i feel like i’ve been walking around for months with something stuck in my teeth

I am reading this blog on Internet Explorer right now. Instead of the visited links being gray like they are when I read Scatterplot in Firefox, they are blue, which leads to an aesthetically unpleasing mismash of gray and blue all over the page. Not only that, but on the far right of the Scatterplot banner, there is a mysterious multihued squizzle that is not supposed to be there.

Word is, there still remain people in this world who use Internet Explorer as their primary browser. Some could even be readers of this blog! If you are one of them, are the visited links blue instead of gray? Have they always been that way? Do you have the squizzle? Have you always had the squizzle? Why haven’t you told me?

correlation, or causality?

From CNN.com:

Obama picked up an endorsement from California superdelegate Crystal Strait…

“Barack Obama has shown a real commitment to young voters in his campaign, and in response, young people have overwhelmingly voted and caucused for Obama,” Strait said in a written statement.

“We know that if a young person votes three times in a row for a party, they become a party voter for life. We know that because of high youth turnout in 2004 and 2006, 2008 is the third and critical election for young voters. And that’s why I know I want to pledge my delegate vote to Barack Obama,” she said.

public sociology trivia

I still intend to write a post with my thoughts on newsocprof’s discussion of public sociology and the tenure process, which jt also addressed in a response post in The Public and the Private.  That will come later, after the flurry of end-of-term grad advising and family business (including my son’s college graduation and attendant in-law visit, out of town trips, and help moving).

In the meantime, I thought I’d mention this week’s public sociology issue for me, which is less philosophical and more mundane.  The Governor is finally giving a press conference next week about his intentions with respect to the big racial disparity report released by the Governor’s Commission in February .  We Commissioners have been invited to the press conference, which is being held in the city 80 miles away at 2 in the afternoon.  As far as I can tell, we are being invited to stand behind the Governor while he talks.  I’ve never met him; I don’t know whether he will even bother to talk to me.  I’ve decided to go, even though this will take up at least four or five hours of my day, lead me to reschedule a bunch of grad student appointments, and make it that much harder for me to get time to get any work done before the relatives show up next week.  It could turn out to be a total waste of my time.  But I find that I hate to miss it.

In other public sociology news, two national NGOs jointly released their reports on disparities in drug arrests last week showing that the big city in our state is one of the nation’s worst, so I got calls from reporters.  A bunch of people said to me, “I heard you on the radio.”  I said, “So what did I say?”  I never did find out.  I did not realize he was taping, although I guess I should have.  Apparently what he put on the air was OK.  You never know.  That’s another fun part of public sociology: there is nothing like a good quotation out of context to make you sound like an idiot, or worse.

happy mother’s day

Shout out to the moms today. I got the most awesome hand-made gift from Kid and a couple of great books from Husband that were just what I wanted. Plus, an extra hour of sleep in the morning, plus pancakes with raspberries. What more could I ask for? It was the best Mother’s Day ever.

Yesterday was almost as good. Kid and I went to the tulip display at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Although the ratio of exploring to snacking was completely lopsided, we got to see most of the flowers and I got some great pictures of a beautiful boy.

my summer vacation

BTW: Things are looking final for Sal and me going to Malawi to teach a course on data analysis at the end of June.  This will be my first time to Africa, my first time crossing the equator, and my first time doing anything even remotely like this.  When I signed up, my thought was Adventure!, although I’m not sure how much Adventure! there will be teaching a class 9-5 for six consecutive days. 

Sal and I will also have a 10 hour layover in London, so presumably we will be able to get from Heathrow to see something while we are there.

why aren’t you blogging???

Because I’m writing a paper on blogging for a small conference on Friday.  I spent several days being stymied by said paper because of teaching, competing professional obligations, my secret new supernerdy hobby, and other distractions.  Then I moved to being stymied by said paper by a general lack of ideas.  More accurately: I have many ideas about blogging, but the things I think about with blogging do not fit that well with the theme of the conference, which is on “public intellectuals.”

Tidbit: while the words “public intellectual” appear in a book by C. Wright Mills, the term was effectively coined only in 1987, in a book by a historian about how the public intellectuals were in decline as a result of the expansion and professionalization of academe.  So, basically, “public intellectual” has gained currency for lamenting about an idealized personage that had a golden age which is passed.

I looked at a couple books on public intellectuals and they just reinforced my sense of much of it being a giant wankorama for clever boys to manversate and inflate their mutual sense of self-importance.  I do not have much interest in contributing to reflections on all that, and it certainly does not play to my strengths.  What I said I would do is talk about blogging and markets for intellectual attention, and I should try to focus on that rather than worry about the conference theme.

BTW, when I went to the library to check out some books on public intellectuals, I learned that my Northwestern ID had expired.  See, apparently, when you start out as a tenured professor at Northwestern, you may have a lifetime committment from the University in one sense, but your ID is only good for six months.   So I’ve squirreled away the books in a random graduate students study carrell and am going over there to continue working on this.

teaching question #2

Is there a way I can see something different on my laptop screen than what is projected onto the lecture screen? I use “bad” PowerPoint slides with too many words because I don’t have the personal organizational capacity to keep track of lecture notes separately from slides, so my slides double as my notes. If I could project something different than what I’m looking at on the laptop, I’d be set. Windows XP can handle two monitors, is there a way to make that work for this purpose? What I’d really like is to be able to project the slide show on one screen and look at the notes for each slide on the other. Also, is there some other slide show software that would work better like this (assuming I could solve the monitor problem) than PPT?

teaching question #1

How do you ask questions that guide a student discussion? I realize I’m a little old to be asking this question, but I’ve realized this is a teaching skill I don’t have. I know how to lecture and tell students what I want them to know. I know how to respond to student questions in interesting ways. I know how to run a class so students are comfortable talking and asking questions. I know how to facilitate and organize a discussion pulling together questions/comments initiated by students. I know how to ask good questions of someone who has just presented a paper in process. But I don’t know how to think about planning discussions in advance for a class session. I don’t know how to prepare to ask questions that elicit somewhat predictable answers that will help students “discover” the point you want them to learn or lead them to talk their way into a point you want them to get to, or that will encourage them to dig more deeply into a topic. I get the impression that some teachers do this. Is that right? I don’t think I learned this by watching when I was young because I did not go to that kind of schools. Can you recommend “how to teach” resources for this particular skill? Do you have tips or techniques?

not to be confused with the domino’s noid.

It’s the 8th of May, and many back home are chanting “Hooray, hooray, it’s the 8th of May!” I guess people outside of Washington were tired of missing out; there’s apparently a NOID event planned in Chicago today.

q: what do you want to be when you grow up? a: elsewhere

My hometown is Manson, Iowa (no relation to Charles or Marilyn), population 1800 or so. This morning in my inbox:

Dear Jeremy,

Another Manson-born academic ([name], at the University of Iowa) sent me (a Manson-born academic at the National University of [exotic foreign country]) the URL of your website, which I greatly enjoyed. Congratulations on that: delightfully, and affectionately, irreverent — and helped me to remember why, from the age of about 12, my life goal was to be somewhere else.

Best wishes,
[name]

I had no idea that there were other people in academia from my hometown. My own life goal of being somewhere else did not crystallize until age 13, with an incident that involved me watching a couple guys who worked on a rendering truck.

(Don’t get me wrong: I love Iowa. And remember, if it wasn’t for Iowa, Barack Obama would not be the Democratic nominee. He better not double-cross us on ethanol.)

I earned star 67 this morning on my plan to exercise 200 days in 2008. Remember, I’ve committed to giving $25 to the George W. Bush Presidential Library for every day I fall short. I am currently slightly behind: if I continue at this pace, I will be donating $300 or so, which is enough to ensure that I will have my name on right-wing mailing lists for life. Plus, it will be all the more evidence at my trial the year ASA has “Who shall we purge?” as its theme.

mario kart party at your house: may 30

Who needs to wait for the ASA party? Not us. I am announcing the first official Scatterplot Mario Kart Wii Party, to take place at 9pm EDT on Friday, May 30.

Everyone is welcome, even those orgtheory guys who, I have been told, can’t tell a blue shell from a banana peel. Readers, writers, and lurkers are all warmly invited.

assorted

A couple of frustrations here at work. Some days I think, “I wish I was getting more done.” Some days I think, “Why am I not just punching out and instead spending my time on my secret new super-nerdy hobby?”*

I was sufficiently despairing by the end of the day that I plopped down on the couch and watched American Idol. I know! It turned out to be a useful theological exercise, though, when it became clear that if the guy with the dreadlocks does not get voted off the show this week, there is no God.**

During AI, I saw an ad for a product called seasonique, which was supposed to be a contraceptive that “allows” (I’m not sure what the right verb is) women to have only four periods a year. I thought women on the pill could already control whether or when they menstruated just by continuing to take the normal pill rather than the placebo portion of the standard packet. Then again, I spent much of my time in the sex-ed portions of health class trying to ward off a seizure, so perhaps I misunderstood this. Anyway, I’m confused.

* A couple people asked me if I had gotten into Second Life. It’s interesting how people can read your blog for years and then reveal in a sentence that they don’t know you at all.

** Speaking of which, two recommendations I’ve been given recently for expanding my social circle here have been: (1) start going to church, (2) start going to cons. But I’m not religious! But I don’t like science fiction! I’ve been told they both operate on a kind of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy if you fake it.

cable bill + passport = ballot.

Some were not so lucky.

Welcome to Indiana.

he’s probably for cloning, too

I have to tell you what Kid said yesterday.

What?

Kid: That lady has a bigger belly than anyone in the whole world.

Mom: Well, honey, some people are big and some people are small. Everyone’s different. Would you want everyone to be the same?

Kid: Yes, everyone the same!

So, basically, our Kid is Hitler.

I think all 4-year-olds are Hitler, though. That’s why you have to raise them well.

new civil rights film

H/T to WOC PhD: http://profbw.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/racism-is-like-contaminated-soil/

I’ve used Eyes on the Prize in teaching for years, it is a great resource. But this new video, Dare Not Walk Alone, looks like it could be an excellent update. In addition to historical footage about the St. Augustine protests, it includes footage and interviews of current conditions. I’m eagerly awaiting a chance to see it. It is in theatrical release now. The web site includes a trailer and lots of background information, including the source of the film’s name, which is interviewee talking about needing to stay in groups to avoid White violence. There is also extensive discussion of why documentaries are so expensive to produce, because news organizations own old television footage and charge $100 a second for it. I remember that the long delay in re-releasing Eyes on the Prize was the music copyrights, now often held by large corporations.

as the bees go, so go the bats

Though plagued by bats in my house, I still love the little web-winged critters. And even if I were anti-bat (hi, Jeremy!), I’d still be saddened by this news of a massive bat die-off in the American Northeast:

For more than four months, perplexed scientists have struggled to understand why upwards of a half-million bats may be at risk of dying in the dark caves and mines of Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and New York. Last year, thousands of dead bats were found in four caves within 7 miles of one another. This year, at least 25 caves and mines spread across 135 miles were found to have sick or dying bats. Homeowners from Hanover, N.H., to East Canaan in northwest Connecticut have reported dead bats on lawns, decks, and roofs, a sign the animals might be affected in an even wider area. But so far, no one has found an infectious agent or any other cause.

Is it a sign of our times that a lack of bats is even more creepy than a bat invasion?

about name tags

So what’s the vote on Jeremy’s suggestion of getting ribbons for ASA? Yeah or Nay? I don’t want to be the only dork wearing one (although I certainly won’t be the only dork). And more importantly, if yeah (YEAH!) what about the design? Our banner. Someone had suggested a multiple-choice question. But I suspect we may not be able to fit it.

As co-chair of the newly elected scatterplot ASA party committee (winning by one vote, shout out to my co-chair, Tina), I am happy to do the planning. If you’re thinking, “Shamus, it’s May. Get a life. ASA is in August,” I say to you: This is the kind of responsible leadership you can come to expect from me. And as you are reading my blog, I would ask, “Who, really, doesn’t have a life??

about names

There are some issues to consider about naming yourself in print, and a lot of these are not obvious at first. I’ve been talking with some of my students about this, because several are thinking about changing their names for a variety of reasons, including marriage and language.

If you are thinking about changing your name, you may as well think about what’s at stake in the options. And even if your name is staying the same, you still have some choice in exactly how you write it for publication. What matters in a publication name?

overheard (community farm fundraiser edition)

The most interesting singles event I ever went to was a Jewish one, at a synagogue.  There were a bunch of dentists there.

Forgive me for saying so, but what made that particularly interesting?

Well, they brought all these canisters of nitrous oxide with them. 

You all did nitrous, at the synagogue, at a singles event?

Yeah.  See, the 80s were fun like that.

we try harder

Does Google return the same search results to everyone, or does it customize the results based on some information its cookies have adduced about you? By my Google search results, anyway, our blog has now climbed all the way to #2 for What You Get If You Search For Scatterplot, preceded only by the 3000-lb page-rank monster that is the Wikipedia Entry. I wonder sometimes why Google doesn’t just replace its “I’m Feeling Lucky” button with “Search Wikipedia.”

Also, almost forgot: Happy Free Comic Book Day! Don’t everyone rush out to get yours all at once.