Jacob Christensen

• SF – SF – Ny integration!
  Fra politisk hold må vi gå forrest med et gennemgribende kasseeftersyn af integrationsindsatsen. Det er – mere end nogensinde – tid til forandring efter 7 år med en regering, der har svigtet sit løfte om at løse problemerne med indvandrerbander, ghettoer og øget splittelse i den danske befolkning. Efter et regeringsskifte vil Socialdemokraterne og SF derfor sigte efter tre ambitiøse mål for en ny dansk integrationspolitik:
  (tags: denmark immigration integration socialdemocracy socialistiskfolkeparti)
• DN – Svengelska
  Svenskan infiltreras stadigt av engelskan, både i grammatiken och ordförrådet. Det skapar en rad problem på olika nivåer – men ändå klarar sig svenskan bättre än många andra europeiska språk.
  (tags: language swedish danish english)
• Sovereign wealth funds: Debunking four popular myths | vox – Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists
  Sovereign wealth funds are a hot topic, but they’re poorly understood. Four popular myths are that sovereign wealth funds are (1) about “them” not “us”, (2) all the same in their opacity, (3) a net benefit to the international financial system, and (4) not like hedge funds. This column explodes those myths and outlines a framework of reciprocal responsibility for sovereign investors and their investment recipients.
  (tags: economics finance globalisation)
• Daniel Davies: The Tories don’t have the faintest idea what government involves | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
  The thing is, these big IT projects aren’t just dreamed up by the government. They’re sold to the government, by management consultants. Sure, the government of the day and the impartial civil service will tell you that they make the policy decisions and merely commission these projects from the most efficient private sector provider, but come on, we all know that isn’t true.
  (tags: publicpolicy it computers uk)
• Bitch Ph.D. – What I Wish I knew: Graduate Student Teaching
  A friend of mine is leading a session in our school’s “training grad students to be teaching labor for slave wages in under 2 weeks” program and has been assigned to the “What I Wish I Knew” segment.
  (tags: teaching academic university)

Andrew Gelman and colleagues run a must-read blog but in one of today’s posts he makes an assertion which calls for an objection. Here goes:

The difference between “quals” and “quants”

In an article on U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics, Samantha Power writes:

Since 1968, with the single exception of the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Americans have chosen Republican presidents in times of perceived danger and Democrats in times of relative calm.

So here’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative researchers. Samantha Power knows more about foreign policy and politics than I’ll ever know. But she could whip off the above sentence without pause. Whereas, when I see it, I think:

- Why start in 1968? Is this just a convenient choice of endpoint? Eisenhower ran as a national security expert, no?
- What evidence can you expect to get about public opinion from the essentially tied elections of 1968, 1976, and 2000?
- Anyway, if you’re talking public opinion, it was Gore who won more votes in 2000–so it’s funny to be taking that as an exception at all!
- How are “perceived danger” and “relative calm” defined? Was 1988, when George H. W. Bush floored Michael Dukakis, really such a time of “perceived danger”?

As commentators have pointed out, the difference is either between researcher and pundit or between a good and a sloppy research design. If Power had been my student and I had been grading her essay as a paper, I – as a basically qualitative researcher – would ask exactly the same questions because the principles guiding your choice of cases are critical for the results when you do a small-n study.

That said, many students often assume that qualitative research is easier to do than quantitative while I would argue that from a technical point of view doing good qualitative research is harder than doing good quantitative research because the criteria for assessing results are less formalised. That there is a lot of sloppy qualitative research around is another matter.

PS: The Power essay in New York Review of Books is available here.

Generally speaking, I’m not a dress-man or a fashion person (I also think that female cat-walk models look like they have just escaped from Auschwitz), but this slideshow by Esquire on men’s fashion from 1930 onward was too good to give a pass.

If I should give my verdict on 1970s fashion, it would be demented rather than deconstructed tailoring, though.

Via the Cranky Professor:

KCTV5 – Professor under Investigation for Mooning Incident

And as said in the title, Bill Shanahan has a blog.

I’m sure there is a lesson to be learned here. Not sure which, though.

And with this, I return to my vacation. Fully dressed.