A note for visitors

Yep, haven't published to this blog in forever. It turns out the more time I spent researching bloggers, the more I realized that blogging isn't particularly an appealing activity for me. It's been defunct for some time, and will remain that way. I'll use facebook instead or (godforbid) twitter.

As a blog researcher, I can say pretty authoritatively that once someone stops writing blog posts, their reader base quickly converges toward zero. So this blog has lain dormant throughout my year and a half of dissertation-writing.

I'm now on the academic job market. As such, there's a high probability of people googling my name, leading them to stumble on this blog. Hence the dilemma of the increasingly fuzzy line between public and private life. I started this blog at the beginning of grad school in order to update a few close friends (the only people who would bother to read it) on my occasional musings and important life events. I also was motivated by the loss of an old journal -- my backpack was stolen, containing that and some Durkheim -- to use it as a means of preserving those experiences for posterity. So that's private information, but stored in a space which is open to the public eye. Blogs like this one exist under the comforting cloak of obscurity: an author can speak candidly, generally confident that their words will only reach their personal network for the simple reason that the internet is a very, very big place and no one else would have any reason to visit them.

Chances are, if you're reading this post, we don't know each other and you've just googled my name to figure out who that guy giving the job talk is [as an aside, that means I got a flyout. Note-to-future-self: sweet!]. I'm leaving the old blog posts up for posterity, and because I honestly don't think a medium like this should be an issue one way or the other. Read on if you want to hear a funny story about a bookcase falling on my head, my brief summer exploits making my rent money as a card player, or far too many failed attempts at a long-distance relationship with the same woman. It isn't going to be particularly interesting - grad school isn't known for being an exciting time in a person's life.

I now contribute to a group academic blog called shoutingloudly.com, and also maintain blogosphereauthorityindex.com, which is an update ranking system of the elite political blogosphere I developed as part of the dissertation. Feel free to visit those if you want to hear more about my research interests and candid opinions about public affairs and the state of scholarship on technology and politics. And if you actually came here looking for "dirt" on one of your "competitors" on the academic job market, I'll just close by asking the following question: is that sort of activity really part of the academic community you want to be a member of? I've been cautioned that people do that sort of thing, and I suppose they probably do, but it seems equal parts silly and petty to me. Go work on some interesting research instead, sheesh!

I win the week

Dear everyone,

This week, I win. If anyone else out there had a good week, congratulations and all, but you're really an also-ran. I'm the big winner.

Monday, I got re-elected to the Sierra Club Board. Anyone who has hung out with me in the past month or so knows that this was no sure thing. Anyone who saw me over the weekend knows that I was positively flipping out about it. Turns out I placed third (top 5 are elected, I was 5th last time), and had a good 4,000 vote margin between me and sixth place. So woohoo, score one for me.

And this afternoon I defended my dissertation prospectus. For those not entirely fluent in nerd, that gives me a cool new acronym (ABD - All-but-dissertation) and is one of the few major signposts left on the road to academic success. Now all I have to do is conduct my research and write the damn thing (piece of cake. Right? Right?!?) Anyone who has hung out with me in the past, oh, couple of years knows that this was no sure thing. I'm excited about my project (on MoveOn, Democracy for America, and progressive bloggers) and have now gotten the go-ahead sign from my advisors.

Therefore, I win the week. I can phone it in on Thursday and Friday, because I'm so far ahead that there's no way anyone is going to catch up with me. Time to rest my starters and give the bench some solid minutes. Woohoo.

I am convinced these sorts of things only happen to me...

So I was cleaning up my place a bit today and also putting together a new table from IKEA. That required a socket wrench, which was under my bookcase. I wriggled it free, no problem, but that tilted my generally-unstable bookcase just enough that the whole thing fell on me.

I'm fine, mostly because I wasn't in the dead center of the thing. Only the books on the right side of the case (about 50 of them) fell on top of me. Most of those were in a particularly large stack that I've been actively working with for my dissertation prospectus defense (which is next Wednesday, btw).

There is so much academic humor in this that I'm almost speechless. I was nearly crushed under the weight of my literature review!

Albums that you will make your life better

Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Decemberists - The Crane Wife
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Patty Griffin - Children Running Through
Josh Ritter - The Animal Years

These albums have been taking turns blowing my mind for the past few months. The new Modest Mouse is addictive.

Back in college, my best friends never told me about good music. I'm looking at you, Aaron, Aaron, and Neil! So I had to learn about the Shins through Garden State, a shame that I am only now willing to admit. Unlike those jerks, I'm a good person. So go buy these albums if you haven't already, because they're great and will improve you life.

Best Thursday Night Ever

Most of you probably don't know this, but a long time ago, I used to play bass. I started in junior high (with a brief stint with a band called Exposed Youth... which later went on to become the lame-but-famous college-rock group, O.A.R). I started playing jazz in high school, and actually got pretty good at it. I gave up playing once I got to college and realized that I didn't have nearly the drive or passion that the conservatory students had.

That was nine years ago. I haven't really played since.

Many of you probably DO know that every Thursday night, I go to Fiume to listen to the Citywide Specials play. They're my favorite country/bluegrass band, and I'm one of the more recognizable drunken regulars in attendance.

Tonight, the bassist wasn't able to make it. They asked if anyone played bass. I took a long swig of whiskey and said yes.

That's right, hang around the bar long enough, and eventually they make you part of the band.

Best. Thursday. Ever.

Elizabethtown and a little updating.

So I'm re-watching Elizabethtown, which is something not a lot of people are ever going to do. A couple of things that I'm realizing about it:

-Cameron Crowe? Really not all that impressive of a director. I mean, Say Anything was outstanding, but how much of that was John Cusack? Singles was fun, but I thought it was a lot cooler before I actually got into my mid-20s and realized that it bore no resemblence to my life. Almost Famous had it's moments, but spent have the time trying to be deep and the other half trying to be a spoof. Now THAT'S a directing problem.

-Orlando Bloom? Shoulda stuck with the funny elf-ears.

Kirsten Dunst? This one was a low point. She can be so much better. A review I read when the film came out said she made Natalie Portman in Garden State seem multidimensional. Such a perfect summary.

-the movie itself? Punctuated equilibrium. There are these moments of depth and brilliance, but you spend most of your time sitting around, wondering when it's going to get good again.

-Nonetheless, two take-homes... 1. I want to take a long road trip someday. 2. Meeting someone new, insightful, and interesting would be kinda nice.

--------

In other news, the semester is officially over, as of today. Spent the past week grading constantly. Watched the Wizards lose their last playoff game, ending the season tonight as well. Seemed almost poetic. Two of my big stresses, both ending until the fall. Of course, the Wizards are only a stress b/c I get too worked up about stupid team sports. And, with TAing and classes done, there's really no difference between the summer and the fall. Er, academically speaking, that is. Economically, I get one more stipend check, then have to spend three months relying on my superior wit, guile, and implicit probablistic models. That's right folks, I'm back to playing poker full-time!

I think it should be a good summer. Unlike last summer, when playing cards was a lot more appealing than studying for my comps, this summer my academic reading is stuff I'm actually interested in. And after 5 hours playing cards online, reading something fascinating that has nothing to do with poker sounds like *heaven.* I'll be hosting about a dozen people for the Philly Lindy Exchange, including the entire Pittsburgh crew. THAT will be the best afterparty I've ever thrown. The July 4th party is canceled this year, so that's a downer (oh, side note: my parents are putting their house on the market and moving to Oregon in the fall. Yeah, I promise to freak out about that later). I'm thinking about putting together a camping trip or something instead. Anyone interested? I've also got a board meeting in Seattle, thinking about sticking around there for a week or so to go hiking and see a few people. Everything's sort of contingent on me making cash at the card tables, though, so please cross your collective fingers...

Movie's over. I don't know that I'll be seeing it a third time.
-D

Words of wisdom from Mike McCloskey

I just got back from hearing the venerable Michael McCloskey give a brief talk promoting his recently published memoirs, In the Thick of It. McCloskey was our second Executive Director and, in one capacity or another, has basically spent four decades at the forefront of the movement. He is the only person I can think for whom "venerable" seems the most appropriate adjective. A real class act...

During question and answer time, he was asked what advice he had for the next generation of activists. In response, he said that, when he was getting involved, he was taught the following three rules of lobbying:

1. Know what it is exactly that you want

2. Identify where the power to give it to you resides

3. Tailor-make your strategy to each case

McCloskey feels that this third rule, in particular, has been lost in recent years. We have a tendency, he suggested, to focus a lot on numbers now -- how many doors did you knock on, how many tabling events, how many media hits, etc. In his time, they measured themselves by one standard: did we win?

In contrast to this, another famous enviro was arguing on a listserv yesterday that the Sierra Club should maintain a strict policy stance that we aren't going to make headway on and is actually hurting some of our other efforts because "lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for."

That sounds great and all, but I think it has a lot to do with the numbers game that McCloskey objects to. Think about the radical socialist groups from the college you went to. What did they spend all their time doing? Handing out newspapers, right? It doesn't really matter when you went to college. ALL radical socialist groups hand out newspapers, because the revolution isn't coming any time soon, but at least they can educate people. There is something to be said for this. In the long-term, educating people IS important, and having short-term indicators of success is a good way of getting some grasp of your impact.

But, the thing is, if the newspapers didn't work in 1998, and they didn't work in 2002, why are they going to work in 2006? This, in my view, is a crucial reason why the American Right keeps winning over the American Left. Karl Rove may be evil, but he's VERY GOOD at what he does. And that third lesson is what he does. He tailor-makes strategies to win victories. Meanwhile, we hold mostly the same tabling events and press conferences we always have. "Hey, let's have another march, that worked once."

Hearing from McCloskey was inspirational, and I heartily recommend his book to any of the progressive-types who read this. He is one of the true elder statesmen of the movement, and it seems that his greatest message to us is, "know what you're trying to get, then be creative in figuring out how to get it." Words to live by...