Where is the usual energy of scatterplotters? A friend recently told me that a colleague wished her a good summer. This was disconcerting as it suggested that the colleague (or everyone?) in the department would be gone for the entire summer. Is that common? And just because one is not in the office, [...]
I received a request from ASA to organize one of the regular sessions for the 2009 meetings. I was asked to do this just a few years ago and I’m not convinced it is something I want to do again so soon after. I understand the service part of our job, however, I’ve already committed [...]
February 19, 2008 – 11:16 am
Finding a time for the meeting when all members are available! In many cases, the time and effort that goes into such planning is more taxing than the meeting itself. The level of incompetence around issues of this sort is staggering.
February 11, 2008 – 11:13 am
I’ll be participating in a professionalization workshop on publishing and looking for ideas on the types of topics we should cover. When it comes to journal publishing in particular, what kinds of questions would you hope to have answered? This can range anywhere from how to select or approach a potential collaborator to deciding [...]
February 3, 2008 – 4:11 pm
I have an old email account I check on occasion. Others sometimes mistype their own account and register for services using this email address. Most services ask for confirmation so there’s not much of a problem. In such cases I don’t confirm and that way the registration doesn’t really go through. Presumably the person eventually [...]
January 25, 2008 – 9:54 am
People often say that every talk is a job talk. I think this is a reasonable approach. And to be clear, “job talk” refers to more than the presentation itself. It’s about the time spent at the host institution overall. You want to make a good impression when you go and visit a school. Making [...]
January 23, 2008 – 11:36 am
From a video by the Stanford Environmental Health and Safety group (actual video not available without an ID):
“So clean your toaster, or get your mom to come here and live with you.”
And no, it’s not just on some obscure video one can only view with a campus ID , it also got blasted to tens [...]
January 9, 2008 – 9:54 am
I would like to second Kieran’s idea that Jeremy’s potential donation be sent to ASA. There are a lot of stupid organizations out there, but if we had a contest, ASA would hold its own for sure.
I was just renewing my membership - call it voluntary punishment. I’ll refrain from going into how unfortunate, and [...]
January 2, 2008 – 1:56 pm
The recent post about how background characteristics and former experiences shape people’s behavior reminded me of a case that raises questions about where we should draw the line in being sensitive to people’s various circumstances.
In a plagiarism case with a graduate student, a colleague once told me: “Well, this is cultural, where he is from [...]
December 18, 2007 – 7:48 pm
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 [...]
December 5, 2007 – 5:23 pm
Why does one negative comment have so much power over all of the positive feedback one receives? Why can one negative response spoil so much positive in a matter of seconds? There must be tons out there on this, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin.
This applies in all sorts of areas [...]
November 25, 2007 – 11:07 am
A: The toys and holiday gifts are in that corner.
B: Oh, okay. * picks up holy family finger puppets *
A: But don’t buy those finger puppets, go for the generic animal ones.
B: Sure, you say you’re not religious, but suddenly you get all squeamish when you see my finger up an angel.
