Online Books and Tacoma's Public Domain

Yesterday Google Books finally began to release full PDF copies of books in the public domain. As you've probably read, Google has been scanning the contents of several major libraries, and making parts of these books available to the public while trying to respect copyrights (see more here). For much older books that have slipped into the public domain, Google is making these open to full content distribution. I played with Google Books yesterday--in order to find the full content works, you need to go to their site and then click on "full view books". One problem I was having was that the radio button to download was not consistently appearing--perhaps a function of the system being overloaded by new users.

Now, books in the public domain will, by and large, be quite old, and often of limited interest. That's not to say there aren't many gems, however. For example:

Tocqueville. Democracy in America
Machiavelli, The Prince
The Works of Alexander Hamilton
Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

What about closer to home? Looking for work on Tacoma, I found a couple of pamphlets on the early debate over Mount Rainier, which locals campaigned for (re-) naming Tacoma, which they considered to be its rightful Indian name.

Here's a little screen capture of the opening page of "Is it "Mt. Tacoma" Or "Rainier".: What Do History and Tradition Say?" By James Wickersham (1893):



I like the reference to cravats in particular. This opening passage seems intended to give the proceedings an air of legitimacy and seriousness. My favorite passage from the text:

And thus, at a distance of over one hundred miles, Vancouver named this grand white-capped summit after a foreigner who represented nothing to our American civilization, and who not only never saw the mountain bearing his name, but who never saw the continent upon which it is so conspicuous a land mark. Vancouver held no communication with the Indians, and seemed to have had the greatest contempt for them, and made no effort to ascertain the names, if any they had, for the rivers, mountains, bays and other natural features of this virgin world.

Browse away!

Tags:

• Tacoma
• technology
• education
  

Mrs. Zinchuk Goes to Budapest

A few posts back we noted the doings of Jennifer Eidum '03, who joined the Peace Corps, went to Ukraine, witnessed their Orange Revolution, and was accepted to the Central European University in Budapest for graduate school. If that wasn't enough, Jennifer got married to Alexander Zinchuk, a police first lieutenant in the city of Pervomaisk, and has started her own blog, Mrs. Zinchuk's Adventures. She inaugurates the blog with a great post on her wedding in the Ukraine and all the traditions and rituals that surround it.

Jennifer is off to Budapest in a week, so we say viszontlátásra és mindent jót! or farewell and all the best! That's Hungarian, incidentally--her Russian and Ukrainian won't be quite so useful in Central Europe.

Tags:

• alums
• gradschool
• peacecorps
  

MBA or MPA? (or MPP?)

If you're thinking about getting a professional degree after graduation, one of the questions is whether you might focus on business or policy. MBA's are pretty well known, but students are less familiar with the Masters of Public Administration, or MPA. The National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration describes the MPA as follows:

"The Masters of Public Administration (MPA) degree is the professional degree for people who want a public service career in management. These degree programs develop the skills and techniques used by leaders and managers to implement policies, projects, and programs that resolve important societal problems while addressing organizational, human resource, and budgetary challenges. MPA graduates work in a wide variety of public service fields and in all levels of government (federal, state, local, and regional), in nonprofits, organizations, in the international arena, and in the private sector."

A couple of items to follow up on:

• A short piece in the Wall Street Journal on when it makes financial sense to get an MBA. Find it here;
  
• The Master of Public Administration Program in Environmental Science and Policy, "a twelve month program that combines Columbia University's hands-on approach to teaching public policy and administration with pioneering thinking about the environment." Find out more here.
• Finally, and again from WSJ, an article cautioning going to graduate school because you don't know what else to do, miss campus life, or dislike your first job. It can be an expensive mistake. Read more here.

Update: To refine this discussion a bit more, Professor Weinberger points out a nice breakdown of the differences between the MPA and Masters in Public Policy (MPP) degrees that has been provided by George Washington University; find it here, and their broader site here.

Tags:

• gradschool
• employment

Politics and Government "Library"

...OK, so it's not much as of yet. But we've just installed a bookcase in the lobby at Wyatt Hall where faculty will be leaving books and magazines that might be of interest to students. They are yours for the taking, though if you take something and later don't want it, you might bring it back and keep up the freecycling.

The Future of the City

We've blogged in past about the debate over where cities like Tacoma are going in future and how they can attract a better educated population. Exit133 has pointed out an interesting organization, CEOs For Cities, and a report they did in December on this topic. The whole report can be found here. Some bits about the Seattle-Tacoma-Bremerton area:

• National rank in percentage of population between ages of 25-34: 15
• National rank in percentage of population between ages of 25-34 with a 4 year degree: 14
• Percent change in population between ages of 25-34, 1990-2000: -4%

So our area has been doing well, but maybe not as well as people (especially in Seattle) might think. The decline in youth population was particularly surprising to me.

Who has been doing well in attracting the young and educated? Two are Portland and Las Vegas--interesting if you think about it, as they are about as opposite as you can imagine. However, as the study points out, much of Las Vegas' growth in educated young workers has much to do with the rapid growth of the city itself. Again, a huge contrast to Portland's emphasis on planned urban development.

Check out Derek's thoughts on Exit133 here.

Tags:

• Tacoma
• Education

That's Entertainment

Professor Haltom sends along a copy of a nice graphic from The Nation on "The National Entertainment State". However, I note that the graphic is far from complete, as I was unable to find our blog appropriately plotted among the nodes of power.

Find it here.

Your Campus Photos for the Day

The weather has turned for now, and so a partially cloudy morning greets us. A nice change from yesterday.



Tags:

• Tacoma
• Campus

Trolling for Polls

Professor Weinberger points out this piece from the New York Times on the proliferation of questionable polls that often drive the media and public debates: find the article here.

The article cites an interesting blog you might check out: Mystery Pollster, which discusses all the intricacies of polling and their sometimes questionable data. Neat stuff.

Tags:

• Technology
• Education

Welcome Back!

It's still too early for most students to be up, so the campus is not yet abuzz with the comings and goings of students. But already I've run into one befuddled freshman trying to figure out where his class is, which it turns out doesn't start until the late afternoon.

It's already 75 in my office and it's not yet nine. I suspect it will crack 90 by the afternoon. Most of Wyatt doesn't have air conditioning--a cost-cutting move that will, I think, come back to haunt us. Perhaps this is something that should be subject to the Institutional Review Board's policy on projects involving human subjects.

Update: I overexaggerated--at 4 pm the office only reached 88 degrees.

Welcome back, Politics and Government students, and everyone who has returned to campus. Best wishes for the new year.

Internship Opportunity, Washington Republican Party

Another great opportunity comes our way--students, check it out.

Washington State Republican Party
Office Intern Job Description

The primary role for interns will be to provide support assistance for the various departments within the office.

Answering phones, providing front desk reception and assisting the Communications, Political and Finance departments with specific tasks as needed.

Persons interested should have an interest in government, politics and campaigns. They should enjoy working with the public and in office teamwork work activities.

The daily schedule is flexible, our office hours are Monday- Friday 8:30am-5pm. Realizing that students have busy schedules, we can accommodate any schedule.

For more information or to schedule a brief, informal interview- Please call Brian Maydole or Carrie Shaw @ 206-575-2900.

The Washington State Republican Party office is located at 16400 Southcenter Parkway, Suite 200 in Tukwila.

Tags:

• Internships

Solving the Textbook

Textbooks are spendy. What about publishing textbooks with ads? An article in the New York Times (find it here) discusses Freeload Press, which is offering free online texts, albeit with advertising embedded in them. So far it's not been a runaway success:

"The number of universities that will be using any of its free textbooks as a required text this fall is only 38.

Without a full range of outstanding textbooks, Freeload will remain nothing more than a concept with dubious prospects. It can’t sign up the authors it needs to expand its offerings because professors balk at the juxtaposition of “Solution to Demonstration Problem” on one page and an ad for a double bacon cheeseburger and fries on the next. The example is not hypothetical."

The author of the article suggests that a more likely model in future will be electronic texts that are not free, but at a highly reduced price in compared to their hardcopy version. The textbooks that I, Professor Fields and Share have authored are going down this path--the second editions will be available soon through Norton as "e-texts" for far less than the paper versions. Will these kinds of textbooks have many takers? Or are the physical properties of a textbook still more attractive? I think we'll see in the coming years.

Tags:

• technology
• education
  

If The Dead Tree Media Fall and There's No One Around to Hear it...

A very interesting piece in the most recent Economist on the future of newspapers in the face of the internet. One of the main problems they point to is that newspapers haven't taken their electronic presence seriously, either in terms of content or organization. The Tacoma News Tribune has responded to the challenge in part by unleashing a whole host of blogs--14 at last count!--and they seem to unleash a new one a week. This seems more like unfocused desperation than a real strategy. In the end, newspapers may have to confront a post-"dead tree media" world:

"For most newspaper companies in the developed world, 2005 was miserable. They still earn almost all of their profits from print, which is in decline. As people look to the internet for news and young people turn away from papers, paid-for circulations are falling year after year."

Read the article here.

Update: A piece from the New York Times on the decline of Knight-Ridder.

Tags:

• technology
• Tacoma
  

Web Write

After being closed to new users for a time, Writely is back in business. This is essentially an online word processing program, where you save your document online and can thus retrieve it from any machine. This could be particularly useful for students who might start an assignment at home, then want to access it from a laptop or common machine on campus. It also appears to have easy collaboration capabilities, which I've often found quite a pain when you're emailing documents back and forth. I've only played with it a bit, but so far it's pretty interesting. Another Google salvo against Microsoft. Try Writely here.

Tags:

• technology
  

Coffee, Hamburgers and Global Economics

A couple of interesting sites:

The International Networks Archive at Princeton does a series of "Infographics" on world issues. Most of these, in my opinion, suffer from graphic overload--perhaps their designer should take Edward Tufte's seminar next time it comes to town. Their one on globalization as seen through Starbucks and McDonald's however, is interesting and nicely presented.

Speaking of Big Macs, many of us are aware of The Economist's Big Mac Index as a way to measure purchasing power parity by comparing how much a Big Mac costs from place to place around the world. Here's another take on this--UBS has looked at how many minutes of labor it takes around the world to earn enough to earn enough to buy a Big Mac. Their conclusion: "On a global average, 35 minutes of work buys a Big Mac. But the disparities are huge: In Nairobi, one and a half hours’ work is needed to buy the burger with the average net hourly wage there. In the US cities of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Miami, a maximum of 13 minutes' labor is needed. Although the comprehensive comparison of purchasing power and gross wages puts them at the top of the table, higher production costs mean that workers in Swiss and Scandinavian cities need 15 to 20 minutes for their Big Macs."

There's lots more in this survey, including a list of the most and least expensive major cities in the world. Here's a tip--don't move to Norway. Find the survey overview here, and the entire study on global prices and earnings here.
thanks to Ken Wedding at Teaching Comparative Politics for the UBS study.

Tags:

• technology
• education

Heavy Traffic

We are thrilled at how much traffic the blog is getting--shortly after I sent out the last Friday mailer we had a huge spike in traffic; as you can see by the stats above, over 160 visits yesterday alone. Professor Sousa has been convinced that it's just him and me clicking over to the site again and again, but even I can't read my own writing that much. We are close to hitting 5000 visits in just 4 months. Wow. Thanks to everyone who has surfed the site, left comments, emailed me, and been patient with our hiccups as we have gotten up and running.

Update: As of Saturday we cracked 5000 hits.

Ole! Kanpai!

In my estimation, students don't get off campus nearly enough. They know Proctor and Sixth Avenue, but haven't plumbed the depths of Tacoma as they could. So I feel it's my duty to occasionally point out places to go that might be of interest. Here's a few that are rolling out this fall.

1. Twokoi Japanese restaurant. Near UWT, complete with sushi bar. Planned opening mid-September; everyone's excited about this. Find the location here.

2. Matador. Third installation of this Seattle Tex-Mex place which I suspect will quickly become the place for the young movers and shakers of Tacoma to see and be seen. Sorry, over 21 only. Opening this September. Find it here.

Tags:

• Tacoma

Publish Your Masterwork

We've had many students write excellent papers for our classes, and often we comment that with a bit of work (or none) they'd be publishable. So here's a reminder to students that there are various student journals out there where you can submit papers. Why not give it a try? It is always fun to see your name in print and a nice thing to put on your resume, especially if you are thinking about graduate school or are currently in grad school and want to get your publishing feet wet, so to speak.

The note below comes from the journal Critique. And in fact, we've had a student publish previously in the journal--you can find Russell Knight's 2003 paper, "The Church Potluck: Using Social Capital to Explain Membership Patterns of Christian denominations in the United States" in their online archives here.

Critique is not the only student publication. I've created a delicious tag that collects a number of other journals you might consider submitting to. You'll find the link here. If you have questions about this whole process, drop by or drop us an email.

-------

From: Ali Riaz
Date: August 22, 2006

The Editors of Critique welcome submissions from undergraduate and
graduate students for the Fall 2006 edition of the journal. We
encourage articles from any field of political science, especially
those that consider new possibilities for democracy and justice, as
well as national and international public policy. The deadline for
submission is 15 October 2006.

Critique is an online journal of critical analysis by students of
politics. It is hosted by Illinois State University’s Department of
Politics and Government. The electronic format of Critique
provides an alternative venue that expands political debate by creating
space for the emergence of new ideas. Such a medium broadens the horizon
for undergraduate and graduate publications and serves to lift typically
unheard voices in academia. The editors firmly believe that budding
scholars introduce valuable ideas that must be heard in order to
understand the changing nature of our global community.

Guidelines for Submission

All submissions will be considered. All submissions will be refereed by
the editors prior to publication.
Students should use the online Submission Form to submit work for
consideration.
Manuscripts should be single-spaced, right margins not justified, and
not longer than 20 pages in length.
Students can submit online at http://lilt.ilstu.edu/critique/writers.htm

Ali Riaz, PhD
Editor, Critique http://lilt.ilstu.edu/critique
Associate Professor, Department of Politics and Government
Illinois State University, Campus Box 4600, Normal, IL 61790-4600
Tel: 309-438-8071; Fax: 309-438-7638
http://www.ilstu.edu/~ariaz

Tags:

• studentpublications
• gradschool

More Blogs Than You Can Shake A Stick At

We've got another entry in the ever burgeoning UPS blogosphere. Professor Mike Veseth has set up a blog for the International Political Economy program here on campus. Like ours, Professor Veseth is providing a mix of departmental news and other bits and pieces to inform his readers.

For those of you who have been off campus for awhile, the IPE program is an interdisciplinary major that combines courses from many different majors, including our own. You can find more about the major here.

Tags:

• campus
• education

Mr. Frost Changes Jobs

From Darrel Frost '04:

"As of August 28th, I will be working as editor of a new alumni magazine (print and online editions) at the Nightingale-Bamford School. Nightingale is a K-12 private school for girls on the Upper East Side of Manhattan; along the lines of a Brearley or Spence, if you're familiar with those, and if not you can learn more at http://www.nightingale.org. This is a great and exciting opportunity for me for a variety of reasons, which I can explain further at a later time if you are interested.

That's the biggest news for me right now, though New York continues to keep me entertained and fulfilled. I hope all of you are also finding enrichment and peace in your respective corners of the world. If we do not get the opportunity to speak face to face soon, I look forward to corresponding with you in other ways."

Congrats to Darrel on his new job, and we look forward to hearing more about it.

Tags:

• alums

Congratulations to Professor Haltom

Congratulations to Professor Haltom who was named one of four Distinguished Professors by the Faculty Advancement Committee. Professor Haltom would say that the term "extinguished professor" might be more apt, but anyone who has taken a course from Professor Haltom or seen his impressive scholarship knows him to be one of the most active members of our campus community.

Tags:

• WilliamHaltom