Santa Claus is comin’ to town.

I have plans to return to blogging as I return from a crazy summer of writing and frantic catch-up.

To ease my way in, I bring a humorous and/or useful link.

I can’t decide if this is really cute or the basis for mass psychopathy (at the very least, I suspect this would really freak out a kid with a pre-existing anxiety problem). It basically says “Hey Kid! There’s a jolly old fat man from the great beyond… and he’s WATCHING you!”

In any case, I totally ordered one.

Honest Face or Complexion Connection?

I could blog about all the great sessions I saw at ASA, the four and half minutes I spent at the blogger party, why the fact that retro dance nights convince me that I am old (the shift from 80s to early 90s music now qualifies as ‘retro’), or the finer points of homelessness in San Francisco but… My better story is that I lost my wallet and I was able to get through security to fly home with no form of photo id.

Tourists get robbed a lot so I assume this comes up often. I called the airlines and they told me to file a police report. When the nice cop was done laughing hysterically after I included my employment information on the report, he told me to go to the DMV and get a temp license. Thinking that was a good idea (and, after all, nothing adds to a work vacation like an early-morning trip to the DMV), I stood in line with the good people of San Francisco at 7am Monday morning. This netted me nothing but a piece of paper with the words “THIS IS NOT A VALID FORM OF PHOTO IDENTIFICATION” stamped on it.

I rolled into the airport 4 hours early and presented my papers to the gate agent. She told me I had an honest face, put me on an earlier flight with an upgrade, and sent me off to TSA. A grumpy, older TSA agent shook his head at me and said I was going nowhere but then two younger TSA agents took me off to ‘validate’ me. I filled out a form with my name and address and showed them my faculty website on my iPhone with a picture that matched my business card. They called somewhere and asked me what kind of cars I have (one of these questions I got wrong but then corrected a minute later) and where I was previously licensed. They then took me to the head of the line, unpacked my briefcase for me, arranged a pat-down, and told me to have a nice flight (with a ‘m’am,’ even).

This must happen a lot — I can’t imagine telling people with no money, credit cards, or identification that they are out of luck (though maybe this explains the homelessness problem in San Fran?). Still, I had the distinct impression that my ability to get on a plane was in no way procedural and totally about how I presented myself. This makes me happy for myself and a little concerned about airline safety. I do have an honest face and cannot lie without blushing — but a colleague laughed at this and said it was more of a ‘complexion connection.’ Another friend *crassly* pointed out the youth and gender of the helpful TSA agents…

On a related note, when told of the lost wallet, women generally commiserate* and men quickly whip out their wallets, offer you cash, and attempt to feed you. I should really lose my wallet more often.

*But one took me to an ATM and gave me a loan. Thanks (and the check is in the mail).

On a lighter note…

I am SO an iPhone person. I had no idea how wonderful it could be — I just spoke to someone on the phone through a microphone embedded in my headphones while texting another friend about how much I liked my phone while searching for the latest imprisonment rate at BJS (750 per 100,000!) while downloading 15 Step by Radiohead. Oh yeah…and I drafted this post on it while still talking to the first person.

Having thrown this question out to my Facebook friends and hit the jackpot, I now ask my hidden friends — what are the coolest, handiest, and not to missed apps?*

*Bro, thanks much for Urban Daddy, I plan to let it rule my life in San Francisco
in a few weeks. Junior is also delighted by "obviously, lightsaber." Apparently
one doesn't have to have seen the movie to think it kicks a** to pretend your
phone is a lightsaber once you have the sound effects. I was also struck by how
your niece seemed to realize it was inherently aggressive.

Childrearing in a Post-Racial World

I’ve yet to meet a sociologist who uses the term “post-racial” without sarcasm. I’m struggling with how best to talk about race with Junior. This is partly motivated by my long-term desire to turn out a child with a just and knowledgeable view of race in society. My immediate motivation, however, is to get her to stop saying mortifying things in public and to her friends.

On the heels of the Gates arrest, I’ve been thinking about how early we start to put people in racially-categorized boxes. For example, in my townhome association, all of of the men who are gardeners fit into one ethnic category.* A few weeks ago, some painters came to paint the house and Junior kept calling them ‘gardeners’ (“Mama, the gardeners are on the roof!”). Why did she do this, even though the men did nothing resembling gardening and wore different clothes? I could be wrong, but I suspect because the painters were also of the same ethnicity as the gardeners. In an effort to personalize the situation, I introduced her to the guy who worked on our house every day and we tried to have a chat with him regularly. Still, from then on, she called him “Arturo the Gardener.”

Then, Junior gets her first sunburn and we have a long conversation about how her skin is very fair so she needs to wear sunblock every day. This moves on to a conversation about skin tone in general — Mom and Grandpa are very light and unable to tan, Dad is a light brown only in the summer, both Grandmas are a darker brown, and Uncle Chris has black hair and the darkest brown skin. Junior’s pretty analytical so if she’s interested, she’ll spend a lot of time trying to figure out the breadth and limits of whatever simple story I’ve given her. In other words, let the public horrors begin…

It begins with comments about skin tone at the grocery store, pointing out the differences among strangers (loudly, of course, and with pointing). It moves on to a discussion about how she would like to have skin like Uncle Chris (he being her favorite) and would it be possible to paint hers? Next she tells a good friend of hers (of a different ethnic background) that she should paint her skin white so that they are the same. She then pesters a bi-racial friend of mine to choose a box (“But, but, are you black or white? You can’t be both…”). It ends with her describing another child with reference to his skin color in a completely innocent but really unfortunate and de-humanizing way.**

Junior’s comments illuminate for me all of our hangups about race and how early it starts. We say we should talk with our kids openly and honestly about race — still, if we talk about it anymore, I’m going to have to move out of pure embarrassment and make all new friends. More problematic, I can’t change the ethnic mix of my gardeners but can’t quite figure out a way to tell a preschooler about social stratification. I’d like to accomplish this while her cognitive boxes are still forming but, at this point, I’m ready to move on to where babies come from…

*And, I do mean all. I've been looking for an exception to point out to Junior but
have thus far been unsuccessful. Can you guess the ethnicity? Anyone who thinks we're
in a post-racial or class-less world, make an argument for how it's reasonable to guess
that my gardeners are all Norwegian.

**I can't repeat it here, it was awful. On the plus side, his mother thought it
was charming. Still, if only Junior weren't so white, and so blond, and so
blue-eyed -- this stuff just sounds worse coming out of her mouth.

Gates Arrest

An illuminating post on Crooked Timber on the Gates arrest, discretion, and the origins of the disorderly conduct charge. I am struck by the police report, given that it details a ridiculous action on the part of the officer and an example of discretion gone wrong. If accurate, the officer induced Gates to follow him outside (by declining to give his name and badge number until Gates was outside with him) after he had established Gates’ identity and that no crime was afoot and then came the disorderly conduct charge.

Compare the officer’s description with the [justifying] description of the incident in the link on Crooked Timber to the Boston Herald.

Gates’ “tirade” on racism “alarmed passersby who were drawn by the uproar.”

Gates “bellowed,” “snapped” at the officer, and resisted the officer who was merely trying to “calm” him.

I’m with you, Rachel. Racial discrimination does not reduce to class discrimination. This is also an example of the limits of citizen rights and the power of the state — while we may technically have the right to walk away from a police officer absent reasonable suspicion to detain us, I’d like to meet the person who has done this successfully.

The Social Sources of Fandom

Thoughts on Michael Jackson — what a strange guy, gee his Dad seemed to really mess him up, very talented, and did he or didn’t he do a 50 degree lean in the Smooth Criminal video? Also, though people often talk about him as transcending race, I tend to see one racial group represented outside UCLA and Encino on the news (and it’s not the group that I would have expected).

I am more curious about fandom. Is there anyone who, if they died, you would go wander around outside of the hospital or their house or the Apollo?* Without diminishing Michael Jackson, I can think of few people (outside my friends and family) who would compel me to organized vigils.**

Responses like this must have more to do with the fans than with the person that died, yet the person must have achieved some base level of notoriety to garner this level of attention. Is it an interaction between characteristics of fans and the characteristics of performers? Do things like this happen at certain cultural/political/economic moments? How do you reconcile the outpouring with rapidly declining popularity, as in the case of MJ? I’m developing hypotheses but don’t quite know where to begin…

*A friend from high school once dragged me to a Jerry Garcia tribute in Loring Park
after he died. Apparently, I wasn't appropriately reverent (I kept making cracks
about the strong smell of patchouli oil), she's still mad about it. I thought
the whole experience was weird -- and I'm not sure my previous lack of interest
in the Grateful Dead had anything to do with it.
**One comes to mind but I fear saying it out loud, lest I cosmically make it happen.

More Equations=Less Substantive Meaning?

I attended an excellent mini-conference/workshop last year. It got me thinking about my #1 rule for presentations, however == the talk is an advertisement for the paper, not the paper itself.

Though the conference emphasized quantitative methods and all talks devoted significant time to discussions of method, selection bias, causality, and the like, not all of the talks included equations or significant verbage about subscripts.*  With few exceptions, the more equations, the less emphasis on substantive meaning and the more audience confusion and/or disinterest. A buddy and I watched a bunch of talks over the course of a few days — I couldn’t help but notice that lots of equations tended to go along with whispered comments like this:

What’s the outcome again?

Why is he/she making such a big deal about such a substantively small difference?

Or, most telling and sophisticated (written on a piece of paper):

WTF?

Perhaps my friend and I are not savvy with methods or statistics (though the evidence weighs against this — we were both invited to speak at the workshop after all) but I find the fetish with subscript is very much getting in the way of meaningful discussions about the social world. Moreover, the comments directed at non-subscript talks were just as rigorous with respect to method — talks that were more substantively-engaged just garnered more of them because they maintained the audience interest.

So, if you’re preparing your ASA talk, drop the equations. You can’t do it in 15 minutes. Give your audience a break and leave it to the reviewers or your friends and colleagues to catch that your propensity score model sucks** or that you’re using OLS to predict a binary outcome.

*The conference required submission of a paper and provided discussants
for each panel. My impression was that most attendees also read the papers
in advance so it's highly likely a major mis-specification or error would have
been caught, even in the absence of a lengthy equation discussion in the talk.

**Don't even get me started on the obsession with propensity score models
plaguing sociology -- it's as if omitted variable bias is no longer a problem
and we're all magically turning observational data into experiments with a wave
of a logit model wand. I've reviewed a bunch of papers lately with no information
on how well the propensity score model actually predicts the treatment, apart
from the obligatory 'see, it's balanced!' discussion -- it's approaching pet peeve
status for me. Am I wrong on this?

More signs of hypocrisy…

While most of you are posting on Iran,* I choose to post on what Liv Tyler is up to…

Liv Tyler recently intervened in a parking lot when she observed a woman hollering at a crying child in a stroller — by all accounts, the woman didn’t appreciate the assistance from a concerned citizen and promptly told Ms. Tyler where to go.

One of my students interviewed me for a research project he was doing on discipline, mainly when other parents intervene with children not their own. I spewed a bunch of sociological nonsense about how it takes a village to raise a child and how it is important to me that Junior obey/respect others. I then filled in with a couple of heart-warming stories about my good friends and how happy I am that Junior does not distinguish between them and me when it comes to discipline.

A few days later, Junior’s nanny informed me that a father at the park had hollered at Junior because she shoved aside his (younger) child to get on the slide. The nanny (aka Junior’s better mommy) blew a bit of a gasket and lectured the dad about how best to handle the situation, emphasizing her role as caretaker and the importance of letting her handle it. She relayed this to me mostly so that I would know not to let Junior play with that kid again (kids can do no wrong, but beware the nanny network that identifies you as a bad or lax parent). Junior has since relayed the story of the “man who yelled at me” to any and all for the last week. She appears to have forgotten about the small matter of shoving the smaller child…

Here’s what I suspect my undergraduate won’t be able to tease out… How much of the problem in the Tyler situation has to do with a young privileged white woman intervening with someone described as an older ‘abuelita’? How likely is it that Dad would have yelled had I been there (instead of my young, *Spanish* nanny)? How bothered would Junior’s nanny have been had the Daddy been a Mommy? More importantly, is all of this a message to Junior that she’s free to be a brat outside the presence of her mother, nanny, and her mother’s best friends? I suspect so…

Despite my interview to the contrary, I’m pretty sure Dad yelling at my little princess would have pissed me off too. I also would have told Liv Tyler to take a flying leap.

*Though, via Twitter, I'm planning a move to Tehran.
And, ahh, the women and revolution. Fantastic.

I laughed out loud…

I post this for no other reason than that it is hilarious…

From an article on how Oprah Winfrey may be, you know, killing us with her shows on health:

This perpetual search for The Answer reached its apex a couple of years ago, when Oprah led the frenzy over The Secret. The video and accompanying book were a rehash of one of the oldest of self-help truisms—”think positive”—refreshed with a dusting of “science.” The secret of The Secret was something called the Law of Attraction….

On one of the Secret shows, Oprah gave an example of the scientific power of the concept. She said that once, while she was hosting an episode about a man who could blow really big soap bubbles, she was thinking to herself, “Gee, that looks fun. I would like to blow some bubbles.” When she returned to her office after the show, there, on her desk, was a silver Tiffany bubble blower. “So I call my assistant,” Oprah told the audience. “I say, ‘Did you just run out and get me some bubbles? ‘Cause I got bubbles by my desk.’ And she says, ‘No, the bubbles were always there. I bought you bubbles for your birthday and you didn’t notice them until today’.”

There are many lessons that might be drawn from this anecdote. One is that if you give Oprah a thoughtful gift, she may not bother to notice it or thank you for it. This is not the lesson Oprah took away from her story. Because the way she sees it, her assistant hadn’t really given her the gift at all. She gave it to herself. Using the power of The Secret, she said, “I had called in some bubbles.”

where an instructor admits lack of knowledge (and then rationalizes it)

I was reading an article on celibacy and the priesthood the other day and came across this:

And while abstinence does not inevitably lead to child molestation, critics are quick to draw a link between priestly celibacy and recent pedophilia scandals.

My first thought… “Wait a minute, does celibacy often lead to child molestation?” This is no mere post about correlation not equaling causation — the scandals in the Catholic church aside, is there a correlation between celibacy and child molestation? What is its strength? Are Catholic priests totally responsible for it? Finally, while we’re at it, I’d be interested in the methods of that study…

The line hit home because I recently gave my end of the quarter lecture on sex offenders — every time I give it, I am bothered by how little sociological criminology there is on this topic. I believe that our way of viewing the world is highly relevant to the study of sex offenders (especially re: punishment) but harbor suspicions that more attention to them from sociological criminologists would highlight a lot of nagging problems with our theories.

My students rarely catch this but there are some [many? a few important?] ways in which sex offenders don’t quite fit the theories that I tend to apply to everything else I think about.* Yeah, they seem to have really low recidivism rates but [some] of them do appear to specialize, start earlier, and take longer to age out. I’ve often wondered whether patterns of sex offender recidivism have changed in the tough on crime era. I’ve often thought of studying sex offenders more explicitly but, no pun intended, it’s a slightly stigmatizing area of research. More problematic, every time I delve more deeply into the research literature, I give up (with a serious case of the heebie-jeebies) because I inevitably end up reading stuff that might as well be a script for A Clockwork Orange, the Sequel.

On a related note, I’m considering hiring a grad student to pose as a sex offender and tell a made-up “ex-sex offender” narrative to one of my classes. My thought is that I would have the person tell a story similar to those offered by ex-thieves or ex-gang members (who routinely come to undergrad crim classes). If you’re not familiar, the story is usually “I met a good woman and then we had a baby,” or “I aged out and got tired of the streets,” or “An employer/teacher/priest took a chance on me,” or some combination of the above three. I’m thinking a panel, where the ex-violent/but not sex offender and the ex-sex offender tell virtually identical stories. I am certain the students will reject a story they readily accept in many other contexts, when applied to a sex offender, but I am unsure if they will do it publicly, during class. Thoughts?

*When they do catch it, I tend to riff on definitional problems (e.g., who do we count as
a sex offender, what group are we interested in?). I have a point but it's also my way
of getting away from the question as I think it's an important one that I don't quite
know the answer to...