PhD research in politics and international relations
I just wanted to share a few more R resources I’ve found useful to keep an eye on.
First, is the always interesting Stack Overflow site and especially those questions tagged as “r”.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r
And second, some good stuff sometimes rolls along on twitter if you search for “#rstats”.
In case you are like me and would prefer to read the report rather than sit back and listen to Enda Kenny and Brian Cowen argue about what it actually says, I’ll include a link to it here.
…can be a dangerous thing.
Morgan Kelly has an excellent op-ed in the Irish Times today giving his opinion on the NAMA (The National Assets Management Agency) approach to Ireland’s banking crisis and I think it is well worth a read.
I think he adeptly exposes the political calculations behind the current government’s response to the banking crisis without sounding shrill or irrational (as too much of the debate on this issue often becomes). Lenihan and Cowen are playing a dangerous game with Ireland’s economic well-being and unfortunately seem unwilling to change the strategy they have selected despite the preponderance of evidence that is confronting us.
The New York Times had an article on Monday describing the visit by a group of paleontologists to the Creationism Museum in northern Kentucky. I read the article thinking it would amuse me, but unfortunately it has left me feeling…well, queasy.
For some, the Bible can be studied as literature, and I’m sure much could be learned from it about the style and language of a time long passed. For others, it is history, and to these people I ask that they consider it as they would any secondary source document. Its provenance, authors and editors should be acknowledged and considered. It has a historical context, tells one part of the global story and contemporary documents should be relied upon to get a fuller picture of the time. In a sense, all history evolves, and the evolution of the Bible makes for a particularly fascinating story.
I feel very strongly that science literacy is being under-emphasized in our society. No matter what our opinions on the philosophical questions surrounding the existence of life we should all be able to agree that critical thinking and an inquisitive nature are vital skills to be fostered and honed.
Ultimately, the article made me feel uneasy because it asks me to recognize that there are people out there who look at the majesty of the universe but don’t feel the drive from their very core to explore it. People for whom science is uncomfortable either because it asks questions about what we do not know or because it dares to ask questions about those things we thought we did. These people have found an explanation for the unknown that I suppose brings them comfort or peace of mind, but in doing so I can’t help but suspect that they have traded away an important part of themselves.
In a sense I can accept an adult making that choice, accepting that trade-off. Uncertainty and exploration can be frightening and exhilarating in equal measure. But no child is born that doesn’t feel the drive to explore and hopefully when these people become parents they allow their kids the opportunity to reach their own conclusions.
Wishful thinking I’m sure…
This post isn’t meant to summarize the fascinating conceptual cloud that is Irish neutrality, and believe me it is a fascinating concept wrapped up with questions of identity, history and politics (with an extensive literature exploring each facet at length).
Instead, I write this because I am intrigued by the visceral reaction which questions of neutrality seem to raise amongst my Irish colleagues. It seems to have blended with the Irish identity in a way which makes its importance so great as to be impossible to disentangle from the Irish psyche. While I remain inquisitive regarding the changing Irish identity (if only to help me better understand my wife) I must remember that we are not many generations removed from the establishment of the Irish republic, and in many ways that the political party landscape in modern Ireland remains divided along the lines of that establishment. In other words, on this island the weight of history feels ever present.
On slightly firmer ground, I am also intrigued by Irish neutrality because I believe that the importance it holds with the electorate is not reflected in the substantive policy of the state.
To rephrase, and perhaps to incite, I would argue that Irish neutrality means very little in the context of the modern world. Setting aside the issue that an island surrounded by democracies and ocean doesn’t seem to have many immediate external, military threats, I instead choose to emphasize two facts. First, that the Irish military is engaged across the globe, playing vital roles in missions under the auspices of both the UN and NATO. And second, that Irish governments have participated quite extensively in the international organizations which exist to guarantee peace and security.
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/SID-790ED36B-5DAB9321/natolive/topics_51979.htm
The link above summarizes, ever so briefly, Irish participation with NATO through the Partnership for Peace Framework. What is interesting is that the Irish leadership must recognize the importance of the neutrality issue to their constituents because the document repeatedly refers to neutrality in the sense that it is both fundamental and unaltered. However, this repeating of the phrase stands in stark contrast to the extensive cooperation which is ongoing as the IDF is involved with both the strategic planning for conflict and in providing soldiers and materials toward the actual operations of such a conflict.
The question remains, how different would Ireland’s use of the military and cooperation with NATO be if neutrality were not the salient issue with the people that it seems to be? I would argue that it wouldn’t be.
PhD Comics has done it again. Hilarious.
There are times when I, an American living in Europe, need to be reminded that I am in favor of social services and helping people to equal opportunities. I really am and I do.
However, I find that I miss hearing the other side of the argument. The ideologues and talking heads back home who make me so angry occasionally serve just such a useful purpose. Grover Norquist might be a nut (“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”), but the argument that government intervention isn’t always the answer to every societal ill isn’t a crazy notion and it is one that is less visible here.
Then came the pension levy…
A stop-gap measure enacted by the government to compensate for the dwindling tax revenues and the exploding cost of unemployment and banking bailouts. So be it. Times are tough and we all have to do our part.
Then my wife received her paycheck and I noticed something odd. The pension levy was being calculated on gross pay, but so was the PAYE (income tax withholding). Both taxes pretended the other didn’t exist. Income tax was being taken for the income which was removed by the levy…
“We are paying taxes on our taxes!”, I bellowed. “This injustice must not stand!”
I was turning a shade of purple and using dialogue better suited for a Superman comic in the 50’s.
I ranted and roared while my wife smiled calmly in that way that wives do, patted me on the arm and agreed it wasn’t very fair but that we should think of those who are worse off than we were. I was not mollified.
“Pack your bags we’re moving back to America! I will not abide such indignity!”
But she’s used to me, and went back to what she was doing before my Fox News moment.
Eventually I calmed down, and rational thought returned. The income levy was always going to be painful and I suppose an argument could be made that applying it after income taxes (and the various deductions for pension contributions, rent allowance, child credits and the like), would have enabled those on a higher income and thus with more capacity to save and use income tax credits to benefit.
Either way, for probably the first and only time in my life I felt a twinge of sadness that Grover wasn’t on my radio ranting away.
Ah, the fun of using general search engines (like the Goog) to find R help can be a real…adventure. But have no fear there are better ways to get the info you need!
1. Within R itself is the handy RSiteSearch() function that opens a web browser and sends your request to the r-project search page.
2. Various specialty search sites have been popping up all over the place. So far, I’ve been particularly pleased with rseek.org.
3. I haven’t used it but www.dangoldstein.com/search_r.html is supposed to do a similar type thing.
So, there you have it, no more excuses, let SPSS go.
(All credit once again to the various contributors on the R-help mailing list, especially Richard Cotton and Ian Fiske)
I’ve been trying to find a simpler bit of R code that will allow axis labels to be written in at an angle, and thanks to my obsessive scanning of the R-help mailing list I found a nice example (all credit to Uwe Ligges and Marc Schwartz for their approach). I’ve made a few cosmetic tweaks in moving the labels off of the x-axis and changing the labels.
The following code will produce the figure below:
labels <- c(“January”, “February”, “March”, “April”, “May”, “June”, “July”, “August”, “September”, “October”, “November”, “December”)
labels <- month.name[1:12]
mp <- barplot(1:12, axes = FALSE, axisnames = FALSE)
text(mp, par(“usr”)[3], labels = labels, srt = 45, adj = c(1.1,1.1), xpd = TRUE, cex=.9)
axis(2)
Configure to your heart’s content. I know I will.
Updated code: R has a few built in constants and I think it makes things much simpler to take advantage of them (letters, LETTERS, month.name, month.abb and pi).
I recognize that my fascination with these things is bordering on the absurd, but I just can’t help it. They’re awful and they’re spreading to the other parties.
Try not to make eye contact with Mr. Ryan it may provoke him…
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