online course materials

Related to a past post in which I mentioned Erik Wright’s podcasts of his lectures is this story in which an MIT physics professor, Walter Lewin, has become an online star because of his lectures. I found myself watching them and loving them. I also discovered that MIT puts a lot of course materials online. [...]

oh, jeremy. you are asking for it.

how hot is jeremy? hot as…
1) a fresh glass of ice water
2) an old cup of tea
3) biscuits fresh out of the oven
4) a sizzling plate of chicken fajitas
5) the core of the sun
View Results
Make your own poll

i’ll sit this one out, thanks

I realize someone out there is probably working on an application where you can get a colonscopy through Facebook, but until that comes out, this one wins the prize for the Facebook application invitation I’ve received that I have the least interest in accepting:

starting off

I’ve been preoccupied with work and haven’t had a blogging groove this week, but The Colonel’s last post about students giving gifts has led to a thread about students bringing smorgasbordly food-spreads to their thesis and dissertation defenses. If Scatterplot contributes to reducing this practice, I would feel like this blog had made a [...]

’tis the season

You don’t have to be an economic sociologist to understand that as a professor, it is not straight forward to get gifts from students. It’s that time of the year (or maybe one of those times in addition to the end of the academic year) when gifts might appear. What to do? I [...]

without reservation

How to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds is something about which I think (and worry and strategize) a great deal.  I’m happy that this has emerged as a topic on this site and look forward to learning from your experiences and suggestions.
In the meanwhile, here’s something incredibly easy that we can all do:

disadvantage

I’ve been working with an undergraduate, a senior.  She is African American, from a poor family.  None of her elders went to college, although a few cousins are doing it.  She graduated at the top of her class in an inner-city high school, where she says she never had to do any work to make [...]

sociology in the news!

There is an interesting article in the NYTimes on sociologists using facebook for data. None other than one of the nominees for “best of 2007” Nicholas Christakis.
A few things strike me as interesting. First, they’re using Simmel, “triadic closure” thesis - whether your friends are also friends. Go Simmel! He’s been primed for [...]

digging out

Like many, we were hit with a lot of fluffy, soft snow yesterday. Although it was the idyllic childhood scene, it took all day to convince Kid that going outside would be fun. Once he got out there, he complained about being cold and refused to get out of his toboggan. Husband and I each [...]

another scatterplot

The green line in this graph from pollster.com shows the trend of Mike Huckabee’s support in Iowa:

Classic J curve! I’m just doing some back-of-the-envelope math here, but

annual reports

I’ve already received two “holiday letter” e-mails, both from people I’m fond of but haven’t otherwise been in touch with over the past year. The first is from a woman I knew from grad school who went off on remarkable length about this new hobby of hers which I won’t go into in any [...]

i am irrationally enraged by this

http://www.wiscnotes.com/
It allows students at Wisconsin to buy/sell notes for classes. Two sociology classes are listed.  I wonder how many other places have something like this?

i’m buying an iphone…

And I’m using research money to do it! I feel a little guilty and a little dirty. Like I’m stealing something. But I’m also fired up. I’m going to have to buy new clothing to match my hip new accessory.

nutter about nuther

I can’t stand how the phrase “a whole nother” has slipped into our language (447,000 hits on Google, the variant in the title produces a mere 25,500 hits).  I’m hearing it everywhere these days–even news anchors are saying it now!  The worst part, it’s so ubiquitous it is coming out of MY mouth.  This madness [...]

i am obsessed with two things

1.) The Mitchell Report, which is coming out in 5 minutes. I haven’t been able to work for the last hour.
2.) Blog statistics. I don’t know why, but I’m fascinated by them. In fact, I’m less interested in the content of this blog right now, and more interested in how people are navigating to, through, [...]

little black corvette

Computers I have either personally owned or procured from research funds for professional use: a Commodore VIC-20 (elementary school), a Commodore 64 (junior high), a PC that I’m sure was made by enslaved children somewhere and whose hard drive kept breaking (college), a Mac Color Classic that was I lost custody of in a breakup [...]

overheard in line at starbucks, a.d. 2049

“What killed sociology, you ask?

taking the role of the other

I am, for the first time, advising senior theses this year.  One of my thesis students, we’ll call her Jane Doe, just won a university wide competition for a grant that supports outstanding undergraduate research in the field of women and gender studies. 

sorry to’ve crumped your style

Two months ago I was at a dinner party that included also an academic couple. The husband made a pun during dinner that indicated he had misremembered my last name (chocolate bar in my profile notwithstanding, it’s ‘Crumple’ not ‘Crumble’), and then he was so pleased with his pun that he made references to [...]

gettin’ old: the bad news follow-up

Thanks to everyone who had good ideas about what to do for my folks that are getting up there in years. It turns out that there are lots and lots of resources just like the ones I was looking for: agencies that screen, train, and bond workers to help seniors out and allow them to [...]