bullets of relocation miscellany

• I am at a Travelodge in downtown Chicago, waiting for other friends from college who are going with me to this football game to arrive.
• The movers today were un-be-bothering-lievably efficient, and so a task which took until past 5pm two years ago was done by 12:30. Unfortunately, my things were moving onto an empty truck, meaning they won't arrive at my apartment until Thursday at the earliest.
• The movers verified that I was indeed, in their approximation, moving a ton of books, and this isn't even counting the Madison books, which are at least 1/2 and maybe 2/3 as many. If it wasn't for the books I've bought in the last two years and the elliptical trainer, I think my Clutter Reduction Effort made this move roughly stuff-neutral with the move two years ago, amazingly enough.
• I had my last meal in Cambridge/Boston at the Legal Sea Foods in Logan Airport, which was fitting because I think I managed to have like ten meals in my last two months at Legal. O, the chowder. O, the popcorn shrimp.
• No matter what the blurb on its cover may claim, A Farewell to Alms is not going to be "the next economics blockbuster." It's far too boring for that. I'm only 75 pages in, but at least it helped me sleep on the plane.
• Yes, I finished my effort to visit all the exhibits in the Boston model solar system. The Sun, as it turns out, is only a quarter-section of the Sun. Saturn, as I said before, has been temporarily removed while its site (the Cambridge Public Library) undergoes renovation. With a friend who knew where in the library it had been, we calculated a spot outside the site for the picture that corresponds to the arc of Saturn's orbit. And, um, we thought if I couldn't have the real Saturn model in the photo, at least I should have a ring:
  
• Intellectually and professionally, the time since ASA in Cambridge has felt like circling an airport. I am looking forward to getting my stuff, getting settled in, getting into a work routine, and getting started on building a life here. Root for me.

there is no sense in which i am proud of this, even if it does entitle me to a free coca-cola sportscar

(accumulated coke zero caps in my office file cabinet drawer)

The movers arrive in 50 minutes!

the protestant genome and the spirit of capitalism

I've started reading A Farewell to Alms, a book about the economic history and macrosociology of the last two thousand years. It received an enthusiastic write-up in the New York Times (here), and I think its publication date might have been accelerated as a result.

The moral and political implications of the book's argument, either if it is true or if it comes to be regarded as true, are so breathtaking as to be hard to understate, especially in a hastily written blog post by someone who is moving.

The argument, most briefly, is that part of what led to the Industrial Revolution was a more longstanding improvement of the species over the preceding several hundred years, and, although the book is coy about saying this improvement could be either "cultural" or "genetic," it's clear that author's inclination is "genetic." The seemingly obvious implication if that were true--although I am uncertain from the 30-odd pages I've read so far whether the author will actually connect the dots he draws right there on the page--is genetic variation among people with ancestry from different parts of the world on traits pertinent to socioeconomic attainment. Good to have ancestry from the regions of the world that were the leaders of the Industrial Revolution or otherwise socially close to it, and bad to be from regions that were not close. In this respect, the argument could be interpreted as providing the historical backstory for The Bell Curve. So, it's important, especially given that it is by an economist and all the recent hoopla for economics as the enterprise that has the apparatus to uncover hidden insights into social affairs and the independent-mindedness to speak unpopular "truths."

As I said, I haven't read enough of the book to be able to begin to evaluate its evidence, and moving isn't exactly allowing great focused cognitive space for reading. I'm approaching the book with a lot more skepticism than the author of the NYT article. I know I post perhaps surprisingly little about the substance of social science on this blog, but it doesn't get more substantive than the history of human organization and the causes of social inequalities, so I'm putting y'all on alert about this book if you haven't heard about it.

my brother's "modelling" thing.

Elaine and sheevonne have just turned 16.
hmmmmm,how was it with R on wed.?
Elaine's parents wasnt arnd,
If i had stayed her hse,
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
sixteen.

dispatch from my apartment, surrounded by boxes

So, I spent an inordinate amount of time this week getting the stuff in my apartment 75% packed, and now someone is here being incredibly efficient with the remaining 25%. It confirms my then-untutored suspicion that the two people who did the equivalent task in Madison were totally inept (because, in effect, they did the task roughly only as fast as I would have, and I take for granted that I'm inept.)

Anyway, I'm sitting here on my laptop, and apropos of nothing I was wondering about how the presidential candidates who have no chance are doing. As in, not how they are doing in the polls, but how they are maintaining a positive presence despite the absolute futility of how they are spending their time. Chris Dodd apparently has received an endorsement from a firefighters union. This fact is announced on his webpage by his banner photo being with a group of firefighters, the endorsement being the "Live Update" at the top, the endorsement being the photo headline, and the endorsement being two of the last five posts on his blog. Perhaps he will show up at the next debate in a spiffy dalmatian suit.

What propels these men forward? Back in 2004, I was convinced that Kucinich was just staying in the race to find some cute young wife out of the deal, a conviction regarded by friends as preposterous right up until it was shown to be exactly right. But what propels him forward this time? I was looking on his website for a position paper regarding legalizing bigamy, but did not see it.

I can't really look at the Republican minor candidates sites without being quickly made surly, but something to note more generally is that, on the prediction markets, Ron Paul (at 4.5% estimated probability of winning) might one day soon catch John McCain (at 5.6%). A guy in Cambridge is inkjet-printing paper signs supporting Ron Paul and stapling them to telephone poles around Cambridge. You don't see anyone doing that for John McCain.

BTW: I feel good about all I've discarded as part of my War On Clutter. I was particularly pleased with how many no-longer-needed cables of one kind or another I had thrown out, until I realized that the cable I need to upload photos from my digital camera has gone mysteriously missing.

Drawing to a Close...

The end of summer is near! I had to go change my school schedule today and it took forever... I had to wait in the sun in a line for like three hours... But I got all the courses I wanted so atleast that worked out...
My mom was gone the whole day with her best friend so I had to get rides from my friends. My mom went to Melrose to eat and shop with her friend. When she came back, I was relieved to see that she didn't forget me. She stopped by Marc by Marc Jacobs on Melrose Ave. and got me a some things from the 2007 limited edition special items. She got my sister a canvas tote with the Marc by Marc Jacobs logo on it. It's the one on the left in the picture below.

As for me, I've been needing a wallet for a while, so she got me a metallic copper quilted wallet. She also got me two plastic bracelets with large circle beads, in orange and green.

School is starting next week, but my mom promised me she would take me to Melrose before then... And I'm also attending the Neighborhood Music Festival in downtown Los Angeles on September 29th. That should be exciting.

Today's label of the day is Wren, a relatively new brand.
With a mixture of vintage, elegance, quirk, and charm, Wren's clothing is for romantic "girls on the move". Head designer Melissa Coker has previously worked with Helmut Lang [one of my favorites!], Vogue, W, and Abercrombie&Fitch.



Wren is available at Opening Ceremony in NYC and LA.



*****UPDATE*****

i just bought the Le Pliage Poodle bag from the Jeremy Scott and Longchamp collaboration.
There are only a 100 available [until Jeremy Scott's winter line debuts in October with more bags] and can only be bought in Colette, Paris. So I had no choice but to get it from colette.fr and pay about $50 for shipping. But hopefully it's worth it because I am a huge Jeremy Scott fan. Here's a picture:

what about little dogs? do little dogs pay taxes?

Leona Helmsley, who allegedly once told her housekeeper "Only the little people pay taxes," has left $12 million dollars to her Maltese, which works out to $2 million more than the sum of what she gave to the four children of her previously deceased son.

Speaking of doggy discrimination, I was on the bus the other day when the driver refused to let this woman with cerise hair on with her pit bull. As he closed the door, he said to the passengers nearest to the front--a woman with three children who had been let on, no questions asked--that "A chihuahua, fine. One of those things, no way." Where are the symbolic interactionist criminologists to consider whether part of why pit bulls are so violent is the way they get "labeled" by social authorities?

one of those moments where i think: that's kind of sketchy, and kind of brilliant

I was talking this evening to someone who works as a graduate student in one of the natural sciences. He was working on writing a review of a manuscript that the professor who runs his lab was asked to review. The idea is that the professor will briefly read over the article and the review, make any modifications that seem worthwhile, and then dispatch with his review responsibility by sending it off. The student seemed to think it was all a useful pedagogical exercise, in addition to just so happening to save his advisor the better part of a day's work. Is this common in the natural sciences? Has anyone heard of someone doing this in the social sciences?

perhaps miss teen usa should start administering the gss question on whether the earth goes around the sun, or the sun around the earth?*

1. If you have not seen this yet, and you enjoy laughing at beautiful young people embarrassing themselves on national television in ways that would probably haunt them for the rest of their lives if not for the fact that their beauty will allow themselves to select into adoring and/or infatuated peers, then you absolutely have to watch this (HT: Jennifer Lena, whose blog has moved).

2. Sure, it's funny, but if your intellectual trajectory has ever had cause to cross the literatures on "health inequalities" and "digital inequalities", you might see an analogy between the logic of the coherent part of her answer and various writings that wildly overattribute the cause of inequalities to differences in what can be straightforwardly characterized as "access."

3. I love that I was listening to "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs just before I pulled up the clip.

* See previous post on the GSS question here, as well as Omar's instant classic original post here.

Update: Dan Myers, himself a winner of many boy-beauty-pageants in his youth, has posted this clip as well.

evidence the facebook scrabble people really don't understand how scrabble passion works

Days! How precious!

regarding the purported glory days of public sociology

For whatever reason, after a couple different exchanges with the proprietors in which we believed the problem to be fixed, I am still not able to comment at Orgtheory (boys, eventually I'll start to take this personally). Fabio has a post about a speech that Orlando Patterson gave on the occasion of Malcolm Gladwell receiving the ASA award for "Excellence in Reporting of Social Issues." Says Fabio:

Patterson noted that until the 1970s or so, you had quite a few sociologists who captured the public’s imagination such as David Riesman and C. Wright Mills. After that time, prominent sociologists decreased in the public imagination.

Fabio raises several hypotheses for why you might believe Patterson or not. On the negative side, I would like to raise another, which is just that ideas of the existence of "quite a few sociologists who captured the public's imagination" then as opposed to now is wildly overblown. Evidence? If Fabio had just included blanks instead of the names of Riesman and Mills, experienced sociologists would have guessed exactly which two names to fill in. If there was such a public sociology efflorescence back then, why wouldn't there be a larger pool of salient examples? (Especially since The Lonely Crowd was published in 1950 and The Power Elite in 1956, and apparently Patterson was talking about a 20-30 year period.)

Not even to mention that Tuesdays with Morrie probably outsold The Power Elite and The Lonely Crowd combined. Why doesn't sociology do more with its Tuesdays with Morrie legacy. I say, Every Day With Morrie!*

BTW, Dan has written an enthusiastic post about Gladwell's acceptance of the award. Meanwhile, I seem to remember being on a panel at the Eastern Sociological Society meetings this spring in which another panelist, a sociologist of some prominence, alleged with considerable irritation that Gladwell interviewed the sociologist Duncan Watts for three days for the Tipping Point and then wildly undercredited his contribution in the book.

* OK, so I don't actually say that. However, I do have a friend who has talked about getting an EDWM tattoo.

Update: Thanks to Brayden, the commenting problem appears resolved.

went to school today.
attended till 2.
finally, but only because of
English Prelim.

slept late last night.
had difficulty waking up so early.
and the whole feeling was weird.
took the bus.
and that boy came up the bus and sat behind agn,
as usual.
he's quite cute. probably sec 2.?
& everytime he sits behind,
i can smell the orange bath scent of
SHOKUBUTSU.
hahas.
but, he smells nice(:

national anthem, pledge, school song.
class room setting and all.
even though its only maybe 2 weeks.
but sadly,
I DO NOT MISS ANY OF IT.

Havent really decided,
if i should consider taking it next yr instead,
and be home-schooled.
my mum rather i take it next yr,
than to screw up the papers.
and then retake and have 2 certs.
But so far,
i've taken the eng prelim today,
so its means i'll be able to take the O level eng paper.

Rah.
Glenys' friend, F,
is superb.
similar kind of setbacks,
so she didnt study for her N prelims.
and her mum, knowing that F would screw up her N levels as well,
brought her to HongKong,
when her N levels are in like 2 weeks time?!?
Nice mum, i must say.


&&& speaking of my dream ystr in the previous post,
just the other day, i dreamt of B. and a girl.

but, the strange thing is,
why was he wearing a hair pin.?
and where did he get his long fringe.?
And who is that girl.?
How did i even create her face.?
LOLS.
STRANGE AND WEIRD.
but nice dream though.
nice story, many characters.
maybe its the result to being able to have plenty of sleep.
without having to be disturbed.

while waiting outside class today,
talked all sorts of rubbish agn.
oh& as elaine says,
shuen watches American pie.
never judge a studious looking person by her looks(:

after school,
went with shuen and sheila to eat.
saw this ang moh,
and Shuen was like ,aiyoh, no word to describe.
just because he kept looking.
HAHAHA.


I have a freaking BIG ULCER.
&that sucks.
its damn painful and i can't eat properly,
or even Yawn.
RAHHH.
so i cant wear retainers to sleep.


So far the longest post after so !@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#@ LONG(:



IM BORED VERY VERY BORED.:(

Almost Famous

Hey everyone
please go check out Penelope's latest post-charmed life! She interviewed me for it! Go read it and tell her and me what you think!
Thanks for interviewing me, Penelope!
So tell me guys.
Do you hate me or love me?
(;
ciao, bella!

bullets of moving miscellany

• Today I finally snapped out of my denial about moving in a week and made big progress. Regarding the concurrent effort to pare things down, I threw out well over half of the cables of one kind or another that were in different boxes in my apartment. The biggest single reduct was being able to get rid of several hundred feet of telephone cable and connectors I had saved from back when I had apartment configurations and dialup that required me to string phone line from one end to the other and back. I was surprised at the unnatural nostalgia I felt for cords.
• Price per 1.5 cubic foot boxes for carrying books when purchased last month at the U-Haul store in Madison, WI: $1.70/box. Price at TAGS Hardware in Cambridge, MA: $6.49/box.
• ASA found and sent me my lost iPod! While I may have ambivalence about never having considered naming my blog anything other than "Jeremy Freese's weblog," I benefited from naming my iPod "Jeremy Freese's iPod." I returned the replacement I had purchased to the store. Given that the night before I had spent my insomnia time reading the blog of the kid who developed the soldering-iron-and-software method of hacking an iPhone, I was tempted to trade up to an iPhone rather than just get my money back.
• I did not do as well as I had aspired in getting rid of books, but some will not be moving back with me. The Tao of Pooh just made the cut, the Te of Piglet did not. I entertained getting rid of almost all my reference books--who uses a print dictionary anymore?--but in the end could part only with my Random House Word Menu.
• I have an extra ticket to the Iowa Hawkeyes versus Northern Illinois football game at Soldier Field on September 1. I'm just saying. Presumably this year I will be subdued in the Hawkeye regalia I wear to the game, just from not wanting to haul too much of it with me on the plane out there.
• The unfortunate situation with my housing is unchanged. Briefly, I have an absolutely fabulous apartment but, due to a planned roommate situation falling through, it's much more money for much money space than what I want to pay. Not sure if I should try one last craigslist assault regarding this.
• I have completely fallen off the wagon on the one Coke Zero a day thing. More generally, I've been living the lifestyle of someone who will return to looking like a narwhal. This has got to stop when I get to Evanston!

Weird weird dream.
superly uberly duperly weird.
why did it even appear in my dream man.
what was i thinking?
this kind also can dream.
must go and meditate,
and think of waterfalls.
RAH.
talked too much nonsense/rubbish alr luh.
that must be it.
or else no reason why..
EEEYERRRRRRRR.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
stupid.

uranus!

(me, a bunch of small children, and uranus)

Okay, so I have been advised by counsel to skip the story of how I was almost murdered at this incredibly sketchy Citgo when all I wanted to do was see Uranus. Uranus is in the Jamaica Plain public library, and a lovely friend who cares very much about my personal safety and well-being was kind enough to drive me there, with the unexpected bonus treat of a delightful little "urban adventure" on the way. (In truth, what happened was no big deal, but keep in mind I don't have that much experience in cities and so get rattled easily. And also, when we finally got to the library, I discovered that there was a bloody prosthetic hook dangling from the handle of my car door.*)

We got to the library and looked all around, but Uranus was nowhere to be seen. So we asked and Uranus was down in the basement, where some kind of story hour was going on. Luckily it was almost over, and so we didn't have to wait long. There were still children around, but we went in and got the necessary photo nonetheless. I now have eight photos down in my quest to visit every site in Boston's model social solar system before I leave, and have only Saturn and the Sun left with one week to go before I move.

* Mom: I'm kidding about the hook.

I want rain.

Tired and don't have much time so quick post.
I went to the park today with my family. The weather was perfect- not too cold, not too warm.
My outfit was this: [sorry for the pictures- i had to take them by myself so i couldn't take them wearing the clothes... won't happen again, i promise!]
I went for the carefreeeeee look today, nothing polished or cinched, with the shorts high waisted and the loose tank tops.
On the inside, I wore a red limited edition organic cotton tank top from Nike. On top of that, I wore a Dolce&Gabbana tank top that I wear as a dress and tucked it inside of a pair of shorts from my mother's closet. Since the shorts were a bit too large, I wore an elastic belt by A Common Thread and didn't put it through the belt loops to keep it from looking too nerdy. For shoes, I chose a lady-like pair of Chanel heels [really small heels, almost flats!] because I thought it looked nice. Again, I apologize for the terrible pictures. (:

Yeahhhhhhh. I'm super excited for the Neighborhood Festival.
People performing include Crystal Castles, the Faint, Steve Aoki, and moreeeeee. And plus it's LA which means afterwards we can go partay. One thing I love about living in Los Angeles... Always somewhere to go!

My shirt came today!
The August Cobrasnake+RVCA shirt. I also got a buncha Cobrasnake& RVCA stickers. How fun. Lalala. I really want to get the purple Super+Caliroots limited editions but I don't know if I should... I already bought a bunch of stufff after payday. Blerghh.

it's not like you are only spending money when you pay at the pump

Discover Your Inner Economist has this quote from another economist to the effect that, "A person who has never missed a flight is someone who has spent too much time waiting in airports." I was recently in a conversation with some friends in which the women were bragging about how of course they have never in their lives had they ever run out of gas while the men, at one time or another, all had. I wish I would have been in touch with my Inner Economist enough to retort that "A person who has never run out of gas is someone who has spent too much time standing in gas stations," as I think this is exactly right. As much of a pain as it is to run out of gas, if you imagine the extra time spent by someone who always refills at 3/8 versus someone who refills over 1/8, the former goes to the gas station 14 times for every 10 times for the latter person. If we budget getting gas at 7 minutes per stop and saying the latter runs a 1 in a 1000 risk of running out of gas, then running out of gas would have to be enough of a pain that a person is willing to trade 46.6 hours of their time to avoid it. So being proud of never running out of gas is like being proud of having spent a week of vacation time standing at Citgo.

This is the prelude to an anecdote that ends, improbably enough, at Uranus, but that will have to wait until later.

overheard

1.
"I told her that you and I write together."
"You always say 'write together.' I always say 'collaborate.'"
"I never say I collaborate with anyone. Saying somebody is a collaborator always makes me feel I'm saying they are like the Vichy government."
"Yeah, I'm not really like the Vichy government. Except I wouldn't mind being headquartered in a resort town."

2.
"I think maybe I'll read the pigeon guy's paper to see what all the fuss is about."
"If you download it, can you send it to me?"
"I think he has it on his website."
"I don't know his name. All I've heard is 'the pigeon guy.' Do you think I can Google 'the pigeon guy' and get it?"

RAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

anger venting:
nbndasmganhjxdycfutsfykh liHGEAIUTny
b >yiwhbeljgkthwgt ohwvjnmg, nw.gpy.hwi
ehbfgisdngiusdbgilsgudbuhdgksdhgkgihb;IHG
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

counselling.
case going through Mrs J.


talked to Joey(not the 4C2 one)on msn.
more like disturbed.
right?
can't be helped.
cos its my source of entertainment.
and its fun.
but now msn seems to have problem.
keeps dc-ing.

as you command:



GAY.


12.01am

water, water everywhere / nor any drop to drink

I received an e-mail this morning from a friend saying that the Today Show was broadcasting a dispatch from Fort Dodge, Iowa -- only 16 miles away from my hometown of Manson -- because of flooding in the area. I look online and the story is that Manson is even more the center of the flooding than Fort Dodge. This was the first I heard of it, so immediately I called my mom.

Our land is on a rise, so for us to get flooded out would require something Biblical. * Still, apparently we have water in our basement, which we've had recurrently since moving into the house 27 years ago. Worse, says my Mom, something with all the rain has caused the switch for our well to break, so my parents have no running water. They are catching rain in barrels to use as their non-drinking water. Plus the septic tank is full and so the toilets won't flush. I didn't ask for details on how they are handling that.

I have a photography-inclined reader from Manson--if you read this, you know who you are--so maybe I'll get some photos of the flooding. The golf course is always an especially compelling flood zone.

* Or, more properly, anti-Biblical, given the whole rainbow thing. I remember my Sunday School learnin'! (Although, wait, is the thing with the rainbow symbolizing God's promise not to flood the world again actually in the Bible, or is it part of the non-scriptural overlay given to various Old Testamant episodes?)

a better title might have been: re-discover your inner economist

I read the first six chapters of Discover Your Inner Economist by the economist and popular blogger Tyler Cowen today. I don't read his blog, but given how much people enjoy it, I was expecting the book to be better. Indeed, I kept reading despite not feeling I was getting much out of it because I kept presuming it would get better. It didn't.

While reading it, I was reminded of the line in Ghost World where Enid says some kitsch performer has gone from being "Past being so bad it's good to being bad again." In this case, one of the main parts of book's overall argument is to go past being counterintuitive to where it is intuitive again. Earlier popular economics writers like Steven Landsburg have created a stage in which another economist talking about how much of the world of interpersonal relationships and intrapersonal striving is not, in fact, like buying bananas at the supermarket can be called channeling one's Inner Economist, instead of, well, one's Humanity. That is, sometimes Cowen is arguing to a popular audience against standard economics and more toward the view the popular audience would have if it hadn't paid attention to some of the excesses of standard economics in the first place.

Apparently also, if you have a Ph.D. in economics, you can give whatever life advice and theories about human nature that you have and pass it off as manifesting economic expertise. Much of the book is about Cowen's vague ideas about the human need for "control." The last anecdote that made me decide I couldn't justify spending any more time with the book began:

On a more personal level, a willingness to give up control can make us better teachers. When we teach our children how to drive, we like to pretend they will never do anything stupid. We give them a lecture about the long list of things they should never do.

My approach is different. I taught Yana, my then-fifteen-year-old stepdaughter, how to drive. One day I started with: "The first thing we are going to do is hit the curb. Drive over the curb, just not too fast." This is the best way to learn where the curb is. Yana is going to find the curb anyway, sooner or later, so let this learning occur under safe circumstances.

Some people might find these expositions more interesting or amusing than I did, but they also provoked this recurrent sense that we were straying far for a book that said it was going to be about incentives. He has this whole chapter about how to appreciate art better, parts of which were interesting, but even then I kept wondering how particular points were "economic." It's as if anything that evinces wisdom in a social setting is to be understood as channeling your Inner Economist.

* This column by Landsburg in Slate singlehandedly stunted my growing interest in economics for almost a year, by making an enterprise that I was coming to better appreciate suddenly seem ludicrous (the stunting abated when I realized that Landsburg was not the ambassador of mainstream economics he presents himself as being).

(ongoing series) how the english language would be different if it had been designed by quantitative social scientists

19. There would be more exact synonyms for "suggest," that most magical word of assertion without authorial commitment or responsibility.

There are too many suggests in this thing I'm revising, so I just changed one to "indicate." But, compared to "Our results suggest that X", saying "Our results indicate that X" is so strong. I guess I could use "raise the possibility that X", although going to that well too many times is way more conspicuous than when one does it for "suggest."

Complete non-sequitur addendum: I don't feel like this is worth a post unto itself, and yet feel compared to share it with you if you haven't seen it: a mash-up combining "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Bootylicious." The video isn't that compelling, but the mash-up of the music, which apparently dates from 2001, is fabulous:

you know you are in a gay resort town when...

I wanted to have a magazine so I would have something to read on the ferry ride back from Provincetown to Boston. I went into the store that said it was Provincetown's Largest Newsstand. I would have preferred to buy, perhaps in order, The Economist, The Atlantic, or Harper's. The store had none of these, but it did have an entire rack of gay porn magazines and an entire rack of nongay porn magazines (granted, GQ, which isn't specifically gay, and Details, which as far as I know is still a strange kind of closeted gay*, were on this rack as well).

As we figured out when we arrived at the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, yesterday just happened to be the 100th anniversary of the laying of the original cornerstone by Teddy Roosevelt at this monument, and so Provincetown was having a special celebration. So, there was a parade. The parade was comprised mostly of Freemasons, and thus the day combined a disproportionate number of male couples walking around with a disproportionate number of men-in-fezzes.

I am neither gay nor a Freemason. Having this instance to observe them both side-by-side, however, gay culture makes a lot more sense to me than Freemason culture. I think whatever goes on behind the closed doors of Freemason temples must be either wilder than anything I can imagine or more boring than anything I can imagine; there can be no in-between.

Back in Boston, we went back and forth trying to find the Boston Massacre site before being informed by a street vendor that it was just this circle of cobblestones in a little triangular intersection, without any explicit plaque marking it as such. Our photo, there:



We also had dinner last night at Cheers; by this point, everybody there really does know our names.

* When it was a Conde Nast publication, Details fabricated reader's poll data to downplay its percentage of gay readers.

Modern girls and old fashioned men

Hellloooooooo!

The title of today's post is the name of a song by the Strokes, only the best band on earth (: They are probably one of the biggest parts and influences of my life... Please release an album soon and go on tour!!!!
Lots of things I want to write about today so let's get started!!
Thursday, I got super long bangs...I think they turned out alright! Friday I was at a friend's sweet sixteen party...Saturday I was at Little Tokyo in Los Angeles to attend the annual Tofu Festival which was a lot of fun. I had a lot of tofu, too, and get this... I drank a tofu margarita. Needless to say, it was... nasty. Hahaha. Well, that concludes my "diary" and let's move on to the important stuff...

Today's designer of the day is Samantha Pleet!
Mixing a little bit of the dark and light, her clothing combines Gothic elements with modern concepts.

Her designs evokes playfulness and a little bit of the dark side and obviously are just plain gorgeous. I like these clothes so much I'm adding a few more looks from the Fall 2007 collection:


Be sure to check out SamanthaPleet.com for more beautiful pictures, information, and where to snag these pieces!



Recently, I've been obsessed with fine jewelry. Their timeless appeal allows them to be worn with almost anything without looking awkward and adds a touch of class to an outfit. One of my favorite jewelry brands creates almost all of its jewelry in solid gold without just plating or dipping in gold [a sign that you're getting your money's worth!].

Bittersweets NY makes bracelets, necklaces, rings, earrings, and more, in simple yet disturbingly morbid ways. There are everything from vampire teeth rings and necklaces to earthworm bangles, beating heart charms and maggot bracelets. I'm not too big of a fan of umm morbid things but what sold me was these tiny letter rings. Available at bittersweetsny.com and comes in three shades of gold [white, rose, and yellow]. They are customizable with letters and numbers [up to 4 i think, $8 for each additional] and are solid gold [explains the price for such a small thing]! Click on the picture for a bigger one because you can't really read what it says..



They're cute but it says on the website that you can "stack em up". I wonder who could afford to buy more than a couple of these... But it's a nice thought.


And I guess the rings were the item of the day but here's another one, just for variety's sake.
Sretsis has long been one of my favorite brands for its sweet, soft colored confections, and this jumpsuit really caught my attention [and it's on sale!]
It used to be $748 and now it's $374... Probably on sale because jumpers are a total summer thing and unless you live in Florida or California, it's pretty much a guaranteed stash away until next summer. Still a splurge but looks like it just may be worth it... Tell me what you think! And if you like it it's available here.

to the sea!

(my favorite sign in the Old North Church)

Full day of Boston tourism with my niece and sister yesterday. Today we are taking some kind of high-speed ferry to the Cape. This will be my first time going to the Cape, and will allow me to avoid giving an embarrassed "No" answer when I tell people I spent two years at Harvard and they ask me if I ever made it out to the Cape.

Of all the places we went yesterday, I think we spent the most time in the bar that served as the inspiration for "Cheers."

random bullet points about violence and moving

• I didn't get to walk around much while in NYC. On my way to Central Park with a friend, though, we passed a corner where two down-and-out-looking men were arguing loudly. "What the bother are you doing?" shouted one, "Woman walking with her kid and you bother with her like that." The other man was gesturing menacingly toward him with this thing that looked like a homemade bullwhip. We just kept walking. It did remind me of how pleased my mother was on the phone back when I told her I had decided against moving to New York.
• Yesterday in Harvard Yard I saw a woman with an uppermost-crust English accent go absolutely apebother on her seven-or-so year old daughter. The daughter was wheeling along the bike with tassels on the handlebars and, as part of a tantrum, had the idea to just leave it on the ground and walk away, at which point Posh went postal. Nothing physical, just shrieking, still disturbing, and yet also with the accent she still sounded classy. Made me wish again I had gone through my original plan to disappear as part of this fellowship and emerge with a bushy head of hair and a plummy English accent.
• Sister B and her daughter are coming in town to visit. This meant I was supposed to do some cleaning today, although the most productive parts of that were more pre-moving stuff than cleaning per se. On the latter, however, I continue to marvel at how ubiquitious mop technology is given its fairly small advantage over pushing a rag around vigorously with one's foot.
• Part of my pre-moving preparations are that I made real progress in my plan to get rid of 25% of my wardrobe. This includes various T-shirts and sweatshirts that I have been saving not because I have any plans to wear them again, but because I have one nostalgic connection or another. My plan for these, I think, is going to be to take photos of them and make them into a Flickr set, then discard.
• So far, so good, with my effort to lower my use of profanity by substituting "bother."
• First things I did today were cash in my accumulated spare change and buy a replacement iPod. The change came to within $10 of what the iPod cost. Which means that, for the past two years, I could have just been throwing my spare change in the wastebasket, if in addition I paid attention to my belongings enough not to lose my iPod. The ongoing tax imposed by my absent-mindedness, especially when its consequences are compounded by being sleep-deprived and traveling like at ASA, gets so bothering tiresome. Ugh. I don't know why Apple can't help people track down lost/stolen iPods since they can match the serial number and iTunes store account of any iPod that plugs into iTunes.

well, there goes the rest of my career

(first facebook bingo - rewraps for 85 points)

I reactivated my Facebook account this afternoon, after learning they have an application that allows you to play Scrabble.

At one point during my time as a junior faculty member, I started playing online Scrabble through this international server, played 112 blitz games (5 mins each side) in a period of six days, and then canceled my account and haven't logged in since. Various lessons about my can be drawn from this episode.

I have been a complete bother up work-wise anyway since returning from ASA. I did buy a bunch of boxes today to pack up my office, so if I'm not going to make progress on any of the four papers I want to finish up in the next six weeks, at least I can make progress on moving.

(ongoing series) things in this world that are plentiful and yet i wish there were still more

931. Novelty socks.

(Even though I don't wear them myself, sticking instead to my ever-expanding collection of argyles.)

Speaking of novelty socks, once upon a time I was talking to this woman who was all excited because she had received a letter inviting her to participate in a novelty sock scheme. There was a list of 3 names, and you were supposed to send a pair of novelty socks to the person whose name was at the top, then send a new list with your name at the bottom to 8 more people, etc.. Only I don't have those numbers quite right, because if everyone participated one would end up getting 71,347 pairs of novelty socks. I told her that she would end up getting no socks. She said my prediction was indicative of a larger character flaw of mine, namely a lack of faith. When I talked to her again a couple months later, she reported receiving no socks. She repeated that my prediction was indicative of a larger character flaw of mine, namely a lack of faith. I decided afterwards that she was probably right about this. I mean, what is more worth an implausible leap of faith than the prospect of many thousands of novelty socks?

Merci, au revoir.

Designer of the day is... Tillmann Lauterbach!

He uses a soft color palette for his collections and concentrates on creating clothes that can be discovered from the inside [rough material on the outside, silk/cashmere on the inside].

His minimalistic yet still unbelievably chic clothing consists of gorgeous evening dresses and objects of everyday wear. Check it out at his website, www.tillmannlauterbach.com!


So, tomorrow, I'm going to cut my hair... I'm going for Louise Basilien of the Plastiscines' look, with the super long bangs that cover her eyes. [you can see her in the current Urban Outfitters' campaign and catalog!] I hope it doesn't look too odd on me.. I just wanted to change my hair in some way so yeah (:

Item of the day today is stockings, socks, and knee socks from LA-based hosiery company, Hansel from Basel.
This is their full collection:

cute, I know. They come in gorgeous colors and designs and it's just as fun to wear them as it is to look at them... They're a lovely way to spice up an otherwise tame outfit in my opinion (:

Price: $18 [on sale online @ Creatures of Comfort!]


And for furniture lovers... I was looking through the Cath Kidston website's clearance section, and the Rose Maroc Gazebo from their catalog is on SALE!
Gorgeous... It's now:

£125.00

so if you need a little something to spruce up your backyard, there you go!

overheard

"Thanks for liberating my car."
"No problem. I was going to put a dead body in the trunk, but none were available."
"Everything went smoothly?"
"I was hoping for more of an ordeal. I thought I would have stories."
"I have no idea how I am going to do the Madison part of my move."
"You still have stuff in Madison?"
"My office."
"U-Haul."
"You know full well that I cannot drive a U-Haul truck in Chicago. Not even Evanston."
"You'll have to hire someone to drive it for you."
"They also re-keyed my office, charmingly enough, so I have to move out during a weekday."
"Why would they re-key your office? And why wouldn't they wait until you moved out?"
"I have absolutely no idea. The mysteries of Madison. Anyway, maybe I'll go buy an iPod today. Sooner I get another one, sooner I can lose it again."
"I say you wait until they make one you can put directly in your head. Then you can be bionic like your Dad."
"Maybe I should buy an iPhone just for all the non-phone features."
"How is that going to keep you from losing it?"
"I would probably lose it even faster, but I'd be so cool until then."

blogging, public sociology, and your cat

Jay Livingston, who I had the pleasure of meeting at ASA, has posted about the session on blogging on which I was a panelist. He has me saying:

“People say they don’t want to read about your cat,” said Jeremy Freese, “but in fact the posts about your cat are the ones that get the most response.”

I appreciate the nod, but this isn't really what I said. I did invoke the idea of blogging about one's cat. However, this was because when I introduced myself I said I had started blogging after seeing Kieran's blog, but I didn't want to misrepresent my own blog as having the same content orientation as Kieran's. So, what I said was that Kieran had once told me that when he started blogging he wasn't sure what he wanted to do but he knew I didn't want to blog about his cat, and I said that I didn't have a cat but if I did, I would almost certainly blog about it sometimes.

Chris was the one who said something about there being the idea that nobody is interested in what you had for lunch and then it turns out that, indeed, some people are interested in what you had for lunch, and might even be more interested in that than some serious post you spent a lot of time on.

Later, I made a related point, which is that audiences very much influence the content of blogs, as content of subsequent post tends to bend in a direction toward those previous posts that get the most response. I cited one example at the panel, which I won't repeat here, but I could cite others and, for that matter, this blog as well. Eszter argued against this as a normative argument--she argued that people should follow their muse because the explicit feedback they get isn't even a good indicator of what posts people actually like--but I intended the statement mainly as a descriptive one, as part of what typically happens with blogs.

I might write more about the blog panel later. Scott from Inside Higher Ed was there; I was sad we didn't get a story out of it, although he has provided good coverage of ASA.

dodging reviewers

Wicked Anomie, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at ASA, posted a list of tips for getting your paper published based on a session of journal editors at ASA. One of them:

[A]nyone you name in the acknowledgments will NOT be called upon to serve as a blind reviewer. That statement may sound obvious, but think about it this way: if there is anyone you DON'T want reviewing your paper (nemesis, archenemy, etc), acknowledge their brilliant advice on an earlier version of your manuscript.

I regard this as ethically sketchy and am somewhat surprised an editor recommended it. Nonetheless, from a purely strategic standpoint, my recommendation would be that the smart thing to do if you are going to insert a name of somebody who has not read your paper into the acknowledgments as a way of having them off the list of possible reviewers, remove that person's name after the paper is accepted. There is someone who has acknowledged me on at least one paper on which I most certainly did not provide feedback prior to its publication, which you might imagine was irksome for me to see, both because of the private implication to me that the person is trying to dodge having me review their paper and the public implication that I provided help on a paper I think is of quite low quality.

BTW: I don't typically include acknowledgments in manuscripts I send under review. I wait until after the paper is accepted and add them. (I'll sometimes have them on drafts I circulate, and will usually not include them in the version I send for review.) Is that unusual?

i fucking hate it.
the kind of shitified feeling.
depressing.
give me a knife and i will stab.
i have to see a psychologist.

asa rulz

I started today with the $28 (plus tax/tip) breakfast buffet, and am ending it now with a $26 (plus tax/tip) room service pizza.

BTW, I don't know if Fabio has this in his "grad school rulz", but while it's good to be able to describe your dissertation to another person in 2-3 sentences, those sentences should be delivered without using air quotation marks 5 or more times.

Also, the outgoing chair at Wisconsin came up to me and said people had been mentioning to her how I had linked to a couple of selections from her webpage in saying she should start a blog. She said, "You should have linked to my Hoops and Hurdles memo, that's my favorite one." We then discussed our favorite memos that she had sent out as chair, hers being the annual memo she send out regarding sexual harassment, mine being the memo she sent out to rally collective support for normative restraint as a solution to unsustainable growth in the cost of the free printing offered to graduate students (an approach was has basically worked; I thought about posting her memo along with a detailed rational choice analysis of the rhetorical strategy by which it worked).

I have enjoyed ASA, but I have not spent as much time interacting with several of those I would consider in my "most cherished circle" of sociology friends as I would have liked. Of course, every time I text Sal trying to get his whereabouts, his first response is always that he's out loitering in the parking lot.

Bonjour, mes amis

quick edit! my link has been changed to: fashionfleur.blogspot.com! Merci!


Today's label of the day is French brand Heimstone!

With clothes in beautiful shades of brown and black, Heimstone's creations are delightfully romantic yet playful. You can wear this stuff during the day and change the look for night with the same dress! Graceful dresses, funky accessories, and even swimwear are a part of their collections which are available for purchase at Jumelle in NYC and Satine in LA.

So, this fall is all about the polished look. Looking through this month's Vogue, fall fashion takes a mature turn after a series of trends meant for the young such as skinny jeans and leggings. So we ask ourselves, what is a polished look and how can we pull it off?

Runways recently have been showcasing structured looks that aren't too complicated and very sleek. They involve dark colors and simple fabrics that support dressing up instead of down. Instead of mix and match, the new look for fall is having a pulled-together look and being complete.

This particular look from Elie Saab's Fall 2007 couture collection reflects several of the fashion world's current obsessions:

SEQUINS
PATENT LEATHER
LEATHER&SUEDE
SHOWY CUFFS
GRAY
JACKETS
KNITS
CROCODILE
WIDE-LEGGED PANTS
SPARKLES
HEELS
POINTY FLATS


Here are some of my picks [from low to high prices!] for achieving the early fall trends:


High

Christian Louboutin Miss Fred Show Boots- $695.00 net-a-porter.com




Low
Made by Elves Oxford Heel- $88.00 urbanoutfitters.com




High

Tory Burch Mercedes Trench- $1, 995.00 toryburch.com



Low

Delia's Audrey Solid Toggle- $88.50 delias.com



High

Sang A Flash Clutch- $595.00 luxcouture.com



Low

Devi Kroell for Target Goldtone Clutch- $19.99 target.com




High

Built By Wendy Chambray Ruffle Top- $158.00 builtbywendy.com



Low

Topshop Silk Ruched Sequined Bib- about $52 topshop.com


High

Chloé Wool Voile Dress- $1, 815.00 saksfifthavenue.com


Low

J. Crew Pinwale Cord Emma Dress- $120.00 jcrew.com



High

Prada Glace Zippers Tote- $1, 490.00 neimanmarcus.com



Low

Banana Republic Fillmore faux-snakeskin deep satchel- $248.00 bananarepublic.com


So, that's it for today and I will update soon! Please leave me lots of feedback because I would love to know what you guys like/don't like so you can leave me a comment here or email me at frenchychiffon@yahoo.com. Thanks and enjoy!