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.

Daniel Drezner notes that David Adesnik is digging himself into a hole of rather epic proportions. Quoth Adesnik:

The great flaw of modern political science is its desire to imitate microeconomists (and share in their prestige) by developing theorems that explain and predict the behavior of rational actors. Of course, that is exactly the wrong way to go about things. It is only when political scientists recognize that ideas and values are what drive politicians and voters that they will begin to produce something worthy of the name “science”.

Huh? To begin with, in general political scientists—with very few exceptions—don’t believe all actors are purely rational; in Herbert Simon’s terms, actors are boundedly rational. It isn’t just political scientists who believe this—contemporary psychologists and economists also use Simon’s conception of bounded rationality and satisficing (the idea that people don’t choose among all available options, but rather choose the first one that they encounter that is minimally satisfactory) to explain decison-making, as well as more modern ideas.

For another thing, political scientists recognize that “ideas” and “values” have utility to rational actors. Quantifying these things is hard, and perhaps sometimes it is simpler to retreat to the realm of relative capabilities and force projection ability (to name two favorite variables of my friends that study international relations using data from the Correlates of War project), but to blanket the entire discipline with a critique that perhaps only applies to the most hardcore CoW junkie (and doesn’t even discuss the contributions of the political behavior field to the understanding of how citizens in democratic societies make voting and other political decisions or elite decision-making processes—not all political science goes on in the halls of ISA) seems awfully, and dangerously, simplistic.

Josh Chafetz, one of David’s partners in crime at OxBlog, has some good points (partially in David’s defense and partially critical) and usefully distinguishes between rational choice theorists and empiricists. But, honestly I’m not sure there are that many “universalist” rat choicers out there; I know a few, and they mostly lurk on the edge between political science and economics. Perhaps that perception reflects my training in the behaviorist (Michigan) tradition, though. But in general the ones I’ve met aren’t hostile to empirical testing of their ideas; it’s just not what they personally find interesting.

As for Josh’s snarky aside, “when The Clash of Civilizations is widely mistaken for a good work of political culture analysis, the field is in trouble,” all I can say is: Heh.

Time for more shaming! The good news is, I can pick games that don't involve the AP Top 25. The bad news is… nobody cares about games that don't involve the Top 25. First the recap:

FLORIDA [2-1] 31, Tennessee [2-0] 21. [CBS]

Actual score: 10-24. Tennessee came to play, Florida didn't. Hence Tennessee is rewarded with sole possession of the SEC East lead and the first division head-to-head result in the league, putting Florida's SEC East hopes in serious jeopardy barring some self-destructive behavior on the part of the Vols.

Georgia [3-0/1-0] 24, LOUISIANA STATE [3-0] 17. [CBS]

10-17. A close game as expected, but LSU held off Georgia in the first half when Georgia had a good shot at making some scores. The legend of Death Valley lives!

Kentucky [1-2/0-1] 41, INDIANA [1-2] 10.

34-17. Well, Kentucky can win out-of-conference... let's see what happens this week.

ALABAMA [2-1/1-0] 35, Northern Illinois [2-0] 14.

16-19. For one thing, the team NIU beat was not Wisconsin. That was last year, except it wasn't, because Wisconsin won that one somehow. UNLV beat Wisconsin. NIU beat Maryland.

For another thing, Alabama is the Jeckyll and Hyde of the SEC. Actually, Jeckyll and Hyde seem to be operating on other teams as well (take Florida, who've demolished some of their opposition but can't hang with Big Six foes). Shula was supposed to win this one.

Turns out this one was on GamePlan. Woo hoo. (Some people in Alabama allegedly paid $30 to see this. They should demand a refund. For one thing, the clock was unreadable. For another, Tyler Watts was on color. He wasn't bad, but sheesh... you'd think Bama could do better for their home announce team than a 23-year-old kid fresh out of college.)

TEXAS CHRISTIAN [2-0] 35, Vanderbilt [1-2/0-2] 17.

30-14. This one was also on GamePlan. Dan Stricker was not on color. Vandy was again let down by their own miscues. The clock here was at least red, so it was semi-legible. CSS really needs to work on their graphics... the WAC game I saw between LaTech and Fresno had better overlays, and it was produced by an outfit I'd never heard of before.

SOUTH CAROLINA [2-1/0-1] 38, Alabama-Birmingham [1-2] 7.

42-10. They weren't booing, they were shouting "Lou".

HOUSTON [2-1] 38, Mississippi State [0-2] 31.

45-38. Sadly, I was right on this one, although State didn't blow the lead at least. (Yes, I am now feeling sorry for State. Don't worry, the emotion will pass.) Unfortunately, a TD-INT ratio of 3:5 will put you in a hole rather quickly.

NCAA Infractions Committee [∞-0] $12,000/player, AUBURN [1-2/1-0] 0.

No news is usually good news. Except in NCAA investigations.

OLE MISS [2-1/1-0]

No word yet on starting RB.

Texas Tech's game against NC State will be televised Saturday at 11 CDT on ESPN2. As NC State's offense is similar to that of Ole Miss, although perhaps even more pass-oriented, it may be a good preview of how the game in Oxford is likely to turn out.

NC State absolutely dominated Tech, despite an obscene 586 yards of passing by B.J. Symons. No more comments here... gotta wait for the Prognostication for the skinny!

Conference standings: UT's win over UF puts them in the SEC East lead, coupled with Georgia's loss. Everyone in the West is either 1-0 or 0-0 in conference at this point, with the first two divisional matchups coming this Saturday.

Time for the predictions. Thanks to my friends at the SEC office (who put this stuff on the web for anyone to read, including people like me), I have the actual, fact-filled "Week 5 Game Preview" in hand to help me predict the games. We'll see if this helps any. Surely at least I'll actually correctly name past opponents for teams.

As always, starting with JP's "heat death" game and working forward. Home team in CAPS, record [W-L/CW-CL], and TV...

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

Florida comes into Commonwealth Stadium looking to get back on-track after imploding against UT. UK is 0-16 in the past 16 meetings between these squads, and if they were playing at the Swamp I'd probably give the edge to Zook's crew. But, to paraphrase Janet Jackson, they're not, so I can't. This same Kentucky squad has given Florida serious scares in its last two meetings, and "QB by committee" doesn't quite have the ring of "Rex Grossman." So, without the Swamp mystique, I have to go with the 'Cats.

Since I originally wrote this, Ron Zook has decided to go with Chris Leak as his sole starting QB. However, the prediction stands.

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

You've got to figure CBS thought this game was much more attractive last Monday; now they'd probably want to swap with JP. Arkansas has looked pretty good, particularly in its win over Texas, but Bama probably isn't in the mood to be embarrassed at home for the third time in four games. Look for the Tide to stomp the Razorbacks in this one as they try to prove they are the rightful SEC West champions. [Aside: Am I the only one who finds Verne Lundquist and Todd Blackledge annoying?]

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

The Tigers catch Western Kentucky looking ahead to their October 4 road date with I-AA powerhouse Western Illinois and pull off the upset.

Ok, maybe not. But I can't think of any other obvious reason why Auburn should win, since WKU has held its last three opponents to three points each and is ranked third in the I-AA rankings, and their kicker scored half of their points last week against EKU. Plus one of their players is obviously a military brat ("Heidelburg, Germany" is not your typical American high school), so I have to give them sentimental props. So what if they play in the "Gateway" conference (is this a new name for the OVC?). I have yet to figure out what Auburn's doing this season, but nonetheless I pick them to win simply because of SEC pride. Or something. But not-so-secretly I want the Hilltoppers to win.

Other interesting note: Tubby is a 1976 graduate of Southern Arkansas. If I didn't read the press release, I -would not know that- (spoken in Phil Hartman channeling Ed McMahon voice). Ok, enough silliness. Back to predictions.

OLE MISS…

Oh, we're saving that one for last. Never mind.

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

Yes, you read that right... PPV. Anyway, before I choke to death laughing hysterically, I guess I'd better justify why I'm picking Vanderbilt. Yes, Georgia Tech spanked Auburn, who in turn spanked Vanderbilt. And, as a firm believer in the transitive property, I should therefore believe that Georgia Tech will spank Vanderbilt. However, fundamentally I think Vandy is "due" and Ga Tech is probably looking forward to NC State.

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

A UT win puts them in a pretty commanding position in the SEC East, all but eliminating USC from contention — in September. Ouch. Lou's done good work in Columbia, but ultimately the Gamecocks are no match for the Vols at home in Knoxcille.

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

Set your VCRs, folks, because this may be the last time you get to see Jackie Sherill on the sidelines of a football game on national television. This one could get ugly, particularly if the artificial noisemakers rule has to be enforced against State fans heckling their own team. And, last but not least…

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

The Red Raiders come into Oxford as the first Big XII foe to ever visit Vaught-Hemingway (which tells you something about Ole Miss's typical NonCon schedule). Despite piling up gaudy numbers, Tech's offense was quite ineffective last week against NC State's defense (and probably wasn't helped by absolutely horrible special teams play). On the other hand, Ole Miss's offense has shown signs of figuring out how to get the running game to work, and the defense has been more effective than in years past (despite some weakness in the secondary early on).

I'd definitely expect to see a shootout, perhaps reminicent of the Memphis game, with both Manning and Symons putting up obscene passing numbers. But Tech has a porus defense, giving up nearly 200 yards on the ground per game (and nearly 450 ypg total)--a weakness even the mediocre Ole Miss running backs can exploit, particularly when you consider Cutcliffe's penchant for the short passing game. That, home field, a team with essentially the same personnel motivated by its tough 42-28 loss in Lubbock last year, and the Rebels' quality special teams play (led by reliable PK Johnathan Nichols) should translate into a Rebel win. However, I also expect the Rebels to be lethargic early, which could open the doors for the Red Raiders to open a decent lead.

Robert Prather links to an opinion piece in the Mississippi State University Reflector by Edward Sanders about news media rivalries. All very interesting, as far as it goes… but try this quote on for size:

All Amanpour’s comments prove is that CNN and Fox News are engaged in a Mississippi State-Ole Miss style donnybrook.

Yes, but at least when Ole Miss and Mississippi State compete, it’s actually worth watching. I’m thinking this one’s more like Mississippi State-Houston, except that one might be a sore subject down in Starkvegas…

According to last Thursday’s DeSoto Times, officials studying the planned route of Interstate 69 through the Memphis area have decided that both the loop route and the through route are needed and will recommend the construction of both routes. More at I69Info.com, of course.

Incidentally, this means the DeSoto Times has scooped the Commercial Appeal by nearly a week. In case you were keeping score at home.

A measure of the APSA’s efforts to make its conference the global center of attention is the fact you can’t even get back from their conference before they start bombarding you with material for the next year’s conference—even though it’s eleven months away. At least it’s in Chicago next year, one of my favorite cities in North America.

Anyway, Dan Drezner is working on a paper on the political impact of blogging with Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber, as part of a roundtable on blogging he is planning to organize at the conference, and is blegging for help with a definition of a “blog” and some good sources.

Considering that I haven’t even thought about what I’m going to propose for the Midwest—the deadline for which is two weeks away, and which will also be held in Chicago (apparently the only city in America that can put up with two gatherings of several thousand political scientists in a year)—I should applaud Dan and Henry’s initiative.

In somewhat related (i.e. completely unrelated) news, I plan to finish my dissertation revisions today. Granted, I’ve been saying that every day since I got back from Philadelphia, but maybe blogging about it will light a fire under my proverbial ass.

David Adesnik apparently has been drinking the Perestroikans’ Kool Aid:

The secret to success in America’s political science departments is to invent statistics. If you can talk about regressions and r-squared and chi-squared and probit and logit, then you can persuade your colleagues that your work is as rigorous as that of a chemist, a physicist, or (at worst) an economist.

Funny, I just came back from spending a month with people who told me that the absolute worst way to get a job in political science is to “invent statistics.” If David means “understand and be able to utilize” by “invent,” that is. If he means something else, I can’t figure it out.

Still, it is absolutely impossible to explain the tactics of Al Qaeda or Hamas without reference to their perverse ideologies.

It is? Actually, it’s pretty easy to explain their tactics—historically, they’ve been quite effective. What’s (slightly) more difficult to explain is why Al Qaeda and Hamas engage in terrorism while the Sierra Club and Libertarian Party don’t.

The real problem is that [Robert] Pape, like so many political scientists, abandons all nuance in deriving policy programs from his work.

Fair enough. But what exactly does that have to do with the fact that Pape uses quantitative methods in his research? Adesnik claims:

As I see it, the cause of this unsubtle approach is political scientists’ obsession with statistics, a pursuit that dulls their sensitivity to the compexity of real-world political events. If numbers are your thing, you’re going to have a hard time explaining why Israelis and Palestinians have spent five decades fighting over narrow tracts of land.

So then, what is to be done? As you might of heard, many political science programs require training in statistics but not foreign languages. That trend has to be sharply reversed.

Great. Now we can have more social scientists who are completely incompetent at quantitative methods, but at least can express that incompetence in multiple languages. Where do I sign on to this initiative?

Look, I’m more than willing to concede that quantitative research doesn’t—and can’t—answer every interesting question in political science. But the rigorous study of politics can, and IMHO should, be scientific: founded on the scientific method, no matter whether the actual methods used are qualitative or quantitative.

And—irony of ironies—the APSR piece that Adesnik vents his wrath at is completely qualitative (at least in terms of its method of inference). Not a p-value, χ², or logit model in sight.

Anyway, you can read the piece yourself courtesy of Dan Drezner, at least until the APSR’s copyright goons come after him.