Things that Robert is thinking about that keep him from accomplishing anything.

 
Dreams Come True?
Some quick hitters here:

• I mentioned I've started running on the treadmill. I can now run continuously for an hour (5 miles). This weekend I'll try to push it up to 8 miles. Considering before last week I had never run more than 3.75 miles continuously (once around Crofton Pkwy), I'd have to say I'm pretty pleased.
  
• Could the disaster of Social Security reform end up making me a happy man? Saw this link where Bob Rubin, former Sec. of Treasury for Clinton, talks about its devastating effects on housing prices and interest rates. I still need to know what the interest rate-housing price tradeoff is. Any real estate agents out there?
  
• I've started writing again related to the dissertation. I'm moving on to working on the proposal, even though I still need to finish my area paper. All pages count in the end.
  
• I woke up in the middle of the night with an idea for a pretty good novel. It's not Moby Dick or anything, but I bet it could get published if I did it right, and really, that's more than enough.

posted by RSaunders at 9:52 AM ⇒ (0) comments

 
Crossing Under
Another weight update: As of yesterday, I was 187.2. It seems running has really boosted the calorie output. For those of you keeping score, that's now 66 lbs. I think this is the lightest I've been since late 1991 or early 1992.

posted by RSaunders at 5:55 PM ⇒ (0) comments

 
Are Americans Teens More Immature than the Rest of the World?
I was flipping through IMDB looking at the info for Lost in Translation, and I noticed that while the film is rated R in America (no one under 18 w/o a parent), in the rest of the world it's viewable without restriction by folks ages 12 to 15. What gives? This could be an interesting study actually, comparing cross-cultural age appropriateness of films. Hmmm...

posted by RSaunders at 3:46 PM ⇒ (0) comments

 
Dumb-de-dumb-dumb-dumb!
The Packers are considering hiring Seattle's VP of football operations, Ted Thompson, as their GM. This is the man responsible for accumulating their talent at wide receiver and developing the core defensive talent that yielded three losses to St. Louis. Sounds like a wise choice. This is not to say Mike Sherman should stay in the GM role; they just need to hire somebody better.

posted by RSaunders at 2:02 PM ⇒ (0) comments

 
Indian Tsunami, American Rains?
Is the tsunami responsible for the California rains/mudslides and the large volumes of precipitation throughout North America this month? I haven't seen any reporting connecting the two, so I wonder if it's simply so obvious nobody has bothered reporting it, or nobody has made this connection yet, or I simply haven't looked hard enough. I guess it's an open question: is there an unusually high volume of precipitation in North America this month?

I would have thought there'd be a ton of articles by now linking the two events, and tons more meteorlogical research discussing this, but so far I haven't hit on anything. To add a political slant here, Bush would then be able to claim the mudslide disaster relief efforts to be part of the tsunami relief, letting him raise the amount of aid offered but direct it locally.

posted by RSaunders at 10:05 AM ⇒ (0) comments

 
Survivor: Nashville
Well, things could have gone a shitload worse today. I think I scared them sufficiently that it would be a lot of work, though probably not as much as I let on.

I think the most important thing I learned today is that 75 minutes is a long-ass time, and that's after I only used 60 minutes and yielded the balance of my time to the senior professor from another section of the class.

posted by RSaunders at 1:26 PM ⇒ (0) comments

 
Eve of Destruction
Tomorrow marks my debut as a university teacher. I will teach undergraduate research methods course under the most ridiculous course title, "Systematic Inquiry." I am excited to get to do this, but I am kind of anxious about the outcome. For somebody who craves praise and desperately wants to be liked, standing before a group of 20-year-olds in a required course trying to impart the wisdom of the ages seems like a recipe for disaster. I was asked the other day, "What's the worst thing that could happen?" I said, "They might come back on Monday."

I was only half joking. I like the idea of this as a regular performance opportunity. I like the idea of putting together new material twice a week for them. However, I'm not used to the scheduling aspect. I can't be late, as I often am. I can't half-ass my way through this. Or, I could, but I actually take seriously the responsibility of teaching them.

I don't have any grand illusions that they'll become researchers or that they'll like the material. I do hope that they will be able to separate the course and its content from their judgment of me, even if I suppose that's impossible since I determine the content.

Anyway, I guess I'll take a break from obsessing about this for a while and get back to work.

posted by RSaunders at 11:48 AM ⇒ (0) comments

 
Conspicuous by Its Absence
Two things struck me from CNN's headlines. First, a case involving Vanderbilt is going forward. At issue is whether the university can remove the "Confederate" from the name of its dorm, "Confederate Memorial Hall." Second, NBC-Universal is in trouble over Motly Crue's New Year's Eve performance: Vince Neill screamed "Happy Fucking New Year" to Tommy Lee. (I'm surprised, actually, that it took so long for it to make the news. I saw it and though, "Oh, fuck!" But, I hadn't seen anything about it until today.)

What gets me is this: at the bottom of the Vanderbilt article, the judge asks whether it would be less of a memorial without the word "Confederate" on it; in the Crue article, the copy uses dashes to replace the "fuck" in "fucking." If you remove the word, but everyone knows what was there, then what does removing it accomplish?

Now, in the VU case, since you might write about the dorm, removing the word removes it from future writings. But isn't the dorm still tainted? Wouldn't the college be better off, except for the cost, tearing the dorm the hell down and building a new one, thereby sidestepping the legal issue?

I'm just not sure who is served or protected when the "bad word" is removed, especially in the fucking case: if you're offended by the ordered letters, "f-u-c-k," aren't you offended by space left available representing "f-u-c-k"? I mean, the idea is spelled out for you without your actually seing the word. If you know the word, you can't make your brain not conjure the image of the word. In the case of the dorm, aren't you just relying on people being lazy and ignorant enough not to know the history of the dorm's construction and presence on campus for decades, or for people who already know eventually forgetting. I don't know, I guess I'm just a vulgarian.

posted by RSaunders at 8:43 PM ⇒ (0) comments

 
Old Pet Peeve
I have a running argument going in my head over the NFL playoffs (and all professional sports playoffs) which guarantee postseason berths to division winners. To me this amounts to geographic affirmative action. We've seen division winners host teams with worse records, but to prove my point I hope next year provides a team that with a better record than a division winner who gets excluded from the postseason. There may be a rationale for affirmative action in employment and education, but I'm not sure whether there is a meaningful basis for geographic representation in the playoffs for pro sports.

posted by RSaunders at 2:40 PM ⇒ (0) comments

 
Latest Article
My Nashville Parent article is finally online. To all the parents out there, feel free to send me your abusive comments.

posted by RSaunders at 2:39 PM ⇒ (0) comments