The Quantitative Peace

While the IR people are away, the Americanists will play.

Editor's note: This is a guest post by Joshua N. Zingher, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Binghamton University. The content of this post is based on Josh's paper, ‘An Analysis of the Changing Social Bases of America's Political Parties: 1952-2008’, appearing in Electoral Studies. This piece is cross-posted at the London School of Economics' USAPP Blog, which can be found here. 

 

Demographic changes mean that traditional Republican constituencies are shrinking as the Democrats’ grow.

It is difficult to discuss electoral politics in the United States without talking in terms of social groups.  Journalistic accounts of party competition often stress the important role that specific constituencies play (such as the “evangelical” or “Latino” vote) in determining the outcome of presidential elections.  A great deal of political science research has shown that these social cleavages structure party competition.  However, the political importance of these social cleavages can change, which can lead to a reshuffling of the social bases of the party coalitions.  In addition, demographic changes also have the potential to dramatically reshape the political landscape, as new groups enter the electorate and the ratio of existing groups’ changes.  I am interested in how changes in the cleavage structure and changes in the ratio of groups work in conjunction to transform electoral coalitions.  In new research, I investigated two related questions: what group memberships influence individual level voting behavior and how has the number of votes each political relevant group contributes to the party coalitions changed over time?

 

Identifying the Group Bases of Party Support 

So what groups are politically relevant?  To answer this question, I conduct a multivariate statistical analysis utilizing nearly 60 years of American National Election Survey (ANES) spanning 1952 to 2008.  I utilized group memberships as independent variables and vote choice as the dependent variable.  The battery of group memberships included variables for class, race, ethnicity, region, education, birth cohort and age. I define politically relevant group memberships as those that exert a statistically significant influence on individual level vote choice.  I ran a separate regression for each decade, which allowed me to assess whether the effect of specific group memberships have changed over time.  The substantive results of these models are displayed in Figure 1 below.

 

Figure 1 – Predicted effect of group membership on vote choice in presidential elections

 

 

The results of the analysis displayed in Figure 1 demonstrate that the following group memberships lead individuals to be consistently and statistically significantly more likely to support one party over the other: 

 

Table 1: The Core Democratic and Republican Social Groups 

Democratic Groups	Republican Groups
African Americans	Whites
Latinos	Protestants
Catholics	Weekly Church Attendees
Union Members	Southern Whites
Non-Religious	Men
College Graduates
Women Jews

 

This analysis highlights the continuity and change that characterizes the parties’ social bases.  Some groups have been stable members of a party coalition for the last 60 years.  African Americans, Catholics, union members and Jews have all been consistent members of the Democratic coalition while whites and Protestants have reliably favored the Republicans. 

Yet, other groups’ political leanings have changed considerably.  Whites in the Southern United States were once reliably Democratic voters; today they are one of the most solidly Republican constituencies.  The divide between the religiously devout and the secular has also become more politically important in recent elections.  Non-religious voters have become increasingly likely to vote for Democratic candidates while weekly church attendees have become more likely to support Republicans.  Similarly, a partisan “gender gap” emerged in the 1980s.  Men have become significantly more likely to vote for Republican candidates while women have become more likely to support Democrats.  In sum, many traditionally politically important social cleavages have endured (e.g. black/white) while other cleavages have become politically important only in recent decades (secular/religious or female/male).

           

Group Contributions and the Importance of Demographic Changes

The preceding analysis established what group memberships significantly influence vote choice, however, simply understanding what group memberships shape individual level voting behavior paints an incomplete picture of electoral change.  Winning an election is not about having core groups of loyal supporters.  Rather, parties must be able to obtain a majority of votes in order to win elections.  Thus, any process that leads to a party gaining more or less from a specific social group is potentially politically consequential.  Figures 2 and 3 show my calculations for each group’s contribution to the Democrats’ and Republicans’ party coalitions, as measured as a proportion of the party’s total votes. There have been considerable changes in the size of group contributions to the party coalitions—many of which highlight the important role that demographic shifts play in reshaping the party coalitions. 

 

Figure 2 - Group contribution as a proportion of Democrats’ total votes: 1952-2008

 

 

Figure 3 - Group contribution as a Proportion of Republicans’ total votes: 1952-2008

 

The Democratic Party has been obtaining an increasing proportion of its support from groups that are growing as proportion of the electorate, such as Latinos, college graduates and the non-religious. In addition, increasing turnout among Latinos and African Americans has also led to the size of these groups’ contributions to the Democratic coalition.  The Republican Party is being forced to confront the opposite scenario—many Republican groups, whites, Protestants and weekly church attendees, are making up a continuously shrinking proportion of the electorate.  Thus far, the Republican Party has been able to offset demographic changes via high turnout among their core groups as well as through winning an increasingly large majority of the Southern white vote.

So what are the conclusions can be drawn from this analysis? Firstly, the group sources of party support are dynamic, the political relevance of certain social cleavages ebb and flow across decades, which is evidenced by the changing relationship between group membership and vote choice.  Secondly, demographic changes can be politically consequential.  The Republican Party is currently in the undesirable position of having to find new sources of electoral support in order to remain viable in future elections.  The Republican Party’s need to find new sources of electoral support has come about not as a result of the loss of electoral support among loyal groups—rather, the Republican Party must find new sources of electoral support simply because traditionally Republican constituencies are making up a shrinking proportion of the electorate.     

 

 

 

The Military and Competitive Sports

I missed my last post, but thankfully I'm on top of this week's edition. 

Kyleanne Hunter and Oliver Kaplan have a piece at Political Violence @ a Glance discussing some of the military roots of the biathlon. I've never known much about the sport's history, but it certainly makes sense that its origins are so closely tied to the kinds of security needs that Hunter and Kaplan cite. This was particularly interesting to me as both my wife and I grew up close to Lake Placid, New York. Lake Placid hosted the winter Olympics twice—once in 1932 and again in 1980—and continues to be a destination for tourists and athletes alike. Additionally, the 10th Mountain Division is headquartered about three hours from there at Fort Drum, and they have an armory located in Saranac Lake, New York where I grew up. Two members of the US biathlon team are also from Saranac Lake: Annelies Cook and Tim Burke. 

I went to high school with both Annelies and Tim, and it's great to see them doing so well. Hunter and Kaplan's discussion of the biathlon's history also makes me appreciate the sport and where I grew up a little bit more, and it's neat to think about the sport in terms of how it intersects with my own personal historical/research interests. The idea that specific military assignments can evolve into cooperative/competitive sporting events is really interesting, and I'm sure there's been much more written about it than I'm aware of (which is little). Naturally this makes me wonder what other sports have evolved out of military activities. Archery comes to mind, but I suspect that has competitive origins that are less exclusively military. There are a number of other shooting-related events during the summer games (see here), but again, many of these events are not necessarily exclusively military in origin either. Some of the historical information the link provides, and the descriptions of some of the events, suggest more of a hunting-related background. And many of these events appear to have been phased out, or have only been held once or twice.

It also makes me wonder as to what kind of selection effects might be at work in terms of how these activities evolve into competitive sports. Presumably you need activities that are a mixture of some highly specialized skill, but also something that's not overly secretive. After all, you don't want other states knowing that you have individuals highly trained in a particular task if that will compromise their work in some way. You also need an activity where multiple countries have need of the same type of training or force. As Hunter and Kaplan discuss, multiple countries were deploying similar sorts of forces to patrol remote, mountainous border regions, thereby facilitating the development of some sort of competitive event based on these shared activities. So not every state needs to have a given force, but at least a few do in order for it to be competitive. 

So what are some contemporary examples of the sorts of military activities that could evolve into internationally competitive sports? And how has technological innovation changed the landscape, so to speak, in terms of the pool of potential activities that could evolve in this way? My mind immediately went to some underwater sports, thinking of some combination of navigating an underwater obstacle course, and then performing some task requiring a demonstration of dexterity. This list of underwater sports suggests there are some sports that at least partly resemble these activities. Underwater navigation and underwater target shooting, specifically. This article also indicates that no underwater sports have been a part of the Olympic games. This appears to be due to the International Olympic Committee selecting which games it will grant approval to. Still, these seem like activities that require a high degree of specialization, but are also pursued by enough countries to facilitate competition. 

Another future possibility would be sort sort of aerial drone competition. Competitors might be judged on their ability to take off, perform certain maneuvers, perhaps "paint" a moving target for a given period of time, and then land. Though there are more advanced military variants, less sophisticated and less expensive drone variants are already being experimented with for a variety of purposes (see Amazon's recent talk of drone-based delivery). Though this would certainly emphasize physical performance less than other athletic activities, I'm not sure it's all that different from other activities like shooting, much of which emphasizes hand-eye coordination. This is also technology that more countries are likely to pursue for security/military purposes as time goes on.

If anyone can think of other military activities that might translate into internationally competitive sports, please share in the comments. 

The Dark Knight Rises and the Economic Impact of Bane's Occupation of Gotham

I started working on this post a long time ago and, for whatever reason, never got around to finishing it. So please keep in mind that this was largely written shortly after the film first came out. I should also disclose at the outset that this post will contain spoilers, so if there is some sort of unbelievably powerful force that has kept you from seeing this fantastic movie, please be warned. For those still interested, there's more after the jump.

Gifts for Political Scientists, 2013

It is a week before the American tradition of "Black Friday" starting on Thursday, and I have not done an updated list on "Gifts for Political Scientists" since 2010, so here is my proposed list for 2013.  Trying to find gifts for that special poltiical scientist in your life can be quite difficult.  Given the existing list from 2010 (that is, I am avoiding repeats) and inspiration from the source I originally stole the idea from, here is the supplement to the 2010 list. 

Board Games

The games on my 2010 list are still my go-to suggestions for people considering games for political scientists. However, for this year, I am adding a few to the list.

• Ticket to Ride (Amazon) - This game is relatively simplistic in its presentation and offers a variety of strategies based on hidden information that each player has.  There are two shared goals for all of the players, and at least two hidden goals for each player.  This game is fantastically appropriate for all age groups and allows some complexity even when there are a bunch of game theorists all playing the game.  I would strongly recommend this board game over something like Monopoly if you are looking for a game for the family.

• Mafia/Werewolf (Wikipedia) - This game is free and there are multiple versions of it available across the web. If you must buy the game, there are some options on Amazon.  I recommend this free game as it is similar to Bang! (see the 2010 list) in that it is a game of private information in which palyers are trying to determine other people's roles and take actions based on their evaluation of that information. In both versions of the game (Mafia or werewolf), the majority of the players are normal citizens who are trying to determine who the non-citizens are that are harming the town.  In Mafia, you are looking to determine who in your town is part of the mob. In Werewolf, you are rooting out werewolves that are destroying your community.  The citizens are attempting to identify and eliminate the mobsters/werewolves while the other party attempts to remain hidden and elminate citizens until they control a majority of the vote and win the game.  

This is a go-to game for large parties and is best played with seven or more people.

Card Games

• Dominion (Amazon) - Dominion is the top of my list for card games.  It is a "Deck-Building Game" that makes building a deck part of the game. For people who normally play collectible card games, deck-building is part of the pre-game strategy. Dominion makes this aspect front and center as many of your actions are built around creating your deck.  Dominion is flexible and boasts eight different expansions that allow you to engage in different settings, strategies, and fundamentally alter some of the rules of the game.

Video Games 

• Civilization V: Brave New World (Amazon/Metacritic Reviews) - Okay, this is slightly cheating on the no repeats rule, but it is cheating I can live with. The second expansion to the 2010 recommended item adds in a few important facets to growing a civilization and dealing with international relations. The biggest game-play addition for International Relations folk is the introduction of the World Congress. The ability to sanction belligerents, ban particular goods, encourage international festivals, and devote resources to science makes this expansion a necessary tool in international discourse.  Quite a long game, but solo play has improved dramatically. If you can find 2-5 people to sit and play competitively for hours at a time, then the experience of the game improves dramatically. To enjoy Brave New World, you do need the base game and I recommend also picking up the first expansion. 

• Bioshock: Infinite (Amazon/Metacritic Reviews) - In my 2010 list, I included Bioshock on the recommendation of Michael Flynn without my own exposure.  Now, I have played through Bioshock, Bioshock 2, and Bioshock Infinite.  The last in the series of games is a standalone game that you can play without having exposure to the previous games.  The setting is the city of Columbia in 1912; a city built in the sky.  Bioshock played upon Ayn Randian themes of an alternative societal structure during collapse.  Bioshock Infinite engages a mix of patriotism, jingoism, and racism.  Columbia is more patriotic and pro-America than America itself and ends up seceding from the Union. The game takes place after this secession.  There is much more to this game and the political themes are worth discussing for political scientists; however, I will not spoil much more of the story here. You can find a trailer for the game here on Youtube. 

• Tropico 4 (Amazon/Metacritic Reviews)- A simulation where you play the leader of a small Latin American Island and lead your country through economic, political, and social decisions. The setting of the game takes place during the Cold War, so you are balancing out trying to appease American and Soviet interests (the closer you move to either country, the more aid they give you) as well as dealing with other international factors.  You have elections every six years and you can make them free and fair, use election trickery, make false promises, or engage in outright assassination.  The choice is yours in creating your island government. This game is great if you are a builder, a planner, or into running your own country.

 

Books/Reading

• Game of Thrones (Amazon/Audible) - I am late on this particular bandwagon.  I have yet to see the show as I am making my way through the books first. Most of my book consumption happens through Audible as I can listen to the audiobooks during my daily commute via bike.  This fantasy series has a decent mix of intrigue and politicking that has made many of a political scientist happy thus far.  My favorite moment from the series thus far is when one of my students wrote a reaction paper that tied a concept discussed by Robert Bates into the book and used it to explain the set of relationships between the various actors.  

• The Foundation (Amazon/Audible) - this foundational science fiction book by Asimov creates the social science theory of "Psycho-History"; a study of groups of people and has the ability to predict their behavior.  Psycho-history cannot predict individuals, but can predict the movement of large bodies as if they were unitary actors.  The parallels between Asimov's fictional social science and what we do should be obvious. This seven part series is a must-read for any political scientists interested in science fiction.

Movies

• The Hunger Games (Amazon) - The young adult novel hit the big screen a few years ago and the second in the series is out this week.  The movie lends itself to some discussion of civil war, protest, and rebellion in the context of dictatorships.  

• Brazil (Amazon/Wikipedia Entry) - One classic in addition to the contemporary blockbuster: Terry Gilliam's dark comedy Brazil.  This movie also lends itself to themes about dictatorship, repression, and resistance with a heavy backdrop of bureaucratic nightmares.  

For the Office

• Tardis Door cover (ThinkGeek) - In case you want to make your office seem bigger on the inside.

• Independents' Flag (ThinkGeek) - For the Firefly lover who wants to express their preferred political affiliation. 

 

The list is a bit truncated this year as I plan to make this an annual post. As such, there are plenty of other items that can make political scientists happy.  Of course, if you are an editor, then the simple word "accept" is more than enough. 

Educational Attainment and Race in Alabama

A part of my responsibilities as a post-doc here at Alabama entails helping faculty with seeking out external funding for projects. One of these projects has involved developing a program to promote educational outreach throughout the state. In the course of this work I've been digging through some data on educational attainment rates in Alabama. In terms of learning about the political and economic characteristics of my new state, this has been an informative exercise. I also think it's helpful in illustrating the benefits of digging through your data, and helps to shed some light on the benefits of considering the distribution of your data more carefully, and so I thought I'd write a quick post on the subject. For the purposes of this post I'll be drawing on data collected from the American Community Survey's 2006–2010 five year population estimates. 

The mean percentage of Alabama's population holding a bachelor's degree or higher for this time period is 21.7%.  Compare this figure with that of my home state—New York's overall rate is 32.1%. This is a fairly large disparity, but further disparities emerge when we begin to disaggregate the data by race. The graph below shows the mean value of this same variable across the black and white populations of both states. 

From this we can see that the total values mask some important differences between groups within each state. In both cases the college attainment rate of the white population is slightly higher than the overall mean value. Alternatively, the attainment for the black population is significantly lower than the overall mean value in each state. Even New York, which on its face appears to have a significantly higher overall college attainment rate, is not much different from Alabama when we compare black college attainment rates with Alabama's values. 

Even when disaggregating the data in this way, we often still lean on the mean value pretty heavily. The distribution of the data around the mean can be incredibly informative as well, but we don't often pay as much attention to this as we should. Below I present a quick illustrative example of why this can matter.

Looking at Alabama's data again, I have drawn on county-level college attainment data for both groups.

Looking back at the first graph we can see that the statewide mean white college attainment rate was about 24%, and the statewide black attainment rate is roughly 14%. Looking at the county-level distributions can help us to get a better grasp on educational attainment rates throughout the state. In the case of white attainment, we can see that the distribution is slightly skewed towards the low end, but the lowest value in the distribution is around 8–9%. Alternatively, the distribution of black college attainment rates at the county level is more heavily skewed, and the lowest value in the distribution is considerably lower than for the white attainment rates, as shown in the preceding graphs where the X-axes are held constant to help make the figures more comparable. In fact, .30% is the lowest black attainment rate recorded in the data. 

Looking at the distribution of the data in addition to the mean values for these different groups can provide some additional insights into the substantive issues we're interested in. In this case, it's already apparent from considering the mean values that there are disparities in the college attainment rates of the black and white segments of the state's population. However, these values may actually underestimate the magnitude of those disparities. Though the distribution for white attainment rates is still skewed, it's floor is considerably higher than that of black attainment rates. In fact, by my count there were 14 counties in which the recorded black attainment rate was lower than the lowest recorded white attainment rate. The maximum for each group is roughly the same, however. Areas around Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and Huntsville have fairly high college attainment rates. But these areas are highly unrepresentative when considering the state more broadly. In fact, although the mean statewide black attainment rate is 14%, the majority of counties fall well below this figure. And while most counties also fall below the mean on white attainment rates, there are, comparatively, more counties falling above the mean. All of this suggests that the mean statewide black college attainment figures are more heavily influenced by outliers in the data than are white attainment rates.  

Lastly, looking at these plots reveals another important feature of the distributions—the variance. The variance in white college attainment rates is 66.2. The variance in black college attainment rates is nearly half that, at only 37.5. This tells us that not only are black college attainment rates lower than white attainment rates, but they are more uniformly so. To put it differently, there is greater dispersion in white college attainment rates, while black college attainment rates are more tightly clustered around lower values. This is made apparent by looking at the two preceding graphs. Though both are skewed towards the lower end of the X-axis, white college attainment figures are less tightly clustered here, as I mentioned above.

This is an issue that I'll come back to in the future, but for now it seemed like this was a useful example for illustrating the importance of familiarizing yourself with the data that you're working with, and how relying less on simple mean values can reveal interesting features of the data you're working with. Bear Braumoeller has an interesting Political Analysis piece about examining the variance, which is worth checking out. More substantively, I also think that this exercise helps to more fully draw out the disparities that may exist between social groups. Relying on simple indicators of central tendency can be useful in some contexts when we want to quickly convey bits of information, but these figures can also be misleading. At the very least, they don't always tell us the full story.

 

Links Galore

It's been a while since my last post, so I thought it was time to put up at least a little something:

Senate Republicans are, for the moment, blocking Chuck Hagel's nomination as Defense Secretary. Admittedly, my attention to current events has been spotty over the past couple of months, but it seems that every time I turn my attention back to this the basic rationale for opposing Hagel has changed. Initially it concerned his comments regarding Israel, then it morphed to include a means of obtaining more information about the attacks on Benghazi, and now it seems to have evolved further to include concerns over compensation Hagel received for giving some speeches since he left the Senate. Ultimately I guess I remain unsure as to how this works out for the better for Republicans—now, or in the long run. 

A meteor injured several hundred people in Russia. 

Spencer Ackerman has a piece up at Wired looking at the mistakes made by the Galactic Empire at the Battle of Hoth. There is also a broader set of responses to Ackerman's piece at Wired, and the folks at the Duck of Minerva have several followup posts debating the shortcomings of the Empire in a wider context. Itemize these posts, I will:

1. Here's Ackerman's post.
2. Wired's symposium.
3. Dan Nexon's piece for said Wired symposium.
4. Patrick Thaddeus Jackon's piece at the Duck.
5. Robert Kelly's piece at the Duck.
6. Steve Saideman piece at the Duck.
7. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson's followup at the Duck.

As these discussions have mirrored some of the lunchtime discussions I've had over the past few years with fellow bloggers Chad Clay and Michael Allen, I've enjoyed reading them immensely. I will try to update this list if there are any new additions.

 

 

Updates

Just a couple of links, comments, etc.

1. Six seismologists in Italy have recently been convicted and sentenced to six years in prison (each) for issuing a "falsely reassuring statement" prior to the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy (BBC Article). The seismologists have been charged with manslaughter over the deaths of over 300 people in the quake, and have also been barred from holding public office ever again in the future. Yesterday's BBC Global News Podcast (Monday, October 22 AM) has some additional details on the situation behind this particular event—apparently there were a series of smaller quakes in the preceding month, but it sounds like such clusters of quakes are pretty common. Some commentators interviewed by the BBC have suggested that this could pave the way for politicians in Italy and other countries to impose new laws criminalizing what I can only label as "bad advice" from scientists, thereby making scientists less likely to offer advice to policymakers. I can't really speak to how likely I think this is, though my initial thought it "not very." Still, I would not have thought it very likely for six seismologists to be sentenced to prison terms under such circumstances in an advanced industrial democracy either. If such laws did become more prevalent, however, I guess I'd be more worried that one potential implication is that failure to come forward to begin with would suggest culpability as well. Damned if you do, damned if you don't?
2. Dan Nexon has recently announced a new blogging reception at ISA's 2013 meeting in San Francisco.  It looks as though nominations for the various award categories are open in the comments thread. Some great blogs already appear to be listed, like Phil Arena's and IPE@UNC. If you somehow read this blog, but not any of these others, you should probably go check them out.
3. The presidential foreign policy debate was last night, and though I don't have a lot to say at this point I do have a couple of brief thoughts. First, Romney definitely seemed more tentative last night than in either of the previous debates. As many others have noted, it seems like this is partially because there's just not a lot of daylight between Romney and Obama on many of these issues. This could also be the result of Obama simply having a greater edge on this subject area because of the job he's held for the past four years, combined with the fact that he's proved far less a lefty on foreign policy than many on the left would have liked, and many on the right had feared. Romney clearly tried to steer the conversation away from what I'll say was a more traditional discussion of security issues to the economy. That's fine, so long as he could have framed it in a clear and convincing way. It's hard to argue that economic policy is not intimately tied in with national security. However, I don't really think Romney did that effectively. His reference to Mike Mullen's earlier comments were helpful, but I think it's getting harder for the Republicans to argue that Obama has reduced our military to some impotent shadow of its former self. Obama's comment on bayonets and horses, while cute, does carry some truth.* Further, that Obama highlighted the fact that we spend more than the next ten top spenders combined on our military helped to further discredit the idea that our military is languishing. He could have increased that number quite a bit and only strengthened that position. In short, I think Romney was weaker here not just because Obama had an experiential advantage, but because even on national security the facts just don't play out as the Republicans would like. 

 

*I'm curious as to how much of this total is simply smaller support vessels that we just don't need anymore. The way to support and maintain ships is quite a bit different now than it was in the early 1900s. The elimination of battleships probably cuts down on this as well. The period Romney referenced is often identified with a significant buildup of increasingly large big-gun ships. 

 

 

Paul Ryan's Foreign Policy Views

Much has been made lately of the idea that Romney's pick of Paul Ryan as VP signals that he is doubling down on the economy for the election. Ryan is clearly known more for his activities on the House Budget Committee than anything else, and that's fine, but just because it's a major signal doesn't mean there are no implications for foreign policy. That said, James Lindsay at the Water's Edge has a brief post discussing some of Ryan's foreign policy views/positions. It's worth checking out.

 

Stuff is still happening in (the sequel)...

I really don't know how many times I'll be able to use that title, but given that the American audience has become so distracted by the Washington debt ceiling battle, I decided to check on some old favorites and post a quick update on goings on elsewhere.  

Libya:  Apparently Libyan rebels have made "significant" gains in the past week, taking control of some key cities on the way to Tripoli.  NATO planes have damaged or destroyed over 150 targets in the past week alone.  However, who really knows what qualifies as a "military target" for these purposes.  Sources in the article also indicate that some of Ghadaffi's forces have begun consolidating in Tripoli and have begun removing their uniforms, apparently gearing up for a transition in tactics.  It will be interesting to see what the next month brings.  

Syria:  It sounds like the body count in Syria is continuing to rise steadily.  Syrian security forces are apparently combating "armed gangs" in an effort to protect the people.  This includes firing into Palestinian refugee camps as well it seems.  The article also mentions a Youtube video that has surfaced, purportedly showing some pretty graphic scenes from the crackdown.  I've not seen it, but it sounds pretty unsettling.  

Bahrain:  It sounds as though things have quieted down for the time being, but Bahrain is still dealing with the fallout from the previous protests and crackdowns.  Quiet doesn't necessarily mean good, however, as the BBC is reporting that hundreds of people are still in jail and there are reports of widespread torture.  Not terribly surprising, but it's important to keep in mind the fact that the violence carries on even once the streets have cleared.    

Jonathan's Card Has Ended

Penny Arcade, a comic that usually discusses video games and the video game industry, weighs in on Jonathan's Card--apparently, homo economicus can gain utility by not only defecting and receiving the largest share possible, but also gains utility purely by gaming the experiment. Unfortunately, it appears the test has come to an end (Starbucks deactivated the card) due to abuse and apparent fraud in the experiment (perhaps Tycho-types have won).  The premise of the project was to have a publicly available Starbuck's card that anyone could use. The card started with a balance and anyone with a smart phone could use it to pay for coffee at Starbuck's.  Likewise, anyone could add money to the card to buy coffee for strangers they would likely never meet.  The data of transactions was made publicly available, published on twitter, and some graphing has occurred.

It was suggested that this might have been a viral marketing campaign by Starbuck's, but it appears that this was not the case after all.  

A few sites have posted more detailed analysis on the card:

• Huffington Post's coverage
• Social Commerce
• Odio and theft from the experiment (original tweet)
• The official Facebook page where people share their stories of how the card impacted them.