January 31, 2009 – 5:18 pm
So, one sometimes hears the statement that a student should not go to graduate school at the same school where s/he went to undergrad. I’ve heard that at least one top 15 sociology department has a policy against admitting its own students (I’m not sure whether it is just students who were soc majors [...]
January 30, 2009 – 10:15 am
You know how as you teach a class there’s a tendency for your syllabus to get longer and longer? This isn’t because you’re teaching more material (probably) but because you’re slipping in additional notes for your students. Fun things like, “Late work will be accepted only with an adequate excuse. Being a member of the [...]
January 29, 2009 – 2:06 pm
Today, I lectured on gender inequality in wages, and President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter bill into law.
January 29, 2009 – 12:48 am
So, I’ve been absent. In part it’s been because I can’t really see. Allow me to report two adventures: one happy, one not so much. So to start with the happy:
The food collective I founded with four other people while in graduate school was reviewed by the NYTimes and Gourmet magazine!
http://bitten.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/a-pork-dinner-raised-in-wisconsin-and-imported-to-brooklyn/
http://www.gourmet.com/food/2009/01/underground-food-collective-dinner
I guess if sociology doesn’t [...]
January 28, 2009 – 7:10 pm
Kid: When people are dead, what happens when they have to go to the bathroom?
Husband: I call Twitter.
Me: *sigh*
January 28, 2009 – 5:10 pm
Almost everyone agrees — and this is supported by my own many years of observation of colleagues — that the most productive scholars have regular schedules of writing a few hours every day. We binge writers can be intensely productive when we are working and can get a lot done in a short time, but [...]
January 27, 2009 – 8:52 pm
Resorting to gimmicks like having nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman write about award-winning sci fi author, Charles Stross, is a sure sign of distress. But when everyone else chimes in, and then Stross responds? Clearly, they are out of ideas.
Hacks.
January 27, 2009 – 6:11 pm
The biggest public works stimulus program ever! Two steps: (1) create America’s largest inland lake, (2) move a certain northwestern state south. See evidence in logo here (HT: KB).
January 27, 2009 – 6:06 pm
I’m Leechblocked from the Scatterplot archives here at work, so I can’t link to old posts, but: does anyone remember those halcyon early days of the financial crisis, when a person could wonder about whether the economy would have adverse effects for sociology’s assistant professor job market? Who knew a few months later one [...]
January 27, 2009 – 10:39 am
Out for a run this morning (btw, you would not believe how much warmer -12 is than -15), I saw a person taking a walk across frozen Lake Ontario. Some guys that were watching him said he came all the way from Burlington, walking in the most direct path. Looks like he saved himself quite [...]
January 26, 2009 – 8:59 am
We all hear a lot about people having trouble balancing their work and family life. We especially worry about this in terms of gender, since the greater familial responsibilities that women, on average, have over men has been identified as an important factor in the gender wage gap. Further, the self-help industry produces buckets of [...]
January 23, 2009 – 5:16 pm
Mario Kartsters: here is the google spreadsheet with the friend codes of everyone who is playing. It has instructions how to input these codes to play against each other. We’ll also use this spreadsheet to communicate during the game.
If you want in and haven’t been granted access to this spreadsheet, shoot me an email at [...]
January 23, 2009 – 10:31 am
You have never, ever seen anything like this in an American president’s agenda. It is, by a mile, the most far-reaching statement of support for lesbian and gay rights this country has ever seen. Sure, it doesn’t include marriage, but it includes everything else, like federal discrimination protections for transgender people, along with lesbians and [...]
January 23, 2009 – 1:22 am
Working on a grant proposal due tomorrow. I just went to look up a journal on Northwestern’s online catalog. A message shows up in red saying: ‘NOTE: TITLE SEARCH NOT WORKING — USE SUBJECT SEARCH INSTEAD’.
How the catbother does an online catalog’s title search break?
January 22, 2009 – 2:07 pm
Today I spent part of my morning at home repairing our dryer. After a prolonged period where it made a horrendous screeching noise the drive belt finally snapped, thus necessitating the repair. After I installed the new belt, reassembled the casing, checked the gaskets, reinstalled the electrical contact on the door, and put the [...]
