Rodger A. Payne's Blog

China & Cars

2012-02-14T15:14:00.000-05:00

Photo credit = kalevkevad via Flickr.

In 2006, the International Organization of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers reported that "China became the world’s third-largest car market." That was thanks to a nearly 40% increase in sales over the prior year. By 2009, Chinese sources noted that China was the #1 car buyer -- a status partly based on 44% growth in China's market and a 21% plunge in US sales that same year.

China's passenger vehicle market ended last year with a 59 percent year-on-year sales increase to surpass the United States as the world's largest auto market for the first year, thanks to the central government's stimulus package.

Journalist Richard McGregor noted at the end of 2010 that China's auto market had exploded from 1 million domestic vehicles sold in 2002 to about 10 million in 2010. McGregor quoted consultant Michael Dunne to simplify the numbers with a comparison: "China has added the equivalent of two Japan markets in less than a decade." One-half million of those 10 million new vehicles are luxury cars like Porsches.

In any event, the implications of this change are profound. World oil demand will continue to increase as the Chinese buy more cars. In coming decades, Chinese petroleum demand will apparently match US demand. CIA data currently reveal that American oil imports are nearly double China's -- meaning that new demand for millions of barrels of oil per day will put huge pressure on international oil markets. Obviously, increased competition for oil, a potentially scarce resource, could have profound implications for geopolitical rivalry -- and energy prices. Michael Klare reports that "the conservative National Defense Council Foundation" found that "the 'protection' of Persian Gulf oil alone costs the U.S. Treasury $138 billion per year."

The climate implications are also potentially disastrous. In the US, more greenhouse gases are emitted from cars than from burning coal. China is now on a dangerous pathway:

The vehicle boom is also pushing up China’s greenhouse gas emissions. Transport emissions of carbon dioxide, the major warming gas, have at least quadrupled since 1990, to more than 350 million tons per year.

This means the transport sector is now about 5% of China's greenhouse gas emissions.

Some analysts suggest that China's rising demand for oil could make the state more likely to cooperate with the international community:

"China is learning that owning equity oil in risky regions may not be as effective an energy security strategy as it had previously imagined," said Amy Myers Jaffe, an author of the study and the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow for Energy Studies at the Baker Institute. "China is now finding itself mired in more energy-related foreign diplomacy than it bargained for.

"But this could be good news for the United States," Jaffe said. "It may mean China will be more inclined to act in concert with other members of the international community in conflict-prone regions."

Can the world really count on that happening?

Unfortunately, at least from an environmental perspective, recent growth in Chinese car sales is likely just the tip of the iceberg. China's vehicle ownership rates now stand at US levels from 1916. In 2008, people in China owned 37 cars per 1000 people. Some scholars predict that the rate will surge to 269 per 1000 by 2030, an eight-fold increase.

The US rate is about 825 vehicles per 1000 people.

Incidentally, here's more cause for concern in new markets -- India's car ownership rate is about 6 per 1000 people...

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Media bias

2012-02-12T21:50:00.001-05:00

Does mass media have a liberal bias? Conservatives, of course, frequently claim that it does have such a bias.

However, as I've taught my students in American Foreign Policy for many years, talk-radio is dominated by the right, newspapers and television are increasingly corporate, Fox News is obviously right-leaning, and "regular" liberal reporters embrace norms of fairness that cause them to report balanced information even when there's no justification -- such as on climate change.

I previously meant to blog this Paul Waldman item, which speaks to media quoting of conservative or liberal think tanks. From The American Prospect, October 2010:

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a progressive group that opposes media bias and censorship, reports that progressive groups have seen their proportion of media citations steadily rise in recent years.

But the left is still chasing the right. The Center for American Progress is probably the signature success of recent liberal institution building; its 2008 budget was $26.3 million. But the Heritage Foundation, its closest competitor on the right, spent $64.6 million that year. The left's think tanks get quoted more than they used to, reports FAIR, but the right's think tanks still get quoted more than the left's. In 2008, conservative think tanks made up 31 percent of all think-tank citations, while progressive think tanks made up 21 percent. The gap has narrowed but not disappeared.

Waldman actually provides a good deal of interesting information about progressive attempts to build a media network to counter the conservative successes. However, as Waldman notes, Air America's failure demonstrates one huge hurdle faced by those making the effort to build liberal counterparts to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Progressives

seek out outlets like National Public Radio that are less combative and more factual. It shouldn't be surprising that a substantial body of social-psychological research has found that conservatives tend to be less tolerant of ambiguity than liberals.

In one of my college Communications classes, the professor gave students a test that determined one's degree of dogmatism. It turned out that I was the least dogmatic person in the class.

My debate colleague at the time, incidentally, was the most dogmatic person in the class -- though he wasn't a conservative so far as I know.

Note: This item was pulled at random from my huge stack of "to-be-blogged" material. Sorry for the lack of blogging lately. I've been fairly active on Twitter, which makes me a better reader, but I just have not been in the mood to blog. I'm going to try to reduce the stack of items pulled from magazines and newspapers because it would be nice to have someplace to find these items when I try to recall where I put something.

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IR in Fast Five

2012-01-31T12:11:00.001-05:00

I watched "Fast Five" on DVD last night, though I haven't seen any of the prior "Fast" films. The movie received decent reviews and is a heist film, a genre that I enjoy, so I gave it a try. It's a bit long and has some stupid dialogue, but the film is generally entertaining. I'd have cut much of the long fight sequence between Vin Diesel and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

About 25 minutes into the movie, the affluent Brazilian crime boss Hernan Reyes gives a speech that sounds like an out-take from Empire-Building 101:

Reyes: Let me tell you a true story.

Five hundred years ago, the Portuguese and the Spanish came here, each trying to get the country from their natives. The Spaniards arrived, guns blazing, determined to prove who was boss. The natives killed every single Spaniard.

Personally, I prefer the methods of the Portuguese. They came bearing gifts. Mirrors, scissors, trinkets. Things that the natives couldn’t get on their own, but to continue receiving them, they had to work for the Portuguese.

And that’s why all Brazilians speak Portuguese today.

Now, if you dominate the people with violence, they will eventually fight back because they have nothing to lose. And that’s the key.

I go into the favelas and give them something to lose. Electricity, running water, school rooms for their kids. And for that taste of a better life, I own them.

I put the key passage in bold.

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I read it in a magazine...

2012-01-10T13:39:00.001-05:00

The internet has helped foster many changes in modern life, but not all of them are desirable.

In a December 2011 review of The Fall of the House of Forbes: The Inside Story of the Collapse of a Media Empire by Stewart Pinkerton, Jamie Malanowski identifies some harsh numbers for the publishing industry:

Facing dramatically declining advertising revenue (in the year 2000, Forbes had more than 6,000 pages of advertising—this was during the high-on-your-own-supply years of the dot.com bubble)—and was charging about $75,000 per page; in 2010, it had 1,640 pages of advertising, and was charging between $23,000 and $25,000 per page. The numbers from magazine to magazine no doubt differ, but throughout the industry the basic story is surely the same. Revenue declined, and the Internet, with all its power to deliver information quickly and cheaply, and all its nifty gadgets, pushed magazines into yesterday.

By my calculations, Malanowski is identifying a revenue drop from $450 million in 2000 to $41 million in 2010 -- and those figures assume the highest charges were always collected in the more recent year.

So Forbes, at least, lost over 90% of its advertising revenues during the decade, before accounting for inflation.

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Socialism is more popular than Rick Perry

2012-01-08T12:02:00.000-05:00

Today, in a New Hampshire debate, Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, borrowed some rhetoric from Sarah Palin:

“We have a president who is a socialist,” Perry said in response to a question at the early-morning eye-opener GOP debate in Concord, N.H.

“I reject the premise that Obama reflects our founding fathers,” Perry said. “He doesn’t.”

I've dealt with this kind of labeling many times in the past, so there's no need to address the substance of the charge.

Instead, let me make a different point. Socialism is more popular in the United States than is Rick Perry. A Gallup poll from 2010 found that 36% of Americans had a favorable view of socialism. Granted, few Republicans share this view and Perry is first trying to win their nomination for President.

A Pew Research Center Poll from a bit later in 2010 found that 29% of Americans had a positive response to "socialism." Among people aged 30 and younger, both socialism and capitalism scored 43% positive. A Rasmussen survey from 2009 likewise reflected ambiguous results when comparing socialism to capitalism.

The latest Pew Research results from late December 2011 show socialism with a 31% positive response.

Among all Americans, in a number generated by averaging his poll results, Rick Perry has a favorability rating of just under 25%. He's getting drubbed by socialism.

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Films of 2011

2012-01-01T11:30:00.007-05:00

As I annually note, I watch a lot of movies, though most are viewed on DVD (or from DVR recordings) on my television. Because I do not see that many new films in the theater, I cannot at year's end write a credible post on the best movies of 2011. After all, I have not yet seen many of the highly touted films released in late December. But I will. Eventually.

In fact, many of the best films I saw this past year were older films on DVD/DVR that I originally missed in the theaters -- or were 2010 films I saw in the theaters during early 2011.

To make this abbreviated 2011 list, I scanned the top grossing movies of the year, as well as IMDB's most popular titles for 2011 and Movie Review Intelligence. In rank order of my preference, these were the best 2011 films I saw this year, so far as I can tell:

Moneyball **
Margin Call **
Midnight in Paris **
Bridesmaids **
The Trip
The Company Men
Beginners
Win-Win

I think almost any film lover would enjoy these 8 films. The list is topped by two films with the same theme -- employing somewhat obscure information to gain a market advantage over rivals in business. In Moneyball, a small-market baseball team excels despite the odds. In Margin Call, greedy Wall Street traders take down the global economy. The Company Men shows the implications for everyone, as does Win-Win. Midnight in Paris, Bridesmaids and The Trip are comedies, but they are very well done. And quite different from one another. Beginners sounds like a sappy movie-of-the-week, but it is well-executed.

The rest of the 2011 films I saw aren't ranked with much care, though the films near the top of this list are better than the ones near the bottom:

Super 8 **
Crazy Stupid Love **
Lincoln Lawyer
Friends with Benefits
Horrible Bosses **
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol **
Captain America **
Everything Must Go
Adjustment Bureau
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows (part 2) **
Take Me Home Tonight
Cedar Rapids
Hanna
Paul
Source Code
Limitless
The Beaver
Our Idiot Brother
30 Minutes or Less
X-Men: First Class
No Strings Attached

** I saw these films in the theater.

Obviously, I saw more current-year movies in 2011 than I have in recent years. This is because of a Redbox located in a grocery store just over 2 blocks from my house.

Here's the annual list of movies I intend to see in the future (hopefully in 2012): 50/50, The Adventures of Tintin, Another Earth, The Artist, Attack the Block, Barney's Version, Bellflower, A Better Life, Certified Copy, Contagion, Cowboys & Aliens, A Dangerous Method, The Dept, The Descendants, Drive, Fast Five, The Future, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Go Go Tales, The Guard, Higher Ground, Hugo, The Ides of March, In Time, The Interrupters, The Iron Lady, J. Edgar, Jane Eyre, Le Havre, Like Crazy, Lovers of Hate, Martha Marcy May Marlene, Meek's Cutoff, Melancholia, Mysteries of Lisbon, Myth of the American Sleepover, My Week with Marilyn, Of Gods and Men, Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times, Point Blank, Rango, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Robber, A Separation, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, The Skin I Live In, Small Town Murder Songs, Submarine, Tabloid, Take Shelter, Terri, Thor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Tower Heist, Tree of Life, War Horse, The Way Back, We Bought a Zoo, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Weekend, and Young Adult.

Metacritic helped me form that list.

Keep in mind that I didn't get around to seeing many 2010 movies from last year's wishlist:Another Year, Blue Valentine, The Book of Eli, Buried, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer, Get Him to the Greek, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Green Zone, Greenberg, It's Kind of a Funny Story, Kick-Ass, Let Me In, Machete, Megamind, A Prophet, Rabbit Hole, Restrepo, Shutter Island, Unstoppable, and Unthinkable.

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Books of 2011

2011-12-31T18:21:00.000-05:00

As I have annually since 2005, I am posting a nearly complete list of books I read in the preceding year.

Allow me to repeat the groundrules: I will not list books that I reviewed, unless those reviews were published. In my academic job, I served until July as chair of a committee that will award $100,000 to a work that exhibited the best "ideas for improving world order." Most of the nominees submitted books and I read my share of the nominations. But those books are not listed here.

Of course, since I'm an academic, I read multiple chapters and large sections of many books pertinent to my research and teaching. However, I'm not going to list those here unless I read them cover-to-cover. Save for the books I use in class or read for review, I often skim over some portions even of outstanding books. It's a time/efficiency issue.

So, what did I read this year, mostly for pleasure? (Some of the recommended books include a link to Powell's books; the blog receives a 7.5% commission on sales that begin via these links).

Non-fiction

Theories of International Politics and Zombies by Daniel W. Drezner

Why Leaders Lie: The Truth About Lying in International Politics by John J. Mearsheimer.

Nuclear First Strike: Consequences of a Broken Taboo by George H. Quester

Washington Rules: How America's Quest for Dominance Has Undermined National Security by Andrew Bacevich.

The Godfather Doctrine: A Foreign Policy Parable by John C. Hulsman & A. Wess Mitchell

Small Stakes Hold 'em: Winning Big With Expert Play by Ed Miller, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth.

Cowboys Full; The Story of Poker by James McManus.

The Education of a Poker Player by Herbert O. Yardley

The Bill James Gold Mine 2009 by Bill James.

The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball by Tom M. Tango, Mitchel Lichtman and Andrew Dolphin.

Stone Me: The Wit and Wisdom of Keith Richards by Mark Blake

I also read just about every word in Baseball Prospectus 2011, but not in cover-to-cover fashion. It was edited by Steven Goldman.

Of these non-fiction books, most were worth reading. I read several of the relatively short international relations books to see if any of them would be appropriate for my various classes. In the right circumstances, I would not hesitate to use the Drezner book. Additionally, the passport-sized Hulsman and Mitchell volume might be useful for my film class.

I enjoyed the Quester and Mearsheimer books, but these are not the best works by these prolific authors. Both are readable and full of interesting examples, but they are not must-read works. Likewise, I found this Bacevich work (assigned in a spring class) a bit more polemical than his prior books. Plus, the historical sections and analysis were not up too his typical standard.

Yardley's Education of a Poker Player is considered a gambling classic, but I did not find it indispensable. By contrast, if you play small-stakes poker, the Miller, Sklansky and Malmuth volume is first-rate. The 500-page McManus tome is certainly very informative, but it is an odd book and not as compelling as Positively Fifth Street. The work covers poker history, includes many anecdotes about famous poker games and players, and surveys the rise of the World Series of Poker. The author has interesting personal experiences in the WSOP, but those are covered extensively in the older work.

Bill James is a seminal sabermetric-minded baseball writer. However, the Gold Mine books are not exactly packed with riveting information. Still, the book was worth my time if only for a few key short essays included in the volume. The Book is a somewhat difficult-to-read baseball book, but it is densely packed with tactically (and sometimes strategically) useful baseball information. Too bad The Book's authors didn't work with James on one magnificent book.

Keith Richards can be hilarious, but this book of quips is too short.

Fiction

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth

Rabbit is Rich by John Updike

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby

Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

Put Out More Flags by Evelyn Waugh

A Coffin for Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

The Black Echo by Michael Connelly

The Wrong Case by James Crumley

B is for Burglar by Sue Grafton.

Blaze by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman).

The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake

The Sins of the Fathers by Lawrence Block

The Godwulf Manuscript (Spenser, Bk 1) by Robert B. Parker

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson.

The Hunter: A Parker Novel by Richard Stark (aka Donald Westlake)

The Black Angel by Cornell Woolrich

Dress Her in Indigo by John D. Macdonald

April Evil by John D. MacDonald

The Barbarous Coast by Ross Macdonald

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski

Supreme Courtship by Christopher Buckley

Perchance to Dream by Robert B. Parker

Grift Sense by James Swain

A Case of Lone Star by Kinky Friedman

The Greatest Slump of All-Time by David Carkeet.

The King's Game by John Nemo.

Of these, I placed the best works of literature at the top of the list, then the remaining genre fiction. The least entertaining are listed last in each section.

The novels by Roth, Updike, Hornby and O'Neill are all excellent. Roth and O'Neill were overtly influenced by 9/11, though Roth's book is actually a counterfactual history about events prior to World War II. What if Charles Lindbergh (sympathetic to Hitler) had been elected President over FDR? As I've written previously, Hornby is one of my favorite authors and this is an entertaining read about personal relationships and popular music. Yes, those were also the themes of the terrific High Fidelity.

I pick up Evelyn Waugh and Cormac McCarthy novels with the understanding that I may already have read their best books. Their other work reflects their great talent, but there's bound to be some disappointment. Gary Shteyngart is likewise a skilled writer, but I hope Absurdistan is not his masterpiece.

Thanks mostly to Bookmooch and PaperBack Swap, I continue to read books by a diverse group of crime writers. Eric Ambler was recommended highly by someone on Journolist. I'm grateful to that person, though I cannot recall his or her identity.

I much-enjoyed Michael Connelly's first Harry Bosch book and will continue with the series. Likewise, James Crumley's Milo Milodragovitch is an interesting character and I look forward to reading additional stories about him. Robert Parker's Spencer books are entertaining, so I decided to start at the beginning of his series as well -- though I've previously read at least one of the later books. The second volume in the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson is not as good as the first book, but I still intend to read the third one in the near future.

Cornell Woolrich was very talented at generating creepy atmosphere and I've already acquired a couple of his other works. That is traditionally Stephen King's domain, but Blaze is a strange crime novel published as his Richard Bachman alias. I think the book's smart writing suffers by featuring a mentally-challenged lead character.

Donald Westlake and Lawrence Block have written dozens of crime-themed novels over the decades. I enjoyed Westlake's more humorous burglary story about a stolen diamond than the first book in his brutal Parker series. I'll read the next volume in each line, however. Likewise, I'll be reading more cases featuring Block's dedicated, thoughtful, and drunken detective Matt Scudder.

As I've noted previously, John D. Macdonald's Travis McGee stories provide a pleasant diversion, but Ross Macdonald's books tend to have a harder edge. Both offer up a good measure of amateur philosophy as well. April Evil is a stand-alone noir fiction -- and it has a harder edge. Grafton says Ross Macdonald is an influence and I enjoyed her second alphabet mystery story. I read her A is for Alibi back in the mid-1990s, but won't wait very long to start C is for Corpse.

I cannot recommend the Swain book about a casino detective and I have tired of Kinky Friedman's redundant prose. Christopher Buckley has written some entertaining books, but The Supreme Courtship is far down his list of accomplishments.

If you are looking for baseball fiction, I enjoyed Carkeet's psychological approach to the game's players, but was less taken with the religious-themed novel by Nemo.

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Favorites of 2011: technocracy edition

2011-12-30T10:25:00.000-05:00

Henry Farrell wrote a great line in his review of David Marquand's The End of the West; The Once and Future Europe (Princeton, 2011) for The Nation (pdf), December 12, 2011:

It is tempting to see the procedures of the EU as a long-term conspiracy to bore the public into submission.

In the next sentences, Farrell retreats a bit from this statement. The institution churns out regulations that Farrell notes are boring and hard to understand, but this result was not produced as a result of top-level secret planning: "The truth is more mundane. Europe’s leaders fell into technocracy by accident rather than design."

One consequence of this reality is the so-called institutional "deficit of democracy" that was met this year by protesters claiming to represent the bottom 99% of us. We'll see in 2012 and beyond if the EU is influenced by their frustration. This EU statement does not seem promising.

Photo credit: Justine (juznie)

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Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T23:54:00.001-05:00

Do not confuse this man for the real Santa Claus:

That photo is from 2010, when we spent the holiday at home.

This year, we've hit the road:

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Baseball Prospectus

2011-12-04T15:51:00.003-05:00

A few days ago, the good folks at Baseball Prospectus announced that they are soon releasing a 2-volume Best of Baseball Prospectus: 1996-2011. I think it is going to include a mix of web articles and book pieces, as well as some new essays. It would likely make an excellent Christmas gift.

So far as I know, unfortunately, it will not include my two old pieces written for BP many years ago. One of those articles is still available on-line at the BP website: "Do Top Prospects Get Traded?" It was posted April 8, 1999.

However, the other one is apparently not to be found anywhere. It was a defense of then-KC Royals manager Bob Boone, written in response to a piece by Rany Jazayerli. On the Wayback Machine, I found Rany's critique of Bob Boone posted March 3, 1997: "Is There a 12-Step Program for Overmanagement?"

Rany and I are both KC fans and we co-authored the Royals team comments for the Davenport Translations published exclusively on the web (in the group rec.sports.baseball.analysis) during the 1994-1995 winter. Unfortunately, I cannot find those team comments on the web either -- though I did find them for nearly 20 other teams. And I have the February 1995 files on my hard drive.

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Around the web

2011-12-02T12:06:00.001-05:00

Sorry for the silence lately. We traveled for Thanksgiving and I'm really making a push on the book project since the current sabbatical ends in four weeks.

Meanwhile, over at Duck of Minerva, you can read my post from November 30 on "Comprehending Gingrich." Does he have a Belgian pro-colonial worldview?

November 7 on the Duck, I posted "Hans Beinholtz: Europe For Sale." That post is basically a funny Stephen Colbert video about the Euro-crisis.

At the e-IR Climate Politics: IR and the Environment blog, I posted "The US is Not a Climate Outlaw?" on November 21. It is part 2 about my October talk at Cardiff University in Wales.

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Hot Stove: Adam Jones vs. LHP

2011-11-21T15:30:00.001-05:00

Given that I started the book in April, you would probably say that I am slowly making my way through the 2011 Baseball Prospectus. Moreover, I do not read the team (and adjoining player) summaries in order. Rather, I read the comments for the good teams first. I'm now on the Baltimore Orioles section (meaning I'm nearly finished), which is why I read the Adam Jones comment today. Jones is a right-handed hitting outfielder for the Os.

In any case, the 2011 BP points out that Jones has had a weird platoon split in his career. He has been fairly bad against left-handed pitchers (LHP), which is abnormal for right-handed hitters. Put succinctly,

"The average platoon advantage for right-handed batters in 9%. Righties hit 9% better against lefties than righties."

I checked the end of year statistics for 2011 and Jones did it again this season. His "triple slash" line vs. LHP was .242/.293/.373 (batting average, on-base average, slugging percentage) for an OPS of .685 in 2011. Versus RHP, he hit .295/.329/.829. For his career, he's now .253/.303/.370 vs. LHP and .285/.326/.464 vs. RHP. That's over 100 points in OPS advantage against same-sided pitchers.

The career lines include about 700 plate appearances versus LHP and nearly 1700 versus RHP. Jones is a talented and fairly young player and still could improve his game. However, as BP points out, if he does not improve in some areas, he could end up as a fourth outfielder -- a useful, but ultimately replaceable reserve.

It seems more-and-more clear that Jones's reverse-platoon split is not the product of an overly small sample size from a single season. Rather, it is a fairly odd (and in this case, unfortunate) player trait. As BP said.

Yahoo has a link to let users see Batter vs. Pitchers matchups, so I had a closer look at Jones. He has had quite a bit of difficulty against some of the league's premier left-handed pitchers. John Danks (CHX), Gio Gonzalez (OAK), Cliff Lee (CLE-SEA-TEX-PHI), Jon Lester (BOS) and David Price (TAM) have dominated him. Against these five pitchers, Jones is 18-for-101 with 3 doubles, one home run. and only 7 walks received. That would make for a horrible triple slash line, around .178/.231/.238. That is an approximation because I didn't bother to see if Jones had reached base because he was hit-by-pitcher or if he had any sacrifice flies against these hurlers.

Moreover, against Brett Cecil (TOR) and Jason Vargas (SEA), guys who are not household names and not discussed as potential Cy Young candidates, Jones is 5-for-33 with 1 walk. That's around a .152/.176/.152 line. I didn't find very many other LHP that Jones has faced more than 10 times in his career.

To show the importance of sample size -- and to reveal that Jones has done much better against some lefties -- consider Jones's performance against staff aces Ricky Romero (TOR) and C.C. Sabathia (NYY): 22-for-70 with 3 doubles, a triple and 3 home runs, plus 4 walks. That's about a .314/.351/.514 line. If Jones could hit that well against all LHP, he'd be a star given his proven ability versus right-handed pitchers and his defensive skills.

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Liberal Hollywood?

2011-11-19T16:44:00.000-05:00

For weeks, I've been meaning to mention an interesting point about Hollywood and politics that I read in a piece about Contagion and The Ides of March, written by John Powers for The American Prospect:

...as Contagion goes on, you realize that it's doing something so rare as to be groundbreaking. Ever since the '60s, Hollywood has tended to treat U.S. government employees as bad guys--CIA assassins, heartless immigration officers, those mean NASA scientists who try to snatch E.T. (The great exception in recent years, of course, has been the military.) In contrast, Soderbergh's film shows how a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team headed by Laurence Fishburne, working alongside the World Health Organization (and other one-worlder sleeper cells), goes about stopping an epidemic even as the public panics, the media goes bonkers, and Big Pharma doesn't have a clue. These medical officers do what they need to do--risking, even sacrificing, their lives--in order to set things right. They don't always behave impeccably or according to protocol, but they are the good guys...

Contagion may be the purest expression of Obamaism I've seen on-screen...Rather than revving us up with fears--Globalization is evil! A killer virus is on the loose! Inoculations are worse than the disease!--the movie plays out its scenario matter of factly. Far from laying on the Hollywood melodrama, it's detached, rational, and while highly involving, also deliberately unexciting. The phrase that comes to mind is "no drama."

Like Obama, albeit more persuasively, Contagion expresses faith in public institutions at a time when too many people want to gut them...[G]overnment can hold things together during an outbreak of a deadly virus. In case of an epidemic, the CDC can and will do more to save you than the executives at Pfizer or Merck.

It is interesting that Hollywood makes so many anti-government films given that it is supposed to have a left-wing bias. Incidentally, I found a NY Times piece making the claim that Hollywood is anti-government in 1995, so this is not a new idea.

The point Powers makes about war films is very important and shows how much the country has changed since the 1970s when Vietnam films often portrayed the military negatively.

The military has been the most trusted public institution annually since 1998! No wonder the US militarizes campaigns against drugs, criminal terrorism, illegal immigration, etc.

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KU-UK in MSG

2011-11-15T21:00:00.001-05:00

In a few minutes, the Kansas Jayhawks men's basketball team plays against the 2nd-ranked Kentucky Wildcats in Madison Square Garden in New York City. Given that I've been a KU fan since the early 1970s and that I live in Kentucky, I'm excited about the game. These two schools have won more college basketball games than any other school. UK has 14 more wins than KU.

The game has me thinking back to other big KU games -- and wishing I had found a way (like many other fans) to go to NYC for the game. KU fans take KU hoops seriously. An old friend used to attend almost every game in Phog Allen Fieldhouse -- even after she'd moved to Dallas!

In any case, over the years I have attended some memorable KU road games.

On February 21, 1987, I saw KU beat St. John's in Madison Square Garden, 62-60. It was vintage Danny Manning, just a bit more than a year until he led his team to the national championship. Ultimately, his junior-year team lost to Georgetown in the NCAA tournament Sweet 16.

On December 5, 1992, I traveled up to Indianapolis to see third-ranked Kansas beat second-ranked Indiana 74-69 in the now-defunct Hoosier Dome. It was the second game of the season for KU and proved to be the harbinger for a successful season. Indeed, later that season, Kansas thumped Louisville by more than 20 points in Freedom Hall -- a game I also attended. The Jayhawks eventually made the Final Four, but lost to North Carolina in the semi-final game.

On December 12, 2000, the memorable day Al Gore surrendered to George W. Bush, I was in Chicago watching Kansas beat DePaul 75-69. Interestingly, that Kansas team eventually lost in the Sweet 16 to Illinois, coached by Bill Self.

And I think that's it. I have apparently not attended a KU road game in more than 10 years. That's gotta change soon. In January, I almost went up to Michigan for a game -- but didn't.

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Squashfest 2011

2011-11-14T00:11:00.002-05:00

Tonight was Squashfest in Louisville. Courier-Journal reporter Ron Mikulak, who recently wrote an article about the annual event, was in attendance along with several dozen others -- newbies and veterans alike.

Question from the event: Should published poets get credit for their creative work -- even if the work under discussion is simply a silly Haiku about squash? From the 2010 event:

“Eat the squash,” I said.

“No, I do not like it, Dad.”

“Fine. More squash for me.”

This year, attendees played Squash Jeopardy. A bit of silliness pervades Squashfest.

My wife and I made a curried pumpkin soup -- though it was a very warm 72 degrees in Louisville today.

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Kimmel

2011-11-12T17:34:00.004-05:00

Wednesday night, in LA, I attended a taping of the Jimmy Kimmel show. You can probably see my arms at about 20 seconds into this clip of guest Freida Pinto.

She's very skinny. The show was OK, not especially hilarious. Pinto was the only guest actually in the studio that night -- the rest of the show must have been taped at another time.

Trivia: Outside the theater, while waiting in line, I stood near the Buddy Hackett star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Just before entering, the line passed stars for Tim Allen and Roger Ebert. Since this was 6834 Hollywood, I missed the markers for Penélope Cruz, Steve McQueen, and Sissy Spacek.

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USC talk

2011-11-07T23:49:00.001-05:00

I'm flying to LA tomorrow in order to talk Wednesday at 12:30 pm at USC's Center for International Studies. The talk will focus on elements of my sabbatical project: "The Comedy of Global Politics."

Eventually, I believe a video recording of the talk will appear here.

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French Film Festival 2012

2011-11-03T11:02:00.001-04:00

This is essentially the University press release (with minor edits):

Third Annual Floyd Theater French Film Festival

The third annual Floyd Theater French Film Festival will bring five contemporary French films to the big screen between Nov. 3 and 18, four of which have never been screened in Louisville.

The schedule includes:

• “White Material,” 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Nov. 3 and 2:30 p.m. Nov. 4
• “A Prophet,” 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Nov. 8 and 2:30 p.m. Nov. 9
• “Of Gods and Men,” 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Nov. 10 and 2:30 p.m. Nov. 11
• “Carlos,” 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Nov. 15 and 2:30 p.m. Nov. 16
• “Making Plans for Lena,” 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. Nov. 17 and 2:30 p.m. Nov. 18

The festival marks the Louisville debuts for “White Material,” “Of Gods and Men,” “Carlos” and “Making Plans for Lena.”

Films will be shown in 35mm format at the Floyd Theater in UofL’s Student Activities Center, 2100 S. Floyd St. All movies will be in French with English subtitles, with “Carlos” also containing Italian dialogue with English subtitles.

Films are free and open to the public thanks to a Tournées Festival grant supported by the French government and secured by Matthieu Dalle, UofL department of classical and modern languages.

A full schedule, descriptions of each film, parking directions and other information, is online.

Sponsors for the Floyd Theater French Film Festival include the French section of the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Student Activities Board and Class Act Credit Union.

I was really hoping to see "A Prophet," but I'll be in LA next week speaking at USC. I'll try to check out one or two of the other films instead.

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IR/Climate blogging

2011-10-30T17:12:00.001-04:00

You can find some of my other recent blogging at these websites:

On e-IR, my Climate Politics: IR and the Environment blog, I posted "Is the US a Climate Outlaw?" on October 20. This is part one, which argues that the U.S. can be viewed as an outlaw.

At the Duck of Minerva group IR blog, I blogged "War and the Eurozone" on October 28. The post notes some recent striking rhetoric by European conservatives in power.

Also at the Duck, I blogged "Graduation Rates" on October 26. What can we make of the apparent disparity in graduation rates between athletes and the regular student population?

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Hoops

2011-10-27T00:14:00.004-04:00

Earlier today, I took a peak at the Kansas basketball schedule for the 2011-12 season. On November 15, the Jayhawks play against Kentucky, a school with 7 NCAA basketball titles in its past. Then, on the 21st, Georgetown (1 title) is the foe. Depending upon results in the Maui Invitation Tournament, their next two opponents over the following two days could be UCLA (11) and Duke (4).

In other words, over a 9 day span, Kansas could face a veritable who's-who of college basketball history -- 23 titles won. Then, on December 10, the team plays against Ohio State (1).

The NCAA tournament apparently dates to 1939, so there have been 73 titlists. Kansas has 3 championship banners of its own. Conference rival Oklahoma State, a team KU will face after the new year, also won 2 titles back in the 1940s.

Rock chalk! I'm ready for some basketball.

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Young in the 60s

2011-10-26T12:44:00.001-04:00

I've been a fan of the Rolling Stones (TGRNRBITW?) for decades, so I asked my youngest daughter to snap this photo when we stopped by the National Portrait Gallery near the theatre district. I wanted to see the small exhibit.

The exhibition "Mick Jagger: Young in the 60s" runs through 27 November.

For balance, I also read Stone Me: The Wit and Wisdom of Keith Richards, which was compiled by Mark Blake. As Richards says in the book in regard to Mick Jagger, "My aim is always to try to introduce a bit of levity into his life."

Update: Since I included the Jagger photo, I wanted to post a picture of my debate colleague from freshman-year at Kansas, Dave McCullough. People used to say there was some resemblance, and he used to go around in a hick voice quoting a funny line about Margaret Trudeau that Steve Martin delivered on "Saturday Night Live."

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Cricket

2011-10-25T00:01:00.003-04:00

Whenever I travel to England, this baseball fan becomes something of a cricket fan. For example, I watched much of this one day international match on television last week.

In preparation for the England trip, I obtained a copy of Joseph O'Neill's award-winning novel Netherland, which features a good deal of cricket. Near the end of the book (pp. 210-11), which I read while traveling, I was particularly struck by a long speech delivered by an important character -- Chuck, a small-time criminal (and thug?) originally from Trinidad -- who explains the importance of cricket for global politics:

"Trobriand Island is part of Papua New Guinea," Chuck said professorially. "When the British missionaries arrived there, the native tribes were constantly fighting and killing each other--had been for thousands of years. So what did the missionaries do? They taught them cricket. They took these Stone Age guys and gave them cricket bats and cricket balls and taught them a game with rules and umpires. You ask people to agree to complicated rules and regulations? That's like a crash course in democracy. Plus--and this is key--the game forced them to share a field for days with their enemies, forced them to provide hospitality and places to sleep. Hans, that kind of closeness changes the way you think about somebody. No other sport makes this happen."

The main character of the book, his friend Hans, asks Chuck if he is implying that "Americans are savages?"

"No," Chuck said. "I'm saying that people, all people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilized when they're playing cricket. What's the first thing that happens when Pakistan and India make peace? They play a cricket match. Cricket is instructive, Hans. It has a moral angle. I really believe this. Everybody who plans the game benefits from it. So I say, why not Americans?"

In the book, this exchange is made more interesting because Hans's estranged wife had warned of America's hawkishness in the run-up to the Iraq war. Indeed, she abandoned Hans in NYC after the 9/11 attacks, but before the start of the Iraq war.

Chuck ultimately fails to achieve his dream of making cricket a major sport in the US -- and as revealed early in the story, becomes the victim of an act of violence that kills him. Various characters eventually affirm that Chuck's plan had been doomed all along.

Chuck's business failure and murder seem to demonstrate America's savage nature after all -- though another reading would emphasize Chuck's violent business dealings (despite the fact that he loves cricket). Like his wife, Hans ultimately abandons his adopted NY home and returns to England where his wife has moved with their child. And where cricket is significant.

Like every good novel, this one makes the reader think. Whatever point O'Neill is making about American foreign policy, it is interesting that the primary characters are all immigrants (strangers in a strange land?) who feel a fairly strong love for America -- right up until the day they depart for Europe or die.

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Back in the USA

2011-10-24T00:13:00.000-04:00

For a bit more than 2 weeks, I've been in the UK. About a week of that was personal time with family in Brighton. From there, I went to Bristol Tuesday October 18 to speak to the International Affairs Society on "The Future of World Order." The turnout was very good and the Q&A was terrific. Thanks to my hosts Eric Herring and Bryn Larkman.

Thursday the 20th, I spoke at Cardiff's School of European Studies on ‘Is the US a Climate Outlaw? Can it be “Scared Straight”?’ Stephen McGlinchey of Cardiff (and E-IR) was an excellent host and I enjoyed spending time with many of his colleagues as well.

Then, Saturday the 22nd, I delivered my promised paper on "Cooperative Security: Grand Strategy Meets Critical Theory?" at the LSE/Millennium conference.

Sorry for the lack of posting -- intermittent wi-fi, train travel locally, and other factors kept me quiet. I did post to twitter fairly regularly over the period.

Learned: Bristol claims British street artist Banksy and has a couple of pieces in its (free) museum. Here's one:

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Academic update

2011-10-06T23:47:00.001-04:00

I finished the paper for the LSE/Millennium conference to be delivered October 22. This link should work: "Cooperative Security: Grand Strategy Meets Critical Theory?"

Additionally, I spent some time this past week adding a bunch of my papers and publications to my Academia.edu page. If you have journal access from a university, virtually all the open/download links will work. Some of the links should work for anyone.

If you really need one of my papers, shoot me an email.

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Obama and Wall Street

2011-10-05T21:07:00.001-04:00

Is Occupy Wall Street fueling a populist political movement on the left that can pave the way to new economic stimulus, dramatic economic reforms in the tax code, or whatever else they might seek? I'm not trying for cheap snark -- but they have been somewhat unclear about their goals.

Could the protest movement even help energize voters on the political left, in the same way the tea party did on the right in 2010, and thus help Barack Obama and other Democrats find victory in November 2012?

Or, as my Duck of Minerva colleague Megan MacKenzie argued today, should the White House be ashamed for ignoring (and thereby "insulting") the anti-Wall Street populism for the past 10 days?

I have to disagree with Megan on this one.

Sunday, Obama blasted Bank of America for its $5 fee on debit card users. "You don’t have some inherent right just to, you know, get a certain amount of profit, if your customers are being mistreated,” he said. Later, he added, “this is exactly the sort of stuff that folks are frustrated by.” Was that a nod to the protesters? It sure sounds like they are on the same side.

The National Journal today criticized the President for his overt "tax the rich" populism -- an approach some of his advisors apparently think will fail in key swing states. Steve Benen dismissed that take, however.

A month ago, independents sided with the GOP by a five-point margin on creating jobs, but now we independents siding with Obama by 13 points. That’s a pretty dramatic swing in a fairly short period of time, suggesting that those arguing that the president is driving independent voters away with his new economic message have this precisely backwards.

Google the White House website for "Wall Street" and you learn that the President or his chief spokespersons have been demonizing Wall Street in some way almost every day -- and pointing out that their reform law was aimed at tightening regulation. Here's a sample from September 30:

frankly, we had seen the rules tilted against ordinary folks in favor of those who were well connected in Washington or powerful on Wall Street.

And we argued in 2008 -- and we captured I think the imaginations of a lot of people -- that we could bring about some fundamental change if we got past some of the partisan rancor and the constant politicking that had come to characterize Washington.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner today emphasized "shock" that Wall Street itself has turned against President Obama -- and he expressed (somewhat incoherent) sympathy for the concerns of those who Occupy Wall Street. For the new populist Obama, it is desirable for Wall Street to hate you. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," right?

And finally, Politico reported this additional evidence today:

“He [Obama] gets genuinely pissed off at the banks; it’s not an act,” said Jared Bernstein, a former adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, who participated in Obama’s daily economic briefing in the Oval Office for the first year of the administration.... “The angriest I ever saw the president was when we found out about those bonuses,” he said. [The banking industry] is like a Doberman he found by the side of the road, nursed back to health, only to have them jump up and bite him.

Our newly populist president has seen his poll numbers drop month-after-month. I do not know if his new economic message will reverse those trends, but it does appear as if he's rolled up his sleeves for a fight with Wall Street. And in doing that, he's with the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

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