starstruck

I figured Mathieu Deflem must have gone onto something else when he stopped his various efforts against public sociology. I wouldn’t have guessed, however, that it was Lady Gaga [HT:Andrea].

on the other hand, this i did find pretty funny

Also, perhaps, uncomfortably accurate in places. Except I can’t get the embed to work, so I’ll just link here.

grad skool rulz

Truly: if you are a graduate student and feel this way about it, quit. Now. Also, if you have a blog about exposing classism and have no more perspective than this on the privilege of being in the academy versus the bottom of the labor market, quit. Now. (Well, except for #1. #1 is a […]

who says false consciousness is a useless concept?

From the NC State Fair today:

guerilla opera

A friend sent me this video – what fun, and what a demonstration of the power of culture!  

someone, please

Run for ASA President as a representative of The Dues Are Too Damn High Party. As a karate expert, I will not talk about anyone up here. Or Contexts.

a major social experiment in england

Today the UK announced tremendous cuts in its overall government. Check out any UK publication for details. Basically, public welfare has been slashed. The Guardian has a great overview of the key points of the cut. What I find most shocking: a 60% cut in public housing and the elimination of almost 500,000 public sector […]

ask a scatterbrain: getting your book reviewed

So, the book comes out in January. And I’m thinking, “how do things get reviewed in journals?” Obviously, there is a matter of choice involved (the book reviews editor decides what is review-worthy). But I’m guessing there’s more to it than that. I mean, the editor has to know the book exists before they can […]

my office hours

I’m featured this week on the Contexts Office Hours podcast, talking about genetics and social science. First time on a podcast. It was fun to do, although because of the bad mic on my laptop I essentially had to rest my forehead against the screen and chin on the keyboard and bellow. Update: I was […]

socialization syllabus.

I’m constructing the syllabus for a new upper-level sociology class next semester, “Socialization and the Life Course.” As far as I can tell, there are two ways that I can structure it. The first is by institutions – the role of the family, schools, religion, media, work and occupations, etc. – in the “nurture” side […]

not a squirt in the eye

The NY Times covers a conference on elites and features Scatterplot’s own Shamus Khan, including a photo with Sudhir Venkatesh and Dorian Warren set in front of the requisite bookcase (are those books arranged by cover colour, or is it just me?). It’s a good, if shallow, article on the idea of studying elites instead […]

a joyous waste of time

So I started a project with a colleague of mine, Peter Bearman, which has been ramping up recently. Basically, last year I convinced a website, famegame.com, to give me all their data. That data has information on about 250,000 New Yorkers and the parties they have attended over the last 5 years (think art openings, […]

texting

Texting rates, by age (the average teenage girl sends about 4050 texts a month!):

killing the messenger

UNC football is in the middle of a scandal involving improper contact with athletic agents and potential academic violations. It turns out that one of the main ways the scandal broke was that players were bragging via Twitter about perks paid for by agents, e.g, drinks, entry to fancy parties, and so on. So this […]

science and morality, harris-style

Sam Harris is back. Since writing The End of Faith, apparently while an undergraduate at Stanford, he wrote Letter to a Christian Nation; he’s also been completing a Ph.D. at UCLA’s interdisciplinary neuroscience program. In his new book, The Moral Landscape, he seeks to bring his new field to bear on one of the thorniest […]