than female stories.

But that might change once they start fighting.  To be clear, I was quite the Kitty Pryde fan, and Like Rogue and Storm (depending on how they are characterized), so this would be cool if done well.  I am just suspicious and pessimistic.

Ah well, someone buy these and let me know how it turns out.

Semi-Blind Spew: The Least Canada Can Do

I had a heap of meetings/class/deadlines today so I was not connected to twitter as much as usual.  So, I seem to have missed Canadian folks making noise about the deployment of a C-17 (a single transport plane) assisting the French intervention in Mali.  My favorite go-to guy on things Canadian military, Phil Lagassé of the University of Ottawa, had a string of tweets including this:

The C-17 deployment also highlights the difficulties that may arise if HoC approval of military combat missions is ever put into statute.
— Philippe Lagassé (@pmlagasse) January 14, 2013

Lots of issues come up. First, and most importantly, this deployment does not mean that I lose my bet with Phil.  I wagered awhile back that Canada would NOT deploy a battlegroup into combat before the end of 2014.  One transport plane is not a battlegroup.  Plus it is not going into combat.

Second, the wager's specifics tie into Harper's statement--the plane is for non-combat.  Harper makes this clear in his statement:

"Today our Government received a specific request from the French Government for heavy-lift aircraft to assist in the transport of equipment into the Malian capital of Bamako, a location that is not part of any active combat zone."
"The Government of Canada will support our allies in this request and will be providing one RCAF C-17 transport aircraft in a non-combat role to support operations for a period of one week.  The RCAF aircraft will not operate in any combat zone.
"At no time will Canadian Armed Forces members be participating in direct action against insurgent forces in Mali."

I am pretty sure the instructions the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command (used to be CEFCOM, now CJOC) will limit what the C-17 can do.  Even if it could do combat stuff, which it cannot. 

Of course, this could be confusing as Harper had sworn off the Canadians intevening in Mali.  But that was before the French jumped on in.  So, this raises a few questions, and I will answer them here with a modicum of arrogance (since I have not done any footwork to figure this all out):

1. Is this the first step to a larger escalation of Canadian intervention in Mali?  Almost certainly not, as that would be costly and budget cutting is job one these days.  Plus Harper has a sore taste in his mouth from the Afghanistan mission--heaps of challenges, relatively little control, and endless questions.
2. If folks in Parliament are unhappy, what does this say about trying to insist on the PM subjecting combat deployments to Parliamentary votes?  Not much unless the PM does not have a majority in Parliament.  No PM is going to agree to a deployment that is so objectionable to his/her party that he/she cannot get a vote through.  Only in case of a minority government is this problematic.  And it would be problematic with or without any formalization of a Parliamentary vote since the opposition parties could cause a minority government to collapse whether nor not they have a formal excuse to do so.
3. Does the noise suggest that "Smart Defence"* is in trouble, as Phil tweeted?  No and yes.  No, in that this case shows that the PM can support an ally by providing a resource (long distance transport) that the ally lacks without any real problems.  Yes, in the sense that some folks are squeamish about the government doing the absolute minimum.  Sending one C-17 or even a dozen (as if Canada had a dozen) is far from getting Canada embroiled in combat.  If people get upset by this, then one can only imagine a Smart Defence kind of assist that has some real risk.

This post may be premature as the leader of the NDP has already muted the noise somewhat. Still, Phil is asking good questions.

For more significant reasons to be skeptical about Smart Defence, see this.

The Force Is Strong in this White House

If by force, we mean both Star Wars awareness and a sense of humor:

Seals, not SEALs

This is taking civil-military relations in an unexpected direction, as I am pretty sure these seals are civvies.  H/T to Michael Yoo on FB

Pondering Popularity: the US in the World

This map from the WP is pretty striking for the blue, the red and the gray:

A quick tour d'azimuth is in order:

• Biggest surprise might be ... Indonesia.  Given that this is the largest Muslim majority country in the world, this ain't bad at all, given the shrill Islamophobes in the US (even if they are in retreat, we would expect lags).  
• Given that the US gun mess is arming the Mexican drug wars, I am surprised that Mexico views the US so positively.  
• I am not a big fan of the BRIC concept since Brazil, Russia, India and China are not much of a category if you ask me, but 3/4 BRIC populations agree that the US is pretty cool with them.  Again, a surprise (especially if you think that 1600 Penn--the new NBC comedy about the Presidency--had a take on Brazil that had any merit).  Speaking of India, while neither India nor its policies are perfect, I am glad to see that the US is trying hard to engage India which is, in general, far more compatible with the US, its interests and values than a certain red country nearby.
• Syria?  Sure, we have earned that.  Pakistan? This is hardly news as well, given that the US has been bombing the country when it has not been sending SEALs into the country to get or whack leaders of Al Qaeda.  
• That France is bluer than Eastern Europe (except for Poland and a Baltic or two) is pretty interesting as well.  Memories about ye Olde Colde Warre seem to be fading except in Poland.
• I guess this means that Guantanamo is not resonating as much as it used to or that its impact has been over-rated (sorry https://twitter.com/rolandparis).

Anyhow, public opinion does not equal policy, but it is not irrelevant either.  Feelings about the US are both cause and consequence, and this map (and ones like it) are useful for drawing comparisons and contrasts.  Again, three out of four BRICs agree, so perhaps we need to figure out Chinese exceptionalism rather than consider BRICs to be a class.

Your thoughts?

To Err Is Human, To Deny Error is Organization

Check out my latest at CIC on the tendency of the CF and DND to deny, deny, deny.

Hungarian Authoritarianism, Art Version

I have addressed the demise of Hungarian democracy before.  This story does a nice job of showing the implications of this decline in the world of culture. When Hungarian producers of culture find it safer to put their stuff in Germany, that speaks more about how far Hungary has fallen than to Germany's positive qualities.  However, since I bust on Germany all the time for relatively half-hearted efforts, this article reminds us that Germany has come to grips with its past and Hungary needs to do so as well.  It is once thing to have a center-right party, it is quite another to have policy-makers and politicians seeming to emerge from 1938.

I am supposed to be going to Budapest in the summer for a conference, but I must say that I am thinking twice about it.  I had no qualms about going to Berlin in 2009 but probably would have avoided Berlin in 1937.  Is putting Budapest 2013 in the same ballpark as Berlin 1937 appropriate?  Probably not, but perhaps soon it will be.  And I am disturbed as hell.  I loved Budapest during my visits between 2002 and 2004 for my second book.

I hate seeing a very fine country brought so low because the institutions and an electoral outcome have facilitated the rise of autocracy.  It is incredibly sad.

No Tanning Today

After more than 10 days in Hawaii over the break, you will have to forgive me if I have the sun on my mind, but as I was walking to and from meetings this morning at Carleton, I realized that my tan is going to fade mighty fast.  Why?  Tunnels!  Carleton has a heap of them so that I don't have to change into my outdoor shoes and put on a coat.  I do want to steal one of the carts (what is it about smaller vehicles like golf carts that attract such ideas?) and blast down the tunnels.  Alas, tenure only gets you so far.

Where You Tan Depends on Where You Sit

My peevishness this morning is driven by how some people see the world.

“If the picture was gloomy before, the clouds just got darker,” said Thomas Donnelly, a defense and security policy analyst at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “Hagel’s just been recruited to be a front man for further budget cuts.” WP

Notice the identification of defense budget cuts with gloom.  Isn't that a bit odd?  The US is nearing the end of its decade (plus) of big wars although it will continue to be engaged in conflicts medium and small for quite a while (depends on the size of the post 2014 Afghanistan deployment, Syria, Mali, etc.)  Those with Canadian backgrounds may think of the Canadian Forces's decade of darkness, but the kinds of cuts the US is facing is nothing like what the CF faced.  Any cuts the US military faces will be cuts on future growth and cuts to some entitlement programs with modest cuts to the size of the forces.  If we have to cut numbers, it is because the stuff we are buying is much more expensive per unit--and that is a choice.

I tweeted that we do not consider peace to be a gloomy time, but the US may be returning to the the good old days of the 1990s where interventions occurred sans seemingly endless counter-insurgencies.  

Anyhow, for whom is this a gloomy time?

• Defense contractors? Certainly, as they lived high off the hog for quite a while, where the Pentagon's spending was unconstrained.  But the contractors will still do very well in a post-Afghanistan world--there will still be plenty of defense dollars to go around, just not as much as the roaring Aughts.  
• Politicians?  Yes, this is a gloomy time for these folks, as hard choices are ahead and they will want to use the Pentagon as a jobs program even though most studies (all?) show that government spending on other parts of the budget (yes, the self-interested Spew-ster will mention that education gets better multiplier effects) help to create/maintain jobs better than defense spending.
• Defense analysts?  No.  There is plenty of work to be done analyzing tradeoffs and making assessments.  In times of huge spending, there really is not much to say compared to how many pages can be written to defend one program at the expense of another.  So, Donnelly should be thrilled to see budget cuts ahead--it will give him far more meat to chew on and far more opportunities to get his opinions into the mainstream press.  Hard choices mean more interesting politics, and that is good for those who are observing and commenting.

And, hey, for those dependent on big budget defense programs, the Congress will probably protect you all quite well, as past cutters (Rumsfeld, Gates, Panetta) have largely failed.  Plus there will be some conflicts down the road--peace is temporary.  These folks should sing*:

*  I feel better about my old crush on Andrea McArdle now that I realize that she is a couple of years older than me.

How Many People Care About IR Theory Anyway?

This weekend I spewed about a piece I had read about the present and future of theory in IR research.  It got a heap of hits--more hits than I thought there were people who cared about IR theory.  This is not counting the hits over at the Duck of Minerva where I cross-posted it.  I guess people appreciate a good food fight....

Anyhow, oh my.

Impact of Infrastructure

I saw this tweet

The Victoria Bridge, built for Grand Trunk Rail in 1860, may be our most structurally sound! #6degreesMontrealDownton google.ca/search?q=grand…
— Anna Anthropologist (@AnnaAnthro) January 7, 2013

and had to respond: Not Saying much.  That is, that the rest of the Montreal bridges and tunnels are in such lousy shape that it is not that hard to be the most structrually sound bridge/tunnel in the Montreal area.

The increasingly decrepit bridges drastically reduced my ability to enjoy Montreal:

• I dropped out of the city-wide Montreal Ultimate leagues as I could no longer stand driving through rush hour, especially to cross a bridge, to get to games.  As the league expanded and had more games in Laval (crossing bridges on the northern side of Montreal) and in Brossard and other parts of the South Shore (crossing bridges on the southern side), I had to spend longer and longer to get to where I wanted to go.  So, I dropped off of my teams, and told my friends that I would sub for their teams IF and only IF the game was on the Island of Montreal and in the middle or western parts of the island.  With tunnels potentially collapsing, games on the eastern side became less attractive as well.
• I became less enthused about skiing in the Eastern townships as that would require crossing a bridge to the south short.  Going north was less problematic but I really enjoyed the places to the East.  

I didn't move to Carleton and Ottawa because of the bridges, but the demise of the infrastructure in Montreal made the decision easier.  I found it harder and harder to enjoy the city and its surroundings, which made the other aspects of Ottawa and the new job more attractive.  I don't think I am alone in re-calculating the ability to enjoy the city as it falls apart.

Given that the political weight in the province is not in Montreal, I doubt that things will really change.

Leaving Grand Theorists Behind

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have written a piece that is critical of the supposed move to hypothesis testing and the failure of IR folks to do grand theory.   I have many reactions to this development that I thought I would engage in a bit of listicle:

• My first reaction was: Next title: why too much research is bad for IR....  
• As folks pointed out on twitter and on facebook discussions, it seems ironic at the least that someone who made a variety of testable predictions that did not come true (the rise of Germany after the end of the cold war, conventional deterrence, the irrelevance of international institutions, etc) would suggest that testing our hypotheses is over-rated or over-done.
• When I was preparing for my comprehensive exams long ago, I worked with a member of my cohort who was a Political Theorist just trying to get through the process.  He would just read everything and ask "what would Ken Waltz think of this?"  Well, invoking the WWWD mantra here, I think he might wonder why M&W are writing this stuff when they could be producing yet more Grand Theory or more Grand Theorists.  Waltz produced Walt after all ....
• Which leads to the next question: what does this complaint say about their students?  Either they failed their students (their students did not learn to do good grand theory) or the students have failed them (their students have focused on stuff other than grand theory).  I know a good number of their students, and their work is often quite terrific and influential, so I am confused. 
• If M&W have failed to re-generate themselves, it could be because they and their generation of grand theorists have answered all of the big questions, leaving us with the small questions and the dirty work of testing hypotheses.  Perhaps they should be happy that their work is done and ride off into the sunset?
• Perhaps the utility M&W really seek to maximize is citations (given what they say at the end of the piece, I guess I am wrong here...).  I became convinced in the early 1990s that producing controversial work seemed to be more important than producing convincing work.  Mearsheimer's piece blasting the False Promise of Institutions seemed to be citation-bait to me.  Similarly, Walt's article finding fault with the move towards formal theory seemed aimed not so much at convincing people but at attracting counter-attacks. [It is interesting that their latest piece cites approvingly the Fearon 1995 IO piece on Rationalist Explanations for War that Walt considered old wine in new bottles way back when]. 

What really frustrates me is that their claims make them bad realists and make me a Marxist.  How so?

The Academic/Media Gap in Canada

While I was out of town, the Canadian journalists started to ponder lives without political scientists.  Or at least they pondered whether it would be better to ignore my kind more....

Here is my response at CIC.

Stress This Redux

Lots of academic folks are upset today as Forbes ranked our jobs as least stressful.  That would be ok, but they make it seem as if least stressful = no stress.  Plus it contradicts studies that show a high level of occupational stress.  I addressed such a survey/news report last spring so I don't have much to add here except key omissions:

• the academic job market will deposit many people in places where they would rather not live.  This creates a daily dose of stress when confronting mud-storms in West Texas or higher taxes/crappy services due to separatist politics in Quebec, for instance. 
• that limited job mobility might mean being stuck with people one hates for two or three decades.  Sure, that can happen in other jobs, but the joy of job security/tenure means that this happens all the time in our business.  

Anyhow, once one gets tenure, the stress is mostly but not entirely self-induced.  This may change as the profession and the universities change, but I do know I am lucky even if I sometimes wanted to sing the blues.

Why Did the Lava Cross the Road?

Last week, my family (The Spews plus my parents and siblings and their kids) spent a heap of time in Hawaii and had a glorious time.  When we went through Volcano National Park, my wife and I were most surprised--that much had changed since our visit during our honeymoon twenty years earlier.  One could not get nearly as close to the crater since it was spewing out rocks the size of washing machines, and the road that went to the edge of the island closed a mile earlier.  There had been a lava flow in 2003 that changed things pretty signficantly although these two pics do not do it justice:

Lava 1992

vs.

Lava 2012

Sure, it just looks like the lava crossed the road despite our best efforts to hold it back, but it was much, much deeper and broader.  Of course, this should not surprise us since the entire Volcano park experience testifies to how the island is still becoming bigger and how flows continue to change the topography of the island, but to realize that there are rocks younger than our marriage and younger than Teen Spew mentioned in my previous post still seems pretty strange.

Anyhow, when we got to this part of the park, we ended up dragging our families much further than expected, as the road is closed about a mile down from where this pic was taken.  Before, you could just drive up to the flow, hop out, take pics and hop back in (also the traffic was far greater this time).

Breast is Best but Confused

I saw this piece last night at Jezebel and went on a twitter tear.  Why? Because of searing memories from nearly seventeen years ago.  So little has changed in this area, compared to pretty much everything else. The Jezebel story asserts pretty convincingly that doctors know diddly about lactation despite the past few decades of increasingly pressuring women to breastfeed their babies.  Yes, yes, yes, breastfeeding is better for babies, but it does not always work out very well.  When people insist that breastfeeding is natural, I retort: so is infant mortality.  Why?  My tale from long ago:

When Teen Spew was just a few days old (Baby Spew), the timing/connection for breastfeeding to work didn't synch up well.  A sleep-deprived Mrs. Spew and I were averse to trying anything other than nursing because we were told that using bottles even just a little bit would mean that the kid would not be able to return to the breast.  Yes, my wife got some help from the lactation experts at the hospital, but not before we had to go back to the hospital a couple of days after my daughter was born--she was dehydrated, which amped up her slight jaundice.  Which led to a little game I like to call "Pin the IV on the Dehydrated Newborn."  Watching a nurse or two try to put the IV needle into my daughter and failing again and again was pretty painful for me to watch probably painful for her.  They had to get a nurse from the neo-natal intensive care unit to find a spot to insert the IV and where did she choose?  See below:

The red thing is a pacifier, the white stuff over her eyes were to shade her from the lights used to deal with the jaundice and that thing on the back of her head is the IV.  Lovely.  Just freakin' lovely.

My wife and baby Spew finally got the connection going and managed to do the nursing thing quite well for quite a while, but the first week was hell and damn near killed the kid.  So, I have a great deal of sympathy for women who cannot get the breastfeeding going, and a great deal of animus towards the medical community for failing to research lactation with even a bit of the enthusiasm erectile dysfunction has received.  One area involves life, death and the health of babies; the other involves men's sex lives mostly in the second half of our lives.

 Good to know where our priorities are.

Math, Military Style

General Allen (yes, the one who writes to Jill Kelley way too often) has finished his recommendations to Obama and Panetta on what the US contingent to Afghanistan should look like after 2014:
6m000 if one wants to gamble (high risk)
10,000 if one wants to accept the various risks (medium risk)
20,000 if one wants to avoid risk (low risk).

My first reaction is this: strategy means taking the number you want and then posing alternatives by multiplying and dividing by two (is this what they teach as strategy at the War Colleges?).  This represents learning from the McChrystal era where his surge proposal was something like 10k vs 40k vs 80k, knowing that the 80k would be tossed out immediately just as 20k is today.  The clever folks tinker so that 6,000 is a bit more than half of 10k, so we might not think there is a sophisticated algorithm at work (divide by two). 

These numbers are driven by three scenarios:

With 6,000 troops, defense officials said, the American mission would largely be a counterterrorism fight of Special Operations commandos who would hunt down insurgents. There would be limited logistical support and training for Afghan security forces. With 10,000 troops, the United States would expand training of Afghan security forces. With 20,000 troops, the Obama administration would add some conventional Army forces to patrol in limited areas.

The last option is out.  Not sure that 4k Americans and a few other folks from elsewhere are sufficient for training ANA, but perhaps provide some logistical support that will desperately be needed.

I get it.  This is what the military is supposed to do--provide options.  And I have not seen the paperwork behind these numbers, but I could have guessed last month or even last year that these would be the options.  We knew 10k was going to be the key number, but to do WHAT?  Training or counter-terrorism?  Or both?  Or support for the Afghan National Army, which cannot operate on its own yet and will probably not reach that capability in a magical two years. Given the green on blue attacks where the people NATO is training are firing on NATO troops, it is not clear how training would be sustainable in 2015.

To do the counter-terrorism mission, more than just special ops and drones are ultimately necessary as that stuff is intel-driven.  How does one get intel from around Afghanistan when one is no longer operating around Afghanistan?  I have no clue. I guess we will have to wait for more reporting and leaking before we figure out what these numbers really mean, besides lost hours by staff officers who had to come up with slides to fit the x2 and /2 output.

Christie Does Better Than Media

Christie called out the GOP in Congress.



Just stunning.  He does not blame Washington--he blames the Republicans in the House of Representatives.  The rant is fact-filled (NY, NJ as donors of federal funding, rates of response) and persuasive, but, of course, I am easily persuaded by this kind of argument. 

Still, oh my.  So, to be straight, this Congress denied aid to Hurricane victims AND killed the Violence Against Women Act.

The GOP in the House clearly prioritize opposing everything and being the mean-spirited party.  Good times.

"We have jobs to do ... for the people that sent you there."  Indeed.

"Unlike people in Congress, we [Christie and Cuomo] have responsibilities ...."

Bags vs Gallon Jugs

In my eleventh year in Canada, I think I must finally take on directly the fundamental question of US-Canadian relations: bag of milk vs. gallon jug.  In my previous post, one of the commenter's raised the question: why wouldn't people use bags of milk?  Well, besides pointing to the vast majority of places that refrain from such ill-conceived milk-carrying technologies, one could simply point to the reality that bags in which milk may be delivered have no other purpose.  A gallon jug, on the other hand, has a vast array of re-purposes.  Indeed, a quick google reveals heaps of disagreement: are there five, forty, ten or thirty-five different uses for a milk jug?

In contrast, google a question about bags of milk and you get a heap of people trying to answer this conundrum--why use an inferior technology?  Here are some examples: here, "so we drink milk in bags, does that make us weird?" [yes, yes it does], wiki and here.

To give bags of milk a fair shake, here:


I do love how this video shows how complicated this milk delivery system is: need to cut the bag just right, need to keep the big bag's clip with expiration date (which is stamped on plastic jugs), and so on.

Of course, the real superiority is that one can simply open a gallon jug of milk and pour.  If you have bought bags of milk, you need to get a container, make sure it is clean, open the bag without spilling anything (no crying necessary with a gallon jug), pour it into the container and then pour some of the contents into one's bowl of cereal (like this bit of Hawaiian hotel holiday excessiveness):

The arguments about the milk bags are more efficient argument might be instructive, except that in Canada, the dairy industry is so highly protected that it can charge quite a lot and is relatively immune from the market--supply management or mismanagement as I like to call it.  So cry me a river of milk tears if you think that the market up here is efficient in any way, including in the use of bags.

Correcting the Canadians

Saw this list at Macleans--terms that Canadians think are confusing to Americans.  As the official American-Canadian translator, I must certify/verify/correct.  Plus I need some blog posts to reverse the slide of late.
1. Two-four (24 beers)
Yes, in the US, we call this a case.  As in a case of swill.  Unless it is microbrew, then it is a case of beer.
2. Loonie (and, of course, toonie)
Of course.  Americans think that the US dollar is or should be the only currency in the world.  Nearly there (if one includes holding US debt)
3. Toque 
Thanks to pop-culture, I think Americans get this one even if they would not know how to spell it.
4. Klick (kilometre)
Given that the US military measures in metric and that Hollywood has plenty of war movies that use klick, this is actually far more familiar to Americans than other metric terms (well, coke users know what a gram is but who else?)
5. Toboggan
Please.  The real difference is not toboggan versus sled, as many Americans in the upper half of the country have used such a device.  No, the real difference is that Canadians go sliding, it seems, while Americans go sledding.
6. Peamealor back bacon
WTF?  Been here ten years, never heard this before.
7. Washroom
Americans use either term washroom or bathroom, thank you very much.  WC is far more foreign.
8. Serviette 
Ok, that is one, but how many Canadians use that word?
9. Chinook (the wind, not the helicopter)
Sure, but do Canadians know what a Santa Ana is?
10. Mickey (e.g. a mickey of vodka)
Hmmm, old school American drunks know this one.
11. Knapsack
Please.  Americans know that one as well.
12. Kerfuffle
Probably class specific, but I heard of kerfuffles long before I moved Beyond the Wall.

Still, the reigning culture shocks for Americans when they visit Canada are: hockey leading the news, bags of milk in the grocery stores, and folks wearing fur (tis not murder up here).  What was most surprising when I moved to Canada was how little difference there is between Canadian and American English.  Sure, heaps of extra u's, dropped "the"s, holidays instead of vacations, but no references to lorries, torches and w.c.'s.  The language up here is far closer to American than the Queen's English.  If I can only keep track of defense vs defence, I will be ok.

21st Century Traveling

I promised to complain less in 2013, especially since I rung in the new year a beach in Waikiki.  So, I will not whine that our bags did not make it all the way home with us.  Yet I cannot help but complain about the following:
Our United flight did not serve any food even though it was a non-stop from Honolulu to Newark.  9.5 hours plus another for a delay in Honolulu, and the flight attendant did not seem enthused about us buying the over-priced and under-nourished snack packs, not to mention any chance of buying a hot breakfast sandwich.  The personnel announced that there would not be any heated meals for the economy folks--that is, we could not buy the breakfast sandwich--due to the timing of the flight. 

Um, it is a non-stop, red-eye flight--what is wrong with the timing of letting folks get breakfast?  I fly plenty of redeye's to Europe, and one usually gets both dinner and breakfast on thsoe.  Sure. I know that United and the other American airlines are facing budgetary problems, but I am not even complaining about having to pay.  Not being able to buy is the problem.  Since we had a short connection time (just made the next plane), we could not eat at Newark.  Of course, this is a first world problem if there ever was one, and I have to say that the United folks were great in pretty much every other way (handling our lost baggage claims on both ends of the trip, for instance).  But this policy of not feeding people on a nine hour flight is ridiculous.

Even more ridiculous than having to turn off my iPad--the downside of relying on e-books for trips.... especially when the delays on the tarmac go on and on.

Still, it was a great trip, so consider this my last whine until the next one.

Plus ça change

The old phrase is the more things change, the more they stay the same, more or less.  Well, I resolved via a twitter that in 2013 that I try to do a better job than the US government of matching commitments to capabilities.  What does that mean?  Well, as I blogged in early 2012, grand strategy is all about committing to do what one can do and no more or adding capabilities to match the commitments one has made.  The entire sequestration debate (I hate fiscal cliff as a phrase) has pretty much ignored that the US must consider revising its commitments so that it can spend less on defense.

For the personal side of this, I have been accumulating commitments so much that I am way behind on my next book (due at the end of 2012, oops!).  For the academic, the major capability restraint is time.  So, I need to figure out a way to stop saying yes to cool projects (such as going to Scotland next fall to predict the various dynamics of the 2014 referendum) since there is no way I can add time (the US could deficit spend a heap more and keep the defense budget where it is--with some consequences) as I do not have a time-turner or any other time travel device.

Perhaps returning to winter late tonight will mean that I have more time than I have had the past ten days or so.  To be clear, I am pretty sure my priorities, which have meant reduced blogging over the holidays, have been in the right place:

Happy New Year to all, and as I wished last night: may all your resolutions be easy or irrelevant!

Always Learning!

Today was another pretty amazing day in paradise!  I have not been blogging as I have been very busy and very tired, but I thought I would post what I learned today. 

I learned there are two kinds of lava: a'a and the other kind (the former is the darker, rockier; the latter is the smoother, river-ier [front and back in this pic]).

I learned that Kona pie has disappeared from Hawaii's dessert menus thus far. And that is very sad.  I enjoyed it (graham cracker crust, kona coffee ice cream, stuff) greatly long ago.... but so far, no find.

I learned that there has been much lava flowing since we were last here.  The spot where the lava crossed the road (not unlike the chicken) is now much more encased in lava than 20 years ago.

I learned that we could not see as much of the main caldera (volcano crater) as the old viewing platform got crushed by flying rock.  Plus the clouds of sulfur gas make that part of the area un-wise for tourists.   Well, closed for tourists.  Despite understanding that volcanos are all about change, we were quite surprised to see geologic/geographic realities changing since 20 years ago.  My wife realized that our marriage is older than the rocks we desperately tried to hold back:

We learned that the Saddle Road is not even a little bit treacherous.  Sure, some fun curves at first but mostly just an interesting drive through the island between mountains and through so many micro-climates.

Oh, and you can tell the locals vs. the tourists--the former drive at or below the speed limits.  the latter?  Not so much.