tdaxp

Note: This is a selection from Redefining the Gap, part of tdaxp's SummerBlog '06

Attempts to find empirical proof for Barnett's Core-Gap hypothesis have increases since I first attempted operationalizing the gap. Coming Anarchy has looked at Euro-Canadian troop deployments and FP's failed state index, ZenPundit ponders metrics, Curtis looks at ways to skin the Gap, and Sean Meade, Tom Barnett's blogger-in-chief, is paying attention.

Now I am prepared to release my own results:

We are at War with Africa and Islam

Federalism. Small government. Freedom. Wealth. The Constitution. Power. The benefits of admitting the 31 Mexican United States to our Union seem almost endless. But there's one more that must be mentioned: secure borders.

Defend America. Annex Mexico.

"Glossary," by Thomas Barnett, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/pnm/glossary.htm.

"Updated Glossary of Key Terms from the Pentagon's New Map," by Thomas Barnett, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/bfa/glossary.htm.

"Neoliberal Geopolitics," by Susan Roberts, Anna Secor, and Matthew Sparke, Antipode, 35:5, 2003, ppg 886-897, http://faculty.washington.edu/sparke/neoliberalgeopolitics.pdf.

"Denaturalizing Dispossession: Critical Ethnography in the Age of Resurgant Imperialism," by Gillian Hart, Creative Destruction: Area Knowledge & the new Geographies of Empire, 15 April 2004, http://geography.berkeley.edu/PeopleHistory/faculty/GHart_CreativeDestruction.pdf

Continuing my work from "Operationalizing the Gap" (which itself built off of "The Cores of Europe"), I now look at what the academic press is saying about Tom Barnett's Pengatgon's New Map Theory.

The results aren't kind.

"The View from Here," by Adena Schutzberg, Directions Magazine, 15 March 2006, http://www.directionsmag.com/editorials.php?article_id=2125&trv=1 (from Catholicgauze).

A quick word of congratulations as tdaxp-alum Catholicgauze is referenced in a Directions Magazine editorial

Another reviewer noted two excellent papers from folks at West Point. The titles exude relevance: "A Geographical Analysis of Ungoverned Spaces" and "The Future of NATO and the EU." The writer seemed embarrassed to note the rudeness of many attendees (ringing cell phones, coming and going during papers, etc.).

I'm still quite proud of tdaxp's appearance on Slate, so I know how Catholicgauze feels. Directions Magazine is a publication in the geographic community, so I'm sure Catholicgauze is double-plus-proud.

Congrats!

"AAG: Thursday Morning Update," Catholicgauze, 9 March 2006, http://catholicgauze.blogspot.com/2006/03/aag-thursday-morning-update.html.

While Dan Nexon worries about "ring wing political correctness" and Rodger Paine mocks the concerned, academia continues its history of being an ideological conversion machine for the Left.

Blogfriend Catholicgauze is attending 102nd Annual Association Association of American Geographers convention. The AAG interest organizations, such as Socialist & Critical Geography Specialty Group, clearly have rubbed Catholicgauze the wrong way. In particular, poor Dr. Mohameden Ould-Mey has drawn C's ire...

a tdaxp Special Report by "Aaron"

Harm de Blij's book, previously shouted out on tdaxp (I, II, III, IV, V, VI) gets a mention on www.kuro5hin.org along with discussion about shortcomings by American students in the area of geography. Read the whole thing.

The brief article did touch off a neuron or two. tdaxp and I frequently argue, over Chinese food naturally, of the utility of public vs private school. So I did some digging. Many conservatives would state that public schools spend too much time teaching hippy ideas and equality and not enough time teaching facts / knowledge. I would argue strongly the other way, that sports, popularity and increasing sexual awareness keep anyone from learning anything in public school. I figured, someone, somewhere has to have dug up some figures. I was right, and they're not that old.

Now, the point here isn't to stir up a new argument. That's actually only secondary. What I want to point out here is that Lutherans outscored Catholics. Since I recently transferred to a private Lutheran college, strictly for the degree, I thought I'd stick it to tdaxp ( and lesser to co-conspirator Catholicgauze) as tdaxp is into Catholicism strictly for the trivia.

Eat hot Eucharist, fascist pig!

Catholicgauze found a nifty site of old road maps -- including some nice German ones...

From the 1950s!

And 1970s!

A more serious point: one hears complaints about supposed Japanese "remilitarization," but Japan wasn't mapping her lost Empire a generation after she lost it.

View the rest of the travel maps

Mark Safranski of ZenPundit declared de Blij the winner in the first part of our de Blij v. Parker death-match on the cores of the world.

Next up is climate change:



Who will win this round?

It's not a dispute

It's a deathmatch:

Note: This is part of an example political science literature review and research design. An abstract and table of contents are also available.

Before the ample literature on economic and political freedom in post-Communist societies is examined, some work on geographic determinism will be reviewed. Specifically, an overview of geographic determinist viewpoints will be presented, examples of geographic determinism with respect to democracy earlier in the literature will be highlighted, and an interesting synthesis on geography, democracy, and war will be examined.

Without getting bogged down into the morass of terminology that Lewthwaite (1968) explores, it is important to say that geography is an important factor in development without being the only factor. As Spykman (1938) writes

It should be emphasized, however, that geography has been described as a conditioning rather than as a determining factor. The word was chosen advisedly. It was not meant to imply that geographic characteristics play a deterministic, causal role in foreign policy. The geographical determinism which explains by geography all things from the fourth symphony to the fourth dimension paints as distorted a picture as does an explanation of policy with no reference to geography. The geography of a country is rather the material for, than the cause of, its policy, and to admit that the garment must ultimately be cut to fit the cloth is not to say that the cloth determines either the garment's style or its adequacy. But the geography of as state cannot be ignored by the men who formulate its policy. The nature of the territorial base has influenced them in that formulation in the past and will continue to do so in the future.