The Quantitative Peace

Links from the Weekend

• Peer Review of the Internet - "It will enable sentence-level critique of written words combined with a sophisticated yet easy-to-use model of community peer-review. It will work as an overlay on top of any stable content, including news, blogs, scientific articles, books, terms of service, ballot initiatives, legislation and regulations, software code and more-without requiring participation of the underlying site." h/t - orgtheory
  
  
• South Korea launches an online "Unification Channel" to educate younger generations about the dangers of reunification. 


• What 7 billion people look like
  
  
• Graphic Dispatches from a Recent College Grad Still Living in a College Town - Gift prices for the holidays v. education v. the real world.
  
  
• 3QD prize voting is now open - Several of the nominated posts are by political scientists and the winner will receive a $1,000 prize.

Maps Maps Maps, Part Deux

I posted a few days ago about openheatmap.com, a website that will convert your csv files into fancy thermal maps.  One problem with our initial attempts to map out the presence of American military forces abroad was that the data are highly skewed.  Some countries host upwards of 50,000--60,000 American military personnel in the year we're looking at (2005).  In the past this figure was even higher---Germany at one point plays host to roughly 250,000 members of the American military during the Cold War.  

As you can imagine, we don't have that many soldiers in most countries.  The original map I posted was somewhat misleading, as countries such as China and Russia appeared to have more soldiers within their boarders than they actually have, and this was mostly the result of the combination of skewed data and the way that software color-coded countries.  Phil Arena suggested logging the troop values to see if this would help to take care of the issue:

 

I've changed the colors from blues to reds, as I think this helps a bit, but the figures used to generate the map above are the logged values of troops within the country.  The paler countries obviously have fewer soldiers than the darker countries.  Overall I think this map looks better, but there is still a fairly substantial amount of variation that is being masked by the limited range of tones.  For example, Iran is actually coded as having one American soldier present during 2005, which explains why it's a pale tan/organge.  Nevertheless, I think the important information that the map is intended to convey (namely the extent to which the US military has at least some presence virtually everywhere) is still there. 

On a final note, I also found that the map doesn't distinguish between 0 values and positive values---rather, a 0 and a 1 will share the same color.  Any observations that have a 0 value need to be dropped out of the data before the map is created.  This is kind of a funny feature, but something that users should be aware of.   

Sounds About Right

courtesy: www.smbc-comics.com

Maps Maps Maps

Back in December I had a brief post about CRACK, a mapmaking software package for Macs.  The downside was that CRACK only worked for making maps of the United States.  As the need has arisen, Michael Allen and I began looking for something similar that could handle world maps.  This brings me to OpenHeatMap, an online platform for making those fancy looking thermal heat maps using data from a spreadsheet.  We were looking for something to visually display some data that we have on US Military Personnel abroad, and this seems to work pretty well.  Here's an example:

The program lets you mess with some of the details, such as borders, colors, etc.  The only downside is that it does not appear to allow you to save an image.  Mac users have the option of taking screen shots by selecting particular areas on the screen, but I don't think PCs have this feature yet.  Anywho, if you have a Mac, this lack of a downloadable file probably won't matter too much to you.  Also, there are some small troop deployments to some microstates that this map does not display--getting it to recognize some of the country names in the data may also be a bit of a struggle.   

Also, the data used for making this map was obtained from Tim Kane at the Heritage Foundation. 

 

While no one was looking?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12612133

The Domestic Side of Things

Clearly I'm trying to make up for a post drought from the past couple of months.  I'll leave the more in-depth commentary to someone who has been following this situation more closely, but it looks like the Wisconsin State Government is experiencing a wheeeeee-bit of a principal-agent problem (via Boing Boing).

Wisconsin Police Have Joined Protest Inside State Capitol

I will say that it's not immediately clear to me whether we're talking about off-duty cops only, or if we're talking about both on and off-duty police officers.  If the latter are protesting that would seem to be less of a problem, but the article seems to indicate that on-duty officers are the ones refusing to remove protestors from the capitol.  On the other hand, the man in the video looks more to be an off-duty officer expressing support (if his jacket is any indication).   

Quick Post

So it's been a little while since I've posted here (very busy times these are).  Anyway, I wanted to link to this post by Phil Arena over at his blog.  Phil discusses how his views on various topics related to IR have changed over the past few years.  I agree with a lot of what he has to say on these issues--I think a lot of what IR scholars focus on, to the extent that we're interested in the domestic forces generating foreign policy outcomes, tend to place too much stock in the qualities we typically assume to characterize democracies and autocracies.  I also agree that economic forces play a huge role in shaping the incentives of political actors--particularly the elites that Arena mentions. 

The International Relations Implications of Chinese Parenting Practices

By now I'm sure most people have come across Amy Chua's recent Wall Street Journal article.  After reading David Brooks' response to Chau's article, I've begun to think of some of some of the international relations implications of Chua's Chinese parenting style.  Specifically, I'm curious to see what her revelations imply for China's ascendency in the global community.  In spite of  her in-text caveats, I will assume that her described style indeed applies to all Chinese mothers and in no way, shape, or form is a blanket generalization that might not apply quite so broadly.

1. Espionage -- Historically espionage and subterfuge have been incredibly important in advancing national objectives.  Well--placed operatives can provide decision-makers with valuable information on the intentions and capabilities of rival powers.  And a relatively simple act of misinformation or sabotage can achieve what might take millions of dollars and thousands of military personnel to achieve.  But it appears that we have very little to fear from China in terms of espionage.  Chua claims that a ban on playdates was one of the imporant steps in creating a driven, high-achieving child.  And let's not even talk about participating in a school play.  Do we really expect the Chinese government to field skilled intelligence operatives if they don't even allow their children to partake in afterschool drama activities?  Where are they supposed to learn the  skills necessary to fool other highly trained intelligence operatives?  Denying a child from an early age the basic opportunities that contribute to shaping their social skills and ability to feign interest in the stories of self-involved peers doesn't seem like a very effective means of imbuing budding spies with spy-type skills. 
2. Military -- One of the two categories that Chua lists as being acceptable for her children to under achieve in is gym class.  I've watched enough movies featuring basic training programs to know that big wall and the rope climb are omni-present features of military life.  Furthermore, a basic neglect of physically demanding activities does not seem like a particularly effective way of building up a strong military.  Granted this ignores the emphasis on more technologically advanced means of warfighting, but as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have emphasized the importance of boots on the ground, I'd say physical prowess is still important.
3. Strategy -- Chua doesn't allow her children to watch TV or play video games.  I assume this ban also extends to surfing the internet as well.  We all know newspapers are dying out, so how will Chinese children keep up on current global affairs?  I predict there will be a severe expertise deficit in China as a consequence of this neglect.  It will take several additional years of education before young Chinese adults will have caught up on all that back reading.  This might also cause the Chinese leadership of the next generation to pursue moot strategies---had they watched TV in the here and now they'd know that the Jersey Shore was already destroying America from the inside out and that there was no need for a more heated contest.  China could preserve valuable military and financial resources had they only watched a little MTV and gave it another 5 years.
4. Soft Power -- At first glance it would seem that China has an advantage in this department.  So many gifted, classically trained musicians and an emphasis high academic excellence should make China an attractive place.  A well educated population provides the country with an enormous pool of expertise and talent which can then provide a boost to China's academic institutions, perhaps making them more attractive to foreign students.  Through attending China's universities, foreign students will experience Chinese culture and develop a greater affinity for the country.  However, the standards by which Chinese parents apparently raise their children has likely had a perverse effect in this area.  Admissions standards to Chinese universities must be incredibly high.  If the lower and upper bounds of the typical grade distribution in China are A+ and A+, where do the A students go?  University admissions standards are likely so high that strategic-thinking foreign students realize they can't hope to compete and apply to universities in other countries, thus depriving China of the opportunity to difuse its values and culture to the rest of the world.  And, really, what do you as a country do with an enormous surplus of high-quality pianists?  China may soon come to have an enormous population of struggling artists to support, placing enormous demands on its economic system as funds are syphoned off to support the glut of unemployed virtuosos.       

I'm sure that there are furhter areas in which parenting will matter when it comes to international affairs.  If anyone can think of anything in particular that I've missed, please feel free to contribute.  

 

Citing eBooks

I got my Amazon Kindle about a year ago and I really enjoy it, but I am  finding myself become increasingly frustrated by the apparent lack of standards when it comes to citing eBooks.  On some occassions this isn't really a problem---if you need a particular page number you can often times type a phrase into Google Books and find what you're looking for (assuming the correct edition is available).  But to some extent this defeats the purpose of having an eReader.  Furthermore, Google Books often censors the content of a variety of books, so it's not guaranteed that you will be able to find the specific page that you happen to be searching for.  

I am clearly not the first person to find this frustrating.  Upon searching for an answer I came across this page with some comments written by a certain Stephen Smith.  The location numbers that eReaders like the Kindle feature should indeed be more accurate, as I understand it.  Depending on the reader's preferences you can change the size of the font.  But, as this will change the content featured on each "page" of the eReader, page numbers are not particularly useful guides when searching for specific content. 

The page referenced above suggests a solution offered by the Chicago Manual of Style, wherein a section title or chapter be listed for eBooks in place of page numbers.  But this is really not much of a solution.  Depending on the writer's style and length of the book, particular sections or chapters could be enormous, thereby making it difficult to track down what it is that you are looking for.  True, as this page points out, even hard copies of books have some issues with page numbers varying across different editions.  But this is only a problem when tracking content across multiple readers.  And even in a situation where two or more readers are working from different editions, the content is often similar enough where the page different might only be a matter of a couple of pages. 

The problem with eReaders seems to be that the reader/author themselves cannot accurately convey, by current academic standards, where it is that they are drawing information from.  And it is more difficult to translate a location number into a page number than it is to navigate from a page number from one edition to the correct spot in another edition of the same hard copy.  I haven't yet seen an article published in a political science journal that features eReader locations for some readings, in addition to page numbers for others.  A quick Google search for political science style guides did not seem to shed any light on the issue either.  I'm not sure this problem affects that many people at present, but it does seem like an issue that would, conceivably, be fairly simple to resolve.                

Two useful blog posts for connecting in the discipline.

Two extremely useful posts went up while I was at MWPSA and are worth re-blogging.  While I am not sure if my readership is radically different than either site, it is still useful to spread the word.

First, the Monkey Cage posted an update to their blogroll that I will soon copy.  It now includes all active political science bloggers that they could find.  Of course, if you are missing from the list, let them know.

Second, Chris Albon at War and Health compiled a list of "35 global health, foreign affairs, and international security scholars, researchers, and experts active on Twitter".  Every twitter link includes a small description of the individual and their field(s) of interest and/or occupation.  Chris aptly argues: "If blogs post are the ‘conference papers’ of the internet, then Twitter is the small-talk between sessions."

Thanks to both blogs for compiling these immensely useful lists.