Out of the mouth of babes

"Hi Grandma. You know, Christmas would have been a real rip-off if you didn't give me my Speed Stacks. They're all that I wanted and I'm already an expert with them."

(This is what I overheard my eight year-old cousin proclaiming on the phone)

Happy Holidays

If this blog isn't updated for a little bit, it's not because I've mothballed the blog, but because I am going far, far away for the holidays and will have sporadic internet access at best. Perhaps it's my aversion to change, but I'm enjoying my quiet time alone where I can slack off work with minimal guilt (given that it's the holidays). I suppose it'll be nice to see family, but I'm not looking forward to all of the inevitable cheek-pinching and talking about myself I'll have to endure with relatives. Family can be paradoxical that way. You're willing to travel long distances to congregate with them briefly, but they can drive you nuts in a relatively short amount of time. Further, the holidays can be weird for me, given that I don't get to interact with anybody within fifteen years of my age (plus or minus), which in past years, has made me miss school and delve deeply into my work over the holidays. It's also weird because I have relatives taking me out for dinner and such, which would be nice, except it's kind of an affront to my pride as a 20-something. I realize that I'm a student and don't have a ton of money, yet my university treats graduate students as well as any. I mean, I usually buy a nice salad at school for lunch everyday (it's the only way I'll ever eat vegetables) and have internet access, cable TV and Netflix in an apartment I have all to myself. While I am a graduate student, I don't think I'm exactly poor (although, many graduate students are, unfortunately). If I didn't want to have a family some day, a grad school income is more than sufficient to fulfill my meager needs and desires for life (although I would like a quieter apartment that isn't next to a major streetlight, and maybe a new computer with a big monitor). On the other hand, I wouldn't be going to the Outback Steakhouse unless prompted to. Unlike my immediate family, they're relatively well-off, but they still have bills to pay and want to retire someday themselves. It's as if I'm in financial purgatory where I sort-of have a career, but am not seen as a legitimate income earner (which may be true, but unfortunately the taxman views my modest income otherwise).

Anyhow, I apologize for all of the rambling (and parenthetical remarks rambling on top of the initial rambling). Regardless, I look forward to having a small glass of eggnog (I realize it's kind of disgusting, but thanks to the classical conditioning I have hardwired into my brain associating it with Christmas, it could taste like motor oil and I'd still like it), and spending the afternoon of the 25th assembling children's toys that you need a civil engineering degree to understand.

Yet another refutation of neoclassical theory

When I was informed of the Allen Iverson trade, I immediately felt that it was a colossal misallocation of resources for the NBA and basketball fans. Iverson is going to go to Denver, take shots away from Carmelo Anthony and likely stunt his development as a franchise player. Meanwhile, for their future hall-of-famer (Iverson), Philadelphia received a 30 year-old point guard that's out of shape (Andre Miller), a 31 year-old career bust (Joe Smith) and a couple of mediocre draft picks. Could this trade have made both terms worse (especially after the honeymoon periods expire)?

Even if I'm wrong about this trade, it did remind me of the possibility that self-maximizing actors can engage in trades that render both worse off, although the actors (which notably included Sixers GM Billy King, who is known as one of the worst GM's in professional sports) who made these economic decisions thought differently and think they're better off today, obviously, and that's what economists would probably retort.

Captain 1, Bureaucracy 0

A few months ago I got a letter informing me that as an international student, recent changes in state law required me to get a bunch of extra and expensive immunizations. If I didn't comply before the new year, my registration at my university would be voided, and I'd have to pay a hefty fine to be reinstated. Naturally, with something this serious, I procrastinated and decided to follow up on this today. My hatred of needles, and lack of desire to deal with expensive health bureaucracies made procrastinating just a little bit too easy (incidentally, chocolate cake would trigger the opposite reaction, as I could not procrastinate partaking in something fun like that even if I wanted to, and I'd devour it even if I was busy or not hungry at the time).

After explaining my plight to the friendly receptionist, she referred me to "Requirements", meaning I'd get one of the bureucratic head honchos at the clinic. Predictably, the woman in question was stern and efficient in nature in informing me that there's no way out of having to get these extra inoculations (even though she admitted that they've never had any problems from my particular country). However when all seemed lost, I noticed on the fine print of the letter that the new law only applied to "full time students taking six credits or more." As an "advanced" graduate student, I don't take any classes, so I'm not technically taking
any credits. When I pointed this out to the bureaucrat, she looked like a deer in the headlights.

"But...you're going to be on campus?"
"But...are you actually a student at this school?"
"But...what are you going to get from this school when you're done here then?"

My answers were yes, yes, and a degree - in theory. However, she couldn't get around the fact that I'm not taking six credits. Having lost just about every valiant battle I've ever fought against bureaucracies (Weber was right, it's almost always futile to try to beat them), I did enjoy watching the bureaucrat realize that she (as opposed to me) was locked inside the iron cage. It's remarkable the the state legislature, or whomever is responsible for implementing these laws wrote the requirements in such a way that gives someone like me a massive loophole out of having to comply (which is ironic, since whomever came up with the law in the first place was trying to get as many people as we could). Or, perhaps they figure that anybody not taking many courses isn't likely to meet people to kiss and give the mumps to.

Can't sleep....Clown'll eat me...

4:17AM and still no signs into lapsing into a anything resembling a sleep-esque state of consciousness. Sleeping in like the epicure for sloth that I am has apparently tricked my body into thinking it's in the Singaporean time-zone. I'm toying with the idea of staying up all night and day, but I was hoping to do work for a few days this week. Regardless, I probably am going to have to do it eventually, as I'll be visiting family for the Holidays, and I always feel that my "wake at 10:30 at the earliest, sleep at 3" is kind of rude, or at least embarrassing. Being a night-owl, it's much easier to set my clock 18 hours forward than 3 hours back. I know this is larely because the circadian rhythm for adults is 25 hours long, but my body has way more inertia in my sleep-wake cycle. Since childhood, I've always wanted to stay asleep when I wake up, and don't want to sleep when I'm awake at night. Regardless, since I'm an upwardly-mobile professional (at least in theory), I can't let them in on my secret that I live like an unemployed stoner (well, minus the drugs at the very least).


4:27...*sigh*

DeVry with Pine Trees

As an addendum to my previous post, Norman Chad's syndicated column is some of the funniest and wittiest quasi-sports writing out there. I've spent a considerable amount of time leafing through the Couch Slouch archives and giggling my brains out. Here is a glimpse of his genius:

"Don't all the great lawyers and judges come from Harvard and Yale? Yet not a single Harvard or Yale grad is an NFL official; rather, just one side judge from Princeton and a back judge from Dartmouth. Heck, Dartmouth's no more than DeVry with pine trees. It's time for the league to recruit officials from the upper-echelon Ivy League."

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/chad/4363812.html

A TERRRRIBLE blog post!

I'm presently watching a meaningless Rockets-Lakers game punctuated by the presence of one Bill Walton on color commentary. While I first loathed his absurdly hyperbolic delivery, he has grown to be one of my favorite television personalities. Sports are not necessarily profound, and since you can see what's going on on the TV, you don't need someone taking up air space with trite facts and explanations. Walton's ridiculous exaggerations and bombast are an experience in themselves which augments the relatively self-explanatory transipirings on the court. Like NBA columnist extrordinaire Kelly Dwyer, I believe Walton knows exactly what he's doing. He's attempting to entertain as much as inform. The success of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and Bill Simmons' Sports Guy columns suggest that intelligent people enjoy being entertained with "facts", as they are capable of observing them on their own and making up their own damn minds. Further, Walton also deserves mad props for improving himself from an uber-shy kid at UCLA with a stutterring problem who went to great lengths to avoid having to do interviews publicly, to being the NBA's alpha-loudmouth.

Along these lines, I also love Dick Vitale, especially when he's working a Duke game. Like Walton, he brings enthusiasm in spades. However, when he's doing his usual fawning over Duke, he's like one of those professional wrestling announcers who blatantly cheer for the "bad guys", as a means of generating "heat", and adding further tension to the scenario. Paired with a good straight-man, it's as if you're having a struggle between good and evil, or ego and id played out in front of you while you watch top notch D-1 basketball. That's entertainment, bay-bee!

Vacancy Chains and "Real Life"

I'm not a huge Harrison White fan, but I do think his notion of vacancy chains is worthwhile. Perhaps the only truly generative theory he brought to sociology (as opposed to his other largely impenetrable writings) , Smith and Abbott fruitfully applied his theory and methods to understanding labor market mobility amongst D-1 football coaches in 1983.

In graduate school, I've observed support and friendship networks kind of work in a similar manner. As old friendships go stale, or people drift apart, support and gossip (the equivalent of grooming in primates) networks rewire and people become closer with others to fill voids. Consequently, attitudes in networks polarize and flip-flop in complex chains (as per Heider's balance theory). However, I am thinking that there are times where the vacancies (or holes) opened up by changes in friendship/affective ties simply dissipate. In my case, a very good platonic friend of mine of the opposite sex appears to be initiating a flirt-mance with one of the new students in my department, and I think it's only a matter of time before it develops into something more (if it hasn't already). While I'm happy for her, and the lack of pangs of jealousy in my gut are a good hint that I know I made the right decision by keeping things platonic with her for the past year or so when we became close, I also realize that I've been supplanted as the so-called "Golden Boy" in her life. I'm totally okay with that too, it just means that I'm going to see her a lot less now, and in this case, no vacancies are opened up by these transpirings for me to fill the void. Unfortunately, close friendships are much more difficult to come by than the head coaching job at Idaho.

Recurring Thought of the Day

Does [so-and-so] not like me (or have I said/done something to tick them off?), or are they just ornery and stressed due to the end of the semester?

EDIT: Hooray! It's just the end of the semester!

Student Government and the Cubic Zirconia of Cultural Capital

In a fit of wide-eyed naivete and a desire to spin my web of network ties outside of the inbred ones that tend to characterize my department, I signed up to be a representative of the Graduate Student Government at my university. Not surprisingly, the whole thing turns out to be very ceremonial, politically inert and symbolic - hardly a surprise for a sociologist. The personalities I've encountered are interesting from a social science perspective. As far as I've surmised, student government is a forum for two kinds of people:

1) Overachieving do-gooders with Type-A personalities

2) Angry, lonely and/or neurotic people who want a forum to publicly bitch in and feel important

In regards to the former, it may be relevant that both the President and VP are both children of privilege. One is the niece of a state governor and the member of an eminent family from a wealthy district in a wealthy city. The VP is a guy who went to a NESCAC school, and apparently talks a lot about hanging out in Kennebunkport on his MySpace. I suppose when the orthodoxy and mainstream institutions have been going your way for all of your life, you're inclined to beleive in them, or at least try to preserve the status quo. I admire them for how hard they work and dedication, but at the same time, it is a bit scary to see people so committed to a student organization with the political clout of a kangaroo court.

Fortunately, I've found a partner in crime on the council who sees the absurdity of many of the arguments and discussions we have, and we enjoy whipsering the occasional humorous remark to each other. The VP's wardrobe (and general dorky mannerisms) provide a good deal of comedic fodder. Doused with preppy-masculine hubris, he donned his usual sweater-vest and tie for the meeting tonight (a maroonish pink and a slightly different shade of red for his vest and shirt, with a green tie - yes, that's how he thinks a good pretty boy should dress). However, most egregiously bad was his expensive tailored navy pants, which had skiiers embroidered all over them. This also wasn't the first time he's proudly adorned himself in such tackiness. This summer, he raised eyebrows by wearing white and green shorts with whales resembling Pucky the Whale of the Hartford Whalers embroidered all over them.

Anyhow, there is a point to all of this, and it's not typical grad school carping...

My friend and I were discussing the absurdity that the Veep spent what had to be at least a few hundred dollars on an outfit that made him look that tacky. Further, he obviously wanted to be adorned with the skiiers and whales, and was willing to pay a lot of money to do so, which makes the choice even more egregiously bad. That raised the question of what kind of shop would sell such expensive, but horrifically tacky clothes. I recall Jeremy Freese once musing that upscale preppy clothes places like The Gap blatantly stock their shelves with ugly shirts in order to make other shirts look like a great find/buy. Howver, ugly and tacky are completely different things, and we surmised that even places like J. Crew, The Gap, Banana Republic etc. wouldn't sell such horrifically tacky and expensive men's clothes. These things are status and market signals, after all.

So, we wondered where the Veep buys his clothes, as he clearly makes very conscious decisions with his wardrobe. I guessed that there's some little-known shop in Greenwich, CT that Ivy League-reject Young Turks who ache to conspicuously lavish themselves with (what they think is) cultural capital know about via their prep school social networks. I can't think of who else would buy expensive clothes with skiiers and whales embroidered on them. Further, that also leaves unanswered who the designers and manufacturers who believe/know this stuff will sell...

Catholic Robbery

I am not a huge college football fan, yet I still feel obliged to add another clamoring voice to the various BCS polemics. For all of the grievances made on Michigan's behalf, the plight of their Big Ten cohorts, Wisconisn, has largely been ignored or at least taken for granted. One could argue that since Michigan lost a(nother) chance at Ohio State and the National Championship, they deserve the most attention and outrage. However, it is also worth keeping in mind that there are millions of dollars at stake here, even for "Consolation Bowls" (the BCS Bowls that are not for the National Championship) that are a part of the BCS cartel. The media seldom mentions that the financial difference between a BCS and non-BCS bowl is immense, and can mean the difference between profitability and having to divert resources from other university functions - such as research and teaching.

While the deal with major conferences that guarantees spots for conference winners is also contentous (Wake Forest vs. Louisville in the Orange Bowl? It's a loooong way from BC-Miami), I'll be more direct and ask why Notre Dame is in a BCS Bowl and Wisconsin is not. Wisconsin was ranked higher in every meaningful poll, having only one road loss to Michigan, a team that blew Notre Dame out in South Bend. The Domers were also blown out by USC - a rebuilding team that lost to two unranked opponents in the notoriously weak Pac-10 and played their usual schedule sprinkled with more cupcakes than a preschool birthday party. The worst thing about the whole thing is that Wisconsin was totally complicit in this fleecing. They accepted their bid to the Capital One Bowl before the BCS Bowls were announced (knowing or having been told full well that they were getting snubbed for mandatory admittances, or the massive ratings Notre Dame brings to a Bowl). Wisconsin head coach Barry Alvarez even served as a cordial commentator on FOX's BCS selection show. I realize football coaches and culture are generally proponents of supporting the orthodoxy, but shouldn't the fact that millions of dollars are being siphoned away from Madison to South Bend be cause for some sort of protest on its own? Doesn't this sort of thing beget a Matthew Effect (and no, it's not unique to science or the BCS) that allows the beneficiaries of evil to further benefit from, regenerate and entrench such odious social orders?

This isn't the first time this sort of thing has happened with Notre Dame, either. In fact, this happens pretty much every single time Notre Dame manages to win their usual games against the military academies (a feat made even easier during times of war) and then pull out a couple more victories to remain bowl eligible. They haven't wom a bowl game since the advent of the BCS, becuase since they're Notre Dame, they get put into a bowl they don't deserve to be in against an opponent that does, and get slaughtered accordingly. All the while, the Fathers back in South Bend gleefully get to count their money.

In short, I hope LSU beats Notre Dame 105-0 or something, so the egregiousness of this seemingly annual farce gets exposed to the extent it needs to be in order to get noticed. However, I won't be watching. I don't want to even risk boosting up the Nielsen ratings for the game, which helps perpetuate this sham in the first place.

Situational Propreity, Network Searches and Poker Dorks

One of the highlights of my rather quotidian life is my weekly poker night with some friends and colleagues. The group was started by a fantastic couple who are new to town and wanted a forum to meet people while staying home so they didn't have to incur child-care costs whenever they wanted to socialize with others. Being new, they relied heavily on their one contact in town to propagate their invitation to join a fun, socially-oriented poker group. This contact on his own is a great guy, but fulfills the role of "pedantic poker player who is great for remembering who plays in position where the tournament goes heads-up, but takes $10 tournaments just a bit too seriously" quite nicely. However, this guy was the "median node" (okay, I just made up a term that might not make sense) in his own network, which then reached out to even more "serious" poker players who have now infiltrated and perhaps infested the group. While the network search started with a friendly couple new-to-town, their lack of ties resulted in low control/selectivity over the search, having to span numerous degrees of separation, and they ended up with a couple of Poker Dorks. Since the game is institutionalized (the same weeknight every week), and they're too kind and welcoming to do anything about it, now they're stuck with them. Live poker is a unique experience that you can't get online, and given the difficulty of getting invited to a game*, I don't think these guys are going anywhere. Perhaps the fact that they don't have a hyper-competive high-stakes game outside of the Indian casino hours away further underscores the co-ordination problem that exists with poker (and for that matter, friendships, forming bands, dating, etc.).

Perhaps you know the type. The guys who are hunched over incessantly doing chip-tricks (with the accompanying annoying "clicking sound") looking and acting miserable, only to have their personalities jolted by an opportunity to count outs, to inform you of their genius that extracted value in a won pot for them, or to concoct face-saving explanations for an unthinkable lost pot ("He was playing crazy! I had to make that call!" [where he turned out to be a 4-to-1 underdog]). As a "serious novice" myself, I don't mind their presence (especially because I enjoy having people I secretly find villainous to compete against), and think one of them is actually a nice guy, but I find it incredibly awkward that they intimidate and alienate the novices, women and those in the group who are just there to socialize. Correctly identifying the table as weak-tight, they raise with marginal hands and bet just about anything strong, as most of the people will fold unless they have the absolute nuts (and even then, I'm not sure some of them would recognize a straight flush if they made it). They also never show their hands if they don't have to, even to novices who are trying to learn the game and ask to see to try to make sense of what happened, as opposed to figuring out how Poker Dork #1 plays AJo UTG on a raggedy flop after CO and the BB called preflop**. I felt terribly that the wife of the original couple specifically asked to have a seat reserved away from the poker dorks because the constant clicking of chips bothered her, and she hated being raised out of every pot that she wanted to limp in. It's her house and she sacrifices sleep to stay up and play, yet I worry that she's not having fun anymore, which in turn impedes my ability to enjoy myself. I used to have a "weekly basketball group" as well, and while we played hard and competitively, we also made sure that everybody had fun (the only bad outing I ever remember having was when we played with some townies who passed less than Kobe Bryant), and certainly wouldn't go as far to debate the merits of the diamond-and-one to stop someone having a good shooting night. I suppose there's a continuum between "cut-throat high-stakes competition" and "competiton as a fun social activity" that some don't appreciate.

In their defense, I'm sure the Poker Dorks just think "we're playing poker" and are oblivious to the context they've walked into. Guys wearing "Yahoo! Student Programming Championship" t-shirts tend not to be the most socially adept people in the world. However, for hyper-competitive people enthralled with gambling, they are totally unaware of the concept of cooling the mark out. Further, the lucrative nature of self-promotion in the booming poker superstar market as proliferated by ESPN and others has resulted in a number of gregarious, entertaining, charming professionals (e.g., Negreanu, Matusow, Nguyen) that show that you can be fun to be around and watch even if you're playing for millions of dollars.

On the bright side, while I don't go out of my way to keep score, despite their focus, drive and virtuosity, I think both of the Poker Dorks are net donators to the prize pool. Given the impact of luck in poker, especially in the short-term, this may not mean a whole lot, but I'm going to be there next week and do my best to gut these Dorks of their chips, so I don't have to listen to that damn clicking all night. I still won't play my fiercest against the novices, but I guess the Dorks have managed to reshape the activity as they desire it, because now I'll think twice about showing my hands and giving out free information. I want everybody else to have fun, but it would be sweet to bust those fuckers and knock them out of the tournament, then chip-dump to the novices and play in a manner that makes devalues skill differentials just to irk them.

I guess the moral of the story is that if you're going to engage in a network search that spans multiple degrees of separation, you better have a damn good broker.


* As an example, http://poker.meetup.com/cities/us/ia/iowa_city/ suggests that this co-ordination/scarcity problem is widespread, and that it's difficult to rectify for many.

** This is poker jargon that I meant to look esoteric and complex. Like I do with most mathematical equations in many social science journal articles, you can just skip over it and understand the general idea behind it.

The Maiden Voyage and Blog Framing

Considering that I don't entirely know what I'm doing with this blog (or why), I figure I should cut to the chase. I am a grad student in the social sciences who has long been lurking amidst the various realms in the blogosphere and have been sufficiently intrigued to start a blog of my own. I enjoy graduate school, but often feel like it only taps a small portion of the creativity and general activity (don't worry - I believe it contains a less than relatively benign dose of neurosis) that goes on in my head. Hence, here is my forum to sublimate these unprofessional impulses. I also figure that having an excuse to write every day will help cure me of my recurring writer's block.

I've self-consciously decided that I'll start this blog anonymously under a silly pseudonym. As a graduate student, I am well aware of the occupational hazards of blogging. Further, I think blogging anonymously will allow me to be more candid, outrageous and entertaining than if I knew potential employers, colleges, family et al. could come across my posts by googling my name. On the other hand, I realize that I will have to suppress information that gives away my identity, home-town, department, research and so forth. Either way, stuff gets censored and I've decided to censor the "personal" stuff (also because I'm a self-conscious introvert who cringes at the idea of self-promotion or being associated with a grammatical mistake or stupid idea that I threw up here in perpetuity). At their worst, anonymous on-line interaction degenerates into childish flame wars, whereas non-anonymous interaction becomes a platform for self-aggrandizing venting and attention-seeking. So, there are the costs and benefits as I see them, and I'll see if I hit the equilibrium point with these choices and adjust appropriately.

Or, I could drop this project and never write anything in this blog again...