Embrace the Market? What Role for Academics?

I have been tempted to post about the MLA meetings this year.  The Modern Language Assocation, as far as I can tell, is not just for linguistics but for the humanities in general.  These particular meetings have earned heaps of scorn for a variety of reasons (see here and here), but especially being especially tone deaf about the 21st century academic marketplace.

The first bit of news was that one department was telling prospective applicants that they would be informed if they had an interview at the conference with that department ... with five days notice. Which means paying exorbitant fees to fly to Chicago.  There was a whole lot of blogging and tweeting about this.  My first reaction was a smug superiority that while conference attendance is important for Political Scientists, one can engage in a job search without interviewing at the APSA or ISA meetings.  APSA has a meat market but it is not the make or break kind of thing--more departments and candidates selling themselves to each other.  Anyhow, the time has passed for extensive comment on this.

The second bit of news is more recent--that the report back from the MLA about how folks should react to the difficult market represents ... um.... a bit of cluelessness about how the world works.  Yes, there are more adjuncts and fewer tenure track jobs because there is less funding.  But like most good Marxists, the diagnosis is on target and the recommendations suck.  Tossing aside the ideas that perhaps we ought to reduce our output (if there is too much supply, then cut supply, right?), folks think we should have more programs or just keep steaming ahead.  When some scholars suggested that the humanities people ought to learn something about economics, I suggested that they ought to learn something about politics, too.  I don't think we are going to see big reversals in the cuts to funding anytime soon, so hoping for a good market in the near future is not in the cards.

Anyhow, a person responded to my tweets by essentially saying this is how markets work--that it is not up to us academics to figure this out but up to students to stop applying to grad school.  Sure, sure.  This is working so great for law schools now that folks figured out that massive debt plus fewer jobs is a bad recipe for a future.  Markets do work by punishing bad decisions--hey, you bought crappy medicine and it killed your kid, but that's ok because others will learn from your example and the company will eventually go out of business.  Woot!  Ok, we have governments to prevent that kind of thing.

The key difference between this market and a market for meatballs or chairs or software is that we are dealing with .... people.  That we get to know and care about the students, so we do not want to say at the end of the day: hey, you screwed up by coming here, thanks for your money, good luck with your life.  We do not want to see folks punished by the marketplace.  If we can change the marketplace a bit so that it is more humane (that we teach them other things to besides become research oriented profs), that it produces better outcomes (we reduce the supply so more of products of grad schools get those cool TT jobs), wouldn't that be swell?

Of course, those of us in the social sciences understand that there are huge political and economic obstacles and dynamics that get in the way.  Wishing for funds is not going to work.  Hoping that collective action appears and is powerful is not terribly realistic.  I am not sure what should be done, but Johns Hopkins just made moves to reduce its output.  I am not sure the drastic nature of the move is right.  I do think universities need to consider freezing or cutting the size of their graduate programs even as deans and provosts imagine having more and more grad programs even as they forget to fund them or do the market analysis to figure out if the folks can find jobs. 

Kicking Off the Book Tour

I will be talking about NATO and Afghanistan in a semi-book tour event on Wednesday.  Roland Paris of U of Ottawa and Lt. Gen (ret) Andrew Leslie could not get the book in time to engage it seriously, so we will just chat about the joy of multilateral operations in Afghanistan and maybe

Libya (chapter eight). 

Roland has written much about international intervention.  General Leslie served a long career in the Canadian Forces, including serving as Deputy Commander of ISAF and as Chief of the Army.

So, come on out on Wednesday to the Rainbow Room in the Byward Market  at 6pm for this CIC organized Politics in the Pub event.

New Paradigms in Fighter Planes?

One of the dangers of twitter is that one can end up pontificating about something which is outside of one's expertise.  Latest example: I was RT-ing a piece that was critical of the F-35 and got this reaction:

@smsaideman @drfarls Once again the flawed assumption is that the F-35 is a hardware rather than a software project.
— Henry Cobb (@henrycobb) January 10, 2014

At first, I was flummoxed.  Isn't the F-35 a plane made of various materials, one that can be broken if one drops something sufficiently heavy on it?  Yes, but much of the special-ness of the plane is not the design of the structure of the plane but the code that is going into it, that will allow it to do special stuff.

Ah.  Well, I get that.  Of course, this raises all other kinds of problems, which I always remember when I get a new computer (woot!)--that the new computer has new and different software issues.  It is faster and better than my old machine but is still buggy.  Making a plane so heavily reliant on complex software makes me very nervous.  Again, I am not an expert, but defense contracting over the past twenty years does not fill me full of faith.  Will the promises be kept?  Will the adversaries figure out ways to mitigate the advantages?

Of course, the argument is that if the adversary comes up with ways to fight the F-35, the code can be written and improved without having to build new planes.  Maybe.

All I really know is that this plane is very expensive, that its procurement process is very flawed, and that providing the adversary with only one plane to figure out does not seem that "strategic" to me.

Perhaps the fact that we have two competing faiths here--those that resolutely believe in the plane and those that resolutely do not believe in the plane--is the real problem.  Defense procurement should not be a matter of faith, right?

Quebec and the NYT

Which is becoming more of a joke? The Parti Quebecois or the editorial page of the New York Times?  It might be a tie since the PQ got to have an op-ed in the NYT yesterday.

Jean-François Lisée, who is the key PQ official in the Charter of Values debate, wrote the op-ed that defends the Charter of Values, a.k.a. the Charter of Pandering to Xenophobes.  Because the NYT gets more circulation than the usual PQ missive, let me take a look at the article piece by piece.

First, the title: Quebec's Latest Stand.  Or is it meant to be last stand?  It could be playing to both and also might not be in the control of the author.  But when I first saw the title, I read it as Last, not Latest.  But the Latest makes sense--that PQ is fighting an imaginary battle, so why not call it a Latest Stand.

Lisée positions himself as being in the European mainstream as European leaders have grown skeptical of multiculturalism.  That might play in Europe, but I am not sure that publishing a piece in the NYT on "how intolerance is wonderfully European, so the PQ is legit" makes a lot of sense.  NYT readers are not huge fans of the growing xenophobia in Europe.  Whatever.  Anyhow, the point is to "break sharply with Canada's broader multicultural ethos."  Yep, we get that.  Not sure why that is a good thing.  But let's see.

The next para goes into how Quebec is so wonderful with its linguistic diversity in Montreal (which the PQ has been desperate to eradicate), distinctive religious history (where the bitterness towards the Catholic Church has led to the use of "Church words" as curse words), and so on.  He goes on to argue that Quebec's hostility to multiculturalism goes way back to 1982 as part of the reason why the repatriation of the constitution was messy and not so beloved in Quebec.  

Anyhow, Lisée finally gets to the Charter of Values, arguing that it affirms the secular nature of the government as it "denies religious requests for accommodations of dress in public sector employment."  He blames the controversy as stuff that happens when "Quebec veers from the Canadian path" rather than the passage of law that would discriminate against religious minorities and is not solving an actual problem.  Anyone who thinks that the Quebec government is not secular because a few people at the equivalent of the Dept of Motor Vehicles are wearing hijabs or because a few doctors are wearing turbans need more than just less religious symbols, they need serious remedial education.  Indeed, one of the reasons why this bill is so very problematic is how much of the economy in Quebec is owned by the province: hospitals, doctor's offices, universities and the like in addition to the stuff that we normally consider--the aforementioned DMV, the tax folks, and so on.  

The piece argues that this is natural extension of the previous secularization moves.  The funny thing is that this is part of a larger PQ problem--what happens when it wins a battle?  It has to keep fighting even if the victory means that there is actually no longer a grievance.   Quebec wins the battle to have French predominate in Quebec, which takes a lot of the justification out of separation, so the PQ has to find other reasons to exist and to gain votes.  Quebec has a secular society and a secular government (except for the big cross in the National Assembly), but since it is a major employer and Quebec's diversity means that some of those employed by Quebec are religious minorities, we need to figure out ways to alienate them.  I mean, to get them to drop their religious beliefs so that they can be just like the rest of Quebec's secular society.

The next paragraph justifies the Islamophobia that is baked into the Charter of Values as defense of women's rights.  This is a complex issue, which means that we need a more subtle, sensitive approach than banning all woman who are devout Muslims from working for the government.  Indeed, is this going to do such women any favors?  Not sure, but the guess is probably no.

Referring to the laws in France may make sense to some, but any laws that are a century old that deal with religion and religious minorities in Europe may not be such a great basis of legitimacy.

The real motivation is revealed at the end--that the Charter of Values is an effort to get the Canadian government (via the Supreme Court) to strike it down, leading to more motivation in Quebec to secede.   Given that the sovereignty movement is on its heels right now, that any referendum would lose today, PQ folks have been talking for some time about passing a series of laws that would antagonize Canada, provoke reactions and that would make Quebeckers more interested in independence.  Ok, to be fair to the PQ, there is another motivation--to divide the CAQ, a third party whose rise has made it very hard for the PQ to gain a majority of seats in the Quebec assembly.  

Andrew Coyne had a good piece this morning comparing the Charter of Values to the York University controversy.  In both cases, the desire to create a single set of rules--to either accommodate everything or accommodate nothing--is a good way to remove responsibility from officials--no decision-making is required.  But, just as Dave and I find in our book, discretion is a fundamental part of governance--those administering the rules need to have the flexibility to accommodate that which is reasonable and not accommodate that which is not reasonable.

Indeed, the whole concept of reasonable accommodation is about being reasonable, right?  The Charter of Values is unreasonable.  There is no problem--there are not heaps of complaints about doctors wearing turbans or teachers wearing hijabs.  But the Charter panders well to those who fear those who are different.  It may be solving some political problems for the PQ.  But it is not a logical effort to fix a real problem.

I am still left with the same question that I had at the outset: why did the NYT publish this drivel?

WWII with Perspective Sauce

Just saw this figure tweeted.  I have been reading some WWII stuff lately, and so I was struck by this figure.

Biggest surprises:

• Indonesia's ranking.  I had no idea how high a price paid by folks living in what we know now as Indonesia.
• Ditto for India and French Indochina.
• That the Axis casualties are less than a quarter of the total folks killed in WWII.  You would think that the instigators, those on the offensive, and especially those that took heavy hits before surrendering (if they surrendered at all, remember the Japanese did not surrender often) paid a high price.  Of course, the Russian and Chinese casualties tilt the balance pretty far.  

Anyhow, with yet more 70th anniversaries ahead--D-day in June and so on, we should not forget how truly awful the "good" war was.

H/T @whinecough

Speculating about NATO's Next Sec Gen

Awhile back, I suggested that Canada's Def Minister might make a suitable Secretary General of NATO as Stephen Harper needed to move him from that position but carefully so.  That cabinet shuffle has come and gone and the former MoD is now Minister of Justice.  The NATO SG spot is relevant again as German Minister of Defense Thomas de Maizière was seen as a favorite for this position. 

I pooh-poohed that idea when it came out.   Why? The timing is lousy for giving Germany the big position in NATO.  After several years of being seen as a rations consumer rather than burden bearer in Afghanistan (not entirely fair, not entirely unfair--see chapter six), Germany then made bigger waves by not participating at all in the NATO mission over and near Libya.  This was a huge deal for several reasons: Germany always participated in NATO missions to some extent; Germany was one of a few countries that had specialized in knocking out air defense systems, so its absence was felt; German crews staffed much of NATO's AWACS planes so the withdrawal made things messy for NATO; and it set a piss-poor example for the rest of NATO.  So, given the difficulties of the past few years, it makes little sense to reward Germany with the top spot.

I am pretty sure now that de Maizière's chances for NATO SG are dead or close to it.  Why? Because as he was leaving the job as Minister of Defense, he crapped all over France and the UK AND insisted that Germany had little to learn from anyone else about how to do multilateral military ops abroad.  Why piss off two of the heavy lifters in NATO (even with all of the cuts)?  This would be a bad idea if he was still seeking to get the big job.  Which means he is not. 

That is my inference.  What is yours?

Distraction Sauce as Main Course?

Lots of squirrel stuff in my life lately, especially with the holidays spent trying to survive the hordes outside my mother-in-law's place.  So, I come home to find that my alma mater decided to supplement its obscure mascot, the Yeoman (and Yeo-variations: women, babes [the ultimate team briefly], and so on) with what?  This:

Yes, the white squirrel.  I guess the athletic department needed some distraction sauce to keep people's minds off of the Yeo-teams.  Yuck.  I would prefer a Banana Slug, Pelicans or Ducks.  This squirrel is nasty.  Count me out of any Obie apparel with this demonic vermin on it.

Irony of the Day: Newspaper Fails at Math, Gets A Plus

One of the basic problems in interpreting/comparing anything is confusing rates of change with the levels of what you are comparing.  If you go from having one shoe to having two shoes, your shoe improvement rate is 100% but you only have two shoes.

What is the latest example of this basic error? Ironically enough, it relates to education.  One of the big local stories here is that there is much grade inflation at Carleton University.  That the average grade has increased over time, so that there is heaps of inflation.  So far, ok.  Whatever.  In today's Ottawa Citizen, it was reported that the University of Ottawa (Carleton's direct competitor),* has much less grade inflation as its grades have not changed as much over the years.

*To be clear, I would be making the same argument if it is the other way around--I care more about the innumeracy here more than the Carleton/U of O rivalry

So, this must mean that U of O has more strict marking, giving students lower grades, right?  Nay:

But while grades may be steadier at the University of Ottawa, they tend to be higher overall. About 38 per cent of grades assigned in 2010 were in the A range — A+, A or A- — compared to 33 per cent at Carleton the same year.
Fewer failing grades were assigned at UOttawa, too, with 4.5 per cent rating an F or an E (between 40 and 49 per cent score in the class), versus 5.2 per cent who failed at Carleton in 2010. 

So, grades have always been inflated at Ottawa and Carleton is now getting closer to the same rates.  This is not great news for anyone, but it is especially bad news for the Ottawa Citizen, which apparently sucks at math.

If grades are already inflated, we ought not to expect much more grade inflation.  It is like comparing the growth rates of advanced economies with those of less advanced countries.  After all:
change = (value now - value at last relevant time point)/value at last relevant time point.
The smaller the value was at the previous time point, the bigger the change will be in percentage terms.   So,   (100-90)/90 < (10-5)/5 as 1/9 or 11%  < than 5/5 or 100%.  But would I prefer to be in former or the latter?  Depends on what we are measuring.  If it is chocolate chip cookies, I would prefer the former situation as more CCC's is better than less, even if the rate of change is smaller. 

So, the lesson, as always, is to consider what the hell is being measured and whether the absolute change is what is most important or the relative change is the most important.  

Gates vs Auerswald & Saideman

Ok, Bob Gates has taught us a few lessons about how to promote a book..... leak copies to the NYT, WashPo and Wall Street Journal where they excerpt the most critical things you say about folks you worked closely with over the years.  Well done!

But since our book on Afghanistan (and Libya) is coming out at the same time as Gates's book on Afghanistan (and Iraq and other stuff), let me highlight a few differences that make the Dave and Steve book a better use of your book-buying dollar.

• Gates's memoir has all that nasty finger-pointing gossip that is fun to read but makes you feel dirty for enjoying it.  Our book has almost none of that, so it has none of the bitter after-taste.
• Gates's book is just going to provide a heap of confirmation bias as people will read into his book whatever they want to see--criticisms of Bush, criticisms of Obama, that Gates was flawed, etc.  Our book has none of that--just cool social science that will create new biases.
• Gates focuses on one country, whereas we focus on ten and cover more in shorter cuts.  So, if you like American exceptionalism, buy his book.  If you like keen comparative analyses, then buy ours. 
• Gates's book is more than twice as long and has pictures; our book is punchy, concise and has cool tables and figures.

I will eventually post my own reactions to Gates's book.  Thus far, all we have are juicy quotes and excerpts.  My reactions now are mostly focused on his views of the National Security Staff (used to be and will be again NSC): that they were too involved in military matters.  Which sounds a whole lot like complaints by the Canadian military folks about civilians who mucked about with Afghan policy.  The reality is in both cases that counter-insurgency requires "whole of government" efforts, which means that no single department gets to run the show and that most governments will need somebody close to the executive to oversee such stuff.  This does not mean that it will go well or that people will be happy, but it does mean that Ministers and military leaders will be upset with people looking over their shoulder. 

Anyhow, Gates's does look to be quite interesting although you already have my recommendation on what to read....

Time Not Wasted

People may have wondered why spend so much time thinking about what pop culture says about international relations.  They have have pondered whether dedicating entire class sessions to Harry Potter and the International Relations of Ethnic Conflict might be misguided. 

I can now officially and completely say to such un-named people: feh!  Feh, I say! 

Why? Because the Sino-Japanese dispute is now an exercise in Harry Potter-one-ups-man*-ship!

The only winner in all of this?  J.K. Rowling, of course.  What is so very striking about this, besides justifying my time spent reading/watching/writing about HP (can I get a retroactive tax deduction for the visit to Harry Potter world in Orlando?), is that this tangent in the dispute demonstrates the globalization of Harry Potter.  I mean, we knew that, but to have diplomatic representatives resort to HP name-calling?  Amazing, especially since the languages involved are pretty distant from English.

Anyhow, the time is now to deploy our HP expertise to understand this conflict.  One could go to an edited volume on this, or one could just rely on those who have blogged endlessly about Harry Potter.  That would be me (ok, others, too). 

What is my take on this? Well, the Chinese envoy referred to the Yasukuni shrine as "a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation's soul," which is a pretty apt application of HP-ness.  That the militarism in Japan's past is not dead and a piece of it might just be kept alive in this shrine for eventual use in re-animating Japan's Voldemort--its aggression towards its neighbors.  Of course, this would seem like a pretty obvious place to put a horcrux, making it easy to confront and destroy, but still the application is on target.

What about the Japanese response?  Not so much.

There are two paths open to China. One is to seek dialogue, and abide by the rule of law. The other is to play the role of Voldemort in the region by letting loose the evil of an arms race and escalation of tensions, although Japan will not escalate the situation from its side.

Um, not so good. Sure, Voldemort engaged in arms races and raised tensions but his initial efforts were far more secretive.  Lots of folks engage in arms races but that does not make them Voldemort (the security dilemma is sufficient to explain that).  Besides, the war between the Order of the Phoenix and the agents of the Dark Lord was behind the scenes and not apparent either to Muggles or wizards & witches. Indeed, the clumsy aggression of the past few years of Chinese foreign policy appear to be more that of a Voldemort pretender ... such as a Lucius Malfoy. 

One last application: if the argument between the two countries is really over islands that have no apparent value, I guess I would have to wonder if Azkaban or its Asian equivalent might not be real target of this rivalry?

*  One-ups-person-ship sounds strange.  So excuse my gendered language, although it makes sense if this conflict between China and Japan is really about comparing penis sizes but that is an analogy for another day.

Pondering the Uncle Ben Doctrine

With great power comes great responsibility, as Uncle Ben told Peter Parker long ago.  This doctrine became a great burden for Spider-man, yet also helped him become the super-hero we all (except for a certain JJJ the third) love.

But one problem that plagued Spidey also plagues the US--just because one is responsible for using one's power well, does not mean that one is responsible for everything that happens.  The current debate is about Iraq and the rest of the Mideast--that whatever is going wrong is the fault of the U.S.  Maybe so, maybe not.  But the thing to consider now is whether American action would actually make things better or worse.

Consider Fallujah.  Arguing about who "lost" Fallujah is, of course, silly since it is still there on the map.  We know where it is.  It was never in the US's pocket or safe.  It was and is always in Iraq, which means that when the US left Iraq (which was the responsible thing to do, given what the Iraqis would not allow and what the American people would no longer support), it would not be able to lose it.  There is only so much the US can do about anything.

Consider Syria.  Yes, things are awful there.  It is not clear that an American invasion would make things much better given the instructive example of .... Iraq.

I do not want to diminish the responsibility of the US in the variety of Mideast messes due to past actions and past inactions.  Invading Iraq has created a cascade of stuff that cannot be undone.  However, making the US responsible for everything means making everyone else far less responsible, and it exaggerates the ability of the US to change things now.

With great power comes great responsibility but not great control over anything.  Tis frustrating but unavoidable. 

The Silliest of Lists: Bestseller!

I am so delighted that the box of NATO books came today.  The book has been a fountain of fun as our hard work is now finally tangible (unless you buy the kindle version, then not so tangible).

Part of the fun has been seeing who we are now beating on the various Amazon bestseller lists.  No, not the main list--ha.  The various sublists like books > history > Asia > Afghanistan (17th in Canada) or Kindle > kindle ebooks > politics and social science > politics > international > diplomacy.

I don't really care what counts and what does not count on these lists or how the methodology is constructed.  As long as we get some fun outcomes, I am fine with however these things are constructed.  Like:

• Outselling Condi Rice, as I am not her biggest fan (amazon.ca, diplomacy list).  
• Outselling Noam Chomsky, as, well, you can guess (amazon.ca, international institutions)
• Outselling Musketry Regulations, as that is simply cool.  (amazon.com, miltiary life and institutions)
• Outselling George Kennan, even though his being dead for quite a while gives us a bit of an advantage (amazon.com, international diplomacy).

This is all very silly since selling well this week, with well measured in a dozen or two sales here and there.  But I can take my joy where I can get it. 

This book was fun to research, fun to co-write, and now fun to promote. 

Sunday Silliness: Predicting 2014

Some non-predictions for the next year

Source: Brian MacFadden of NYT as usual.

Of course, I am not such a fan of the Snowden bit, but otherwise, super swell.

Wrong Tweet To Go Viral? I Blame the EU

This morning I tweeted thusly:

Not Russia, not Ukrainians? Mt @ProSyn: "The blame for the outcome in Ukraine falls squarely on the EU’s leaders." http://t.co/R4EzPvJVAF”
— Stephen Saideman (@smsaideman) January 5, 2014

And it kind of went viral, getting a heap of retweets instantly.  Given that I also tweeted about the new book, which I would like to have sold and cited far and wide, I would have preferred that tweet to get more action.  Oh well.

So, about this Ukraine thing, the article itself is a bit better balanced than the headline, showing that it really is about Russia and about Ukraine more than about the European Union.  Still, the timing is good because the NYT has an article on the US and the Mideast with the same kind of disease: the Western actor (EU/US) is seen as unwilling to impose its will.  The reality, of course, is that Iraq, Afghanistan and numerous other policies that have not been super-wonderful demonstrate that it is not just the exertion of power and cleverness by the western outsiders that matter but the incentives and institutions in the countries that are in play that matter.

Which is why Andrew Exum ended his rant on the NYT article thusly:

My lesson from Iraq/Afghanistan? The US can do a lot, but long-term success is ultimately up to what people on the ground do or fail to do.
— Andrew Exum (@abumuqawama) January 5, 2014

Playing Favorites

(Yes, I refuse to go full-Canadian and spell it favourite).

Anyhow, one is not supposed to have a favorite child.  We finessed that problem by only having one.  And, yes, she is my favorite.  One should not play favorites too much with one's pets, but when I had two dogs and one cat, one dog was clearly my favorite pet--Flynn a.k.a. the Fonz of dogs. He was not just our favorite, as we were told when we were leaving Vermont ages ago: "We sure will miss

Flynn."  Indeed.

So, I must declare that my latest book, this one with David Auerswald, is, indeed, my favorite of my three books.  Sure, one could accuse me of recency bias by preferring the most recent.  But despite my fondness for my other books and the work by Bill Ayres on the second one, this book is first in my heart.

Why?

1. Well, it was the most fun to research, with trips to Kabul/Kandahar, Bagotville, Paris/Berlin, Sydney/Canberra/Wellington, Copenhagen, and The Hague/Brunssum/Brussels/Mons.  Book one had no travel, book two took me to Budapest a few times and Bucharest once--both of which were interesting and fun, but the two cities just simply are less than the many cities/countries I visited over the past five or six years.
2. Not just travel but heaps of interesting people.  I forget how many folks I interviewed for book two (probably around 40?), but this time, Dave and I chatted with more than 250 people of varying ranks and occupations.  Just amazing conversations.  I spent many a drive from Ottawa back to Montreal repeating out loud: "I love my job."
3. It has been and will continue to be the most fun to present (although no one has asked as wonderfully strange/amusing questions as Bill and I received when presenting Kin or Country).  I will not list the places I have presented bits and pieces of research from this book, but just this winter/spring's schedule of talks (see below) will take me to many interesting places.  
4. The presentations for this project have included multiple opportunities to share my ideas with policy-folks.
5. It is the only book project that produced enough material for a second book.  I have spent this past year, while the NATO book was in production, writing up another book--this one on the Canadian experience and what that tells us about how Canada does foreign/defence policy.  
6. Best blurbs (see the back of this book or check out the Amazon page or the PUP page).
7. About that PUP--Princeton U Press.  Well, I have been chasing that white whale for my career, and while my previous books were at another prestigious, selective press, PUP is about as good as it gets for International Relations stuff.  So, woot us!  When I met Dave over the holidays, we chatted and both marveled at how thorough PUP folks were, even as our original editor moved elsewhere in the middle of our process.
8. Dave.  Dave and I spent five years in the trenches otherwise known as grad school in San Diego (ok, very temperate trenches with much sun and Mexican food).  So, it was a great pleasure to be working with an old (and yes, we are both getting old) friend. His access via his National War College job to the US case, to CENTCOM and to the Brits was incredibly handy for this project, and we built on his previous theoretical work nicely.
9. We had a heap of help from a great group of friends, colleagues and graduate students (see our acknowledgements pages--most of which can be read at Amazon).
10. The book is very relevant for understanding pop culture as I have demonstrated a few times (here and here).
11. The book is just super-interesting.  Check out chapter one at PUP's page!  And then buy it ;)

The book tour will take me over the next few months to Kansas City, Denver, Calgary, Ottawa (three times), Sydney (Australia, not Nova Scotia), and hopefully Toronto and San Diego down the road, so see me if you can while I am in your town.  I am cheap date!  Really, so invite me and I am likely to show up.  Or just buy the book!  And if you cannot buy it, just cite it!

Yo, Adrian!

The NYT has a fun quiz that asked people how they spoke certain words or which words they used to identify where they are from.  My results were both not surprising and surprising:

It gets right that I am from Philly--the give away question was, of course, hoagie when referring to a big sandwich chock full of stuff.  Didn't even have to go into how I say water.   Mischief night (night before Halloween) is also a big Philly thing, although I don't think I ever did mischief that night (why focus on just one night?)

The surprises would be the hot spots in Florida and Texas.  Ok, not so much Texas since I spent six years there in my first tenure-track job.  However, note the Texas is the east part, and I lived in the West part.  The big texas phrase may have been blow-off for an easy college course rather than gut.  Which makes sense since my first years of teaching shape how I think about such stuff more than where I grew up.

Florida is a surprise since my one year in 2nd grade could not have been that formative, but maybe it was. Garage sale turns out to be the big one which is prominent in Texas and Florida but not Philly.  Really?  Maybe yard sale would have been more philly, but I have had many garage sales in my life (thanks to a wife that does not like to just toss stuff--and because the circle of crap is so magnetic).

I wonder if any Canadian stuff have creeped into how I talk, but the quiz is only US focused.  I do know in my writing, I keep changing defense/defence depending on which country I am discussing, but I resist the extra "u"s although my daughter, alas, does not.

The remaining surprise is how little impact California made on the way I talk, given the six years there.  Too busy hanging out with other east coast elitists while in San Diego? 

Anyhow, fun to over-think this stuff. 

WWI Deja Vu

I extended yesterday's post for CIC.  I forgot to include alliances, which was silly of me given the hottest book to hit the market in just a couple of days (Sunday!)

Pre-empting Preemption

As 2014 is exactly 100 years after 1914, we are going to see a lot of stories saying something about how 1914 speaks to today.... as if World War III may break out soon.  Of course, anytime somebody says it ain't gonna happen, folks mention the various experts who said in 1914 that war was not going happen.

Well, I am not afraid to be wrong--I tweeted a few minutes ago that if Vegas set an over/under line on World Wars in 2014 at 1, I would bet on the under--that there will not be a world war this year.  Of course, this depends on what one means by a World War.  How about a conflict that takes in multiple hemispheres (north and south or east and west--I am not picky)?  How about one that involves more than three great powers with at least two great powers on either side (or just two superpowers like if the cold war got hot, but there is only one superpower still, right)? 

Of course, then we would have to figure out who is a great power, and that is not always easy.  But any half-assed list of Great Powers would include: US, China, Russia .... maybe Japan, Germany, France, UK, and if we stretch further perhaps Brazil, India, Indonesia and a few other places.  Great powers are those who can project power and can make a difference around the world, so all those with nukes and the ability to deliver them around the world stand up (US, UK, France, Russia, China, India [if you have a space program, you can drop nukes far away]).  We can come up with other lists, but the question of WW or not WW basically entails whether some combo of US, China and Russia (with European countries to be named later) will get in a war together. 

So, what is the likelihood that the US will engage in a war with China and/or Russia?  Pretty close to zero.  Why?  Those aforementioned nuclear weapons have a great deal to do with it--MAD and all that.  The difference between 1914 and 2014 is precisely the reversal in preemption temptation.  In 1914, there was a sense that moving first had great advantages and most countries had war plans built on those assumptions.  Now, attacking first just means you make more rubble bounce, but that your own country will be destroyed as well.  So, even if North Korea does its damnedest to suck us all into a world war, it is far more likely that China and the US will not get sucked into a war.  MAD ain't perfect (there is ye olde Stability-Instability Paradox), but pretty sure the preemption temptation is not relevant 100 years after WWI.

Furthermore, we are likely to see far less US intervention in the next couple of years.  Politicians can read polls, too, so the numbers on Afghanistan speak to them (and the numbers on Syria and Iran do, too).  We are exhausted.  So, don't expect much in the way of new wars this year for the U.S. 

China? No need to engage in war anytime soon.  Russia?  Not until after the Olympics, right?

Anyhow, the point here is that numbers are fun, anniversaries are swell, and we like to think about how the past matters for today (which it does).  But don't buy into what the fear-mongers want to ... monger.

Evolving or Regressing?

The recent surveys on evolution in the US can be read in so many ways, so I have a few reactions:

• That fewer Republicans buy into evolution does not surprise me.  As the party gets narrower and older (thinkprogress had a piece on this), those most likely to flee the party are going to be the ones most likely to be reality based and not so science-averse.
• As always, my reaction to folks who don't buy into evolution is to ask them not to partake of any of the evolution-based products ... such as anti-biotics.  But with the whole anti-vax movement causing heaps of folks to suffer when they should not be suffering (plus causing other peopel to be sick), I guess not.
• That 2/3s of Democrats and Independents do buy into evolution only seems like good news when compared to the Republicans.  That people are rejecting some of the basics in science (biology, geology, chemistry, economics, political science, history, etc.) is pretty disturbing.  Too many folks rejecting that which is well known and basic.  Hard to have decent conversations when the fundamentals are so mis-understood.
• I was amused when I was at the Natural History Museum to see so much stuff that was focused on the evolution of humans.  If only Congress knew what was down the street ....
  

Words, Man

Mother Jones came up with a list of least favorite words of 2013.  I had been meaning to assess the list but got distracted by squirrels.

Anyhow, the words are below and my take on them, with blue meaning I support the opinion, red means wrong, and [my comments]

• "#." R.I.P., early Twitter feature. We'll bury you next to your friend, the FourSquare check-in.
• adverbs. Ban all adverbs. They're mostly just gulp words, really.  [I call bs on all rules of writing that are so categorical.  Adverbs seriously and truly have their place.  Otherwise, how do we modify verbs?]
• "all the things." [?]
• "because [noun]": (i.e. "because science.")  [This is only a weak foul and can be handy especially on twitter where brevity is king and queen]
• "brogurt." No.
• "classy."  [Nope, we like some old time words used mockingly or even sincerely (hey more adverbs!)]
• "controversial tweet." There's just no way to make this sound dignified, and besides, it leads to think pieces.  [tis a good thing]
• "cronut."  [No opinion since I have not tried one yet]
  
• "crowdsourced." [What else you going to call it?]
  
• "derp." It's been an emotional ride, but it's time to send this one off on the ice floe. [So much derp, so little time, must keep]
• "disrupt." Luxury car apps aren't disruptive.  [Please, I hate this use of the term, unless we are referring to the weapons carried by foes of the Enterprise--disrupters]
• "Donald Trump is considering a run for…" No, he's not. He just isn't. And if you'd like to get him unearned publicity, you should at least get some stock options out of it. [Agreed, the more we ignore Trump, the better]
• "doubled down." Unless the candidate did it while biting into a delicious sandwich, let's just say the candidate "reaffirmed his/her position" on transportation funding or burrito drones or whatever we'll be discussing in 2014.
• "...favorited a tweet you were mentioned in." No one has ever wanted to know this. [Twittter is already narcissistic enough, thanks--and I should know]
• "gaffe." It's going to be a long-enough election year as it is. [nope, gaffes gonna happen, it is all in the game]
• "game-changer." What you're describing probably won't change the game. But if it does, would you want to spoil the moment with a cliche? [yep]
• "Guy Fieri." What if we all decided to just never mention him again? Would he disappear? [please]
• "hashtag." This refers to the spoken utterance of the word "hashtag," often accompanied by air-quotes. People can see you doing this. [meh]
• "hipster." Wearing glasses is not something people do because they're hipsters; it's something people do because they're nearsighted. People don't drink hot chocolate because it's a hipster thing to do; they drink hot chocolate because it's literally liquid chocolate. Yes, I wrote "literally." That's what happens when you use a word so casually and carelessly in think pieces as to render it meaningless. [meh]
• "I can't even." You can. Dig deep. Find your Kentucky. [agreed]
• "impact." (When used as a verb.) [A thousand times yes.  Or no, just stop!]
• "…in .gifs." [no, gifs are great]
• "...in one chart." We're aiming high in 2014. Two chart minimum! [No, one cool chart is fine]
• "listicle." This is the last one. [Less listicles, not necessarily less use of the word]
• "literally the worst." Actually, while we're at it, let's ban "literally." Literally is the "not the Onion" of fake things. [Unless deployed on Parks and Rec]
• "millennial." Young people are living with their parents because their parents' generation destroyed the global economy. Next.  [The term is fine, the generalizations about it not so much]
• "nondescript office park." As opposed to the Frank Gehry ones. [whatever]
• "not the Onion." [Duffleblog?]
• "Rethuglicans, Repugs," "Republikkkans," "Demoncrats," "Dumbocrats," and every other variation thereof. Please just use the normal proper nouns; you can add whatever modifier you like before or after. [Sure]
• "selfie." But what do they tell us about our society, in the digital now? Let's ask James Franco. [Too much about this. Selfies are fine.  People want to document where they are, whom they are with.  Having super good cameras that take instant pictures that are easy to post is a good thing.  Suck it up]
• "Snowfall." (In the future, a high-cost digital production that doesn't live up to the hype shall be known as a "Skyfall.")  [Um, winter is long here and we need as many different words to cover it, so nope]
• "the Internets." This was a George W. Bush joke or something, right? You can still use the Internet—just drop the "s." [if it is fun, what is so wrong]
• "This Town." [?]
• "thought leader." Mostly beaten out of existence, but don't think we didn't notice that Paul Allen interview, Wired. You're on notice. [If it means we can pick on NYT columnists, it stays]
• #YOLO. Seriously. [Hey, you don't know what will replace it, right?]

Ranking Trilogies, Revisions Necessary

Gawker ranked movie trilogies and, well, performed miserable in the effort.  The Madagascar movies might be swell, but number #1?  Hmmm.  To be an excellent trilogy, all three movies have to be very good to excellent.  The weakest cannot suck even if the two others are fantastic.  So, here's my first over-thinking of pop culture in 2014 (yes, I am still procrastinating about some grading).

Oh, and a couple of key caveats:

• If I am surprised that a third movie exists, such as "there was a third Addams Family movie?", then you are not a top ranked trilogy.
• If there are movies beyond #3, then the series of movies can count if the extra movies are forgettable.  We call this the Crystal Skull addendum.  However, this can only be done once--which means that Rocky is a quadrilogy with us forgetting about Rocky V.  If they had stopped at three or four, then that entry would rank pretty highly.
• I cannot rank a bunch of them on the Gawker list as my watching, like Luke's training, is incomplete (hence no Before Sunrise/Sunset/Dusk/whatever).  And no Twilight because I didn't see a single one of them. 
• Original ranking in []

1. Star Wars/Empire/Return of the Jedi [5].  People complain about the third one, but in a competition of trilogies, the weakest Star Wars movie is far better than most of the second best movies in most trilogies.  Folks might not like Ewoks, but the speeder sequence, the Tatooine stuff (including that most famous Leia costume), the space battle (amazing in its time), and so on are all pretty terrific.  Yub-yub indeed.
2. Toy Story [7].  Could have been the top ranked.  Not a stinker in the bunch.  Some would argue it is the same movie three times, but only if one is blinded by the tears as Andy drives away in the third one. 
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark/Indiana Jones [-].  If adventure has a name, it must be Indiana Jones.  People are critical of the second movie, or were, until the fourth one made them realize how good the second one was.  The second is the only where Indy truly makes a difference, as only the Russians and Ike could stop the Nazis.  Anyhow, Raiders is
4. Godfather [2].  Done in by the tragically lame third movie.  Otherwise, it would be number one here.  But its weakest is very weak.
5. Back to the Future [3].  People may quibble about the second movie or the third, but it told a pretty coherent story that involved time travel. Do not try this at home.  As 2015 approaches, we are wondering where our hoverboards might be.
6. Lord of the Rings. [6] They only made three of these?  Each one was so long, with the last one being simultaneously endless and chockful of endings.  Still, an amazing depiction of a hard story to tell.  Others would rank this more highly, but that is because they like endless panorama's of  New Zealand scenery.
7. Spider-man via Sam Raimi. [-]  The third was a mess, but the first and second were just terrific.  Molina as Dr. Ock was fantastic.  The train scene in the second was just so very Spidey.  Nice depictions of New Yorkers' reactions in the first two: you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us!  Indeed. 
8. Iron Man. [4]  The second was a mess, the third was good but not great, but the first was a Marvel-ous movie.  Great casting, not a bad origin tale. 
9. The Cornetto Trilogy. [-] Loses points because it confuses people since they don't realize that Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End are actually a trilogy--same actors, different characters.  Well, sort of.  The first two are eminently re-watchable and the third probably is--just have not re-watched much yet.  But brilliant takes on classic genres of movies: the zombie movie, the buddy cop movie, the alien invasion/old crowd gets together movie.  [Omitted by some sort of tragedy from the Gawker list]
10. The Bourne movies. [15] They tend to blend together, but Matt Damon was amazing, the fight scenes were terrific.  Just not sure which one was which.
11. Austin Powers. [24] All three movies were pretty entertaining, but only the first one really holds up.
12. X-Men (hard to count as a trilogy since we now have more than three, but the first three are a sequence). [-]  People forget, but the first two were pretty swell movies.  The third was, again, a bit of a mess, but it still addressed major X themes. 
13. Beverly Hills Cop. [20] The first one was so very, very good.  The second ok, the third meh. 
    
14. Ocean's 11-12-13. [11] First one was delightful, last was pretty good, middle was meh.
15. Batman Returns, Dark Knight, etc. Not on the list and I forgot until reminded on facebook.  This series reaks of darkness for the sake of being dark.  And despite a delightful game of prisoners' dilemma in the second movie, the antics of the bad guys were so incredibly stupid (the Joker could place explosives everywhere, Bane was ... so Bane-ish), the good guys were dumb, too.  Just incredibly stupid plots that were saved by some great performances--Heath Ledger, Anne Hathaway, JG Levitt, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, etc. I would rank this series higher but I so hate how overrated these movies are. 
16. Blade. [-] I am fuzzy on the details, but remembered all three to be silly but entertaining.
17. Harold and Kumar. [17] The first entry was really, really strong, and then progressively weaker but still some fun stuff along the way.

Worst Trilogies

1. Tie between the Matrix [13?] and the Phantom Menace/Clones/Revenge of the Sith [23].  Both faced huge problems about expectations although the Matrix movies got progressively worse while the Star Wars prequels got progressively better.  Still, each trilogy only had one good/semi-good movie and two awful-tragically awful entries.
2.  The Hangover [10].  The first was fun.  The second was complete replay.  The third was pretty unnecessary but had its moments.  But no way it is better than Austin Powers, Beverly Hills Cop, Oceans, or Harold and Kumar.  Recency bias?

Mad Max is not ranked here as I didn't see Thunderdome (a grievous omission, of course), nor is Ace Ventura as I don't remember the third movie.   Same goes for Robocop--didn't see the third one.  I plead the fifth on Porky's.

Science Is Cool!

I like the latest bit of visual stuff--it shows that happiness is the only feeling that affects the entire body: