The pharmacy giant (and purveyor of fine energy drinks including Blue Monster), CVS, has one of those oh-so-convenient member card programs in which you can get some miniscule (but significant) amount of money back. Having been in possession of one of these cards for a couple of years, I have yet to use it [...]
I really don’t think blogs without comments should be allowed. Really.
For example, there is this post over on The Soc Shrine, and yet, there is no where for me to point out that while the Queen song did in fact go, “dum, dum, dum, da, de, dum, dum,” that the Vanilla Ice song actually [...]
I recently attended a research talk by one of our good friends from orgtheory.net. I was introducing the speaker and therefore got close enough to the powerpoint to read the fine print on the opening slide. (Apologies for the two-piece picture, but the cell phone camera has its limitations). In case you [...]
I have a theory. That theory is that reality television has benefited the democratic process. I’m sure that seems like a stretch to you, but I have been curiously watching the really unprecedented hoopla surrounding the primaries this (and last) year and it strikes me that the press is treating the races very [...]
As someone who suffers from kidney stones, I’m always on the lookout for news about them and how I might better avoid another round of the excruciating pain that come with them. I recently noted several reports recounting a recent study in JAMA on how kidney stone pain is treated in emergency rooms by [...]
Another of my pet peeves is starting an academic paper by referring to the dictionary definition of something. “According to Webster’s Dictionary, X is defined as…” How many times have you read that sentence in your life? I suppose it is a lousy, boring, but minimally acceptable way for an undergraduate to start [...]
I’m sitting here celebrating St. Valentine’s Day by writing decision letters (mainly rejection) for my journal. I have an editor’s tip to share with all those willing to hear it:
Do not cite Wikipedia in your literature review or to provide historical background. Even once. And certainly not multiple times. It provides a heuristic device [...]
I had a very interesting experience yesterday. Very interesting. Perhaps life-changing. You see a couple of weeks ago, I received a call from someone in the computer science department informing me they had a visitor coming to campus from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory who wanted to meet with me. “Ah,” [...]
I’ve blogged before about the pointless activity of writing mission statements. Today I received a link to this dandy little article which reveals some of the incredibly profound discussions surrounding the writing and adoption of mission statements.
“How can you possibly say our mission is ‘research and teaching?’ It’s so obvious that it’s ‘teaching [...]
Three colleagues and I are putting the final touches on an NSF grant, due Tuesday, and one of today’s tasks is to produce the 2-page version of our CVs. The format of the two pager is laid out in the Grant Proposal Guide, and is longer in words than most of these “biographical sketches” will [...]
Scatterplot went over 24 hours without a post? How can this be? I suppose I could post something, but I’m definitely already over my weekly limit!
I’ve been in a snit all day about Hillary and gender, and so I decided to let some of it out. I’m really getting fed up with how the press is talking about Hillary using gender stereotypes and out-and-out sexism against her.
I’ve asked a lot of people who oppose Hillary the reasons why, and [...]
There’s a lot of excitement in the air about Obama’s win in the Iowa Caucuses. When the fever pitch comes, so does hyperbole. One thing I’ve been hearing a lot is something to the effect that “the results show that a state that is 94% white can vote for Obama.” I beg [...]
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 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’ve been holding back on commenting on the powerful post by “olderwoman.” I’ve been less tempted to comment on it directly, and more on some of the commentary on the post, on the extension of the conversation over on Crooked Timber, and the extensions of the conversation on scatterplot. Finally, I just got [...]
I’m currently in midst of writing reviews for 21 NSF proposals (which need to all be filed by 5:00 tomorrow before I head to the airport to fly out to Washington for the Sociology Panel…argh). Having read most all of them at this point, I can make a couple of recommendations to future writers [...]
I like listening to books-on-tape in the car. This is probably because I’m getting older and can’t stand most of the music played for “kids these days” on the radio. I wouldn’t mind listening to more talk radio if I could find someone who shared my biases. Even that darn NPR is [...]
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