Cranky and Venting

I've been avoiding the blog lately because I've been cranky. There are a lot of little things going on, both personally and professionally, that are really irritating me. I didn't think I could write about them without being bitchy. And then today, after receiving an email that almost made my head explode, I suddenly remembered that I don't care if I'm bitchy. It's my blog and I'll write about whatever the hell I want. One of the reasons why I like blogging is because it is cathartic. When I can transfer the thoughts into words and deposit them somewhere, then I can clear my head to think about other things. So here is a non-exhaustive short list of things currently annoying me:

• "Friends" who think that starting an phone call or email with "How are you?" and then proceeding to go on and on about all of the drama in their lives is real communication as opposed to egotism.


• Women who won't acknowledge that trading sex for material goods is prostitution. Just because you are white, middle class, and educated and you are (typically) not handling cash doesn't make it less wrong! And, as I've mentioned before, when you're 30-something and don't know better, it is really pathetic.


• The fact that I don't get paid this summer. Yes, I love what I do for a living, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't get paid for it. I am working my ass off this summer for the sake of tenure. Yes, yes, I know that the hard work will pay off in terms of gratification and professional success some day. But, today, I have bills to pay. What other profession expects people to work for free?! It's completely exploitative and yet we accept is as part of the mythical honor code of academia. Well, it's bullshit. (Workers of the world unite! -- I still say KM wasn't totally off his rocker.)


• I chipped a tooth last week. When I think about all of the money that I have poured into my teeth it makes me want to vomit. It also makes the above point more irritating.

Yet Another Example of Why Economists Should Stick to Their Own Field

An unfortunate side-effect of Freakonomics -- a book that I have issues with but that I appreciate for its cleverness and popular appeal -- is that economists have been bolstered to continue forays into other disciplines that they know nothing about, produce some kind of odd result that's statistically significant, and then gain unprecedented press coverage for their "brilliance." The infiltration of economists into crime research, without any fundamental knowledge of criminology or sociology, is exasperating. Today's paper highlights just another example of this problem. The headline reads: "Study links unusual names to juvenile delinquency." Their point is that kids with unusual first names are more likely to get into trouble than those with more common names. The article concludes with this quote: "it's not the name per se that causes the juvenile to behave badly, but it's the family background." Really? Well, any intro criminology textbook would have told you that. I actually started to read this paper and got so annoyed that I had to stop so I wouldn't spend the entire day fuming. Somebody please tell me what the point of this line of inquiry is. On second thought, I should save this paper as an example for students of a poorly constructed research question.

*Okay, so the title is misleading in its snarkiness. There is nothing wrong with interdisciplinary research. My point is that you should actually take time to learn something about the field that you weren't trained in before you go "revolutionizing" it with your half-baked ideas and fancy statistics.

Pity Party

On this hot, humid, and now rainy Sunday afternoon I've decided to clean up some of our photos. I came across these two from Easter that I had meant to share, but never found the time. This one is Oscar -- my mom's 11-year-old daschund who lives with my sister. He is probably the most annoying dog we've ever had -- whiny, clingy, and never satisfied. The miniature, short-haired daschund was the size of a beanie baby when we first got him and was simply adorable. Then for the next 10 years he was spoiled rotten by my mother. The lap dog was her constant companion and he was treated like royalty. The saddest thing about my mom's passing was watching this little dog cope. During her final days he was utterly distraught and then after her death he simply didn't know what to do with himself. We at least were able to process our grief, but his life had been turned upside down with no way for him to understand what was happening. He's now adjusting to his demotion from "prince" to simply "dog" and he's obviously well cared for by my sister and her family, but sometimes I still feel incredibly sorry for him. This picture was taken at Easter when he took refuge with the stuffed bunnies.

This is a picture of Bob, my niece's best friend and constant companion since she was an infant. Bob is a girl and was named by Abby when she was just learning how to talk. All of her other dolls and Barbies have very feminine, Disney-influenced princess names, but Bob has always been Bob. Even though she's now five -- and a "big girl" -- she is still quite attached to Bob. As you can see, she has had numerous reconstructive surgeries, thanks to my sister's sewing skills, but she is still little more than a rag.

Busted

Pro-jihadist anti-Americans' efforts to subtly gain support for their causes through Rachael Ray's Dunkin' Donuts ad have been thwarted! How dare our enemies try to poison us with fashion!

Wait ... what? ... Rachael Ray? Dunkin Donuts? anti-American?

Yup. That's right. Most of us were apparently too ignorant to realize that Ray was donning a "pro-Palestinian" scarf while hawking coffee. Well, actually it was just black and white paisley, but apparently it looked enough like something Yasser Arafat would wear that the right-wing blogging community rushed to our defenses lest we be brainwashed.

According to one such protector of our fashion sense, Michelle Malkin explained that "Ignorance is no longer an excuse. In post-9/11 America, vigilance must never go out of style." Whew! I feel safer already! Of course, we can be ignorant of the other themes of the ad -- like the exploitation of coffee farmers, the proliferation of disposable plastics that is killing the planet, the unhealthy, chemically induced "food" products, etc. It would be un-American to discuss them, particularly with respect to a company that "protects our immigration laws" and therefore is usually considered ultra-American, except for this little fashion faux pas.