Once a month, Junior and I go to Target for supplies and calamity usually ensues. The monthly trip has included multiple tantrums, attempts at petty theft (and one robbery — I give her points for that one), a head injury, an incident in the bathroom that I’ll spare you, and a knocked-over fully-decorated Christmas tree. Lately, things [...]
Archive for March, 2008
Princess! Princess! Princess!
Posted in adventures with child, gender, pop culture on March 31, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Leave me alone, rate my professor.
Posted in on the tenure track, teaching on March 28, 2008 | 15 Comments »
I just received my teaching evaluations for two new classes. They were good. One student, however, appears to despise me. For every category, the student ’strongly disagreed’ that I did anything helpful with respect to lecturing, discussion, grading, or organization. Of course, the student also left no comments so I have no idea what I [...]
Earthquake!
Posted in Uncategorized on March 26, 2008 | 3 Comments »
To the folks at home, the Midwesterners just had their spring break interrupted by their first earthquake. A 3.1 (described as minor) but we thought someone drove into the house we are in… Junior did not wake up. Veeeerrrrryyy Strrrraaange… and actually being able to feel the ground moving beneath me makes me miss snow, black ice, and [...]
The Candidates and Criminal Justice Policy
Posted in politics on March 26, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Thanks to The General Blog of Crime for pointing out the Sentencing Project’s guide to the criminal justice policy positions of the ‘big three’ remaining presidential candidates. A quick look yields what one might expect — the biggest differences are between parties. McCain tends toward the conservative (surprise!), Obama leans pretty far left, and Clinton [...]
Things I wish I’d thought more about in grad school…or why TAs are good
Posted in teaching on March 26, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Teaching generally goes well for me. My problems begin when the final ends. I’m a terrible grader — I have no grand theory or principle guiding my distribution of grades. I spend way too much time grading papers and it generally goes like this: 1) Papers 1-5, “gee, these are terrible.” 2) Papers 6-10, “here’s [...]
Teaching: Can Sex Offenders Be Ex-Offenders?
Posted in teaching on March 25, 2008 | 7 Comments »
I’m just off three months of lecturing to my students about prison reentry, stigma, recidivism, and the like… Sex offenders, of course, offer a good teaching example because they are the group many of us fear most. Many of the best-known public safety laws are the result of horrific crimes committed by sex offenders who had previously [...]
To blog or not to blog? Part II
Posted in Uncategorized on March 23, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Thanks all for the thoughtful and generous comments on my last (excessively long) post about blogging. I made a concerted effort this week and stayed off the blog (with one late night exception) to think things over and wanted to respond (again, excessively) to the comments that most hit on what I’ve been thinking.
On the time [...]
This wasn’t quite what I thought I’d say…
Posted in music on March 18, 2008 | 3 Comments »
if I returned to blogging but here goes. The absolute best song to listen to while writing code, creating variables, using stat transfer endlessly, and doing all the other assorted crap work associated with statistical analysis is:
New Soul by Yael Naim
Buy it, run it on a loop, bob your head comically from side to side, and [...]
To blog or not to blog?
Posted in blogging on March 14, 2008 | 13 Comments »
Apologies in advance for the excessively long post. I realize what I’m about to raise has been discussed before and I suspect that it happens to most bloggers at some point but… I’m thinking of giving up the blog. Another assistant soc prof blogger caught some flak from his/her department for a post he/she wrote — [...]
South by Southwest
Posted in teaching, travel on March 13, 2008 | 5 Comments »
I’m going to a wedding in June. I go online to purchase my tickets on Southwest because they are 1) about $150 cheaper than other airlines to my destination, and 2) direct flights. As I do this, the major banner on cnn.com is that Southwest has grounded 44 planes for some minor safety violations, such [...]
