Stupid Society Privileging Marriage...

For my recently and soon to be married colleagues, here’s a story I’d like to draw your attention to from Inside Higehr Ed. It documents a study on graduate students and marriage. Appearantly, being married increases graduation rates and hireablity across the board, but most of all for married men (I think there’s more systemic influencces here than he’s accounting for, but I haven’t seen the data…). Nonetheless, he does have an important conclusion for women which goes against an anecdotal bias which I have seen as well. Here’s a preview:
In many respects, the greatest professional advantages found in the study go to married men. But in an interview, Price said that he thought the study’s findings might be most useful to married women. Previous research studies, which Price said are confirmed anecdotally by graduate students he talks to, have documented bias against married women in graduate school and first jobs in academe. Some of those selecting among candidates assume that a married woman will abandon her career for parenthood.
Price said it was notable that a majority of women in his study who were married had children, and yet they were more productive and successful than single women. He said he hoped that those admitting graduate students to programs and hiring them would take note. “We shouldn’t view married women as being less able to do well in graduate school and the professoriate,” he said.

My Big Wii Update

On Friday Claude and I went to the mall at 7:45am to stand in line in order to pre-order a Nintendo Wii from Gamestop (it opened at 10). Claude thought I was crazy for wanting to get there even earlier, but I compromised at that. Even I was surprised at how few Wiis ended up being available: only 6! I was 5th in line (thanks god!). For a recap of the events of the morning which is interesting and roughly accurate (yet somehow managed to cut me out and give Claude my name…) here’s a story from Joystiq. Yes, it is called the “Bible Belt Edition,” a cruel fact I so love to be reminded of…

Other Wii notes:
here’s a funny spoof of Wii games you’ll never see…

And to prepare us for the new upcoming Zelda title (which I preoredered along with my Wii), here’s part one of a retrospective on the series.

And lastly, here’s an amazing clip from Wiids… I mean Weeds (the surprisingly amazing show about a white suburban drug-dealing widow.). Ok, I’ll be nice and warn you that it’s a speech about masturbation. The first time I saw it (when it came out of nowhere) I was memorized at the surprising eloquence of such a speech. As a teacher of public speaking, I have to say this is top notch work; it would probably get a high A. No joke ;o) And I’m a notoriously hard grader! Check it out.

What's wrong with this picture?

This is today's Politics newsletter from CNN. Why is it that every picture is of an old white man? Are we really that backwards in this country that we still can't conceive of a politics that might be even remotely inclusive of anything but blank slate privileged buffoons??? I hate the world...

The Heathens and the Accountants

A recent article on Inside Higher Ed revealed that despite popular opinion, there are almost as many people who believe in god working in academia as there are in the general population. There were some disciplinary differences, however:

In terms of disciplines, professors in psychology and biology are the least likely to believe in God (about 61 percent in each field are atheists or agnostics), with mechanical engineering not far behind at 50 percent. Professors most likely to say that they have no doubt that God exists are in accounting (63 percent), elementary education (57 percent), finance (49 percent), marketing (47 percent) and nursing (44 percent).

The best part however cam after the article was finished. The first comment posted at the bottom of the page reads as follows:

Well, I’ll be damned. (No doubt.) I find it interesting that most of the believers are in schools of business, which is where most of the Republicans are, too. I wonder what that correlation means. Makes intuitive sense to me, though—the kind of Christianity I grew up with was mostly a form of accounting, with a strong marketing department.

Take a Look at Mii!

I can't wait for the Nintendo Wii (pronounced "we") to come out next month. One of the nifty features is the ability to create you own characters to use in certain games, called Mii. I just found an online Mii creator so I had a stab at it, here's Mii!