PAXi Notes for Monday, July 30, 2012: Peace, Numbers, and the Olympics

The PAXi for Mon.
7/30/12 is:
141

The Daily Peace Culture Index for the United States [DPCIUS], or PAXi, was developed by Peace Couple/Wilderside, Ltd., and begun a little over two weeks ago, on Sunday, July 15, 2012.

The PAXi number is designed to describe the amount of energy and discussion devoted to peace and nonviolence in The United States each day.

We wanted to share some observations made while observing this index for the last couple of weeks.

The high for the PAXi has been: 147. The low for the PAXi has been: 131. The range, therefore, is: 16.

The average PAXi has been 137.

Our guess would be that factors that would increase the PAXi the most significantly would be: a huge shift in public sentiment against war; large peace demonstrations held in the United States; new peace organizations being created; or announcements made by elected officials, candidates, or political parties, calling for an end to war(s). We believe that the current range of PAXi may be in a fairly steady state, because no dramatic peace events such as these have taken place.

Overall, we believe that the London Olympics has had a very pro-military-flavor to it — it has included fighter plans with country colors flying by and celebrations of the monarchy, etc. Though, in some ways, the Olympics inserts a discourse of goodwill, sharing among nations, and diversity. So, we are wondering if the last few days of PAXi results in the average and above average range are related to those cultural threads.

Since the PAXi is so new, it is difficult to know what a “big” daily shift would be. So far, the biggest day-to-day jump has been plus 16. Since the Olympic Opening Ceremony, the PAXi number has made small gains of “plus 1” and “plus 2” each day. That may be showing an effect, or it may be too small a shift to be statistically significant.

Our introductory post, explaining PAXi/The Daily Peace Culture Index: here. That post lists the PAXi number for every day the index has existed.

Below are the PAXI numbers from recent days:

July 25, 2012 PAXi: 137

July 26, 2012 PAXi: 135

July 27, 2012 PAXi: 137

(Olympic Opening Ceremony
takes place in evening of 7/27/12)

July 28, 2012 PAXi: 138

July 29, 2012 PAXi: 140

July 30, 2012 PAXi: 141

We also found numbers that demonstrated a possible Olympic effect on the PAXi, because “Google News”, and some of our other indicators, show overlap with the terms Olympics and peace.

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