Best Military Advice, continued

Apparently, Petraeus's slide explaining how the transition should work in Afghanistan.  I miss the acronym heavy environment that is NATO.  Anyhow, it is interesting to see what Petraeus is pushing against:

• decisions based on preferences of the folks at the top (Obama, NATO, Karzai).
• time-based (milestones, not benchmarks).
• just pulling out.
• transition for transition sake.

Of course, the best military advice, which this may be, may not become political decisions (especially since the process at the top includes places where consensus is required--NAC means North Atlantic Council).  The key question is the first issue--conditions-based.  Will the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan really drive events or will the requirements of domestic politics?  Moreover, while there is some debate about how much progress the Afghan National Army has made over the years implying some potential for modest transitions, there is consensus that there has been no real progress on the Afghan National Police.  And that means local level conditions are not advancing enough to really transition to an Afghan-led effort.

Mike Lombardi, formerly of the National Football post and now at the NFL's website and network is fond of repeating the maxim that hope is not a plan and the two should not be confused.  Well, is this a plan or is this wishful thinking?  I lean a bit towards the latter.  And I am not optimistic about the parliamentary elections next month.

We Are a Bad Guild [updated]

The academic community, like the law school folks, have done a poor job of being a guild--we create too many competitors for too few jobs, creating heaps of anxiety and perhaps pushing down wages.  This psychologist is quite clear about the problem.  While I have been telling aspiring law students to think about supply and demand for quite a while, I have only started doing so for aspiring PhD students lately.  Taking on fewer students?  Well, our department does not give individual profs the power to admit students, so I cannot unilaterally reduce the size of our program.  I am taking on fewer students because of past uneven burden-sharing issues, not because of the job market situation. But this article does suggest that more restraint would be a good idea.

It is clear that we face still strong incentives to have many PhD students around, but perhaps not let them complete and compete?  The system is, indeed, broken, and we need to think about the incentives we face.  But I am doubtful that we will make much progress, as this is a classic case of a collective action problem.  And academics do not cooperate very easily.

Updated: Check out this story for the ugly trend.

Least Surprising News of the Week

Administrative expenses at colleges and universities have been going up faster than faculty costs.  I am shocked about as much as if there is gambling at Rick's.

Between 1993 and 2007, the number of full-time administrators per 100 students at America’s leading universities grew by 39 percent, while the number of employees engaged in teaching, research or service only grew by 18 percent. Inflation-adjusted spending on administration per student increased by 61 percent during the same period, while instructional spending per student rose 39 percent.

I wonder what the numbers would be if service was dropped out.  Of course, since this article is from the Goldwater Institute, the focus is on how much states and the federal government are doing to subsidize administrative expenses and perhaps we should let the students feel more of the costs.  That makes me laugh, as we see tuition skyrocketing across the board--as their own charts illustrate quite clearly.

Anyhow, administrative bloat is pretty obvious--there are far more Vice Principals/Chancellors, Assistant Provosts, etc than before and their costs are pretty steep because they not only command higher salaries but also more and more staff.  Nice to know that our anecdotal understanding is supported by the statistics.  If these admin types could figure out how to make university funding sustainable without gutting faculty or accelerating tuition, their growth would be worth the cost.

The Greater Romania Party and the Republican Party

Yesterday, I pondered why the Republicans would want to distract people away from the lousy economy.  I quickly received heaps of comments here and on facebook suggesting that the GOP is equally implicated by the "Great Recession," and that surveys show that the public has more negative views of Republican handling of the economy than the Democrats.  Pretty hard to achieve, but there you have it.  In talking this over with my wife, I suddenly realized an interesting parallel--the GOP with an extreme right-wing party in Romania--the Greater Romania Party.

The Greater Romania Party, I found in researching For Kin or Country, is not as loudly irredentist as one might have expected with that name.  Instead, over the course of the post-communist period, it has been a party that has focused its nationalism on xenophobia--on the internal targets or "others" rather than the external "us" in Moldova.  What is more interesting and relevant for the US today is how the Greater Romania Party was quite flexible in changing targets as some "others" had more friends or were seen as being less useful for rabble-rousing.

The Greater Romania Party started out being quite anti-Semitic, but this was not so easy to sustain, given how few Jews remained after the Holocaust.  During my interviews several years ago, everyone noticed that Vadim Tudor was taking a very different stand--proclaiming himself to be a philo-semite (whatever that means) by visiting Auschwitz and by taking on an Israeli campaign coordinator.  Focusing on the large Hungarian minority was also a part of the Greater Romania Platform, but as Romania sought membership in the European Union and as Hungary made it in first, the party needed to dump this component of its nationalist rhetoric to appear more suitable as a party that could lead Romania into the EU.  The good news for the party was that there were three or four groups left to target: homosexuals, Roma, Muslims and immigrants.  I am guessing that the party figured that they could target each of these, but especially Muslims and immigrants without too much opposition from the EU or from Romanian parties worried about threats to the EU membership process because the members of the EU were not and are not big fans of Muslims or immigrants (or Roma).  We have a party seeking to divide the electorate and gain support based on emotional appeals to an imagined pure nation of the past, promising policies that discriminate against those that are seen as belonging to the Romanian nation.  And this worked to some degree, as this party finished second and third in the early to mid Aughts.

And the Republicans, fighting to maintain a vote share in desperate times (mobilized minorities, declining percentage of whites in the US, etc.) have made a similar move, emphasizing one set of identities and then another, alienating one minority and then the next in the quest for more support for more extreme candidates.  The anti-Semitism has not been so prominent, but it is there.  No accident that George Soros is portrayed as an agent of bad stuff by both the Greater Romania Party and the Republican Party.  Republicans focused a bit on race, proving that Obama's Presidency does not mean we live in a post-racial America.  They focused on gays and lesbians, but found that Americans have grown far more tolerant to rise to this bait as enthusiastically as in the past.  The Arizona laws on immigration played upon fears of Latino immigrants committing an ever-increasing number of crimes (despite all trends to the contrary).  So now, rather than taking the new ruling on Prop 8 and running with it, the focus is now on the 14th amendment's born in America proviso (as opposed to the equal protection component): this combines Islamophobia with anti-Latino xenophobia.  Terror babies, indeed! 

When I teach about ethnic conflict, the starting point is always that there are multiple identities and that the salience of each one (and the meaning attached to each divide) varies according to the political context.  It is striking that the Republicans have taken this bit of social science thinking seriously and have moved from one identity/set of cleavages to the next, trying to mobilize the base in this election.  Since the base of the GOP is white rural Christians, the use of identity politics can work in the short term precisely because the demographic balance of the US is shifting.  The 2010 elections may lead to big Republican victories, but my best guess is that this is a short term outcome, as the combination of different targeted minorities will ultimately produce majorities.  The GOP can win California only with a Republican who is one in name only.  In Presidential elections, that diverse state is lost for the near and medium term.  Colorado is now a toss up state.  Arizona, well, that should be interestingly ironic down the road.  How about Texas?

Indeed, we may have our answer for why using Islamophobia--to distract from the previous waves of anti-gay, anti-African-American, and anti-Latino stands.  But it is unlikely to work for long.  The Republicans should take a look at the Greater Romania Party to see what the future contains--as the the Romanian extremist party is now getting very few votes and having few seats after it has gone through its menu of targets.

Ultimately Arbitrary

Wayne Norman, a philosopher at Duke, has developed very quickly a very interesting blog--thinking about sports in ways that have shifted my perspective quite a bit.   He has pondered classic questions like: when is a sport a sport? What's wrong with soccer broadcasting?  He has compared soccer to American sports to understand why soccer has not yet become as popular in the US  (and Canada?)* as it is elsewhere. 

In his latest post, he posits something quite striking,

The “essence” of a game or a sport, again, is bound up in the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. The participants must embrace rules that prohibit efficient means in favor of inefficient means to achieving the goal of the game. In many cases, the most basic rules are, for all intents and purposes, arbitrary.

Of course, given my own obsession, I immediately started to ponder about Ultimate.  Because Ultimate was invented by a bunch of over-educated types long after other sports and is a semi-conscious imitation of some sports (football, soccer, basketball), it makes sense to focus on a few aspects that fit Norman's idea of arbitrary obstacles to efficiency.  Three come to mind:

1. You cannot run with the disk.  The frisbee is advanced forwards and backwards (moving it backwards is not a big deal and can be a good idea, as it moving the ball backwards in soccer, to create space and keep posession).  But only by throwing.  The most efficient means of getting the disk into the endzone would be perhaps to run it in like in football, rugby and similar sports, especially when it is windy or when one is already close.  But nope, you can only run with the disk if you pass it within a couple of steps or for a couple of steps as one stops running.  You cannot change direction while slowing down and you cannot take more steps than is necessary to stop.  Otherwise, you can be called for a travel. 
1. An implication of this rule is that once you have stopped, one foot becomes the pivot a la basketball, and then you can only move one foot as you pivot with the other.  It would be more "efficient" to step around someone guarding you to pass the disk, but the rules prohibit that.

Confused About Republican Strategy

Why are the Republicans putting the mosque near (not at, just near) the former site of the World Trade Center (ground zero will always mean to me the courtyard in the middle of the Pentagon) at the heart of their campaigns?  Sure, demagoguery is good fun, but given how bad the economy still is, how high unemployment still is, how hard it is to borrow money, and so on, why not run on the economy?  Incumbents lose when the economy is bad, especially of the party in power (Dem incumbents are at far greater risk than GOP incumbents). 

I am just puzzled why the Republicans would want to divert attention from the economy.  Even if they have no solutions (other than tax cuts for the rich), it would seem to me that focusing on bailouts, deficits and the like would be just fine.  Where is the message management police when you need them?

Any readers want to explain why religion-baiting makes more sense?  Is this about turnout?  Un-confuse me if you will.

These Kids Today, part two

Beloit College circulates a list each year to prepare the profs for the new generation of students--a "mindset" list.  The idea is to prepare profs for the reality that our students have a different mindset.  Of course, the first question is: should we care?  Well, some of this does deal with communication, so we need to be prepared to communicate with them, although bending to their preferences/styles may be doing all of us a disservice.  And for those who use pop culture as part of our teaching style (that would be me), then we need to update our references (Monty Python is dead to them, for instance).

Anyway, here is some of the list and my reactions in blue:
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive. Good: printing is easier to read when grading in class exam booklets, although I try to avoid such things when i can.

2. E-mail is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail. I did not find this a problem last year.  Are this year's students that much different?  I will not be facebook friends with new students so they cannot expect to chat with me, nor will I skype.  I prefer email as it leaves a trail--that I can use the past emails to remind me what I have committed to do (grant extensions, whatever).

3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia… and learn Chinese along the way.”  Is there more interest in Asia now?  Not so sure, as folks in Montreal tend to look to Europe still.

4. Al Gore has always been animated. This is already out of date--has Al always been considered a sexual predator?

6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High. This seems dated--are the 18th years of today focused on a 1990's vampire slayer? 

8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.  Academia, I think, was ahead of the curve on accommodating student disabilities--we have entire offices and procedures dedicated to this stuff, so this is not so new.

9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend. As the kids would say, WTF?

10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority … unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet. Oh, I think xenophobia still matters especially in poli sci classes.

11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis. That has been true for nearly forever. 

12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry. Ok, that is a significant cultural change.

13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation. For a year maybe.  Jeez, this list is out of touch.

Overwhelming Guilt

Do I feel overwhelming guilt for arguing for xenophobia's upside in my book with Bill (the non-terrorist) Ayres: For Kin or Country?  One part of the book's argument is that people will be less enthused about bringing back "lost territories" if they consider success to be the equivalent of a large wave of immigration, as they will not want to share their country with these "others."  Even if these others speak the same language as long as their shared identity has weakened a bit over time. 

The conclusion was that what was bad for domestic peace might be good for international stability, so xenophobia might not be always a net negative.  But now I am stuck watching the xenophobes running amok in the US.  Is it ok, in the larger scheme of things?  No.  Why?  Because there are no positives to American xenophobia.  There has been little risk of American irredentism ever or manifest destiny lately (since 1898 or so), whereas a bit of domestic hatred (towards Roma, Jews, gays, Muslims, whatever) might be compensated by regional peace in Eastern Europe.

Still, the anti-Muslim fever in the US, fanned by those who have nothing positive to stand for, is appalling, and makes me perhaps a bit more reluctant to be flippant about xenophobia.  The good news is that we can divert the American people from these demagogues with this video:

Mad Men: Rejected?

Funny that the title of this week's Mad Men is rejected, as not all advances were rejected and some folks made progress.  Again, for a thorough review, see Sepinwall.  But for a few quick thoughts, see below the break:

Best Military Advice

General Petraeus is making the news for saying that he might recommend against a quick withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. Why?

“Certainly, yes,” he said when the show’s host, David Gregory, asked him if, depending on how the war was proceeding, he might tell the president that a drawdown should be delayed. “The president and I sat down in the Oval Office, and he expressed very clearly that what he wants from me is my best professional military advice.”

Some might compare this to McChrystal's criticisms of Biden's views.  Petraeus is much more experienced at this game and has more legitimacy, based on past experience.   And he is speculating about the future.  One where Obama has not really promised a fast drawdown but a re-evaluation of the impact of the surge (which begins in December).  So, Petraeus is defining his role appropriately--to give the unvarnished best advice he can give to the President.  Then it is up to the President to decide.  Petraeus will have to show that there is progress being made, despite Karzai's best efforts to show that he ain't changing.  That is the real problem, right now. 

We expected violence to go up as more and more Americans poured into the country, increasing the tempo of operations and the number of folks who can be targeted.  So, this spike in violence was anticipated, just as violence spiked in Iraq during the outset of the surge.  But will the guys now holding territory face a decline in violence that is not merely seasonal (things slow down in winter)? 

Again, this gets at metrics--what is progress?  How do you measure it?  And which indicators matter most?  Since the campaign is multi-dimensional (military, governance, development, international), if one is failing miserably on one (say, governance with Karzai undermining anti-corruption efforts), does that doom the effort?

The only clear thing right now is that Obama is in a difficult spot--pulling out has huge consequences, but staying is just becoming increasingly costly.  If Petraeus can show to the American people that progress is being made, that should reduce the political costs of sticking around.  But Petraeus is no magician--if there is little progress, then there will be a limit to how much he can spin it.

Somebody Is Planning Ahead

“Reunification will definitely come,” Mr. Lee said in a speech marking the 65th anniversary of the Koreans’ liberation from 35 years of Japanese colonial rule. “I believe that the time has come to start discussing realistic policies to prepare for that day such as a reunification tax.”

 Stunning.  Raising taxes is never popular, but to propose them for a possibility that is pretty far down the road is amazing.  And the neighbor is not going to like either:

Analysts expected an angry North Korean response.
“North Korea will take a unification tax as the expression of a South Korean attempt to prepare for a sudden collapse of the North Korean government,” said Kim Yong-hyun, an analyst at Dongguk University in Seoul.

 So, of course, the big question is: why now?  Is this part of the tit-for-tat after the North Koreans sank a South Korean Ship in May?  Perhaps.  Is this a domestic political ploy?  Probably not as tax increases never play well, especially when the benefits go to someone else.  Could this be a sincere effort by a politician to pay now for something that is going to be costly down the road?  Oh my, this could utterly shake my belief system.  Bears further observation.

Old But Slow

I have been noticing articles and podcasts with a common theme lately: when is an athlete too old and too diminished to keep on playing.  Why?  Perhaps because I have had a few bad games of ultimate lately.  I have long been too slow to play great defense, and I have never had great ups to out-sky people.  So, what has changed?  Well, since most of my game has been in my throws and decision-making, it could be my arm or my head.  If the latter, then it is good news as I can learn and try to make better decisions.  If the former, then it is probably part of a decline.  And my elbow does get sore now, so perhaps I have lost a bit on my fastball and my distance throws, and my head has not yet caught up to that reality.

Is it time for me to hang it up?  No, not yet.  I am not yet Willy Mays wandering around centerfield in 1973.  But my days in the A league may be coming to an end.  The key to being a handler--one of two or three point-guards/quarterbacks is know one's own limitations.  My limits are changing, and I now I have to learn the new ones and adjust. The good news is that I have never been in good shape, so I don't have to worry about that.

Bush and Obama on CT

The challenge of terrorism in the aftermath of 9/11 is the absence of easy and good choices.  The NYT has a piece addressing the secret side of things.  It includes one long sentence that presents the downsides of engaging in the secret side:

 Yet such wars come with many risks: the potential for botched operations that fuel anti-American rage; a blurring of the lines between soldiers and spies that could put troops at risk of being denied Geneva Convention protections; a weakening of the Congressional oversight system put in place to prevent abuses by America’s secret operatives; and a reliance on authoritarian foreign leaders and surrogates with sometimes murky loyalties.

The funny thing is that people are surprised that Obama would be pursuing counter-terrorism with a similar kind of enthusiasm and with similar use of secret sauce as the Bush Administration.  While they have perhaps not identical attitudes about executive authority, Bush and Obama have faced similar sets of ugly choices.  Bush could not and Obama cannot be seen as being weak on counter-terrorism.  The domestic costs of a severe attack would be huge--politically. 

 When terrorists threaten Americans, Mr. Zenko said, “there is tremendous pressure from the National Security Council and the Congressional committees to, quote, ‘do something.’ ”

 In terms of means, the US tends to focus too much on the military side--that counter terrorism is multi-dimensional.  Of course, multi-dimensionality means that military tools are part of any strategy, and, given the nature of the threat--individuals and sub-state groups--using special ops and other less conventional and more secretive tools/tactics is inevitable.

People tend to forget that Obama did not pose as a pacifist during the campaign--he was opposed to Iraq but promised to stay in Afghanistan and engage in counter-terrorism.  Being a Liberal does not mean one has to be squishy.  But the administration could do a better job of allowing oversight to take place.  Fighting hard does not mean you have to fight without any oversight.  It might be easier but not necessarily better.  We could use some of those values in Obama's Mosque speech here.

Better Late than Never?

Obama came out on the NYC Mosque controversy.  Given some time, he then articulates the issue clearly and persuasively:

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

the reason that we will win this fight is not simply the strength of our arms – it is the strength of our values. The democracy that we uphold. The freedoms that we cherish. The laws that we apply without regard to race or religion; wealth or status. Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect to those who are different from us – a way of life that stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today. 

Obama, combining the 1st and 14th amendments, separation of church and state and equal protection under the law, does not help me resolve which amendment is my favorite.  Nate Silver shows that this is not as brave a stand as we might have thunk as even a Fox News poll shows that more than sixty percent of Americans do buy into the 1st amendment.  Still, Obama does the nation a service by putting the Islamophobes back into a corner (under their rock?).

Scott Pilgrim and the Rolling Stones

The Spew family is most jazzed about Scott Pilgrim, perhaps the movie we have looked forward to the most this summer (since HP 7.1 is in the fall).  It is getting good reviews, including from the part of the NYT review that always indicates its appropriateness (what kind of sex and violence): “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Violent like a video game, sexy like a pop song on the radio."


And anytime we can combine a hot movie with The Watcher and a key Stones lyric, I am all in.  Indeed, I have used that line in my IR classes about the limits of cooperation--you cannot always get what you want, but sometimes you can get what you need.

Is The Right Getting More Clever?

Yesterday, I pondered whether the Prop 8 folks fell into a trap.  It turns out that they may have realized this themselves, as there is not a line to appear the judge's decision. 

Barton: Right now the damage is limited to California only, but if California appeals this to the US Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court with Kennedy will go for California, which means all 31 states will go down in flames, although right now this decision is limited only to California.
So there's an effort underway to say "California, please don't appeal this. I mean, if you appeal this, its bad for you guys but live with it, but don't cause the rest of us to have to go down your path."

It is a gamble, but it would be fun to see Gov. Schwarzenegger mess with the right that has been so critical of him and appeal the decision, hoping to get the Supremes to rule against these kinds of laws.  Of course, this is more wishful thinking on my part.  If there is no appeal, California improves as a wedding/honeymoon destination for gay couples.  I wonder if that will appear in the next California tourism ads starting the governator.

The Future or Past of Military-Financed Research

In Canada, the Security and Defence Forum [SDF] has been supporting scholarly research of the Canadian miltiary and other security and defense issues.  To be clear, it does not support the development of new weapons technology (other agencies do that).  The money has gone to a dozen or more research centres throughout Canada based at universities from coast to coast.  Money also goes directly to fund research and conferences through special projects grants (see below) and graduate students. 

The general idea is that Canadian public policy is better off if there is a community of scholars who study defence issues.  For instance, before World War II, few democracies had much academic depth in the study of security issues.  After the war, there developed in the US and elsewhere more and more scholarship to understand the causes and consequences of war, alliances, military doctrine, procurement, and a host of other security issues. 

Why blog about this now?  Because SDF is about to get axed, apparently.  It would save the Canadian military $2.5 million.  Which, even in Canada, is chump change in terms of defense budget savings.  SDF has faced this threat before, seen by some as funding cheerleaders in academic world, that having the military fund research is ethically problematic, that there are other agencies to fund social science (the Social Science Humanities Research Council [SSHRC] to name the major one), and so forth. 

Let me reveal what SDF has done for me to be clear about my biases:

Wishful Thinking?

I have been thinking for quite some time that the demagogues on the right  have been overplaying their hands on immigration and Islamophobia.  I have been hoping that this is more of Obama's rope-a-dope strategy--give the dopes enough rope to hang themselves.  Is this just wishful thinking?  At a time where economic trends are pretty depressing, where there are lots of real problems with difficult choice sets, it is perhaps easy to rely upon fear and blame-casting.  But is it good politics?

That is, we may find that short term polling indicates that many Americans will buy into Islamophobia, but will this really lead to support for the Republicans this fall and beyond?  How do we reconcile these polls registering intolerance (and fundamentally anti-American attitudes) with other polls that suggest progressive attitudes winning?  Gay marriage is more popular than ever!  Ok, that is a bit much, but more Americans are supporting the right of gays to marry than ever before.

I pondered last night with my wife--did the Prop 8 folks fall into a trap or at least generate unintentional consequences?  By restricting the rights of a minority, these folks created opportunities for that minority to seek redress through the courts.  If this goes all the way to the Supreme Court, which is now very likely, it may (just may, no certainty) lead the Court to rule that equal protection under the law requires non-discrimination against gay marriage.  And wouldn't that be ironic/karmic for the voices of intolerance to spark a process that leads to greater tolerance?  Or am I wishful thinking again?

One last note of irony--there is now a small movement to alter the 14th Amendment that grants American citizenship to all those born on US territory.  The funny thing is that it causes folks to overlook the real power of this amendment: Equal Protection.  This amendment is now rivaling the 1st Amendment as my personal favorite.

Here We Go Again

NYT has an article about the uncertainty of the next milestone (or is that benchmark) in Afghanistan's political development: parliamentary elections.  There are concerns that it will go just about as well as last year's Presidential election.  This is the first but not the last story about how difficult the security situation is for an election and how these challenges will just facilitate yet more corruption.

Too early to say right now, but could it possibly be worse than what happened last year? 

“We know it’s not Switzerland,” said Staffan de Mistura, the special representative of the United Nations secretary general for Afghanistan. “But I am concerned, and I am raising a yellow flag.”

Oh, forget I asked.

Viral Madnews

I have marveled over the past couple of years about the spread of various video clips on youtube and elsewhere from strange marriage vows to Star Wars parodies.  The pace has gotten to be so fast that we now go from stunt to revealed hoax to getting behind the scenes of the hoax in about 24 hours.  The latest is the Jenny and her whiteboard resignation bit.  Truly an enjoyable set of pics (not even video).  And now we have a CBS.com interview with the actress and the creator. 

This is one of those days where I wish I was a sociologist. I'd love to see what kinds of stuff get the most play and when.  Clearly, the Jenny (what is it about Jenny?  I still know her phone number--867-5309)* here gets much play given the economic context--lots of frustration over lousy jobs, few jobs, economic distress, etc.  I am sure there is already a grad student out there trying to figure this out.  But, of course, the problem is, as the kids say, the FAIL cases--which stuff does not spread.

Two last comments: the interviewer here is a bit weak: "Do you like the internet?"  And The Chive?  Really?  How far from the The Onion?  Hmmm.  I do like the site's humility: "Probably the Best Site in the World."





*  There is a website dedicated to a guy trying the number throughout the US.