There is no milk for my cereal this morning. Two days ago, when there was no milk in the morning, my husband got his car stuck in the snowplow-created snow dam trying to get milk for me before I got up. (Yes, he is a sweetheart. But I’m OK, too. After we got him unstuck, [...]
I know that others have noticed that Google Books sometimes show the fingers of folks doing the work of scanning old texts. But there is just no excuse for this.
I want to post information that consists of ~200 graphs on my web site in a format that will be accessible to the most people. I don’t want to spend a ton of time doing this and would prefer to have the files as small as possible. I am generating the graphs in Stata, which [...]
This post needs to make a reference to oral sex and you’ll just have to get over it.
Having sat through a series of interviews with job candidates (and been on some myself) I have begun to wonder why we take the interview so seriously as part of the job process. I understand that if you’re hiring someone you want to see what they’re like - but I’m curious about how and why [...]
I am back from my holiday visit to my parents and sister, glad to be home. I was a little helpful here and there, and my sister and I had some chances to talk about the plan. I think my biggest accomplishment was convincing both of my parents to finally get hearing aids. I hope [...]
A few weeks ago, jeremy posted about the intricacies of randomness:
People have asked and, yes, the graphic is an actual scatterplot generated using Stata, although the data are random (and uniformly distributed on both the abscissa and ordinate.) Note the relatively large spaces of white adjacent to places where the points are densely bunched on [...]
So, orgtheory has had a couple of posts (here and here) about journal comments that follows my own, perhaps overdramatic, earlier post on the topic. Part of one thread, as well a post by Peter, follows up on my statement that there is often a “wild lack of critical thinking that many sociologists evince [...]
(view from my window, right now)
The only conceivable justification for my current apartment is the view. Which I do adore. Except, when the weather is windy and rainy outside, you get to see it in all its ugly dysplendor. That can actually be quite fun to watch when you are staying in [...]
When the war of the yard signs was at its peak several years ago, I wanted to put three popular signs in my yard, all together:
Let Your Light Shine: Fight Racism
We Support Gays and Lesbians
Keep Christ in Christmas
My state celebrates the winter season with the war of the symbols. Nativity scenes on public property justly [...]
Sara, I’m not sure if Santa is alive AND parents give you presents or if it’s really just parents who give you presents.
That’s a pretty serious question, Finn. How do you think you could find out the answer to that?
I’m not creative enough to write an ode. But I will say this, I love fruitcake. What’s not ot like? Fruit, booze, and cake? I’m making one this afternoon. The fruit has been soaking for six days (I even brought it, soaking in a bowl, on the Amtrak from NYC to Maine). It’s going to [...]
Is here. I will admit, I’ve wondered many times what my life would be like if the Internet had never been invented. My main conclusions are that I would have read more books, be less well apprised of current events, and have less geographically dispersed and less interesting friends. I’ve also wondered [...]
My parents called this morning to let us know they were leaving for the airport and to talk to B one more time (knowing my mother, this is because she’s always afraid she’s going to crash without saying goodbye to those she loves). At any rate, apparently my mom told B that she’d be in [...]
We’ve had so much discussion about grade inflation in higher education lately, I think it is becoming part of me just by osmosis. The first 7 or 8 years I was at Notre Dame, I was one of the tougher graders in the department. The last two years, not so much.
I am working on a revise-and-resubmit for a comment on a paper published in a prominent journal. Believe me, I am by this point so over being surprised by incompetent work appearing in prestigious places, and yet this paper was beyond the beyonds. The paper has three sections that claim to offer [...]
Fabio recently linked to an argument by the economist historian Deirdre McCloskey against using outside letters for tenure decisions. The argument is mostly economic: because there are no incentives for outside professors to be exacting or to say anything negative, the letters convey virtually no information because either the outside person is going to be [...]
Pardon my making an executive decision here, but it seems that the “what to wear to an interview” thread that got started in the comments on a prior post should get its own line. Here is the original question: One grad student told me that her adviser said not to wear black at a [...]
I hate grading. I hate grades. I especially hate grading in classes where it seems like everyone ends up on the cusp of two grades (which happens more often now that I’m working someplace with a +/- system). That’s exactly the predicament I’m in now.
This one is less cool than an iphone but maybe you folks can help. I want to get a new small 12″ notebook computer. It is mostly for PowerPoint so I don’t need a lot of horsepower. (My main computers are my desktops.) Portability and long battery life are my main [...]
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