Ho, ho, ho.

Suppose a member of your family sent (via USPS) a gift that you didn't like. Specifically, the gift was both inappropriate and offensive to you and your family. This person knew the gift would be offensive and sent it nonetheless.

Given that direct confrontation will not serve any constructive purpose, is it okay to pretend the gift never arrived?

(Merry Christmas, Happy Chanuka, and Happy Kwanzaa everyone!)

An open letter to my fellow parents.

So you've lied to your kid, for "the magic of Christmas" or whatever, and convinced him that Santa is a real person coming to his house on Wednesday night to deliver his presents. That's your choice and I understand why you made it. However, I didn't lie to mine and she doesn't believe in Santa Claus. She knows Santa is not coming and that your son is mistaken.

If our children have a conversation about Santa Claus, that is their business and none of ours. My daughter has every right to tell your son about her beliefs, just as your son has every right to tell her about his. Just as I have told my daughter to respect other people's beliefs, it is now your turn to tell your son the same thing. Telling him instead that he can't play with her any more and treating me like I have ruined Christmas for your family forever makes you look like ginormous intolerant assholes.

And ponder this: no matter what you say or how badly you behave, my kid is going to win this one. Maybe not this year, but she will win eventually. (And mine will grow up knowing that I never, never lied to her.)

The mitten factory has closed.

My holidays have themes. This year was mittens. Last year was little FIMO ornaments. (William, I was going to make you a length of oh-so-festive necrotic bowel for your tree, but you would have had to tell me what it should look like and that would have taken the fun out of it, so I gave up on that idea.)

The Icelandic wool was a little harder to work than I was accustomed, so my gauge was screwed up and they were bigger than they should have been. Luckily, they should shrink up and get nice and felty. Instead of giving her a badly-written term paper, I gave these to my mythology professor, who had, coincidentally, outed me as the Angry Professor in the last few weeks of class. That will teach me to use Eliade as a sleep aid. Welcome to my world, Angry Folklorist!

I knit one twined mitten with Shetland wool before the Icelandic wool mittens, and one after. Knitters, DON'T EVER DO THIS. My gauge was so screwed up by the Icelandic wool that the second twined mitten was about 20% larger than the first one. I tried to avoid knitting a third mitten by shrinking the mutant mitten in the dryer. Yeah, no. Don't ever try to do that, either. So I knit a third mitten. These went to the teaching assistant in my daughter's kindergarten.

Finally, I churned out a pair of plain old "classic" mittens in grey wool for my daughter's kindergarten teacher. I took this picture with my new cell phone, so it isn't the best. I'm done with knitting for a little while.

I am in a bad, bad mood.

I picked up a virus after Thanksgiving. I finally recovered last week, only to be knocked on my ass again this week with another one. I'm grouchy and unpleasant and I have absolutely no Christmas cheer. I haven't been blogging because while I can't get out of the real world, I can sure as hell get out of the virtual one. I haven't even been checking my email. The last time I did, I found the dreadful message attached below. I long for the days when reprint requests came on little index cards and when, if someone needed to ask a question, he made damn sure it was important, concise and relevant before he picked up the rotary dial phone.

From: Ducerveau Demerde
To: Angry Professor
Subject: Advice

Dear Dr. Professor,

I read your paper ["Modern Statistical Techniques for the Analysis of Measurements: Why ANOVA Sucks and How You Can Avoid It"] recently and it was very helpful as I was trying to understand my data. I am currently confused by something and I really need your help.

My area of research is [Frybread Studies] and my dissertation examines [relative utility of maple syrups absorbed in pancakes, crepes and waffles]. I have run a series of experiments in which I collected measurements that I wish to analyze using ANOVA. According to my hypothesis, there should be an interaction between type of syrup and type of bread. Unfortunately, pancakes, waffles and crepes absorb syrup differently, leading to a great deal of variance in my measurements, and the interaction is not significant.

I have read all of your papers, the one I cited above, as well as ["ANOVA: The Rape of a Social Science"], ["P-values Are Meaningless"] and ["You Can Do Better Than ANOVA"], and based on what you say in them, I think I can process my data differently so that the interaction (via ANOVA) is significant: I can use the inverse of the measurements to reduce the variance. I have used SAS, SPSS, and SYSTAT, but even using the inverse, the interaction is still not significant. However, I found another program online that seems promising (it is attached) and I have several questions that I hope you can answer.

<snip an additional page of questions about preparing the data for an ANOVA>

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you can help me because if this interaction is not significant my dissertation will be a disaster.

Sincerely,
Ducerveau

<snip attachment of several megabytes of executable incompatible with my operating system and an Excel spreadsheet containing his raw data>

I wanted to respond, "Just increase your degrees of freedom! That's what I do."

But no. Despite my aggravation, I responded very politely. I can understand the desperation of a graduate student thinking his dissertation experiments are for shit, but I can't understand how anyone who has read my work could even dream of sending me this letter.

I have a question about twining.

I just finished my first mitten by twining from both ends of a skein. Twining means you have to spend some time after each round untwisting. Unfortunately, untwisting the two strands also seems to result in unspinning the strands themselves. Am I doing something wrong?

Also, I'm starting another set of twined mittens with unspun Icelandic wool. I predict that this time untwisting the strands will spin them. I'm nervous about using the Icelandic wool because it seems to pull apart so easily. Any advice? Encouragement?

I wish I had heard more.

Picture two students, walking against the wind.

Female undergraduate: And sometimes, you know, I just hate myself. I really hate myself.

Male undergraduate: Cool. Like, I think that's cool.

Why yes, I do wear an underwire.

She looks pretty good on the outside, too.

My physician and I have been locked in mortal combat over my lipid levels. I don't want to take lipitor, and she was preparing the five-point restraints. We came to a compromise: I would have a CAT scan (at one of these fancy places^* that doesn't accept insurance) and she would then leave me alone.

I am a "zero." Ha! No lipitor for me.

But something interesting happened on the way to the CAT scan. Since the beginning of the year, I've lost 15% of my body weight. This was no great trick: I just stopped eating so much.^** We reduced our portion sizes and the amount of wine we drank with dinner, and I stopped eating when I wasn't hungry. I now weigh approximately what I did when I was on my postdoc 15 years ago. And my cholesterol? The fancy no-insurance place^* measured it at 252 - lower than it was 15 years ago. They didn't understand why I was getting the scan.

Of course it could have been a measurement error, but I'll take it for now. Meanwhile, I have to go shopping for new pants. I gave all my skinny clothes to Goodwill years ago.

I am feeling very smug right now.

^*I highly recommend the fancy no-insurance place. The waiting room was swanky, I didn't have to wait past my appointment time, and they had coffee, fruit and donuts (irony!) for the patients. The technician showed me each image and explained what she saw on each one. I got a complete copy of my records and the scan images on DVD. I paid for the scan up front, but they filled out the insurance paperwork for me, on the off chance my insurance would cover the (large) expense out-of-network.

^**Why did we do this? Despite our steady increase in weight over the years, neither of us were heavy. But I've been on a sewing binge for a while, and last winter decided to make myself some nice pants. Pattern sizes have larger numbers than off-the-rack clothes, so if you wear (say) a size 10, you will probably end up using a size 14 or 16 pattern. I made a size 14 pair of lovely dress pants. It took about two weeks fussing over every stitch, and then they were finally done. I tried them on, and despite the fact that I had chosen the pattern according to my measurements, I couldn't even get the fuckers over my hips.

She must be sore.

I have insomnia, and it's getting worse as I get older. Usually I wake up around 3:00 a.m. and can't get back to sleep. Last night I couldn't get to sleep at all. After tossing and turning for a few hours I pulled out Eliade's Myth and Reality and that did the trick.

Unfortunately, in the early hours of the morning, I was awakened by loud rapping. It was the headboard of the bed in the next room banging into the wall. It went on for 30 minutes at around 1.2 Hz. The rapping was punctuated by her moaning (I assume) with pain.

It's about 7:30 a.m. now. I've turned the television up as loud as I can. HBO is airing "Hairspray." I'm going to jump on the bed for a while.

Skymall Catalog's special "Rich and Stupid" edition.

Tired of just burning your money? Then you need a $79 sweatshirt. But not just any sweatshirt! This is a very special woo-imbued sweatshirt.

These are not your ordinary shirts! Why? Research that shows written words on containers of water can influence the water's structure for better or worse depending on the Intent of the word. The human body is over 70% water. We believe that these positive, loving and powerful words will have a profound effect on your entire being when worn on your own personal "container" on a daily basis. Imagine the feelings of Love, Peace, Courage, Strength, Hope and more, that you'll experience with these wonderful words printed on the inside of your clothing.

Where to begin?

Saturday night and I ain't got nobody.

I'll be in Chicago this weekend. I notice that the spinach ricotta cheese pie is still on the menu at Dave's Italian Kitchen. Would anyone care to join me? How long is the wait for the purple line at Howard on Saturday nights these days?

Another example of how not to get in to graduate school.

From: Hope S. Eternal
To: Angry Professor
Re: Graduate School

Hey Dr. Professor,
My name is Hope and I'm applying to the LSU Social Science Ph.D. program. Your work on [cut and paste from website] looks very interesting. Can you tell me what else you're working on? Are you accepting new students?

Hope

Thank god it's over.

My paternal grandparents came from the Ozarks, a place to which their ancestors fled (the family speculates) after deserting the Union army. They eventually settled in Atlanta and became slumlords, providing barely livable housing to poor Black families. They referred to their clientele exclusively as "The N---ers." My father taught me that was not an acceptable way to refer to a person of color, even while he speculated that there must be something wrong with people who would live in the squalid conditions established by my grandfather.

My maternal grandfather was a South Carolina native, a state that his ancestors came to as landed gentry. My ancestors were slave-owners, and my mother's very unusual maiden name is shared by our White line and a Black line that my aunts and uncles have tried very hard to ignore. My grandfather was a farmer, and he had Black tenant farmers -- sharecroppers. My grandmother was fond of entertaining guests, and would, for large parties, ask the sharecroppers' wives to serve dinner for her guests. She would make them wear black dresses with white aprons. My grandfather was heard to tell them, "Mind you say nothing to my guests." We were not permitted to play with their children.

I grew up in a town in the middle of a Midwestern state. There were no Black families in my town. I only saw Black children when I visited my grandparents. When I reached high school, I finally had two Black classmates. Thanks to my upbringing, I was incapable of interacting with them in any way that wasn't ignorant and racist. I like to think I've come a long way since then.

I am not going to tell you, my readers, for whom I voted for president. We had two smart and decent candidates from which to choose, both with strong qualifications and both with serious limitations. Never mind for whom you and I cast our votes: I am very proud today to be a citizen of these United States.

I'm paralyzed.

No, I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth. However, I can't blog anything right now. I'm over at pollster, transfixed by tiny little movements in proportions not significantly different from 0.5. It's like popping bubble wrap; I can't stop myself. If y'all don't hear from me by Thursday, I'll probably need some help getting out.

I'm going to have a wonderful day.

There's nothing like getting a Pap smear and internal exam at 7:30 a.m.. How bad could the rest of the day be?

I've never paid more than $250 for a garment.

Since I've stopped answering the phone, they've started leaving turds in my mailbox.

I'm getting very angry.

If one more politician, pundit, or pissant tries to measure my patriotism or my love of country by my demographic indicators, I'm going to... going to... do something. I don't know what, exactly, but I will probably start by hurling my cast-iron sewing machine into my television monitor.

Will they stop calling me now?

I love voting on election day. I especially loved it back when there was a real lever to pull: Ka-CHUNK-A! really made me feel like I'd exercised my right to vote. But Ellesiouville is short several hundred voting machines and Square State has generous absentee-voter regulations, so I voted absentee this morning. Voting absentee frees up my place in line for someone else and also frees me up to work the polls.

I did not like dropping my ballot into the black maw of the USPS mailbox. It felt very much like I was tossing my ballot down a sewer. Of course, some people might say I flushed my vote away anyway. Just wake me up on November 5 and let me know what happened.

It doesn't work this way.

To: Angry Professor
From: Other Professor
Re: Re: Re: Colloquium

Well, I was looking at your department's online calendar. I see that you have nothing scheduled on November 24th, so I'm shooting for giving a department-wide colloquium on that day. If that doesn't work, I could give a brownbag in either of the [Theoretical Social Science] or [Organic Social Science] areas. Just let me know what works best for you.

Regards,
Other


> To: Other Professor
> From: Angry Professor
> Re: Re: Colloquium
>
> Hi Other. Thanks for letting me know. Tell me when and where your talk will be
> and I'll try to make it.
>
> Best,
> Angry
>
> > To: Angry Professor
> > From: Other Professor
> > Re: Colloquium
> >
> > Dear Angry,
> >
> > My name is Other Professor and I'm a faculty member at Villa State University.
> > I'm writing to you about my coming to give a talk at LSU. My talk deals with the
> > application of nonlinear dynamics to issues of control and regulation in social
> > systems. I hope all is well with you and I look forward to seeing you soon.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Other

This is not an interesting post.

Is Bloglines broken? Many of the blogs I follow (like Cranky's) aren't showing any updates, so I have to hit the blog directly to read new posts. This has been going on for several weeks.

In which I realize I am an idiot.

Some of y'all know that, when I am not teaching, I like to take classes around the university. Usually I take classes in math and statistics. This year I decided to shake things up a bit: I'm taking a graduate seminar in comparative studies on the theory of mythology.

As the lone professor in these classes I take, I am used to knocking the top off the curve. Of course I have more practical experience in math and statistics than the students, and I only have the one class to worry about, so it usually isn't very hard to ace the homeworks and the exams. The mythology course is filled with (painfully young) MA and MFA students, most of whom are also teaching a few sections of English composition to keep biscuits on the table.

They're kicking my ass. These kids are wicked smart, and far better read than I could ever hope to be. They somehow manage to read the several 100 pages of assigned reading for each class, and also find helpful background material in history and philosophy to supplement class discussions. So far we've read (among other primary sources) Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days, Snorri's Edda, Plato's Republic (thank Odin I had already read that one), and a selection of writings by Jacob Grimm and Johann Herder. These kids get it, at a level that I can only dimly sense. (I'm still having trouble distinguishing between myth and legend, despite my patient professor's attempts to explain it to me at least three times.)

This winter, when the graduate applications come through, I'm going to look for students who have taken higher-level English, as well as calculus and statistics. Now, please excuse me while I go try and digest some Solar Myth. I may need help later.

Here's your chance to tell me what to do.

I agreed to give a talk to an undergraduate organization. My talk is scheduled for sometime tomorrow, someplace on campus. Unfortunately I can't get anyone to tell me where or when. My schedule has filled up, so at this point I will not be able to give the talk unless it is in the evening (when I suspect it will be).

This talk is a major inconvenience for me, for a number of reasons. In other circumstances, I would cancel it without thinking about it. However, I love this particular organization, and would very much like the chance to get to know these students. What would you do?



Update: So I sent an email very similar to the one Anonymous in the comments suggested and finally got a somewhat defensive reply yesterday morning giving me the place and time. I went, I spoke, I was a big hit, and I think they are going to ask me to be their faculty sponsor next year. Yay!

A malison on the poor of spirit.

With mansuetude (compossible with my muliebrity), I condemn those niddering, olid morons who, in caliginosity of understanding, vilipend our English by attempting to exuviate words for which they cannot see any present custom. It is apodeictic that, while perhaps obscure, words like "skirr" and "periapt" serve uniquely expressive purposes and cannot be subrogated by other, more commonplace words. The attitude that words may be discarded -- indeed, that words have caducity at all -- is not salubriously abstergent, but reflects an agrestic nisus that all cultivated English speakers must eschew. At its heart, this attitude embrangles the concepts of "need" and "want"; those fubsy fuddy-duddies with griseous imaginations believe that words no longer in frequent use will never in the future be needed by English speakers and writers more nitid than themselves. Old words must not be treated like recrement!

You may see my attitude as defensive and oppugnant, but I vaticinate further derogation of our incomparable tongue should such complots be permitted to unfold without denunciation. And I think I'll just stick with the good old OED from now on.

Has anyone seen this one before?

So I'm in the ladies' room sitting on a toilet when someone else came in and entered the stall next to me. As I finished my business, an expensive, flowery smell filled the air. "Wow!" I thought to myself. "That's quite an improvement over my usual business! I wonder what I could have eaten..."

Of course my poop still stinks the same as everyone else's. The young lady in the stall next door was frantically spritzing perfume into the air as she pooped, apparently so that I might be fooled into thinking that her poop, literally, smells like roses.

I'm trapped in the heartland.

I am spending this weekend in my home town. Not only did I grow up here, but I went to LGU here. I got my Bachelor's degree here, and my Ph.D. as well. There are ghosts on every corner.

We have been coming back in the fall for a festival this area is famous for. It's difficult to describe; think of a Renaissance Faire and a Civil War reenactment mixed together and you won't be far off the mark. There are lots of people in costume, muskets, cannon, bits of dead animals hanging from trees, wood smoke and cider. When I was a kid, I helped man the French onion soup tent.

It's fun, kind of, to come home. However, Jesus has taken over my town. We rode out to the festival in a bus covered with "Jesus." Just "Jesus," printed in every imaginable font. There were lots of Jesus tee-shirts at the festival. (My favorite was worn by a young man escorting a young woman. They had their hands stuffed into each other's back pockets and a neutron couldn't have broken between their bodies. His shirt said, "Abstain to Attain!") All the radio stations are playing Jesus music ("Christian rock"); most of the local stations have been taken over by Moody Radio. The highways into and out of town are flanked by large glossy billboards that say things like, "Where will you spend eternity?" and "Hell is a real place!"

The Angry Baker says it has always been this way. I don't remember it so.

More impossible music.

If you're at all interested in the problems involved in getting sounds to one place at the same time, here is a near-horrifying description of what Philip White, chorus master of the Danish Royal Opera, must do as the singers move around on stage.

Hat tip, Mario!

Mailbag Monday: Edition "How to not get in to graduate school."

From: Paddy Travaille
To: Angry Professor
Re: Graduate School

Hello:

My name is Paddy and I am a junior at Another State University. I am just now beginning to look at graduate programs, and I am interested in what you do. My main interests are in [this discipline] and [that discipline] . Could you please email me back with more information about how you interact with graduate students, funding, and the LSU community? I know that most of this information is probably online, but I really want someone to tell me about it instead of looking it up myself. [Sic!]

Paddy

She's definitely mine, no matter what my mother-in-law says.

"Mommy, I love chocolate! I love it so much! I love it all the way to the Oort Cloud!"

A logical syllogism for the LSU marching band director.

1. Premise: While there are always exceptions to this rule, large groups of tubas, sousaphones, and bass trombones are not generally appropriate for music that depends heavily on staccato phrasing and allegro, vivace, or presto tempi.
2. Premise: Sound travels at 1125 feet per second. The football field is a 360' by 160' plane in Euclidean space. If Tuba 1 is on the home team's goal and Tuba 2 is on the visiting team's goal, everyone sitting in the home team's endzone will hear Tuba 2's notes lagging approximately .25 s or more (perhaps an entire presto beat or two) behind Tuba 1's notes. Reverse the problem for the other side of the field. Not taking into account the terrible acoustics of the stadium itself, the best you can hope for is cacophony for approximately half of your audience.
3. Conclusion: Your Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine halftime medley is really going to suck, no matter how good your musicians are.
   

We have electricity!

I'm flipping the bathroom lights on and off just for the fun of it.

I went to the market to pick up a few essentials. Toilet paper, flashlight batteries, and marshmallows for the neighborhood gettin'-rid-of-the-branches marshmallow toast. There was plenty of toilet paper, but no batteries. And no marshmallows. Apparently we weren't the only block to have this idea.

Square State students pull together after the devastation of Hurricane Ike.

Like many other states, there is more than one LSU in Square State. One of the other LSUs, call it OLSU, is on the semester system, so they started classes a few weeks ago. OLSU had to shut down for a day because of storm damage and power outages, but they reopened today.

The OLSU students staged a protest. There was no reason why they couldn't go back to class, they just didn't want to. They aren't sandbagging for devastated areas or helping board up broken-out windows in the university area. Food Services is out of pizza, though. And their dorm rooms are dark. Apparently, it's better to sit in a dorm room with no electricity than it is to go to class.

You ED folks have my admiration -- and my deepest sympathies.

We took the Angry Baker to the LSU emergency department last night. His condition wasn't an emergency (shortness of breath; he's fighting off pneumonia again), but all the urgent care centers and his doctor's office were closed because of the power outage -- not even the answering service was available. We thought, hey! There are functional 120V outlets in the ED! How bad could it be?

Of course he was triaged into the least urgent group, so we got to sit around in the waiting room with the other non-emergent cases. These included a young man with a skin condition and a young lady in gastrointestinal distress. While we were waiting, the ED handled a trauma case and an old man brought in in full arrest. Meanwhile, the sick and merely uncomfortable slowly filtered back one by one.

The ED wasn't terribly busy. We were there about 3 hours. We listened to one mother talk about her son turning himself in for arrest and being unable to make his court date because he was arrested on some other charge on the way to court -- as if this was perfectly normal, and just a spot of difficulty that any fine, upstanding young man might find himself in. During this time (throughout the entire 3 hours), the young lady with the stomach flu moaned and wailed without ceasing. She cried for her mommy. She said (loudly) that she was dying. She screamed, she begged, she was obnoxious. (She barfed only once, but made sure to make so much noise during the act that the entire waiting room could hear her.) Her partner held his head in his hands and tried to become invisible. By contrast, those with sprained ankles and collapsed lungs and feverish babies were patient and dignified. The 86-year-old wife of the old man brought in in arrest wept quietly in a corner, her son holding her hand.

We shouldn't have been there, like about 50% of the other patients in the waiting room.

It pays to be nice to the triage nurse when your condition is not emergent. We explained that we were there only because of the power outage, and that we would go away if they were too busy to see us. The staff could not have been more pleasant, and AB went back to a bed before the howling, nauseated banshee and the psoriasis patient, much to their mutual disgust. The banshee was so disgusted, in fact, that she found the strength to pull herself up from the 3-4 chairs she was occupying and walk out the door without being seen at all. Even though we shouldn't have been there, I'd like to think we helped out a little just by giving her the motivation to leave.

The AB is fine. We left with a prescription for antibiotics and advice to load up on the mucinex. Current ETA for electricity is Sunday night.

Warm thoughts for everyone in Galveston.

Our square state was kissed by the remnants of Hurricane Ike yesterday -- a kiss with tongue and teeth and hands down the pants and "You know you want more of this, don't you, you slut?" While we escaped being bludgeoned by falling trees, we have lost all power.^* Estimates for the restoration of power range from "a few more hours" to "Saturday for sure." We have about 20 pounds of venison and 10 pounds of home-made sausage and kielbasa thawing in the freezer.

We're having a cookout! Y'all are invited. Bring cold beer, candles and ice.

^*I'm blogging from LSU, where all is normal. Football must go on!

I'm trying to ignore politics until Thanksgiving, when I'll get all the turkey I need.

Nonetheless, I need someone to explain this to me.

All the world's a stage.

My department is quite large, and encompasses several different specializations within my social science. Hence, for governance and training purposes, we are broken up into areas, each area with its own chair and its own administrator. Each area has its own graduate program requirements and admissions criteria. Each area has its own colloquium series. Most importantly for this story, each area has its own search committees, although the department chair determines the composition of the search committees and makes sure that there are representatives on them from other potentially relevant (concerned) areas.

I recently received an incomprehensible email from someone in the department whom I did not know. The email contained only a proposed schedule for a visitor whom I had never heard of, and demanded, without preamble, that I indicate when I would be available to meet with this unknown person. I did what any rational person would do under the circumstances: I ignored it.

Several days go by, and then I receive a strangely-worded email from one of my colleagues.

To: Angry Professor
From: Concerned Colleague
Re: Is there a problem?

Hi Angry. Melissa told me that you have refused to meet with Mysterious Guest. As chair of the search committee, is there any problem with Mysterious Guest that I should be aware of?

Best,
Concerned

To which I responded:

To: Concerned Colleague
From: Angry Professor
Re: Re: Is there a problem?

Hi Concerned. I didn't refuse, I simply didn't respond to an email from someone I didn't know demanding my time to meet with someone I didn't know for reasons I didn't know. I assumed the message had been sent to me by mistake. No problems.

Best,
Angry

Today I learn that the search committee met to finalize the Mysterious Guest's schedule. The search committee was deeply concerned (a mole reports) by my "refusal" to meet with Dr. Guest. One of my colleagues explained to the committee that I had been on an NIH study section with Dr. Guest, wherein we had many bitter disagreements, and from this enmity arose my obvious reluctance to recruit him for our department.

Let me repeat once more: I have never heard of Dr. Guest, nor his research, which is far removed from my own area.

There is something lacking in the upper echelons of academia (in most departments, anyway), and that is drama. Graduate students have lots of drama: they fuck each other like bunnies in spring, they get drunk together and say things to each other they wish they could take back, they compete among themselves for grades and faculty recognition; it's junior high all over again for the graduate students. By the time those same students all get tenure, they have spouses and children, big, soul-sucking mortgages, and countless pressing deadlines for the completion of countless tedious tasks. Most of us have neither the time nor the inclination to waste precious psychic energy on interpersonal drama, even if it does involve hot sex with junior faculty.

Hence I am not concerned or angry that a fairly large number of people in my department are now worrying about my imbroglios with Dr. Guest and how they will influence the job search this year. I am amused, and interested to follow this patently absurd story to see how far it will go. Here's what I'm hoping for:

Dr. Guest and Dr. Professor served on an NIH study section together. They had an affair, which lasted quite a while, over several study section meetings. Dr. Guest's wife found out about the affair and became hysterical, showing up at the hotel during the last meeting. She made a scene in the lobby, which was witnessed by almost everyone on the panel, and which ended when Dr. Professor slapped her across the mouth. She then revealed that she was pregnant, whereupon Dr. Guest broke off his affair with Dr. Professor. Both Dr. Guest and Dr. Professor were asked to leave the study section, and neither have since been invited back. Dr. Professor is still furious with Dr. Guest and slanders him at every opportunity. If Dr. Guest is hired by the LSU Social Science department, Dr. Professor will make his life a living hell. And there's no way his wife will get tenure here, not if Dr. Professor has anything to say about it.

Adventures in the great outdoors.

The Angry Family had a lovely weekend, for the most part. We got to our camp site on Friday evening and set up camp fairly easily. The Angry Baker had a few profanity-laden moments when the pump for the air mattress was found to be too small for the valve on the mattress, but a few feet of duct tape took care of that problem. (Never go camping without duct tape.) We were supposed to have been met by about a dozen other families and their children, but there was rain in the forecast and we were the only brave souls to camp that night. It didn't rain -- big wussies, all those folks, in my opinion.

The rest of the camping party showed up on Saturday afternoon. The Angry Kid took great delight in showing her best friend her "pee tree"; yes, the Angry Kid learned how to pee in the woods! Her little friend was delighted and tried it out herself. Had you been hiking the [Boring Flat Trail] through [Square State Park] and looked out over the ravine, you might have seen many tiny bare asses hanging over the hillside and tinkling into the poison ivy. When they weren't peeing just for the fun of it, they ran from tent to tent, jumping on air mattresses, tracking dirt and squashed bugs all over sleeping bags, and having the time of their lives. Thankfully there were no mosquitoes, but there were many, many harvestmen. I'm still picking long dismembered legs out of my stuff.

There were about 30 children under the age of 6 after everyone finally showed up. Sounds like hell to you? No, the kids were great, as were most of the parents. Most of the parents were young (or middle-aged) professionals: we numbered two statisticians, a banker or two, three physicians, two psychologists, a chemist, a newspaper editor, a librarian, two artists, a community organizer... and two acupuncturists (a mated pair). The hell began on Sunday morning, when the more obnoxious of the acupuncturists started lecturing one of the physicians about "qi" and "meridians" and patient care in general. The Angry Family felt it was really time for us to go, and we broke camp and tore ass out of the park just ahead of almost everyone else who wasn't an acupuncturist.^*

We were home before noon, and I took several showers. Ahh, clean, hot water! Soap! Shampoo!

^*Are you an acupuncturist? Then please try to remember that you are not a physician. You are, to be generous, a physical therapist. What you do may have great value for your clients, but do not let that confuse you into believing you are a trained medical professional.

The worst of it will be over by Sunday.

Is this a good idea?

I'm taking my itchy, sneezy self and my family camping for the weekend. There will be no blogging; there will be no moderation of comments.

In which I am vindicated.

So there. Thanks, DrugMonkey.

I am so miserable.

Five years ago I found Claritin. This miracle drug (and my new daughter) made it unnecessary (and economically impossible) to continue looking for fall vacation homes in places like Argentina, Australia, and Alaska, homes to which I could retreat from mid-August to the beginning of October and avoid the hell that is ragweed season.

I've always had a little breakthrough on really high pollen days, but for the most part I felt completely "cured." This season is another story; I might as well be taking aspirin. I've even started taking two Claritins, one in the morning and one in the evening, but 2x0 = 0.

I thought maybe the regional weather conditions had led to a very high pollen year, so, geek that I am, I downloaded the ragweed pollen counts for the past 5 years and plotted them in 5 time series (click to embiggen).

The plots show that this year's (green dashed line) maximum pollen count, which was measured approximately a week ago, is higher than any measurement made in the past 5 years. However, since that day, the pollen count has been at the same level or lower than most measurements made in the last five years. Therefore, there is no reason for me to be suffering like I am.

I conclude that, pharmaceutical hype to the contrary, I have experienced Claritin poop-out. And we're now too poor to be able to afford that vacation home in Iceland. I will have to spend the next 40 days in the shower.

E-mail gets me into trouble again.

To: Angry Professor
From: Zhou Wenru
Subject: This is Wenru

Dear Professor,

This is Wenru, the student who met you at the conference. I am very glad to discuss my work with with you.

You should come to China for travelling. There are many delicious foods and famous places. I will tell my advisor to invite you and maybe give a talk.

Sincerely,
Wenru

To: Zhou Wenru
From: Angry Professor
Subject: Re: This is Wenru

Dear Wenru,

I am pleased to hear from you and glad you enjoyed the conference. I enjoyed speaking with you. I would be very pleased to visit China some day. Please extend my most cordial greetings to your advisor.

Best regards,
Angry

> This is Wenru, the student who met you at the conference. I am very glad to discuss my work
> with with you.
>
> You should come to China for travelling. There are many delicious foods and famous places. I
> will tell my advisor to invite you and maybe give a talk.
>
> Sincerely,
> Wenru

To: Angry Professor
From: Zhou Wenru
Subject: Re: This is Wenru

Dear Angry,

I told my advisors that you are coming to China! They are very excited! Please tell me when you can come. We must fill out paperwork to get funds. We expect to see you any time after November.

Sincerely yours,
Zhou Wenru

> Dear Wenru,
>
> I am pleased to hear from you and glad you enjoyed the conference. I enjoyed speaking with you.
> I would be very pleased to visit China some day. Please extend my most cordial greetings to
> your advisor.
>
> Best regards,
> Angry
>
> > This is Wenru, the student who met you at the conference. I am very glad to discuss my work
> > with with you.
> >
> > You should come to China for travelling. There are many delicious foods and famous places. I
> > will tell my advisor to invite you and maybe give a talk.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> > Wenru

Try this instead of coffee.

Log in as root, go up and down your directory tree for about half an hour, stop at some random point and confidently type "rm -rf /home."

Now that feels exhilarating, in a "I think I'm going to throw up now" kind of way.

Snapshots of a temper tantrum.

The Angry Kid started kindergarten today. We only found out on Monday that we got into the school of our choice, and she's been under a lot of stress, complete with upset tummy and reversion to the terrible twos. Yesterday we went shopping for her new bookbag. She was very good about getting her bookbag from J.C. Penney instead of the Disney store, but when we made a quick detour to Target for feminine hygiene products and I warned her we were not buying anything for her there, it was too much for her to bear.

If you followed us around, you would have thought my daugher was Veruca Salt. Here's some of what you would have heard:

• Fine. [Insert foot stamp and eye rolling.] Go and buy yourself some giant grownup diapers!
• If you just buy this for me [a giant lollipop and whirling electronic toy combination made by blind Chinese orphans] I'll be able to keep control of myself for ever.
• [Screamed: ] I can't wait until I'm older than you and then I'm going to whack you on the butt!
• [Sobbed through tears and spraying gobbets of saliva:] I'm going to move to England! I'm really serious!

Guess that department!

This beautiful building is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in several phases, the earliest during World War I and the latest in 1970. Its architectural style is mostly Jacobethan Revival, while later additions are Tudor Revival. It is a low, sprawling building with lots of limestone buttresses and decorations, and stone-mullioned windows. One of the additions was built under the WPA, and it has heavy timber entries, intricate brickwork and projecting bays. It was originally set in a residential district surrounded by a botanical garden; now it is crowded between other university buildings on two busy street corners.

The building's interior is as fascinating as its exterior. It has undergone several renovations, some more successful than others. Many of the original details remain, such as terrazzo floors, the large windows and skylights, and the wall and ceiling treatments. The offices, many with antique oak doors and huge windows, are strangely cramped, while not necessarily small. The hallways curve around and about in unexpected directions, as one might expect in a building that has evolved over 70 years or more of construction and remodeling. Large stairways appear tucked into corners. While trying to find one's way from one entrance to another exit, one stumbles over strange original fixtures, such as a full-size wall safe circa 1915 set among a row of office doors. Conference rooms are below ground level and difficult to find. Ceilings seem lower than they should be.

If one looks hard enough, one can find stairways that lead down below the ground floor level and into the deeper basement. From the basement are tunnels that lead to a number of other interesting buildings on campus, some surprisingly far away. I make frequent use of these tunnels in inclement weather. It is not uncommon to see corrections officers leading shackled men wearing orange jumpsuits in the tunnels. I try not to stare.

Your task, dear reader, is to guess not only what department inhabits this wonderful building, but also why the building was constructed in the first place (its original inhabitants).

In which we demonstrate impeccable timing.

The Angry Kid begins kindergarten in two weeks. In preparation for the big day, she spent yesterday morning at the optometrist's office. She played all kinds of games with lights and letters and drew things and generally had a great time until it came time for the drops. Then she got sullen.

To make it up to her, I took her to the local pool for the afternoon. We splashed around in the cool water and practiced putting our heads under water -- something she's been having trouble with in her swimming lessons. I noticed, but only processed for its amusement value, the sign at the front gate which said, "Please do not swim if you have diarrhea."

Last night the Ellesiouville public health department closed down all the city pools for hyperchlorination. Apparently there is an outbreak of cryptosporidium they are trying (and failing) to contain.

If you don't see it, you're part of the problem.

This post by Female Science Professor and some of the comments to this post compel me to point out (quite unnecessarily) that sexism is rampant in the Academy. We females aren't just whiny and paranoid, Gentlemen. If a significant fraction of the graduate students in your field are women but only a few of your colleagues are women, then there's a problem and you are very likely contributing to it.

The worst offenders are often the nicest guys. They have no idea they are being sexist, believe, in fact, that they aren't being sexist, and so the problem persists.

Here are only a few of my recent observations:

• Men have important discussions and sometimes make administrative decisions with male colleagues while standing at the urinals. There's rarely more than one woman in the restroom at a time in my department and at my conferences; there are too few of us.
• Talks given by women are more frequently interrupted, often with irrelevant or tangential comments. At my recent conference presentation, a man interrupted my first slide to ask a procedural question about Pap smears.
• Women who attempt to ask questions about or comment on talks usually raise their hands so the moderator can call on them. Men frequently fail to do this, and even when the moderator does call on a woman, men sitting nearby assume that the moderator called on them and will talk over her. I have seen a woman fight back by being just as aggressive and rude, and even pointing out to the audience that it was her turn; she was labeled oversensitive and bitchy.
• Women are frequently not told of nor asked to contribute to special journal issues or special collections, even when the topics are directly related to their research. I am on the editorial board of a journal, and only recently found out that several special issues are in press. The decision to release these special issues was made by a subset of the men on the board without consulting the board as a whole; no work by women is represented in these issues.
  
• Seminal papers authored by women are overlooked until that line of work is cited by men. Then it is the men's papers that are cited; the original work is forgotten. I can name at least three areas in my field where this has happened, and one of the areas is mine (keep reading).
• I initiated a now important and popular line of research approximately a decade ago. A man (my post-doc advisor) decided to do research in this area, and conducted a series of federally-funded workshops here at LSU. I was not invited to participate (told, in fact, that my participation was not welcome), and was not told about them until the day before they began.

You can say that many of these instances are just examples of academics being shitty to each other. However, this crap doesn't happen to men. Give me one time that a man's talk was interrupted by a woman asking about a prostate exam, or one time that a man's seminal paper was overlooked in favor of a woman's later work.

Oh, good.

This should work.

ORLANDO, Fla. — A team of psychic detectives is assisting Orlando police in their search for missing three-year-old Florida girl Caylee Marie Anthony, according to local news reports.

The group, known as "Body Hunters" and lead by psychic detective Gale St. John, is "blind driving" around Central Florida in search for the toddler who was last seen June 16, Local6.com reported.

"We will not even look at street names," psychic detective Gale St. John told the TV station and its Web site on Monday. "We drive and go completely on feeling instinct, chasing down what we call a person signature."

I would never make it in the real world.

A publicly-traded company asked me to pass scientific judgment on research proposals requesting company funds. I read one tonight. The proposal was remarkable in its utter lack of any meaningful content. Consider, for example, my interpretation of a critical graphic, entitled "Process":


The proposal also used lots of acronyms and management-speak, vocabulary designed to violate, on purpose, every one of Grice's Conversational Maxims. (The Angry Baker just tells me that I fail to appreciate things that are really important.)

Unless this company gives my lab research funds soon, within the next month, I predict that my tenure as one of their scientific advisers will last no longer than next month.

In which I am under-appreciated.

I am one of three senior females in my professional society, the membership of which numbers around 200 academics and students. I haven't felt that my sex was a disadvantage until recently.

I worked very hard this past year to obtain external funding for our annual conference. Because our discipline is highly specialized it has been difficult to obtain such funding in the past. I wrote two proposals, one submitted to a DoD agency and the other to NSF. This took a large amount of time last winter that I didn't have, but both proposals were funded and consequently we were able to provide travel assistance for a large number of graduate students, attract some good keynote speakers, and cover the outrageous expenses incurred by the hotel conference "support" staff and the AV rental company.

I should note that, in past years, other similar proposals were submitted by other society officers to the same funding agencies, but these proposals were not funded. I had these rejected proposals available to me while I was writing the successful proposals last winter, and I can testify that they were rejected for good reason: they sucked.

The society officers met over lunch for the yearly governance meeting last week. An officer myself, I went to the meeting expecting the other members of the board to acknowledge my effort and to express their gratitude. I didn't want much, just a formal "thank you" from the board. Instead, the current society president opined that my proposals had not actually undergone panel review (except they did), that the funding agencies had picked these proposals out of all the submissions because our society was so important and they had extra money. "We can't count on getting funding like this again in the future," he warned.

No one on the board said thank you. No one. Because, you know, I just pushed the paperwork through, kind of like a secretary. Well, fuck me. And fuck you too, sirs. I will not make the same sacrifice twice.

Someone paid me for my work today.

I cleaned out my e-mail inbox, which had over 1000 messages in it. It took over five hours.

Never underestimate the importance of a folder labeled "Miscellaneous."

In which I extend some words of advice.

If you are ever called upon to give an address at a banquet, here are some pointers that may help make the evening a more enjoyable experience, both for you and for your audience (me).

1. Your audience is tired and drunk. This is not the time to trot out your favorite theorems in differential topology and pontificate about how these theorems unify all natural laws.
2. If you have chosen your topic well, the audience (remember, we're all drunk) will want to participate. Expect lots of laughter, inappropriate questions, and good-natured heckling. Your talk should not be more than 30 minutes long (remember, we're all drunk), and should include no more than 10 minutes of material.
3. If you have disregarded points 1 and 2, your talk will unfold as follows:
   
1. In the first 5-10 minutes, your audience will initiate the participation phase. Questions and comments will focus on your choice of fonts on your slides, your failure to cite irrelevant work by your friends, and the fact that your socks don't match your tie.
2. When you respond too earnestly to these questions and comments, your audience will fall silent. They don't yet believe that you are truly serious and are waiting for the punchline.
3. Around 20-30 minutes into your dissertation, your audience now realizes that you have hijacked the banquet and they will begin to rebel. Eating and drinking, having resumed around minute 10 or so, will become quite loud. There will be audible laughter; you must recognize that this laughter is in response to jokes made at your expense. At some tables in the banquet hall, food will be thrown (remember, we're drunk).
4. After 50 minutes, your audience will fall silent again. This silence signals defeat and helplessness. The deep sighs you hear should be interpreted as wordless pleas to stop, just stop.
5. After your summary and conclusions, your audience will politely applaud. This is because you finally shut up, not because anyone appreciated your insights.
6. There will be no questions.
7. You will not be invited to any hotel-room parties.

Yay!

I am not spam.

I assure my readers that I am completely recovered from my formerly uncontrollable urge to post stories about V I A G R A and how "She love you're new 8 inches!"

He can make monkeys fly out of his butt, too.

A friend directed my poorly-controlled attention to this press release, headlined:

Dallas Psychiatrist's Paranormal Abilities to Be Tested by Noted Debunker James Randi


Dr. Colin Ross Can Send a Beam of Energy From His Eyes; Aims for $1 Million Prize

Dr. Bane strikes again.

A few questions for my dear readers:

1. Suppose you were incontinent of feces at a professional venue. Would you tell anyone about your unfortunate accident or would you keep it to yourself?
2. If you decided you had to tell someone, would you tell one person you knew well or a group of people you had never met before?
3. Would you whisper it sotto voce or declare it loudly in the lobby of a ritzy Washington hotel?
4. Would you show people the evidence so they would know you were telling the truth or do you think your confidants would believe you without seeing a ginormous pair of poopy man-panties?
5. Do you carry around ziplock bags in case you are incontinent of feces?
   

My favorite student email of all time.

From: Idrul Copius-Emments < ice@aol.com>
To: Angry Professor's Friend
Subject: you suck

I am writing you this email in concern of your class. I am extremely dissappointed in the way you have taught your class. you taught your class on a level that was way too advanced for a [00] level course. Having to grade on a [X] point curve is ridiculous for 2 tests in a row. when over a quarter of the classes are getting D's and F's on tests is ridiculous. i understand one test being hard and you curving and making up for it on the second test, but then for that test to be curved and even more harder is not ok. I know several people in both classes and they struggles as well, they also expressed to you and you didn't really seem to help them as well as me. I emailed you two times before you responded back to me when i wanted to speak with you about help because i am a senior graduating next quarter. i wanted you to help me understand the materials a little better, all you did was told me to study the notes more intensively. Yes, i am upset because i failed the class, i am upset that you made your tests so hard and weren't concerned about helping your students, especially when they are graduating seniors struggling. what you need to realize is some classes we have to take because it is required, not everybody is a whiz at this stuff is you, try puttin it down in our terms. your lectures are understandable but your tests are horrible. I don't recommend your class to anybody or you. i have struggled before in classes, but never have i felt so disgusted with the way a teacher has taught or dealt with their students. Curving is great, but when a teacher has to curve regularly is not ok.

Mailbag Monday: Edition "Thinking is hard!"

From: Arless Smart
To: Angry Professor
Subject: question about test

Professor,

Just a quick question regarding tomorrows test. Will we, as a class, need to refer back to the readings specifically. The only reason I'm asking is because there is a lot of readings and I didn't know if it would be wise to look over them again before tomorrows test.

Just let me know

Thanks

Regards,

Arless

Why do I need them if I have wings to fly?

My feet are not my best feature. They hurt (for no apparent reason), I am prone to stress fractures, I have chronic athlete's foot, and all but one of the nails on one foot have been completely destroyed by fungal infection. Every few years I get disgusted with the situation and complain to my physician, and she refers me to a podiatrist.

This morning I visited my fourth podiatrist in this benighted town. I am convinced that most podiatrists are perverts and the rest are morons. (Some of them are both perverts and morons.) Consequently, I was relieved that this morning's "doctor" neither stroked my feet overlong nor breathed through his mouth. He also demonstrated a reasonable knowledge of statistics when presenting me with treatment options.

In my lifetime I have consulted with at least seven podiatrists. The worst of them we called "Dr. Magneto." Dr. Magneto had a thriving business selling magnets and practiced reflexology on the side. He had all kinds of interesting ideas about fungus (it's just toenail rotting in the skin!), and tried to sell me a magic potion (formulated according to his own special recipe) that was guaranteed to cure my toenails. He later lost his license for gross malpractice.

Of the seven, two (one being the gentleman I visited this morning) stand out as being completely normal and possibly even competent. With the exception of Dr. Magneto, I was referred to each of these "doctors" by my physician. Eliminating Dr. Magneto from the sample as a potential outlier, we can obtain an estimated "competence rate" of p = .33 (SE = .19).

My questions are thus:

• Who the hell are these people?
• What other profession tolerates a rate of competence less than 50% (besides psychology)?
• Why won't my own physician, when faced with an obvious fungal infection, take a nail for culture (they pull off easily, no surgery required), order a liver panel and write a script for Lamisil, instead of referring me to creeps who masturbate into shoes or need a roadmap to find my toes?
  

(All due apologies to the 33%.)

Thinking ahead, for a change.

I will be in my nation's capital toward the end of next week. There used to be a great dessert restaurant in Woodley Park, but I don't know if it's still there. Is anyone interested in a blogger meetup over tiramisu and Sauternes?

Damn that bottled water.

I went to a new dentist today. (My previous dentist was a jerk.) It's been two years since I've had my teeth cleaned. (Who has time to search for a new dentist when one's dentist is a jerk?) Disgusting, I know. (Sorry.) (Nonetheless, I had very little plaque buildup.)

I needed three fillings. He did them on the spot. He drilled me out and had me patched up in less than 15 minutes. No needles (no lidocaine!) and no dental dam.

If I had known what modern dentistry could be, I wouldn't have waited two years.

Words fail me.

Mailbag Monday: Edition "Sad, sick and spammy."

The following sadness was mass-emailed to almost everyone I know.

From: "Some Guy" < someguy@aol.com>
To: Angry Professor
Subject: Please help me

Doctor:

If you can help me with this, you will have truly saved a life.

My Unheard-of Plight
History

I have a history of mental illness, having been diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder and Acute Depression. I have alternately been on the following medications: Xanax, Luvox, Zoloft, Geodon, Depakote, Lorazepam. I have worked with four different therapists (psychiatrists and psychologists) on a consistent basis.

Since my teenage years (I am now 29), I've mostly been battling with purely obsessional OCD. The core of my obsessions center around 3 issues: sexuality, religion and image/identity. World class and pioneer OCD therapists have treated me and admitted that I'm one of the most complex patients they've had. They have not been able to effectively treat me. I, in turn, have never heard or read of anything that addresses what I go through.

Oversensitivity

Everything I feel I feel very deeply. An impression, a word, a thought, impacts me to my very core. I spend hours thinking constantly about it and its ramifications.

Sexuality

The issue of sexuality is the foundation of most of my mental turmoil. I was never sexually abused. I was raised in a conservative Christian home and early on developed an intense hatred for homosexuality (although not for homosexual people). It was the worst thing in the world to me, and I would rather die than have one homosexual thought.

I have an intense fear that 1) I may find some gayness in me, 2) People may think I'm gay. These two fears constantly swirl around in my head. Exposure therapy has not worked. The two fears just make for a very black miasma and atmosphere of thought as well as deep depression and foreboding.

I have never been sexually attracted to a man. I crave and lust for only women. My brain seems to target and attack whatever I love. So I do hypersexual activities, like looking for prostitutes and being overly promiscuous. But nothing has effectively dealt with my sexual orientation occupation. I literally think about it all the time; it is behind every thought.

It gets as bad as this: If I say or do something that may be remotely seen as gay or feminine I'll obsess about who saw me. I think that they think I'm gay and I'll see myself through their eyes and look at myself as gay. It's like my whole identity topples. I see myself through their eyes and can't be myself anymore.

I'm consumed with what others think of me. If they think that I'm anything I don't want to be I become consumed with the thing and it constantly plagues me. What they think becomes my world. It's almost as if if they think I'm gay then I am gay. I am distracted from lusting because when I see an attractive woman I think how they
think I wouldn't be attracted to her because I'm gay. What they think almost become who I am.

Obsession and Male Competition

When I see a girl I'm attracted to and see other men looking at her I became possessive because I believe that my lust is stronger. I want to stop all men from lusting but me. Their lust for her bothers me to no end. I have to make my lust for her unique in some way so that it will be stronger than theirs.

Uncertainty

I'm not sure of anything. However many hours I spend having sex and chasing women, for instance, I still question my sexuality. My brain may tell me that the women I am with are masculine or even are men themselves. If I see a man with a body part that looks like a woman's or reminds me of a woman and I would be attracted to it on a woman, I constantly obsess over it to make sure I have no attraction to it.

There is something in my brain that seems to live to take happiness from me. Whatever I take pleasure in, it generates insecure or contradicting thoughts that ruin it for me. The thoughts underlie every other thought I have. They color all I think and do.

Bottom Fall Out

Some days I have slight forebodings that the bottom will fall out and I will lose all of my bearings. It is a desolate, agonizing feeling. I have no relief from this. I must just wait for it to pass. I have never felt secure a day in my life.

Desperation

I've been battling these issues for years and it seems like however much I try to overcome them I can't. My mind has a mind of its own. Its sheer persistence is unbeatable. Even when I know something is false and absurd it powers on and overwhelms me.

Please help me by offering your expert opinion or some books on what I'm going through. I have never seen it addressed.

Thank you,

Suffering

Angry Professor's Chicken Kiev.

A reader, Bertrand, writes:

You are all a bunch of condescending assholes. Now that I've got that out of the way, let me explain.
Today's recipe is quite simple. You'll need four boneless, skinless chicken breasts, half a stick of chilled butter, one large egg, 1/4 cup of milk, 3/4 cup of fresh breadcrumbs, salt, pepper, fresh parsley, and a few tablespoons of vegetable oil.

Obviously these students are willing to put in more effort to get a better grade, so why not let them put in more effort? Maybe let them turn in some extra special assignments?
Pound the chicken breasts thin between two pieces of waxed paper. They should be about 1/4 inch thick.

The problem with professors is that they really suck at teaching, which in my opinion and in my experience, is the single biggest reason why not every student is able to get an A. I had some very good teachers in highschool [sic] who utterly surpass any instruction [sic] I received in college(as evidence I cite the fact that many of my classmates and I earned a score of '5' on the AP physics exam). I'm more of a science person, but I had excellent English teachers as well.
Season the breasts with salt and pepper. Cut the butter into four long "sticks" and place one stick at the edge of each breast. Sprinkle each breast with about one tablespoon of fresh chopped parsley.

I think they really cared about us as individuals, which should be a prerequisite to accepting students. In fact, if I were a teacher I would think of each of my students as an apprentice rather than a student. The word 'student' has developed an impersonal and uncaring connotation in my mind over time as I've been more exposed to the educational system.
Roll each breast around the stick of butter, sealing in the ends as you go. You should have a fat log of chicken when you're done. You can secure the edge with a toothpick if you want, but if you pounded the breasts thin enough you shouldn't need to.

In highschool [sic] it was possible to study the teacher's notes, memorize them and apply them to the quizes [sic] and exams. But when I went to college(UCLA if you must know) it was complete chaos. The notes were complete crap and in most cases were irrelevant to the exams.
Beat the egg in a small bowl and add the milk. Coat each rolled breast in the egg and then roll it in the breadcrumbs. Make sure you have a nice, even coating that covers the ends and the rolled edge. Put the breasts on a plate and chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour.

Note to teachers: if the average score on your exam is 40% then you suck at being a teacher. And sadly I've seen much lower averages then that.
Heat a frying pan well and add the oil. Fry each breast until golden brown and the juices run clear. Serve with buttered egg noodles and your favorite veg. This recipe serves four.

A public service announcement.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car sucks Satan's sweaty sulphurous suppurating syphilitic scrotum.

That is all.

Lost in translation.

This is a paragraph from the owner's manual for our new electronic toy. I was searching for information on how and when to charge the battery.

NOTE
Charging a battery only happens when the power is off.
Okay, easy enough.

The battery will not be charged when it is naturally or purposely discharged.
Umm, wait a minute...

Because the unit cannot perceive battery voltage, even if you attached the battery.
Wait, stop. Go back to that last one and...

When you are in this situation, power on the unit and then power off again.
What situation? Am I in a situation? What about the battery... Wait!

Then battery charge will proceed.
Uh, help?

And there goes hubris.

Immediately after posting this smug missive, I submitted a failing grade for a graduating senior. No matter what your grading scheme is and how carefully you document your course policies, the failing no-longer-a-graduate will make your life a never-ending hell in the hours before commencement looking for loopholes and accusing you of being capricious and unfair (or just a bitch). Tales of woe, including how hard he worked over the quarter, his full-time job, the cap and gown he purchased, and the family who have flown into town just for commencement, rain down upon your head.

(Why a single course could keep a student from graduating has always been a mystery to me. Why it always seems to be my course is another mystery.)

After I posted my grades I ran from my office at top speed and swore I wouldn't check my email. But who can do that, really? And his desperate messages, sent one after the other and stacked up in my inbox for as far as the terminal window could see, were so full of misunderstandings and misinformation that I had to respond.

I feel bad. I keep telling myself that if he were a freshman I would have failed him without question and without agonizing over it. Therefore, he still deserves to fail as a graduating senior. Why should I compromise my standards just because of a student's class standing? Maybe I am a bitch, after all.

Some advice on grading for my colleagues.

A significant proportion of my time this week has been devoted to meting out justice computing final grades. I thought I would share with my peeps a simple little trick, taught to me by my beloved father who was also a university professor.

This trick should work whether you grade on a true curve or straight scale, but because I only use a straight scale myself, I shall assume y'all are using a straight scale too. Here is the golden rule of grading: never let the students know what scale you are using.

"But Angry Professor!" you protest. "It isn't fair to hide your grading scale from your students! How will they know how well they need to do to get an A?" Go ahead and give them a scale, of course, but make sure the scale is stricter than the one you really use.

So suppose you tell the students they need 91% or better for an A, 81% or better for a B, etc. It is important to maintain this fiction throughout the quarter/semester. If the student shows up during your office hours and asks you how well he is doing (and you feel so inclined), compute his grade, make a big show of pulling out the syllabus and looking up the scale, and tell him that you're very sorry but it looks like, with a 70% going into the final, you see no way that he could do better than a C as a final grade, and only then if he works very hard and aces the final. The student will leave in tears, and sit in the front row staring at you with puppy-dog eyes for the remaining two days of class.

When it comes time for determining final grades, toss that syllabus in the trash. Pull out your double-super-secret scale which differs from the syllabus in that the grade boundaries are at least a point or two below the boundaries in the syllabus. Puppy-dog eyes, who studied his ass off and aced the final, gets a B-! Imagine how happy he is!

But here's the best part: Suppose your cutoff for a D- is 57, and Lori Loser finishes up with a 56.99. Guess what she gets? An F. You don't have to agonize about it and she doesn't ever know that she was only .01 percentage points from a D-. A computer can assign the final grades for you and you can walk away without wasting precious minutes of your life struggling with the decision to bump her up or not.

I find it is important not to release the letter grade before you ship in those final grades, but only let the students see the final percentage. Then they have to pull out their syllabi and figure out what they're going to get, further reinforcing those high boundaries. If what comes back on their report card is higher than they expect, they're very happy. All those students more than two points from the boundary see their expectations matched in their report card, and of course they are too far from the boundary to legitimately launch a grade appeal.

It is noteworthy that in the 15 years that I have used this sort of strategy I have never had a single student ask me for a bump up to the next letter grade -- at least not on the basis of how close he came to it. (I have, however, had students ask me for the ridiculous: "I got an F but I need a B- to graduate so would you please?") It is also noteworthy that not a single student has come back to tell me that I made a mistake and gave a grade higher than he deserved.

My next lecture isn't until January, 2009.

Is this really a big problem?

I'm trying to understand this. For example:

Yes YOU Too Can Learn How To Stop Jezebel With Ease! Thousands already have learned these proven truths. With the knowledge in this book you can stop her in less than 24 hours. Take action today.

Has this man been tormented by a strong, confident woman? Or is he possessed by the spirit of a strong, confident woman? I'm missing something -- something apart from his transparent attempt to part me from my cash.

How much do you spend on food?

The Ellesiouville Times ran a Sunday story about the high cost of food. (I had noticed already the crazy high price of food all by myself, thank you very much.) This story focused, as such stories often do, on the lurid and sensational. A single mother of two children under five, receiving $315 in food stamps per month, told how her household was out of food half-way through the month and of her scramble to keep her children fed until the beginning of the next month.

Let's not be too critical of the food stamp program. I think quite highly of it when it is not abused. I put myself through college working the night shift as an unlicensed nurse's aid earning only minimum wage. There were a few months in my senior year when I relied on food stamps to keep me in biscuits. After those few months, I never applied for them again. (Thank you, fellow taxpayers, for helping me through that rough spot.)

Let's also not ask where the father of these two children is or what the extent of his contribution to the grocery budget is.

Let's figure out how much it should cost to feed a young mother and two preschoolers. In my household, we have two adults and one preschooler. This household is, I concede, run by two skinny, stingy bastards who suffered through too many years of graduate school. In those lean years, we could not afford to get more than one pizza topping. We avoided group dinner outings, in dread of the suggestion that "we just divide the bill by [N]." We learned how to cook, and we learned how to have fun without spending a dime -- the swings at the local park were our favorite place to go on a date.

Recently, prodded by the high cost of food, we challenged ourselves to see how little we can get by on in a month. According to the Angry spreadsheet, factoring the restaurant bill, our total food expenses per month average around $400. Despite occasional excesses, our meat consumption is minimal. We do a lot of shopping at discount groceries. We buy in bulk. We eat a lot of legumes and grains, the Angry Baker makes all our bread, and most of our grocery bill goes toward produce and dairy. Once every few months we have to spring for a 50 lb. sack of flour.

Young children cost next to nothing to feed. The Angry Kid could live on milk and peanut butter alone. Of our monthly bill, I generously estimate she is responsible for maybe $75 of it. (Most of that $75 goes for Parmigiano Reggiano.) We grownups cost, then, $162 each. Back to our single mother, one adult at $162 + 2 children at $75 = $312. (I didn't even try to make that work out like that.)

So what's the deal? I know that food has gotten much more expensive. Our food budget is up at least $100 a month. The young mother in the story claims she needs over $600 a month to feed herself and her children. If we were talking about teenaged boys, I could be sympathetic. Even if she buys processed food, I don't understand why her bill is so high.

(If you haven't seen it already, check out this comparison of monthly food budgets around the world.)

Mailbag Monday: Edition LOLScammers

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Ouch.

This is a picture of my right cheek completely covered by a pressure dressing. The eraser on the pencil is slightly larger than Doug was. I am astonished by the enormity of the incision that was required to eradicate all traces of him.

My plastic surgeon was fantastic. I wouldn't mind having carcinomas all the time, so long as he was the one to remove them.

In which I am grateful for a 15-page syllabus.

A student contacted me today three hours after missing a quiz. This student explained that he had certain health issues, and that he had felt bad this morning and passed out, only coming to after class (the quiz) was over.

The clear policy outlined in my syllabus made any skepticism on my part irrelevant. It was nice to be able to ignore Angry Professor, sympathize with the ill student, and point to the syllabus. Taking him at his word, I was also able to give some advice about making use of the Disability Office, which is something he hadn't considered but was clearly eligible for (if he was telling the truth).

I could have been Angry; instead I was helpful. Even though this was a disaster for the student, in the long run I think he got more out of the event and talking with me about it than he would have if I had just let him take a makeup quiz in violation of my policies.

Quarter system haiku.

My own sunny beach.
I make margaritas
Then wake up in pain.

My friends are finished
But I have class tomorrow.
They can kiss my ass.

The term stretches on
And on and on forever.
My brain is melting.

Happy Mother's Day!

The Angry Kid has her heart set on taking me someplace she loves for Mother's Day. I, on the other hand, had my heart set on Indian food. In an attempt to make everyone happy, the Angry Baker took us to a wonderful, tiny little Indian place for dinner tonight.

You'll notice that it's 7:30, and here I am blogging. (Cue the shark music.)

The Angry Kid began complaining of belly pain about five minutes before we headed out the door. We didn't believe her. We all piled into the car and headed to the restaurant. The kid fell asleep on the way there. (Shark music is getting louder.)

At the restaurant the kid cuddled on my lap, and we ordered food. At this point I still thought this was a hunger/pooping issue, and encouraged her to drink a little water. (Dum DUM dum DUM dum DUM...)

The food came, and oh my it was amazing. (Ellesiouville denizens, email me and I will tell you the hole-in-the-wall of which I speak.) I took one bite, and the kid started struggling in my arms, cheeks in the blowfish position. We rushed for what I hoped desperately was a restroom and, just a foot and a half shy of the door, she unloaded about a gallon of partially digested hot dog onto the floor. But she wasn't done: the second wave hit the wall next to the ladies' room door.

Our server came running out of the kitchen. I apologized profusely and asked him to pack up our meal. The only other diners were also parents; I apologized to them as well, but they just laughed. The Angry Baker was on his hands and knees for about 10 minutes scooping up blech with paper towels from the men's room. We left a very large tip.

Let me count the ways this is all my fault: 1) It was my idea to buy hot dogs for lunch from a roach wagon. 2) I didn't give up my dream of Indian food when she complained of feeling "really sick" at home. 3) I didn't give up my dream of Indian food when she complained of feeling "really sick" in the car. 4) I didn't give up my dream of Indian food when she complained of feeling "really sick" in the restaurant. I only got what I deserved.

Fiche-moi le camp.

Dear Angry Professor,

Do we need to know the Null and the Alternative Hypotheses for the exam or just the p-value?

Thanks,
Mia Depuis Longtemps

Dear Mia,

Please choose the option that best completes the following sentence: The information you requested

1. was provided in class on Monday.
2. was provided in class on Wednesday.
3. can be found in your syllabus.
4. can be found on WebCT.
5. (All of the above)

You're welcome,
Angry Professor

In which a student cares not what people think nor know about her.

I entered my lecture hall at 10 a.m. sharp this morning, mentally girding my mental loins for a lecture on the null hypothesis. As I tripped merrily down the stairs, I noticed that my students were uncharacteristically silent. What, I thought, could render this garrulous crowd completely silent? Did all 100 of them have hangovers? Were they all reviewing their notes?

Then a young woman who sits in the front row screamed, scaring the crap out of me. She was yelling into her cell phone, and the rest of the class had, apparently, been enjoying one side of the soap opera that is her life.

"I'm tired of cleaning up after you!" (Pause.) "I'm tired of you taking advantage of me!" (Pause.) "Just get up and go to class!" (Pause.) "Why do I have to do all the work in this relationship?" (Pause.)

I reached the lectern with what must have been an incredulous expression on my face, because the class broke their silence and began laughing. This, apparently, was the moment they'd all been waiting for. The young lady didn't seem to notice she was the center of attention (nor that she was being laughed at by 100 of her classmates).

"My class is starting now!" (Pause.) "I'm hanging up!" (Pause.) "I mean it, I'm just going to hang up." (Pause.) "You need to get out of bed and go to class!" (Pause.) "I'm hanging up now!" (Pause.)

I had to tell her to take it outside so that I could begin my lecture. She yelled into her cell phone all the way back up the stairs and out the door. Why are social science majors so odd?

It's because I'm so special.

Dear Angry Professor,

I missed the quiz last Tuesday. I was the person who came in late. I was late because I couldn't find a parking space. I know that you told us on the first day of class that we shouldn't ask for any favors and I signed the consent form, so you might think that I'm asking for a special favor but really I'm not.

I've never been late to class before because I have another class right before yours. But I skipped that class last Tuesday, and I didn't know that parking would be a problem at 10:00 a.m.. I really tried to be there on time. You can ask my friend Emily who sits right next to me in lecture and she can verify that I was really trying, because I gave her a ride in and dropped her off right before 10 so she took the quiz while I was still trying to find a parking space.

I really hope you will let me take a make-up quiz because I don't think the class rules should apply to me in this situation when I was trying so hard and getting a parking space was out of my control. It isn't unfair to give me a make-up quiz because the other people who missed it weren't trying as hard to get there as I was. I'd even be willing to do an extra-credit project, if that was ok with you.

Let me know what you think. I am available to take a make-up quiz at any time. You can call me at 123-456-7890.

Aloss Cawz

It's official.

In case anyone was wondering, Doug was squamous cell carcinoma. I think I'll get a gold stud to put in his hole. (I always wanted to get my nose pierced, but the Angry Baker wouldn't let me.)

I want my $600.31 back.

We have a lot of storms here in the Midwest. I once swore I would never live north of the Mason-Dixon line ever again, but I did miss big thunderstorms and tornado season living down there. There's nothing more exciting than a purple-green sky sporting a rotating wall cloud. When I was young and foolish, I would go for walks during those nasty storms and relish how all the little hairs stood up on the back of my neck. (Now I just watch from the porch.)

We have noticed a new phenomenon associated with the beautiful Midwestern storm: the insurance company scam. After even the puniest of hail storms, out-of-state contractors drive through Ellesiouville neighborhoods in shiny new Jeep Cherokees to tell homeowners that the storm has damaged their roof or their siding. Sign on the dotted line, they say, and insurance will pay for it all! Of course the work is not done by the wealthy Anglo contractors who signed everyone up, but by poor migrant Latino workers with questionable visas.

The first time these companies came through, the people who opted for the "free" work got their policies canceled -- we have friends who had to scramble for a new insurance company shortly after they bragged about their new siding. Now it seems the insurance companies just let it happen. At least half of the homes in our neighborhood have new vinyl siding (beige seems to be a popular color) and/or new roofs courtesy of the same "disaster restoration" contractor; no one has reported being cancelled or having their premiums increased.

There is so much of this work going on that our streets are littered with vinyl scrap, roofing nails and sheet metal screws. My tires have been punctured three times in the last year and a half. The most recent puncture (a sheet metal screw) occurred last night. Unfortunately I didn't notice that my tire was completely flat, and I sleepily drove three blocks on it this morning before I figured out why my car was tilted, pulling to the left, and making a strange flapping sound.

Although it was only a few blocks, driving on the completely flat tire destroyed the sidewall. At the Tire Barn this afternoon, the mechanic tells me that I cannot replace just the one tire. No, I can't just replace two. Because I had the misfortune to purchase an all-wheel-drive Subaru Forester, I must replace all fucking four, or risk several thousand dollars' worth of damage to the transmission. A quick call to the Subaru dealer confirmed that this was true.

So now my neighbors' propensity to think like trailer trash looking for their next government subsidy has done more than make me wonder about their intelligence and ethics. It has cost me plane tickets to Paris. Fucking idiot bastard pinheads.

In which my patience is tried.

Some of my students are hopelessly unprepared to do statistics of any sort. For this reason I ask that they complete a math quiz on the first day of class and drop if they do not pass. Today I saw a student outside of office hours to help her with problems relating not to statistics, but to her lack of background in basic arithmetic. (She did not take the quiz, for an assortment of bizarre reasons. She claims a calculus background.)

So we write down a simple frequency distribution for a sample of scores {X_i}, where f(x) is the number of times each value X=x appeared in the sample:

x	1	2	3	4	5
f(x)	1	1	1	1	1

I ask her what the sample size is. She counted up the frequencies: "One, two, three, four, five. ...Uh, is it five?"

Then she says she just doesn't understand "that big E." (Deciphering exactly what this means is left as an exercise to the reader.)

She did not do well on the exam. I'm sure she has no clue that she did not do well on the exam.

I couldn't be more proud.

Yesterday the Angry Kid used, in a grammatically correct way, the noun "crap" in a sentence. "Mom, where's the one with that plastic crap on it?"

Now she needs to learn the glorious grammatical flexibility of the verb "fuck."