The most interesting singles event I ever went to was a Jewish one, at a synagogue. There were a bunch of dentists there.
Forgive me for saying so, but what made that particularly interesting?
Well, they brought all these canisters of nitrous oxide with them.
You all did nitrous, at the synagogue, at a singles event?
Yeah. See, the 80s [...]
At a cafe in Fort Collins. The guy working behind the counter is wearing a T-shirt that proclaims “I’m not a hairy cowboy, I’m a well groomed mountain man.”
(it pains me not to capitalize the W in West)
I.
The same joke has been in the past two books I’ve read.
What’s the joke?
Something like “Two behaviorist psychologists have sex. And then afterwards, one says to the other, ‘It was good for you. How was it for me?’”
I read that in a book, too!
II.
A lot of Irish people immigrated to the U.S., and [...]
From a friend: ”There is a cluster of galaxies called the Perseus Cluster, which is 250 million miles away from Earth. Scientists found that all of the sound waves it is emitting form a single note…B flat. “
Apparently, this is the deepest note ever generated in the cosmos (?!).
In other geekly weekend highlights: Quantum Hoops is the history-of-science-and-underdog-sports-team-documentary [...]
~5 year old: Dad, what’s the biggest building?
D: That’s a good question. Do you mean what’s the biggest building in Boston, or in the United States, or in the whole world?
5: In the whole world!
D: That’s hard to answer, because they keep building very tall ones, but I think it’s in Malaysia. Why don’t we look [...]
you rock!
love,
your blog
(Note from Jeremy: Sara is renowned for wanting to do birthdays up big. However, I resized the photo and put it in just as a thumbnail so that it would not be so big as to crash anyone’s browser. The photo is from last year, when we were at the [...]
At a dinner party tonight, I was asked by an Italian postdoc to explain the process by which either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will become the Democratic Party’s nominee in the general election in November. As I got to the part about the super-delegates, it was clear from the expectant smiles on my [...]
From a midterm evaluation in my undergraduate course, “Environment, Health, and Society”:
“This class seems to give me the chance to learn some new, outrageous fact every week.”
Based on popular demand (n=2), I’m raising a question from today’s “ask a scatterbrain” comments thread from “off topic” to the topic:
Is it possible to be on the job market “on the down low”?
For those following this series, here’s the next.
Update by Jeremy (the embed, not the video itself):
Do pay especial attention to the woman signing.
(Jeremy, thanks for the embed!)
Or, would you prefer traditional peer review? Which do you think would most improve your manuscript?
See this article in today’s Chronicle.
I recently received this query from a colleague:
I’m two weeks into my first course (Intro to Soc) and trying to make some rigid rules about prep time. I am realizing (as I’d been warned) that I could prep and prep and prep all the time. Do you have rules about how much time you spend [...]
I’ve been recruiting for Scatterplot in recent weeks (with only limited success, thus far, though I remain hopeful that a certain favorite sociologist will soon use the login we sent him last month to begin posting). This usually involves a conversation about how often we hope contributors will post, the advantages and disadvantages of blogging [...]
Sara, I’m not sure if Santa is alive AND parents give you presents or if it’s really just parents who give you presents.
That’s a pretty serious question, Finn. How do you think you could find out the answer to that?
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:
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.
Earlier this month, columnist Paul Krugman wrote about Giuliani’s misrepresentation of the differences in US and UK prostate cancer survival rates and their role in his misrepresentation of health care reforms proposed by Democrats.
A more extensive listing of Giuliani’s mis-stats appear on the front page of today’s NY Times.
Perhaps one of our home departments should offer up a first [...]
I.
“I had dinner last night with someone who self describes as a ‘quant jock.’ Is that a familiar phrase to you?”
“Yeah, it gets used a lot at the Kennedy School.”
“So, I understand what it is to be a ‘quant’ - both in finance and in social science - but what’s a ‘quant jock’?”
“It just [...]
It’s a treat to begin the morning with a really good cup of tea and an article in the Chronicle about a friend’s research!
See
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2558/race-class-and-the-choice-of
Congratulations Eszter!
The term “gnotobiotic” stems from the Greek words “gnosis” (”known”) and “bios” (”life”). Somewhat paradoxically, a gnotobiotic animal is, at least originally, one with no known life. That is, a gnotobiotic animal is born and reared in a sterile environment, so that it is germ free (or GF, in the parlance of the articles I’ve been [...]
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