Happy brain stretching!
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Tag Archives: Short
Unusual stories
The most unusual part of this unusual story is not that a bee truck overturned and overwhelmed victims and emergency workers with bees. It’s that a similar accident occurred in 2006. WTF, Turkey?
Interdisciplinarity, yet again
Fabio, over at orgtheory.net, suggets yet again that Sociology should be more like something else. I am genuinely mystified by these periodic forays into the dissing of the discipline, and my take is generally that: There is a small but persistent category of sociologists who always seem to want sociology to be more like some …
What does it mean?
What does it mean when you start reading articles, posts, threads, and comments that look like the same exact articles, posts, threads, and comments that you already read 5 years ago? Same cited people, same trajectory of argument, same conclusions. It’s not plagiarism, it’s the re-invention of the wheel. Like undergraduates reading Marx for the …
Serena
Well, IMHO they have to publicly levy the maximum fines, penalties, suspensions, scorn, shame, and derision on Serena (tirade! outburst!). Because it allows the officials to not have to admit that they substituted procedural rationality for substantive rationality in a) allowing a linesperson to call an at-best 1/16 inch footfault at 15-30 at 5-6 in …
What I'm looking at
I am preparing for classes to begin, cleaning out files and cleaning up office. And I decided last-minute, with a cheap fare, to jump to Chicago for the weekend to attend a close friend’s annual party (which I’d never been to before and seemed like the kind of thing to do at least once). As …
Front-stage/backstage behavior
One of Erving Goffman’s brilliant insights is the extent to which people engage in presentations of self. Front-stage behavior is the display meant for ‘public’ consumption: witty, urbane, dangerous, smart, smooth, down-to-earth, intellectual, anti-intellectual. This depends on the audience, of course, and it is meant to make oneself look good. Backstage behavior is closer to …
Authorization
There’s a longer post I intend on the ways political/social discourse gets hijacked by experts, well-covered territory to be sure but important nevertheless. In the meantime, I’m still on something of a news hiatus. So I am coming to this a little belatedly. Apparently, Niall Ferguson, a professor dude who writes about money, wrote an …
Some observations on ASA 2009
Back from ASA, and it somehow feels incomplete without some kind of wrap-up. So: I am coming to appreciate my cohort and close-related cohorts at Northwestern more and more. Within a couple years or three, wow. This year, I ran into or got to catch up with Mike Sauder, Ryon Lancaster, Tim Hallett, Mike Lounsbury, …
Can't control the Moon – Delta edition
I was scheduled to leave for SF today, and after I arrived at the airport and waited around a half hour or so, I was somewhat horrified to learn that my flight had been irreparably delayed. My choices? Fly to Cincinnati and take an early flight out from there, or fly out tomorrow morning. So …