Mike is pretty non-plussed with the replacement mascots being proposed by the administration (and, I for one, basically agree, even though unlike Mike I think the Colonel is embarassing—though I’m more embarassed by the idiots who rally around him than the Colonel image itself). My solution is basically the same one I proposed for the flag mess: replace it with nothing. We don’t need a state flag and we certainly don’t need a mascot. I mean, Auburn’s got six of them but, in the end, they’re still stuck with Tommy Tuberville.

The SEC FanBlog has a post on this as well.

Stephen Green links to this Roger L. Simon post that alleges:

What we are witnessing is the beginning—the early movement—in the death of the two-party system as we know it. This is a revolt of the pragmatic center. And that is a good thing for the American people because those parties and the media that feed on them have indeed become a form of nomenklatura. They depend on each other. They are the mutual gate keepers of an old and sclerotic bureaucracy from which their jobs flow in a system of patronage as elaborate as the Czar’s. No wonder watching CNN tonight I felt as if I were watching a wake. They are threatened by what is going on—as they should be.

I don’t know that I believe that. Any good political scientist will tell you that we’re probably overdue for a realignment—but realignments rotate the societal cleavage lines, finding a new way to split the center; they generally don’t produce “the pragmatic center” versus “everyone else.”

Realignments are fundamentally about changes in the issues that separate voters between the parties. Now, maybe the “war/no-war” issue is a possible realignment pivot; I honestly don’t know. It certainly sees political figures of all stripes squabbling within their own parties more than usual. But that’s not anything to do with the “pragmatic center.”

Yet, arguably, the pragmatic center won in California. That was largely due to the ballot format, and in particular due to the fact that party activists were not the gatekeepers for candidates to receive a major-party label on the replacement ballot. Look at the figures: six of the top seven candidates in the replacement ballot had a party affiliation, and five of the seven were affiliated with a major party; the top five major party candidates received 94.3% of the vote, the Green party candidate received 2.8%, while the highest independent tally (0.6%) was for Huffington, who essentially ran as a Democrat. If primary voters, comprised mostly of Republican and Democratic activists, had been able to be gatekeepers for the ballot—as they are in virtually every other partisan election in the United States—chances are the “pragmatic center” option wouldn’t have even made it on the ballot, even though it’s fairly clear Schwarzenegger was the Pareto winner* of the election.

Unless the pragmatic center can break down these barriers to entry for their preferred candidates, or establish a viable third party label (something Schwarzenegger probably isn’t interested in heading, particularly after the Ventura debacle), chances are that the major parties—and particularly the party activists who control them—will continue to win almost all elections.

Pieter Dorsman of Peaktalk has some interesting thoughts on this topic as well, including a cautionary tale about single-party democracy in his adopted homeland. And, I particularly like Matthew’s reaction to something Michael J. Totten said:

This isn't really recall-related, but Michael Totten follows up on Simon's post with a "can't we all just be nonpartisan?" plea, and cites increasing complexity as a reason to move toward a more nuanced politics. That's fine for folks like Michael, but there's a downside to increased complexity—most consumers of political information have little time to think about complexity, and instead receive their information in little bite-sized pieces. It's this famine of depth which encourages hyperpartisanship, as gut reactions predominate over reason. If anything, the trend isn't toward the death of the two-party system as we know it, but toward the creation of an increasingly polarized and anti-intellectual pair of party masses, along with a highly informed politically moderate elite (i.e. folks like Michael and Roger), who occupy the position of “kingmaker” in future elections.

That sounds about—and, dare I say, scarily—right.

Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds’ semi-blog at MSNBC thinks the recall is an effective way to upset special interest politics-as-usual; I think that, again, goes to the format of the ballot, which allowed a moderate figure to run with a party label without significant initial support from that party’s activists. The other major candidates, however, were in hock to established state interests: Bustamante with the Old Left and racial unity groups, McClintock with the Christian right, and Camejo and Huffington with the Sierra Clubbers. In any event, generally speaking I don’t have a problem with organized interests influencing politics, even if the playing field could be made more level. (And I’d slightly quibble with Mancur Olson’s interpretation of Japan’s interest group structure; by the accounts I’ve read, the post-war kieretsu were not too different from the business cross-holdings prior to the war. Olson’s probably correct when it comes to the bigger picture, however.)

Tyler Cowen has the scoop on the Economics Nobel prizes, which are being given to the inventors of two time-series econometrics techniques: ARCH and cointegration. As Tyler points out, Granger is more famous (perhaps even infamous) for his contribution of the concept of “Granger causality”; the typical joke is that, by the Granger defintion, summer “Granger-causes” fall (or autumn, if you don’t live in North America).

Anyway, very cool stuff; I’m not a time-series guy myself, mainly because there isn’t all that much great cross-sectional time-series data on mass political behavior at the individual level, but ARCH and cointegration are a big deal for political scientists looking at things like presidential approval and aggregate voting behavior over time, and the Nobel is well-deserved by both.

Via Calblog, I found this neat county-by-county map of the recall results; there’s all sorts of cool tables available here. It’d be nice if our state could put together something similar for this year’s gubernatorial race too.

Rather than talk about the California recall results directly—a topic I can add little to the existing discussion on anyway—I’ll just point to my August post on how recalls are compatible with representative democracy. And if California Democrats want to try to kickstart a new recall election against Schwarzenegger immediately—something they can probably gather enough signatures for to qualify for the ballot, but will probably have major problems attracting support from the voters (and which probably will be an unneeded distraction in a year when the party will need to focus on getting out the state’s vote for a Democratic nominee)—more power to them.

Kevin Drum also thinks an Arnold recall would be a distraction from the Democrats’ 2004 campaign.

Just speaking for myself, the more whining I hear out of Democrats about “stolen elections” the more likely I am to vote for Bush just to spite them—bearing in mind that now, frankly, I could probably easily be convinced to vote for a sane Democrat like Joe Lieberman or even Serb-warlord-coddler Wes Clark. So, yes, California—and the maturity of Democrats’ response to having an ineffectual, embarassing governor of their own party who was a willing captive of Old Left interest groups quite deservedly tossed from office—will matter for me, and many other fence-straddlers, in 2004.

Today’s Memphis Commercial Appeal contains a typical rendition of one of the fundamental problems with the newspaper: it confuses the op-ed page with a forum for writing news pieces that are completely unsourced. Today’s example: its editorial on the selection of a route for Interstate 69 through the city, which somehow in 527 words manages to avoid taking a position on absolutely anything. Let’s start at the beginning:

AN ADVISORY committee’s proposed route for the extension of Interstate 69 through metropolitan Memphis offers a compromise that should provide some satisfaction to the highway’s proponents in Tennessee as well as Mississippi. The recommended route is actually two routes: one through downtown Memphis that would get the I-69 designation and an outer loop to be called I-269.

Indeed it should. Did it occur to anyone at the CA to interview these proponents so we can be sure? Or are we just engaging in wild speculation here?

Officials in Mississippi, backed by the state’s congressional delegation, say they would prefer a horseshoe-shaped loop for I-69 between Millington and Hernando to improve transportation and bring new economic activity to eastern DeSoto and Marshall counties. Memphis officials have not opposed an I-69 bypass, but have lobbied for a downtown route for the new highway, which eventually will link Canada to Mexico through eight U.S. states.

Well, the basic facts, at least, aren’t in question.

Much of the Shelby County portion of the proposed outer loop is built or under construction. The Tenn. 385 loop, which includes Paul Barret Parkway, would become I-269 at Millington, connecting to a new section of Tenn. 385 that is under construction between Arlington and Collierville.

It might have been worthwhile to clarify that part of Tenn. 385—the Nonconnah Parkway—won’t become part of I-269. That, you know, would actually be informative.

South of Collierville, a road would have to be built through the northwest corner of Marshall County and across northeast DeSoto County. The new road would cross I-55 north of Hernando. Work on the highway west of that point is under way, with grading, drainage and bridge work on the stretch that runs from U.S. 61 to Interstate 55 expected to be complete by November 2004.

Good to know our friends at the CA at least read the DeSoto Times, as a reader of the CA wouldn’t actually know this from their previous reporting on the topic. (For the record, we’re four paragraphs in, and there has yet to appear a single opinion.)

Much of its route through Memphis is paved. From Millington, a new stretch of the highway would be built to just below Frayser, following a path west of U.S. 51. From there it would use existing freeways, starting with the connector between U.S. 51 and the I-40/240 loop, merging with I-40/240 and then following I-55 South, picking up I-269 traffic north of Hernando, then heading southwest into the Mississippi Delta.

“Much of its route through Memphis is paved?” And the rest is a cowpath? Are there dirt freeways in Shelby County?

Temporarily, the new highway would be a welcome addition to the regional transportation system for suburban Memphis residents. Local commuters spent an average of 36 hours waiting in traffic in 2001, according to a report released last week by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. That’s about 15 hours less than the average urban commuter wasted, but no doubt more than the typical local commuter would prefer.

As the I-69 project encourages more development on the fringes of the metropolitan area, however, its advantages to the commuting public will wane. Particularly in Marshall and DeSoto counties, where new stretches of roadway would be built, I-269 could exacerbate the urban sprawl that has had considerable impact on the quality of life, culture and economics of Memphis and surrounding communities.

Never mind that Mississippi officials already planned to build a freeway along the I-269 route anyway, starting in 2009. Besides which, I suspect most people in Marshall and DeSoto counties prefer the “urban sprawl” to what was there before, since those counties didn’t really have much of an economy before it.

Interestingly enough, the Commercial Appeal isn’t very upset about a new stretch of roadway between Memphis and Millington, which is likely to be a larger sprawl magnet, seeing as that area will be much more accessible to downtown than southeastern DeSoto County is. One suspects they’re on better terms with Millington City Hall.

And the environmental impact of the highway has not been sufficiently explored. The road’s proponents maintain I-269 could have a positive effect on air quality, by relieving some of the congestion that a single, downtown route would create. Its effects on wetlands and farms could become sources of contention, though, before a final decision is made.

Uh, I call bullshit. The Tennessee and Mississippi departments of transportation have been studying the highway proposal in detail since December 2000. They have produced a Draft Environmental Impact Statement that discusses the “effects on wetlands and farms,” among other topics, which will be (a) very large and comprehensive and (b) available at area libraries later this fall, once it is approved by the Federal Highway Administration.

By late this year, a draft environmental impact statement must go to the Federal Highway Administration. Public hearings early next year could finally provide the information needed to determine what’s best for Memphis and neighboring communities.

Uh, hello? The Technical Advisory Committee has already determined “what’s best for Memphis and neighboring communities.” That’s why they made the decision to go with the “system alternative.” The public hearings are designed to determine whether the public agrees with that choice—there have already been two other sets of public meetings designed to find out what alternatives the public would like to see considered.

By the way, that’s where this “editorial” ends. What does the CA think? Who knows? But if you’re going to be an opinion leader, it probably helps to have an opinion in the first place.

One of the things that critics who accuse America of being an imperial power should consider—repeatedly—is that the United States has not engaged in a war for territorial acquisition since 1898, and has given, or at least offered, independence to every territory captured since the Mexican-American War. The states of Western Europe and Japan were restored to sovereignty, and left free to their own devices, even when those aims contradicted ours; to name just two examples, Japan was left free to erect high barriers to imports from America, while France was allowed to pursue an independent foreign policy that often is at odds with that of the United States. Imperial powers don’t tolerate these sorts of things, as the Hungarians and Czechs could testify about their Russian overseers or Tibetans (and, increasingly, the people of Hong Kong and Macau) could point out about their masters in Beijing.

Another data point, from Glenn Reynolds: Reuters reports that Iraq’s civilian authorities want a GSM-based mobile phone system; GSM technology is generally produced by European manufacturers, while the rival CDMA system has strong backing from American companies. It will be Iraq’s first public mobile phone network, as the Saddam Hussein regime did not permit use of mobile phones by members of the public.

Of course, Reuters never misses a chance to accentuate the negative:

A functioning national phone system, which Iraq has lacked since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April, could also allow guerrillas fighting the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq to organize themselves better on a national level. The U.S. Army says guerrilla groups are only locally organized at present.

For good measure, it also notes:

The choice of Kuwaiti companies to help run the phone network is a controversial one in a country where many Iraqis still resent their small southern neighbor after years of tension following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

No Iraqis, of course, are quoted as finding this decision “controversial.”

Reuters spends much of the report going off on complete tangents that have nothing to do with mobile phones, discussing such disparate topics as unemployment, Vladimir Putin, and a U.N. draft resolution on Iraqi reconstruction.

RCR News has a report with additional details (which, somehow, manages to stay on-topic).

Pete Holiday has written a recap of Week 6 in the SEC, which saves me that chore for this week. Predictions will be forthcoming later.

One thing I will quibble with is that nobody seems to be giving Ole Miss any credit for the win. Perhaps Zook made some questionable calls—I probably would have passed more—but if there’s a rule of coaching, it’s to stick with your game plan, and the way Leak was passing late, he probably would have thrown more picks if Zook went to the air earlier. But, if you look at the stat book, the Gator offense doesn’t look that bad: 376 yards is hardly a sign of offensive weakness, the O-line only conceded one sack, and they went 3 for 4 in the red zone.

Even on defense, the Gators didn’t look that bad. Florida essentially shut down the Rebels’ go-to receiver, Chris Collins, for much of the game (he was held to 5 catches for 72 yards, and didn’t catch a pass until 24 minutes into the game on the drive where UF intercepted the ball). Maybe the defensive line failed to stop a few running plays that they should have, and perhaps the secondary wasn’t prepared for the best passing quarterback they’d seen to date.

But, in the end you have to give some credit to the Rebels, who were down 14-3 early and could have just folded their tents and went home. Instead, they made some adjustments, came out, and played to win the game. Ole Miss may have been mediocre early in the season, but they weren’t mediocre on Saturday when it counted, and now they’re the only team who’s 2-0 in conference road games this season.

Since our European “allies” are such big fans of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, as Michele suggests, let me make a proposal: free Mumia, strip him of his American citizenship, and exile him permanently to France. If we’re really lucky, he’ll kill Roman Polanski, which will (a) solve the problem of getting Roman back to answer those child molestation charges and (b) prove once and for all that Mumia is just a run-of-the-mill, murdering scumbag who happens to possess a modicum of literacy. What’s not to love?

Matthew points out the inevitable fly in the ointment—that Mumia would be fêted as a great hero. I suspect the more likely outcome is that Mumia would be a short-term fetish object for the hard Euroleft and then fade quickly into oblivion after they moved onto the next cause-of-the-week—at least, until such time as Mumia convinced himself of his inherent badassitude and got himself killed venturing into the slums of Marseilles.

After six weeks, things are starting to become a bit clearer in the SEC races, particularly in the East. So it’s time to handicap the teams and try to figure out who’s going to Atlanta, who’s going bowling, and who’s staying home.

In the East, the title race is essentially down to Georgia and Tennessee. Both teams have one loss against a non-division foe. Barring a collapse down the stretch, the winner of Saturday’s contest between these two teams should be the East’s representative in the title game. South Carolina has the talent to win the title, but division losses to both Georgia and Tennessee mean that both must have at least 3 conference losses for the Gamecocks to travel to Atlanta. Florida’s condition is almost as critical, having conceded the tiebreaker to the Volunteers. Lurking in the wings is Kentucky, who at least don’t have division losses to the leaders (yet) but seem unlikely to run the table. Vanderbilt needs to win 5 of 6 to even be eligible to appear in a bowl game, and barring a miracle (victories over all five of their division opponents, coupled with at least one more loss each by the Dawgs and Vols) the Commodores aren’t winning the division. Georgia and Tennessee will almost certainly be going to major bowls (and, if one of these teams wins out, it still has an outside chance at a Sugar Bowl appearance); South Carolina probably will earn a bowl appearance as well. Kentucky and Florida’s bowl prospects are more uncertain.

In the West, things are decidedly more interesting. LSU would appear to have the inside track, with a 2-0 conference mark, being the only undefeated SEC team left, and having some of its most severe conference tests (Florida, Auburn, and final game Arkansas) at home in Death Valley. Arkansas, however, has also looked impressive early in non-conference play, Auburn has apparently turned around their season from a lackluster start, and the offensive line and secondary of Ole Miss finally seem to have figured out how to put the Rebels in a position to win. All of these teams currently are undefeated in conference play, although that won’t last long, with Auburn travelling to Fayetteville on Saturday. Barring disaster, all of these teams should see postseason play, with LSU almost certain to appear in the Sugar Bowl if it runs the table. Alabama remains ineligible for a conference title or a bowl appearance. Mississippi State, despite breaking a nine-game losing streak at home against Vanderbilt this weekend, is unlikely to be bowl-eligible with a 1-5 mark.

Looking ahead, Georgia should have the SEC East title wrapped up after the Florida game November 1st. The West race is likely to come down to the final week, with Arkansas going into Baton Rouge facing LSU for the conference title game berth. Given the reputation of the West for having bruising divisional contests, Auburn or Ole Miss could easily gain an edge—the Rebels have already won two of their four conference road games, never an easy feat in the SEC, while Auburn has the most potent ground game in the division. But for now, I think the most likely outcome is a Georgia-LSU rematch in the Georgia Dome, with Georgia winning the conference for the second straight year.

Gary Farber points out a New York Times piece that, while going out of its way to kiss Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet’s ass, indicates Valerie Plame had a ‘non-official cover’, which is CIA-speak for “Plame posed as a civilian expert under her own name while actually working for the CIA.”

Now, assuming this is true, the obvious question is why anyone with Robert Novak’s phone number in their Rolodex would know this. Novak may have some cachet as a columnist, but his shifting politics over the years suggest he should have few friends in this—or any other—administration. It’s even more puzzling why her CIA job would apparently have been common knowledge in Washington circles if Plame did have a non-official cover—or, for that matter, why an undercover operative would draw attention to herself by making donations to political candidates that must be disclosed to the public by law.

Frankly, I think the only way this mess is going to get sorted out is if the FBI and/or Congress follow Glenn Reynolds’ suggestion and start subpeonaing the journalists involved in breaking this story, starting with Novak. And, if they don’t like it, maybe they should put the heat on their sources. And, in the end, I suspect these sources will look a heck of a lot more like David Kelley than Karl Rove—two small fish whose reputations were puffed up to make a story sound more sensational than it really was.

Dan Drezner, as always, has the latest on the machinations surrounding the Plame/Wilson affair. I don’t have too much to add, since I’m immersed in a fun college football Saturday that has seen the David Cutcliffe Season Survival Meter (current value, as always, in the sidebar) skyrocket by no less than 25 points.

I have become convinced that for blogging to go mainstream, first it must overtake that other pretender to the journalistic throne, the alternative newsweekly (or alt-weekly for short). To do that, we must determine what makes the alt-weekly successful.

Rather than the obvious possibilities—lengthy, one-sided articles on progressive causes, an editorial slant that considers Tom Tomorrow the necessary counterbalance to the opposing ideology espoused by Ted Rall, the gratuitous use of four-letter words, a level of commitment to journalistic ethics that would make Jayson Blair blush, or the savvy copyediting skill that somehow makes every serious news story jump to the page with the ads for the titty bars on it*—I believe alt-weeklies succeed primarily because of the innovation of the “I Saw You” (ISY) personals ad.

So, in order to compete, I present Signifying Nothing’s first ISY ad.

You: cute girl waiting behind me at Papa John’s on Jackson Avenue around 9:50 p.m. while I futzed with the debit card receipt.
Me: well, you got here, so you’ve probably figured it out by now.

Now to get the bugs worked out…

It’s a good thing after all that I stopped back by work this evening, as OS X 10.2.8 has come back from the dead (after being pulled about ten days ago due to some networking problems). Not quite as smooth as typing apt-get upgrade, but then again, what is?

Apologies for the light posting; I’ve been busy working on integrating some changes into the department web site. More posting soon (I think)...

KENTUCKY [2-2/0-1] 24, Florida [2-2/0-1] 17 [JP].

21-24; Kentucky somehow blows the fourth-quarter lead, extending Florida's streak to 17 games in the series.

ALABAMA [2-2/1-0] 27, Arkansas [3-0/0-0] 14 [CBS].

31-34, double OT. Arkansas pulls off the road win in Tuscaloosa, not the easiest thing to do.

AUBURN [1-2/1-0] 35, Western Kentucky [3-0] 17.

48-3; Auburn has now put together two impressive performances against lower-calibre teams after some early disappointments. We'll see if that lasts this week…

VANDERBILT [1-3/0-1] 17, Georgia Tech [1-3/0-2] 14 [PPV].

17-24, OT. Vandy has come oh-so-far, but not-so-far-enough.

TENNESSEE [3-0/1-0] 31, South Carolina [3-1/0-1] 17 [ESPN].

23-20, OT. The Gamecocks put up a good fight at Rocky Top.

Louisiana State [4-0/1-0] 45, MISSISSIPPI STATE [0-3/0-0] 7 [ESPN2].

41-6. Really nothing to say about this one, folks; it was just sad.

OLE MISS [2-1/1-0] 38, Texas Tech [2-1] 21 [Webcast only].

45-49. As-billed, a big shootout. The Rebel secondary continues to get burned for big plays; however, the killer was the lack of red-zone offense that led to 18 of the Rebels' 45 points coming from field goals.

Where does this put everyone in the standings? UT holds the lead in the SEC East at 2-0, with Florida and Georgia tied at 1-1, while everyone eligible for the conference title in the West (except Mississippi State) is undefeated in SEC play. That, however, won't last long. Realistically, the East is down to UT and Georgia already (with Florida with an outside shot if UT collapses down the stretch), while it's still anyone's ticket to Atlanta in the West.

Only four games this week, all of which are East versus West showdowns, three of which are on TV. Starting at the JP game and working later in the schedule:

FLORIDA [3-2/1-1] 27, Ole Miss [2-2/1-0] 18 [JP/GamePlan]

Unless the Rebels' red zone offense drastically improves or the secondary figures out how to limit big plays, Chris Leak will look like the second coming of Johnny Unitas in the Swamp on Saturday. A must-win for both coaches (and for either team to have a shot at the SEC title game).

Vanderbilt [1-4/0-2] 21, MISSISSIPPI STATE [0-4/0-1] 10

Two SEC losing streaks are on the line here in Starkville. I see absolutely no evidence of life out of the Bulldogs, so I have to favor Vandy by default.

GEORGIA [3-1/1-1] 35, Alabama [2-3/1-1] 14 [CBS].

Bama's been all over the map this season. Georgia hasn't. 'Nuff said.

Tennessee [4-0/2-0] 31, AUBURN [2-2/1-0] 17 [ESPN].

Auburn has yet to prove it can win a game against decent opposition. UT, er, actually has won games against decent opposition.

Till next time…

By the way, Pete Holiday has a preview of the UT-Auburn matchup at the SEC Fanblog as well.

Pete Holiday at the SEC Fanblog takes a look at this Saturday’s matchup between Vanderbilt and Mississippi State in Starkville. One SEC losing streak has to come to an end in this one, and Pete gives the edge to the Commodores.

Henry Farrell, Daniel Drezner, David Adesnik, The Invisible Adjunct, Erin O‘Connor and Jacob Levy (whew—did I get everyone?) are among those discussing David Brooks’ latest NYT op-ed on the alleged liberal bias of the academy, particularly in its hiring practices. (I previously blogged about this topic back when Horowitz was making his splash but can’t be bothered to search for the post. Oh, well.)

I think Jacob Levy is onto something when he writes:

What we do is also: research. It’s always been pretty clear to me that there are people who have the reputation of subordinating their research to an ideological mission, and doing bad research as a result.

I think the danger for a lot of scholars—on the left and the right—is that they will fall into this trap. However, it’s a much more deadly one for rightist scholars than leftist ones; I can recall a particular gathering at which one particular political science faculty member was fawning over Michael Bellesiles’ then-new (and then-undiscredited) Arming America; one suspects my colleagues were not quite so entralled by John Lott’s (also-then-undiscredited) More Guns, Less Crime. In the medium-to-long term, Bellesiles is likely to resurface relatively unscathed somewhere in second-tier academia, while Lott will be most fortunate if he ever sees a room with students in it again in his life. Of course, neither of these men are political scientists (just as well, I suppose, since that means we don’t have to disavow them).

I’ve been relatively fortunate in my career to fall in with faculty who, if they don’t share my political beliefs, can at least accept that they are legitimate and sincerely-held. I think it’s also the case that in more empirically-oriented parts of the social sciences, ideological differences don’t matter as much as what the data can tell us, provided we are honest researchers. After all, Johannes Kepler started out believing—as his mentor, Tycho Brahe did—that the Earth was the center of the universe, but ended up producing the laws of planetary motion for our sun-centered system that astronomers still use today.

The epitome of good science is a willingness to revise—and if necessary, reject—your preconceived notions if the evidence cannot support them. In the end, that is the only ideology that should matter.

The announcement of a new winter intersession here at the University of Mississippi is coupled with news that the fall and spring semesters will be a week shorter each, starting in Fall 2004. Anyone who’s suffered through our interminable semesters—either teaching or as a student—will be positively thrilled at this news. (Don’t get me wrong; I love teaching. But semesters that start two weeks before Labor Day and don’t end until mid-December are just a tad too long.)

The royal We at Signifying Nothing are proud to introduce a new feature: the David Cutcliffe Season Survival Meter! This is our predicted probability that David Cutcliffe will be the head coach of the Ole Miss Rebels for any game in the 2004 regular season.

We predict Cutcliffe’s survival odds at 0% if the Rebels lose six or more games, and 100% if the Rebels appear in the SEC Championship Game. To survive the season, we expect that the minimum requirements for Cutcliffe to last until 2004 are:

• Defeating homecoming foe Arkansas State.
• Defeating SEC West cellar-dweller Mississippi State on Thanksgiving.
• Defeating at least 3 of the 6 other SEC opponents.

We currently predict that Cutcliffe’s chances of pulling off this feat are 50%. The survival meter will appear on the sidebar for the remainder of the regular season, or until Cutcliffe is fired—whichever event occurs sooner.

I really don’t know what to make of this whole Valerie Plame business—I remember reading the original Novak piece God-knows-how-long-ago and found it a bit of a head-scratcher (to say the least). And I’m no more enlightened now, perhaps in part because of the four Tylenol PM’s I took last night that somehow knocked me out for a good eighteen hours. So I’ll just point you to Daniel Drezner’s post, which (a) has a good collection of links and (b) displays an appropriate balance between outrage and confusion.

I’ve been spending most of my morning trying to free up enough space to install the SimCity 4 Rush Hour Expansion Pack on my Windows 98 partition ($19.66 at Walmart, before the $10 mail-in rebate offer). So far I’ve:

• Accidentally blown away 50GB of Debian packages when I tried to use parted to resize a partition to free enough space to move my root partition.
• Faced mysterious crashes when using reiserfs for my new root partition that went away when I reformatted to use xfs instead. (Advantage: SGI.)
• Sat for two hours while reiserfs tried to reconstruct the tree of my old Debian package mirror disk (which currently won’t mount).
• Accidentally set the frontside bus speed of my motherboard to 133Mhz (because I forgot what processor I have in the machine… I’ve now concluded it’s a 1.15 GHz Athlon XP, and no I don’t know what PSR it has). That’s because I flashed my BIOS thinking that would fix the mysterious system crashes.
• Tried to pay my DirecTV bill online (I got a lovely “our systems are down” message).

Needless to say, I’m nowhere close to being able to play the game yet. Grr. And it remains to be seen whether I can actually resize the FAT32 partition my Win98 install lives on without accidentally blowing it away too. Which probably means I’m going to have to either find my original Win98 CD, or break down and install the copy of WinXP Pro I paid $50 for sometime last year I have lying around (which I was really hoping to save for… well, I don’t know what really).

David Adesnik has a response to the critiques of his earlier posts at OxBlog and the Volokh Conspiracy. He first notes that he’s just as annoyed by new data sets as by old ones:

Actually, I’m far more frustrated by the new data sets than the rehashing of the old ones. Just three days ago I was at a presentation in which a colleague described the data set she assembled on over 120 civil wars that have taken place since 1945. Since Latin America is the region I know best, I pulled the Latin American cases out of the data to set look at them.

What I found was that a very large proportion of the cases were “coded” in a misleading or flat-out wrong manner. Why? Because no one can study 120 civil wars. But pressure to come up with data sets leads scholars to do this anyway and do it poorly. Of course, since their work is evaluated mostly by other scholars who lack the historical knowledge to criticize their work, they get away with it. And so the academic merry-go-round spins merrily along.

That’s a fair and reasonable critique—of that particular dataset. There’s always a tradeoff between parsimony on the one hand and depth on the other. You can collect data on 120 civil wars, and try to explain with parsimony why—in general—civil wars occur, or you can soak and poke in one civil war and try to figure out all the myriad causes for that particular one. Each has its pitfalls; figuring out why Cambodia had a civil war in 1970 (my years are probably off, me not being an IR scholar) through a “soak and poke” really doesn’t help explain why Pakistan had one in 1973. On the other hand, oversimplifying the causes can be problematic too.

But that strikes me as more of a coding problem in a particular dataset than a problem endemic to social science research; ultimately, you have to simplify the real world to make scientific explanations of it. And this isn’t a problem unique to “soft” sciences like political science: physicists don’t really think light is composed of photons that are both a particle and a wave (for example), but the only way for humans to currently understand light is to model it that way, and chemists don’t think that nuclei are indivisible (but, for their purposes 99.9% of the time, they might as well be).

David does take me to task for my admittedly flip remark that Hamas was comparable to the Sierra Club:

With apologies to Chris, his comment summarizes everything that is wrong with political science. Who but a political scientist could think that ideology is not a good explanation for the differences between the Sierra Club and Hamas?

Both groups have fairly revolutionary ideologies, yet they pursue their ends through different means. The Sierra Club operates in an environment where at least some of its goals can be accomplished from within the existing political system, while Hamas’ goal is the obliteration of the existing political system in Israel and the Palestinian territories. One need not resort to ideology to see that the Sierra Club doesn’t need to engage in violence to pursue its goals while it’s pretty clear that for Hamas to produce revolutionary change in the former Palestinian mandate, it does.

That the goal has something to do with Hamas’ ideology is rather beside the point; they can’t accomplish it without obliterating the Israeli state through violent action. The Sierra Club, on the other hand, has a sympathetic political party, a regulatory agency whose civil service employees (if not its politically-appointed overseers) share its goals, and other sources of active support that mean that they can achieve their goal of reducing pollution and other environmental impacts without resorting to violence. Ideology may define the goal, but the goal itself will be pursued through means that are shaped by the political environment.

Of course, in some cases, ideology may affect the means chosen. But a theory of how Osama Bin Laden operates isn’t very generalizable; it only explains how Bin Laden behaves, without explaining how ETA, the Tamil Tigers, or the Real IRA operate. That’s the tradeoff—you can spend a lot of time trying to explain how one actor will behave, and nail that, or you can spend a lot of time explaining how multiple actors will behave, and maybe get close. Maybe Bin Laden deserves case study attention. But most political actors don’t; they’re frankly not that interesting.

For example, in-depth case study of how my neighbor across the street makes his voting decisions tells me next to nothing about how my next-door neighbors vote, much less how people vote in general. My resources are probably better spent trying to explain how most people vote from large-scale survey data, and getting close, rather than studying one person so I can predict precisely how he’ll vote in 2032.

Around Harvard, all one hears is that incorporating statistics into one’s work significantly increases one’s marketability (and I don’t just mean at the p<.05 level—we’re talking p<.01 on a one-tailed test.)

I will grant that the use of statistics—or more accurately, the demonstrated ability to use statistics—helps the marketability of political scientists. For one thing, this is because of hiring practices in political science—your primary or major field defines the sort of job you will get. Unless you are looking for a job at a small liberal arts college, no school that is hiring in IR will care if your second (minor) field is comparative, theory, or American, since you’ll never teach or do research in those fields. The exception is in political methodology: you can get a job in methods with a substantive major and a minor in methods. The downside (if you don’t like methods) is that you will be expected to teach methods. The upside is that you aren’t tied to a particular substantive field.

More to the point, in some fields it is difficult to do meaningful research without statistics. In mass political behavior and political psychology—my areas of substantive research—at least a modicum of statistical knowledge is de rigeur. Which brings me to Dan’s point:

I’d argue that the greater danger is the proliferation of sophisticated regression analysis software like STATA to people who don’t have the faintest friggin’ clue whether their econometric model corresponds to their theoretical model.

For every political scientist that knows what the hell they’re doing with statistics, there are at least two who think typing logit depvar ind1 ind2 ind3 at a Stata prompt is the be-all and end-all of statistical analysis. Frankly, a lot of the stats you see in top-flight journals are flaming crap—among the sins: misspecified models, attempts to make inferences that aren’t supported by the actual econometric model, acceptance of key hypotheses based on marginally significant p values, use of absurdly small samples, failure to engage in any post-estimation diagnostics. And, of course, “people who don’t have the faintest friggin’ clue whether their econometric model corresponds to their theoretical model.” Several thousand political scientists receive Ph.D.’s a year in the United States, and I doubt 20% of them have more than two graduate courses in quantitative research methods—yet an appreciable percentage of the 80% will pass themselves off as being quantitatively competent, which unless they went to a Top 20 institution, they’re almost certainly not.

David then trots out the flawed “APSR is full of quant shit” study, which conflates empirical quantitative research with positive political theory (game theory and other “rat choice” pursuits), which, as I’ve pointed out here before, are completely different beasts. Of course, the study relies on statistics (apparently, they’re only valid when making inferences about our own discipline), but let’s put that aside for the moment. The result of all this posturing is our new journal, Perspectives on Politics. Just in case our discipline wasn’t generating enough landfill material…

He then turns back to the civil war dataset his colleague is assembling:

Take, for example, the flaws in the civil war data set mentioned above. I’m hardly a Latin America specialist, but even some knowledge of the region’s history made it apparent that the data set was flawed. If political scientists had greater expertise in a given region, they would appreciate just how often in-depth study is necessary to get even the basic facts right. Thus, when putting together a global data set, no political scientist would even consider coding the data before consulting colleagues who are experts in the relevant regional subfields.

Undoubtably, this particular political scientist should have consulted with colleagues. What David seems to fail to understand is that she did: that is why your colleague presented this research to you and your fellow graduate students, to get feedback! Everything political scientists do, outside of job talks and their actual publications, is an effort to get feedback on what they’re doing, so as to improve it. This isn’t undergraduate political science, where you are expected to sit still and soak in the brilliance of your betters while trying not to drool or snore. You’re now a grad student, expected to contribute to the body of knowledge that we’ve been assembling—that’s the entire point of the exercise, even if it gets lost in the shuffle of “publish or perish” and the conference circuit.

And one way to do that is to say, “Yo, I think you have some coding errors here!” If this political scientist is worth her salt, instead of treating you like a snot nosed twit, she’ll say, “Gee, thanks for pointing out that the Colombian civil war had N participants instead of M” or “Cuba’s civil war was a Soviet-supported insurgency, not a indigenous movement? Thanks!” (Again, these are hypotheticals; I’m not an expert on Latin American history.)

As for the lag time in Pape’s piece, well that’s the peril of how the publication process works. If it’s anything like any other academic paper, it’s been through various iterations over several years; you don’t simply wake up one morning, write a journal article, and send it off to Bill Jacoby or Jennifer Hochschild. At least, not if you don’t want them to say nasty things about you to your colleagues. Anyway, you can fault the publication process to a point, but I think it’s a safe bet that Pape’s thesis predates 9/11, and that people were aware of it before his APSR piece hit the presses.

AstroPlay® vendor SRI Sports has a video of the installation of their artificial turf at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium this summer. (Yes, this means I’m getting anxious for Saturday’s game…)

James Joyner reports that Edward Said, Palestinian apologist cum Middle Eastern Studies scholar, has passed away at the age of 67. Reports that Said was “too sexy for his coffin” have not been substantiated.