Archive for the ‘too much information’ Category
almost three hours of the 2017 indiana university international harp competition
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BUY THESE BOOKS!!
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($4.44 – cheap!!!!)
A theory book you can understand!!! Theory for the Working Sociologist (discount code: ROJAS – 30% off!!)
The rise of Black Studies: From Black Power to Black Studies
Did Obama tank the antiwar movement? Party in the Street
Read Contexts Magazine– It’s Awesome!
more jaap blonk than any human can handle
++++++++
BUY THESE BOOKS!!
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($4.44 – cheap!!!!)
A theory book you can understand!!! Theory for the Working Sociologist (discount code: ROJAS – 30% off!!)
The rise of Black Studies: From Black Power to Black Studies
Did Obama tank the antiwar movement? Party in the Street
Read Contexts Magazine– It’s Awesome!
classical music for social scientists
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
once again, halloween is the best holiday
I’ve often argued that Halloween is clearly and obviously the best holiday. Let me restate the case:
- Low social expectations. If you drop out and don’t do it, no one cares.
- Low cost. Just buy a bag of candy and you’re ready to go. Cheap costumes (or none) total acceptable.
- Be anything you want to be.
- Cool colors.
- No one alienates their family over “Halloween Dinner.”
- Limited travel.
- Pro-child holiday.
- A-political and inclusive of all religious and secular people.
I wish we could have Halloween every day of the year.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
hold on… did that pro wrestling commentator just get into sociology?
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
eriko toyoda, a message for you
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
don’t be fooled: trump gave a remarkably effective speech
I woke up this morning and started reading the post-mortems on Trump’s speech. Andrew Sullivan pronounced it boring and lacking substance. Michael Barbero in the New York Times called it a missed opportunity. People are getting comfortable that Hillary’s point-spread will hold and we will ride Trump out.
Those people are wrong. First, I’ll say this up front and as clearly as I can: I do not support Trump for President of the United States. His temperament, his instincts, his tactics and his values are antithetical to mine and I cannot support him. But having said that, I will also say that he gave a remarkably effective speech. And I think it will get him elected. Let me be specific: Read the rest of this entry »
thank you, uber
Some folks find ride sharing services like Uber to be a threat. Here’s my view:
- Uber doesn’t drive past me to pick up other customers.
- Every time I call them, they show up.
- They take all credit cards.
- They give me a receipt for the exact amount.
- I have never been yelled at by an Uber driver.
Not a bad deal, if you ask me.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
commentary on a talk by john cage
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
the force awakens commentary
Oh yeah, and you know there’s gonna be a few spoilers.
This is the film that JJ Abrams was expected to deliver. Lots of action, basic dialogue, and a lot of homage to the original series and other science fiction. If you’ve seen Abrams’ other films, you’ll recognize the approach and style. Running through explosions, the killing of a major character, and chirpy banter.
d&d is kool
Vice magazine has an insightful article artist/GM Zak Smith on the dogged persistence of RPGs. Let’s start:
“Dungeons & Dragons is some of the most crazy, deep, deep, deep nerd shit ever invented.”
-Ice T
Smith elaborates:
But beyond all that, the reasons that D&D is still worth playing are the people you play it with. As opposed to online RPGs where players interact through screens or headphones, when you sit down for a game of Dungeons & Dragons you do it with your people. In the same room. With snacks. Without the rest of the bar watching. There’s a story about three witches and a pack mule, which you all not only watched but invented, and then the witch threw a Dorito at you and drank your scotch.
My games are alcohol free, but I digress:
You learn things about your friends during these times, too. Who are these people when the stakes are low and wagers are little and no one is cool? Poker night gives you permission to get into your friends’ wallet; D&D night gives you permission to get into their heads. Sometimes it’s no surprise: Patton Oswalt played a drunken dwarf, Marilyn Manson says he was a dark elf, VICE international atrocity expert Molly Crabappleplayed a thief—but would you have pegged our porn correspondent, Stoya, for a druid with a dog named George? It’s important to know when there are hippies in your house.
And:
The game is meant to reflect the people playing. D&D came out of the mimeographed, amateur-press wargame scene and reached the height of its popularity in the mid-80s, when zines had staples in them, Metallica didn’t suck, and computers had not yet quite eaten the world—and it still carries a heavy debt to the handmade and the DIY. Every rule in the game has been crossed out and rewritten thousands of times by thousands of pencils in thousands of ways by thousands of Brads, Steves, and Marcys for tens of thousands of tables who wanted to do it this way instead of that way, and none of them needed to learn code to do it.
Yes! People coming together and making an absorbing world with each other. Read the whole thing.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
the hookup scene: good or bad?
Let’s start with a thought experiment. Assume we want to sell widgets but we haven’t developed any mechanism for coordinating buyers and sellers. Then, you read a proposal for setting up a widget exchange. It will have the following properties:
- Low information – the buyers and sellers don’t really have a lot of accurate information about widgets. Many customers are first time buyers. Some are minors.
- 1 shot interaction – the buyers and sellers will only interact with each other briefly and many will never see each other again.
- Low visibility – widgets will be bought and sold in secret locations and their will be no record of the transaction.
- Coercion is allowed/No complaints – There will be very little punishment for people who break the terms of widget trading. Many who steal widgets go unpunished. Widget sellers are consistently bigger and stronger than widget buyers.
- Inebriation – Widget exchange frequently occurs when traders are drunk.
What would be your ex ante evaluation of the propsoed widget exchange? You would be justified in saying that the widget exchange would be inefficient. You might also be justified in saying that the widget exchange facilitates criminality. It is hard to find many reasons to support the proposed widget exchange.
Claim: Modern hookup culture is very close in practice to the dysfunctional widget exchange. In private spaces, young and often sexually inexperienced people meet, drink, and engage in short term relationships. If you think the widget exchange proposed above is bad, then it follows that hookup culture is bad as well.
Social conservatives are often critics of hookup culture because they often pick up on the inefficiencies of that institution. However, they often make a mistake – the rejection of hookup culture does not entail a return to more traditional approaches to the organization of sexuality. We can ask about the institutional design of more traditional sex and apply the same criteria. For example, in a regime of no-premarital sex and unbreakable martial contracts, we would expect suboptimal performance because you have low information customers who commit to a single unbreakable transaction.
One might counter that the a no-premarital sex/no divorce regime might be preferable to hookup culture. If the only option is the hookup scene, then that might be a strong argument. However, there is a lot of unexplored space between hookup culture and more traditional sexual institutions. The hookup scene is only one extreme point on a continuum. It is not hard to imagine other sexual institutions that try to address the problems of hook up culture as I’ve outline them. For example, it might be possible that liberalizing alcohol on campuses might decrease the demand for hookup scenes.
The bottom line in hookup culture is that it is a very bizarre institution with a lot of very bad built-in features. But that doesn’t mean one should revert to an older institution that had its own problems. In an age where people have sex for both procreation and enjoyment, and where birth-control is cheap and common, we should be able to think about the unexplored territory between highly regulated sexual interaction and the false freedom of the hookup scene.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($2!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street
don’t look dumb: on the anxiety of asa meetings – a guest post by jeff guhin
Jeff Guhin is a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Virginia and earned his Ph.D. in sociology at Yale University. This post is a reflection on being an early career scholar at the ASA meetings.
Much like death, a meeting at ASA is generally short and anxiety-provoking for all parties involved. Think of the weird status distinctions of all of those friends-of-your-advisor meetings for the job market: sitting on a sofa in one of the halls, people watching so as to avoid too much eye contact. Passers-by wonder to whom that famous sociologist is talking (you! she’s talking to you!). Acquaintances of the high status individual feel permitted to interrupt. Your friends walk on past but ask about it later. All of these anxieties mask a much larger one: you’re a product at a market, and you damn well better not look dumb. If ASA is really about exchanging ideas and only secondarily about displaying cattle, then ASA isn’t working. It’s very hard to develop an idea if your primary goal in any conversation is not looking like an idiot.
To our discipline’s credit, the discomfort of those meetings is rarely the fault of the senior scholars themselves. The overwhelming majority of professors I’ve met at ASA have been extremely supportive and encouraging. I was shocked by how many made time to chat for a while in the halls. I recognize that I’m white, male, and straight, and also that I went to a top 20 program, and while believe these scholars would have been as kind to people in different contexts, I obviously can’t say for sure.
The majority of the people I met weren’t very famous sociologists anyways: they were the majority of the people I read, folks who write good articles about stuff I study too. These are folks who might or might not work in elite programs but who produce excellent work and come to ASA to talk about it, in their panels, sure, but also with junior scholars like me who want to get better at what we do.
i don’t normally listen to smooth jazz, but when i do, it’s grover washington, jr.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($1!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street!!
come say hello!!!!
This semester, I’ll be visiting a few places.
- January 19th (Monday) – I will be giving a talk and leading a discussion on student activism at Bates College. Bonus points: Peniel Joseph will be giving the key note for the MLK Day celebration.
- February 26th (Thursday) – I will be giving a talk on the lessons of the Civil Rights movement for the modern era at the University of Central Arkansas.
- March 6th (Tuesday) – Michael Heaney, my co-author on Party in the Street, will be at the Seminary Co-op in Chicago giving a talk on the book.
- March 27th (Friday) – I will be on the “Author Meets Critics” panel for Jerry Jacobs’ book In Defense of Disciplines at the Southern Sociological Association.
Please come by and say hello!!
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz ($1!!!!)/From Black Power/Party in the Street!!
interstellar: another movie where they kill the black guy first
Question: In the movie Interstellar, what is the one thing that an advanced human race can not accomplish?
- Building a five dimensional tesseract allowing people to cross time itself.
- Making a wormhole connecting distant parts of the universe.
- Colonization and exploration of new planets.
- Letting the Black Guy live to the end of the movie.
If you said 1, 2 or 3, then you know jack about science fiction. TV Tropes has a great list: The one guy killed in The Shining is Dick Halloran; in Deep Blue Sea, Samuel Jackson is eaten by a shark; X-Men First class kills the only black character very quickly; in the Alien films, Black characters die early and fast; and so forth. Recent film isn’t much better. The last Riddick film had only 8 characters – and all 4 people of color die. At least they let Jeffrey Wright live in The Hunger Games – but only after crippling him and putting him in a wheel chair.
I had my hopes up for Interstellar. Dr. Romilly is the dude with the most brain power. You’re going to need a Ph.D. in astrophysics if the human race will be saved. So I’m like, ya, this guy will live to the end. But no!!! Blown up by Matt flippin’ Damon, fer cryin’ out loud. At least they could’ve softened the blow by tossing in Affleck.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz/From Black Power
i wish western civ was taught this way
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz/From Black Power
eden ahbez(nature boy)
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz/From Black Power
blogcation fall 2014
Due to travel and work, I’ll be on blogcation for about a week. If you want to write a post, send it: 1-3 paragraphs on sociology, management, or a related issue. Self-promotion of papers and books is welcome. Until then, I leave you with this video of Hamlet, starring Doctor Who and Captain Picard.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz/From Black Power
hats and bluegrass. and whiskey. yes, please.
Thile’s Punch Brothers Play “Rye Whiskey.” via guest DJ M&M.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz/From Black Power
soy califa
Personally, I prefer the version on The Other Side of Round Midnight. But hey, it’s Dex.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: Grad Skool Rulz/From Black Power
yes, we’re going there. and i love it there. seriously.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
frozen/MJ
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
blogcation april 2014
I got some good books in the mail and some stuff to complete. I will also go outside and enjoy the Midwestern spring. Posting will be light in the next week or so.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
whitney 2014: crowded shows and the life and death of malachi ritscher
Joeff Davis, Malachi Ritscher, Iraq War Protest, Chicago, 2003. Included in the project Malachi Ritscher by Public Collectors. Image taken from the Whitney 2014 Biennial Website.
Update: I’ve added credits, fixed spelling, and here’s a link to the essay about the Ritscher exhibit, written by Marc Fischer from Public Collectors.
Last week, while I was visiting CUNY, I made some time to get down to the Whitney Museum to see the Biennial. This year was notable because the show was split three ways. Each curator got her own floor and each took a wildly different approach. The fourth floor was given to Michelle Grabner, a professor and artist. That was probably the most jammed part of the show with art on the walls, floors, and ceiling. It was also the most educational. Basically, Grabner found artists who explored all kinds of materials. For example, Sheila Hicks, one of my favorite fabric artists made this huge rope column. There were also some interesting gems, like a few shiny abstract canvasses mottled with salt by Carissa Rodriguez. Each work was an education in what you could do with particular materials. The floors by Stuart Comer and Anthony Elms were about youth and what one might call “intellectual concerns:” ethnography, politics, etc. For example, there was some strong work dealing with gay subculture, such as Tony Green’s work, Paul P. ‘s watercolors and Elijah Burgher’s pencil drawings.
The critics constantly complained about the whole show. I think it is better to admit that art has massively expanded and that there are multiple centers of gravity. Overall, you’ll be overwhelmed, or bored by the spectacle. But if you slow down, you’ll find that there is a lot to be enjoyed depending on what you want from art.
For me, there was one very moving part of the show, an exhibit by the group Public Collectors dedicated to Malachi Ritscher. He was a Chicago resident who was an avid free jazz fan and antiwar activist. He was notable for two things. First, he created an extensive library of recordings from the Chicago creative music scene. Second, he killed himself in 2006. To protest the Iraq War, he lit himself on fire on the Kennedy Expressway. He recorded that as well.
Malachi’s life and my own crossed many times. I am also a free jazz fanatic and sat next to him many times. I would go to the shows that he recorded. I actually recognized some of the shows whose recordings are in the exhibit. I am pretty sure that I am at least in one them and I am certainly an audience member in many other recordings that are part of Malachi’s library. He documented me. A brooding graduate student, I never introduced myself. But still, he was part of my world.
Later, I would dedicate part of my academic career to recording the antiwar movement. I spent quite a bit of time going to major cities, like Chicago, and conducting surveys and long form interviews with activists. Malachi is probably recorded in my materials. Maybe he filled out a survey. Maybe he was interviewed by me or my research partner. Or, more likely, he is part of an audience that I documented with a photo or audio recording.
The Ritscher exhibit deeply moved me. Malachi and I cared about the same things. Malachi and I passed by each other many, many times over a nine year period. Our lives have been stamped by the city of Chicago and its culture. We were even employed by the same organization – the University of Chicago.
But our stories diverge. He chose a path that I find hard to understand. Faced with the brutality of war, he did something brutal to himself. I have not walked in his shoes, so I won’t pass judgment. All I’ll say is that I remain viscerally shocked by his death. I mourn the loss of him and his knowledge. I responded to the war in a different way. I became the documentarian, the recorder of events.
Ending this post is hard because there simply is no end. I just don’t know what to think of Malachi’s musical contribution, or his suicide, or the crossing of our paths. Perhaps all I can now is dig out my copy of Emancipation Proclamation, which of course, was recorded by Malachi Ritscher.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
obama and race: a sober assessment
When people discuss Obama’s contribution to racial inequality, people quickly sort into a few camps. In the middle, and among Democratic partisans, Obama has done well. He believes in affirmative action and avoids race baiting. On the hard left, he’s slammed for not taking a more direct approach. They suggest that Obama either openly discuss the legacy of slavery and consider more redistribution. On the right … well, let’s just say that they can’t quite accept the fact Obama isn’t an atheist Muslim who hates America. I think these views all miss something important about race and the US presidency. They all say: What do I wish the president could magically do? Instead, you have to start by asking: What are the biggest racial issues in America? Which of these can the president actually solve?
In my view, the biggest drivers of racial inequality are:
- The mass incarceration of Blacks for non-violent drug related offenses. This is hugely important because prison massively disrupts the economic and social lives of people in nearly irreversible ways.
- The de-facto criminalization of undocumented migration, which is designed to marginalize non-whites on a massive scale.
- The college completion gap between Whites and Asians, and everyone else. This hugely important because college completion is the crucial difference between having a middle class life style and not getting one.
Notice that I didn’t say white privilege or white distrust/hatred of other groups. I certainly believe they are important, but honestly, if one had to choose, most rational people probably end mass incarceration before eliminating white privilege.
Let’s talk about Obama specifically. What can he do about #1? No president can magically undo a maze of Federal and state drug law, or single handedly reform the nation’s prosecutors. However, he could do some fairly simple things like simply remain silent on drug issues or down play excessive drug enforcement. I’ve little evidence that the Obama is especially interested in reforming drug laws and the President has scoffed, in the past, at drug legalization. On #2, Obama’s record ranges from marginal improvement (like promoting the DREAM act) to atrocious (overseeing mass deportation). On #3, there is little that the President can do directly to affect education. The power to improve schools lies mainly in the hands of the states and local school boards. My summary judgment on Obama is that he has done little to directly affect mass incarceration of Blacks and what positive he is doing immigration is outweighed by doing nothing to prevent (or actively encourage?) deportation. On schooling, I’ll give a pass.
Meh.
50+ chapters of grad skool advice goodness: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
festivus orgtheory
Happy Festivus. In honor of the Airing of Grievances and the Feats of Strength, I now celebrate all the people who have hated on me this past year (or ever):
- David Graeber, who said my online behavior was “reprehensible” (sorry, no link, the tweet seems to have been deleted, but you can get the background here)
- Critical realists, both ontological and regular varieties
- Post-modernists, you all haters
- The American Association for Public Association Research (though the discussion was very civil, which I can’t say for certain anarchist anthropologists)
- People who use job interviews
- White nationalists
- Overly annoying commenters
If you got a beef with Fabio, Festivus is your day. Use the comments, but rule #6 will be applied liberally.
The best book on grad school advice you can buy: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
fabio works for tips
Desperate for a workshop speaker? Send me an email. My topics:
- The politics of the antiwar movement after 9/11
- Black Power/Black Studies
- More tweets, more votes: social media as a measurement of public opinion
- Knowledge and practice in infection control – new project on the organizational behavior of hospitals
I’ll do it for free if I can drive there. If you pick up transportation costs, I come cheap. If anyone in NYC wants me to visit in Mar/April/May, I will work for tips.
PS. I have two topics for grad student groups: grad skool rulz and public sociology. Undergrads may enjoy a discussion of my manuscript in progress on social theory.
The True Word: From Black Power/Grad Skool Rulz
piping hot unicorn meat
The Medieval Manuscripts blog reports that an old cookbook has been rediscovered and it has that unicorn recipe I’ve been looking for:
After recipes for herring, tripe and codswallop (fish stew, a popular dish in the Middle Ages) comes that beginning “Taketh one unicorne”. The recipe calls for the beast to be marinaded in cloves and garlic, and then roasted on a griddle. The cookbook’s compiler, doubtless Geoffrey Fule himself, added pictures in its margins, depicting the unicorn being prepared and then served. Sarah J Biggs, a British Library expert on medieval decoration, commented that “the images are extraordinary, almost exactly as we’d expect them to be, if not better”.
Finger lickin’ good.
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feminist star wars
There is a strand of feminist discourse that highlights the under-appreciated contributions of women. Consider this post my contribution to the genre.
If you talk to a really, really hard core Star Wars nut, like I used to be, you’ll hear the standard story of George Lucas’ decline. He was a nerdy avant-gard wannabe film maker. He finally decided to go mainstream, to great success, making three outstanding films in a row, American Graffiti, Star Wars, and Empire Strikes back. However, released from the pressure of Hollywood, he didn’t have the discipline to rein in his weaknesses, resulting in a slide from Ewoks to Jar Jar.
The feminist view of Lucas argues that this doesn’t go far enough. The feminist interpretation is that George Lucas was never a good film maker at all and that most of his success is really attributable to the unacknowledged work of the women around him. Consider, for example, Marcia Lucas – George’s fist wife. There’s an easy case to be made that Marcia was the person responsible for making Star Wars a great film.
keeping my promise to latin jazz
David Sanchez plays “La Fiesta Va.”
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meet in me in chicago!!! again!!!!
Yo: I will be in Chicago for the Midwest Sociological Association meeting on Thursday. Want to chat? Hang out? Talk about sociology? I’ll be on a panel discussing The Handbook of Sociology and Human Rights edited by David Brunsma, Keri Smith, and Brian Gran. Pls email/tweet/facebook/smoke signal me.
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orgtheory.net 