Here I summarize some of the common arguments from my students' papers, which were based on research they conducted on some part of their own culture ( Read more... )

Illinois politician arrested. In other news, pigs still land-based; Hell remains hot.

We're talking a bit about the concept of and practices associated with race in Anthro 104 this week, so in honor of that here's a nice New Yorker article which outlines a few of the problems with IQ tests. Spoiler: black people aren't actually biologically dumber than whites, and anyone who says so doesn't have a good grasp of such things as ( Read more... )

My academic adviser is retiring at the end of the semester. Gasp. I'll talk with him tomorrow about where to go from here (not sure yet if he's still going to be around for me, or whether I need to find a new head adviser). I knew it was coming, but still it feels a little unsettling. Good for him, though--he's earned it for sure.

Here!

So according to some of my students, my grading of their papers has been harsh. They have compared with students in other sections who wrote almost the same thing and received higher grades. Etc ( Read more... )

Or at least my neighborhood in Madison. In the last 2 weeks, I've had two volunteers come by to make sure we knew where our polling place was, and just now (2 hours before the polls close) another just knocked on the door to make sure we had voted. Sure, there is a partisan motivation behind it (volunteers for the Obama campaign encouraging ( Read more... )

Slate has what seems to be a fairly comprehensive list of voting irregularities across the country. One addendum: the mention of 'Republican poll-watchers being tossed out of polling places' in Pennsylvania sounds more nefarious than it seems to be--apparently the place is just really crowded, and the watcher watcher watchers (Democratic and ( Read more... )

A question: Is 8:30 am too early to start playing beer pong?

My neighbors' answer: Nope.

Followup to earlier post:

Blizzard has fixed the arena titles, and I did get Rival! Woooo!