even lame ducks get the blues

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 10:51:10 -0600

i just read this time-magazine bit about how w is a super lame duck and obama is pretty much at work already. i'm glad obama is our president elect. i imagine this is how my parents must have felt when JFK was elected.

however, i'm starting to believe, like others, that the media is getting a little silly over obama. for me, the story is in juxtaposition. take a look at this paragraph:

.

i feel that's kicking a w while he's down. after a paragraph basically saying he sucks and how lame he is, there's a link to great pics of the new guy. that's like a facebook page talking about how much a guy's old girlfriend (who he is about to break up with) is a total wench and a terrible person, with a link to the pictures of the new girl (who he's already kinda seeing).

i think w knows he sucks. i bet in his heart of hearts he knows that he messed up and would want to do things differently if the neocons got off his back.

the author of this piece, joe klein, is a smart guy and i have a lot of respect for him. my guess is that klein didn't put that link in there, and that it was done by the cnn/time/warner/whatever's "synergy" crew that tries to weave all the little media bits together.

what's more, look at the pictures:

vs

that pretty much sums it up. w, alone and looking stupid and humiliated. obama, triumphant and surrounded by friends. this is all true, and maybe because it is true it is ok. but the kid in me feels like somehow this is mean. the adult in me thinks this is vindictive. both are not where we as a country need to be. let's at least be gracious.

these pictures are the copyright of time and affiliates, etc, and i pulled them from their websites without permission. the first picture is credited to Brooks Kraft and the second is credited to CALLIE SHELL

symbol

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:34:06 -0500

today i do something i rarely do anymore. i saw a book in a freebie bin and grabbed it. it was symbol: handbook of international signs by diethelm, et al. pretty sweet book.

i love symbols and signs. i had a blast mocking up a logo for the umn soc department. so i love me a good logo. i try to use them in my own work as much as i can.

above is my attempt at a graphic to help me explain one of the central themes in my dissertation: to understand social capital you need to consider the different outcomes of the same relationship in different networks. for instance, compare the line between w and v on the left, and w' and v' on the right. both have little 4s in them, meaning each is a tie = 4. but all the other lines in the two graphics have different numbers, different averages, etc. so the idea is that w and v will have a different outcome because of the ties around them.

but anyway, back to symbols, i love thinking about that stuff, and i love good line art. the task with poems, equations, attack ads, greeting cards and signs is to convey complex meaning with little or no written language as possible. what if we tried to take some sociological concepts and make signs of them. i'm thinking about ronald burt's structural hole argument or granovetters weak ties argument, that people win big when they can connect two separate groups. i want this on my door:

anyways, you see them everywhere. these are some signs from europe, can you tell what they all mean?

and finally, because i'm a geek, here are some symbols from ye ol trek. even in the future, signs signs and more signs . . .

who cared?

Fri, 5 Sep 2008 01:46:48 -0500

ok, now both the republicans and the democrats have had their party's parties. with the nomination of obama and palin, each party is tossing in a minority card into the presidential voting decision. on npr, during the clinton v. obama contest, they asked the question of which minority's issues were of most concern to them--women's or african americans'? well, in the first part of a two part series, i'm going to present some back-of-the-envelope analyses using gss data. first, in this post, i'm going to present some numbers from the survey taken 25 year ago, in 1983. one way to think of this presidential election is to ask, if X wins, will that mean that we've really come along for Y group? in other words, will palin be a bigger step for gender issues than race issues should obama win? so lets get the baseline. 1983, the initial revolution occurred and things were getting better for both groups, but both issues were still far from resolved. of all the respondents, what issue was more important?

RS CONCERN ABOUT |
WOMENS RIGHTS | Freq. Percent Cum.
---------------------+-----------------------------------
VERY CONCERNED | 171 21.95 21.95
SOMEWHAT CONCERNED | 377 48.40 70.35
NOT VERY CONCERNED | 162 20.80 91.14
NOT CONCERNED AT ALL | 69 8.86 100.00
---------------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 779 100.00

the question was how concerned the respondent was about women's rights. the more people that answered that they were very or somewhat concerned, the more of an issue it was for society (this is crude, of course, but it is also a blog). so, by that criteria, it looks like in 1983, 70% of the respondent were concerned about women's rights.

RS CONCERN ABOUT |
RACIAL ISSUES | Freq. Percent Cum.
---------------------+-----------------------------------
VERY CONCERNED | 153 19.49 19.49
SOMEWHAT CONCERNED | 388 49.43 68.92
NOT VERY CONCERNED | 173 22.04 90.96
NOT CONCERNED AT ALL | 71 9.04 100.00
---------------------+-----------------------------------
Total | 785 100.00

and for racial issues, it looks like about 69% of the respondents were concerned. at the myth-buster level of significance, i would call that even.

ok, ok, you can argue that for the true measure of where society was for each of these groups, we should ask what did women thing about women's rights and what did african americans think about racial issues? ok, ladies first.

RS CONCERN ABOUT | RESPONDENTS SEX
WOMENS RIGHTS | MALE FEMALE | Total
---------------------+----------------------+----------
VERY CONCERNED | 31 140 | 171
| 15.74 24.05 | 21.95
---------------------+----------------------+----------
SOMEWHAT CONCERNED | 98 279 | 377
| 49.75 47.94 | 48.40
---------------------+----------------------+----------
NOT VERY CONCERNED | 43 119 | 162
| 21.83 20.45 | 20.80
---------------------+----------------------+----------
NOT CONCERNED AT ALL | 25 44 | 69
| 12.69 7.56 | 8.86
---------------------+----------------------+----------
Total | 197 582 | 779
| 100.00 100.00 | 100.00
female cum = 71.99

women came in just about the same as the total sample, about 72% of women were concerned about women's rights (note, however, that three quarters this sample actually were women, so their probably isn't a difference because of the bias in the data; but this is a blog). so, what is the verdict for african americans?

RS CONCERN ABOUT | RACE OF RESPONDENT
RACIAL ISSUES | WHITE BLACK | Total
---------------------+----------------------+----------
VERY CONCERNED | 116 34 | 153
| 16.62 43.59 | 19.49
---------------------+----------------------+----------
SOMEWHAT CONCERNED | 354 29 | 388
| 50.72 37.18 | 49.43
---------------------+----------------------+----------
NOT VERY CONCERNED | 166 7 | 173
| 23.78 8.97 | 22.04
---------------------+----------------------+----------
NOT CONCERNED AT ALL | 62 8 | 71
| 8.88 10.26 | 9.04
---------------------+----------------------+----------
Total | 698 78 | 785
| 100.00 100.00 | 100.00

black cum = 80.77

note, that i only include african americans and whites in the table columns. also note, that unlike women, there are very few african americans in this sample (about 10% of the sample). however, given those disclaimers, about 81% of african american were concerned about racial issues. that is 10 percentage points more than women's concern for women's rights. more african americans were concerned about their group's rights than women where concerned about their group's rights 25 years ago. ok, but what about black women? they are part of both groups. what were they more concerned about?

RS CONCERN ABOUT | group
WOMENS RIGHTS | White Wom Black Wom | Total
---------------------+---------------------+----------
VERY CONCERNED | 117 23 | 146
| 22.41 38.33 | 24.29
---------------------+---------------------+----------
SOMEWHAT CONCERNED | 252 27 | 287
| 48.28 45.00 | 47.75
---------------------+---------------------+----------
NOT VERY CONCERNED | 113 6 | 123
| 21.65 10.00 | 20.47
---------------------+---------------------+----------
NOT CONCERNED AT ALL | 40 4 | 45
| 7.66 6.67 | 7.49
---------------------+---------------------+----------
Total | 522 60 | 601
| 100.00 100.00 | 100.00

white women cum = 70.69
black women cum = 83.33

black women were more concerned than white women when it came to women's rights. ok, how did black women measure on racial issues?

RS CONCERN ABOUT | group
RACIAL ISSUES | White Wom Black Wom | Total
---------------------+----------------------+----------
VERY CONCERNED | 85 25 | 119
| 16.13 41.67 | 19.67
---------------------+----------------------+----------
SOMEWHAT CONCERNED | 276 23 | 305
| 52.37 38.33 | 50.41
---------------------+----------------------+----------
NOT VERY CONCERNED | 124 5 | 131
| 23.53 8.33 | 21.65
---------------------+----------------------+----------
NOT CONCERNED AT ALL | 42 7 | 50
| 7.97 11.67 | 8.26
---------------------+----------------------+----------
Total | 527 60 | 605
| 100.00 100.00 | 100.00

white women cum = 68.50
black women cum = 80.00

they cared just as much: 80%. white women also cared approximately the same as they did about gender issues, 69% and so, for the sample, gender and race victories in the white house would be even victories. then, even if we try to nail this issue down by asking black women what they think, they also present us with even numbers. thus, based on this research done at 2:30 in the morning, i would have to say that if we were to think in terms of "how far would X group have come if they sit in the white house?", it's even, no difference, not useful to think about. so, folks, your going to have to vote on the issues or hurt feelings about your candidate.

further reading. i'm on the market. so to show off my teaching pizzaz, i will suggest an interesting reading that deals tangentially with this issue. i didn't read it closely, but i did get interested in the issue it presents: if you're a lower class woman, are you allowed be a feminist as well? it's interesting when you think of other groups and social class. for instance, how many really-poor, active and out, gay men have you heard about? anyways, here is the citation if you want to take a look:

Spelman, Elizabeth. Inessential Woman. Chapters 2, 4. Boston: Beacon University Press, 1988, pp. 37-56 and 80-113.

later.

later i'll present some numbers from a more recent survey.

neat iphone game

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:31:01 -0500

i just got an iphone game that is pretty cool for those who study networks. its called BridgesManiak by Alexandre Minard. The purpose of the game is to connect the nodes (the circles) in such a way so that there is a path from any node to another, however long. the trick is that each node is labeled with a number and that each node must have exactly that number of links. For example, if a node had a "4", it must have 4 lines connecting it to other nodes. at times, with multiple lines between any two given nodes. sweet game. what i love about this game is that it aligns pretty well with how i like to think of social network analysis. i feel that social network analysis has spent far too much time obsessing about graph theory and the distinction between connected and not connected. This makes us think of social networks as we think of computer or electric networks. people are not power stations. instead, if we take network connections as given, then examining these networks forces us to engage the content (and gets us back to Simmel) of each connection and compare across ties and across independent networks. this is what i do in my dissertation. but i digress, this game is like how i think about social networks in what i have to connect the network in such as way as to create ties of different strengths. the other rule in the game is that nodes can only be connected by horizontal or vertical lines, and can't jump over other nodes, also adds positionally to the game as well. there are defiantly circumstances in which the only way i'm going to get to C is by way of B. and sometimes, B is a pain the ass. anyways, it a cheap $1 game and if you have an iphone and like networks, i suggest you take a look.

you know, i wanted to be a poet. . .

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:08:37 -0500

we had a small crisis at work this past week (can't tell you and wouldn't want to anyway) and we had to really look hard at the code I wrote for the analysis. everything is fine with my code; thank you for asking. at one point in staring at my computer screen, staring at my code trying to find a bug, i remembered that before sociology, in college, i really wanted to be a poet. part of it was girls. the other part was that i really liked the idea of putting complex thoughts and feelings into a little space as possible. when we code data, calculate statistics, make a chart, we are doing this. poets have been doing it for years. the greats (or, the greats for me) were awesome at not only using just the right number of words, and the right words, but they were also talented at putting the meaning in between those words. in this, the poem became a catalyst that sparked feelings in the reader. i wanted to be a poet. i used to write a lot of poems. on this page is one of my poems from when i first moved to chicago, some code, and a poem from my favorite poet, e. e. cummings. they all look the same to me. i still feel like i am putting complex life into little boxes and letters. i still try to write when i can, but time is always limited these days.

hello from boston

Sun, 3 Aug 2008 11:21:09 -0500

this weekend is asa, the annual conference for sociologists. people present papers, attend meetings and parties. asa is also about networking, and we have done a lot of that at the parties. i've been handing out business cards like flyers, talking up my diss and trying to create a brand. it's actually been a lot of fun. we'll see what comes of it.

since both dani and i went, we also brought the boy and grandma. without grandma, again, we would be in a pretty rough spot. we really owe her. since i study intergenerational exchange, i especially feel obligated to not be a jerk and let her know how much she is appreciated. she's helping by investing her time in watching the kid so dani and i can party and network effectively, her time is our money in the future. but, i also know what this means for the future of grandma and us: she covers us now with the boy, we take care of her later when/if she can't take care of herself. that's the deal. we haven't really talked about it in those terms (grandma and us), but dani and i have talked about this, and are prepared for it.

here to stay

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 16:26:20 -0500

it's always the little things. the small signs that reflect daily life that make me really internalize things. the latest thing that made me smile was a towel. i was in the bathroom getting ready for bed. i turned to the door and was struck by what i saw: three towels. the kid is getting daily baths. daily baths means using a towel everyday. using a towel everyday means you use the same one for a couple days (at least we do) and leaving it on a hook or rod to dry. the kid gets daily baths, and thus has a towel that he (well, we) use to dry him off. my house now has three regular towels. i love my son, and i'm glad he's here to stay.