Roundup

Because my efforts to get back the bloggy back after being on vacation have been stalled by a trip to Ann Arbor to work on my work (that sounds funny, but is actually true) so that I might be able to forgo the "graduate student" title and move onto "professor" or "Dr.", I thought that I would just do a roundup for the time being and hopefully move onto more productive blogging in the future.

• Speaking of becoming "Dr." as opposed to a lowly graduate student, the future Dr. Warner moved to a new site that she hopes to keep going after she is a grad student. I hope she does, because her posts are always fascinating for anyone in grad school, but particularly those in sociology programs. Check out her new site. I'm not sure if there is an appropriate web version of the housewarming present - any suggestions are welcome.


• On the other hand, Jeremy Freese has declared a hiatus because he is afraid of becoming "some kind of peculiar jester-statesman for my discipline." While I certainly do not believe this to be true and respect Jeremy for the decision, it is sad to see such a great voice leaving the blogosphere; and, it appears that most people who took the poll agree with me. But, it was good to see that he did have a brief post titled "entr'acte" today, hopefully this means that there will be more to come.


• Speaking of being between acts, I will hopefully be in that state soon as my advisors told me that they think that I should be able to send out my paper which means I will be on to my dissertation.


• Which reminds me that Dave ran away from Big Purple, but at least his Ducks are ranked number 5 in the BCS which I hope helps. Given his frustration with the labor movement's lack of appreciation for young people--a topic on which I completely agree (and, agree is a problem on the left more generally)--I hope that it is for the best for him.


• Another cool kid from the GTFF wrote a great post about why economic rationality and "just-in-time" professorships are bad for academic freedom.


• Oh yeah, you should also check out another great rant about the ages.


• Is it just me, or do other people not care about the presidential primary anymore, particularly whether Clinton is "playing the female card" a) because she's not; b) because if she were, why is it a bad thing to point out that she is the only woman in the field; and c) because it is really hard to take Matt Lauer seriously.


• But, all is not glory in the Clinton camp, either. I seem to remember some saying about foxes and hen houses. Not only does the company that Mark Penn, Clinton's pollster and a top advisor, serves as the CEO defend Cintas, a notoriously anti-union company that broke OSHA standards so badly that the administration fined them for killing an employee, his company also works to improve Blackwater's image. His excuse on the first account, he doesn't personal work on that campaign (though, presumably he makes money from it). On the second--get this--they outsource the work for Blackwater. That's priceless.


• And, while I'm on the topic of pollsters and the campaign, I should mention a great initiative by another pollster (on the other side of the spectrum from Penn), Mark Blumenthal from Pollster.com is undertaking what they he is calling the Disclosure Project to get polling companies to release the details of their methodology.

Off to bed with me now so that I can work on getting my own survey results written up tomorrow. I am sure that there is much more that I missed, but I hope to maybe start catching up on my bloggy activities, maybe even post something substantive. I know, shock!