The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of…zzzzz

All aboard the failboat

I don’t even have the energy to put today into actual words.  There are just so many fails.  These fails are way more amusing.

Why is Barack Obama the “Black” Candidate?

My mother called today to make sure I’m still alive, and was thus subjected to the same sad fact as my blog: in preparation for qualifying exams, all I think about is culture and inequality.  You might as well not even try to have a normal conversation with me; my eyes will glaze over, and I’ll either be (a) thinking about how something you said relates to culture and/or inequality, or (b) thinking about how your normal conversation is irrelevant to culture and inequality and thus irrelevant to me, period.

Anyway, my mother luckily had something prepared to talk about that was relevant to my exams: she told me about a column in the commentary section of the local paper, written as a response to a reader who wrote in and asked why the paper always calls Barack Obama the “black candidate” when he is, more accurately, biracial.  The column itself focuses more on journalism (you can read it here, though you may need to login), but it’s a very sociological question.

I told my mother that if I were answering this reader’s question, I would point to the historical legacy of the one-drop rule, the traditional view of race in America as a black/white dichotomy, and maybe even a little bit of the Thomas Theorem and an explanation of ascriptive inequality–after all, Barack himself points out that if you look African-American in our society, people will treat you accordingly.

Orlando Patterson wrote an article addressing some of these issues for Time Magazine back in 2007, though he was writing before Obama’s success in the primaries.

Of course, this all feeds into the debates over whether or not Barack is “black enough,” another question that points to sociological issues related to the construction of race and cultural ideas about “doing” race.  I can’t tell if the reader who originally wrote into the Hartford Courant had this issue on his mind when he asked why we don’t describe Obama as biracial, or if he was just curious about why everything gets reduced to a black/white dichotomy that isn’t as objective and concrete as it seems.  At any rate, it’s an interesting question to ponder from a sociological perspective…

…and yet I’m already trailing off, because I’m thinking to myself: will I get an exam question on the social construction of Barack Obama’s race?  Probably not.  I crave the day when my entire existence is no longer directed toward one  72-hour exam period.

Caturday: The cat in CATI

By popular demand (N=1), Caturday for Nerds is back.

* CATI = Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing

No words, just wallpaper

Last night, I looked up at the sky, saw the potential for a great sunset, and promptly abandoned Microsoft Word and drove out to the lake. I haven’t been since the Fall. And guess what? It was way more fun than that Microsoft Word document. The photographs are also more fun than any words I would find it in myself to write on this blog right now, because I’m about three weeks from taking my exams and consequently about 84% insane. So, to distract us both from that: look, more pretty photos at flickr! Just in case you needed something to distract you from your Microsoft Word document, too.

Spiders, Musicians, and Credibility

Neil Young Gets New Honor — His Own Spider

An East Carolina University biologist, Jason Bond, discovered a new species of trapdoor spider and opted to call the arachnid after his favorite musician, Canadian Neil Young, naming it Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi.

“There are rather strict rules about how you name new species,” Bond said in a statement.

“As long as these rules are followed you can give a new species just about any name you please. With regards to Neil Young, I really enjoy his music and have had a great appreciation of him as an activist for peace and justice.”

This is just one of the ways in which the “hard” sciences seem to have more fun than sociology. Do you think that if I came up with the most brilliant sociological thought ever, a theory completely supported by empirical evidence, but called it the Britney Spears Model of Social (Dis)order, anyone would take me seriously?

More selfishly, I considered asking the sciencey folks I know to name something after me, but since their projects center around bacteria and hepatitis c, respectively, I thought better of it. Instead, reverberitis can temporarily refer to my tendency to procrastinate by blogging about things too silly to be truly academic, but too nerdy to be truly interesting.

Epic Fail: American Beverage Institute

The American Beverage Institute, a “restaurant trade association” devoted to protecting on-premis alcohol consumption, took out an ad in USA Today featuring Lindsay Lohan’s mugshot and arguing that ignition interlocks (which work similar to the Breathalyzer and keep the car from starting if the driver’s blood alcohol level is over the device’s programmed limit) are okay for serial drunk drivers like Lohan, but not for the rest of us.

Naturally, their use of Ms. Lohan’s mug drew a fair amount of attention to the ad.  However, I’m much more horrifed by the text below.  You can click on the above image, but here’s what the ABI argues:

“Ignition interlocks, or in-car breathalyzers, are a great tool for getting hard-core drunk drivers off our roads. However, activists now want to put one in every car in America. That means the end of moderate and responsible drinking prior to driving…No more champagne toasts at weddings, no more wine with dinner, no more beers at a ballgame.
Let’s stop drunk driving without eliminating our traditions.”

I could understand this argument if ignition interlocks kept people from driving if their Breathalyzer showed any alcohol; after all, the legal limit is .08.  But the devices are programmed to keep the car from starting at a certain blood alcohol concentration level.  If you take that into account, the ABI is basically arguing that for “the rest of us,” the good people of America, ignition interlocks would take away our time-honored American tradition of driving drunk after our weddings, dinners, and/or ballgames.  How do you square “moderate, responsible drinking” with drinking that would put you over the blood-alcohol limit?

What the hell?  I mean, come on, American Beverage Institute; I like a drink as much as the next person, probably even more than the next person, but you know what else I like?  Being alive, and being socially responsible and not endangering other people.  From my brief internet research, it seems like there are plenty of reasons to argue against mandatory ignition interlocks that don’t rest on the argument that they’ll take away our hallowed tradition of driving drunk.  You know, drunk, but just a little drunk, not like Lindsay Lohan drunk, so it’s fine, c’mon, stop being so uptight, all the cool kids are doing it!

Sensational celebrity mugshots aside, this advertisement is socially irresponsible and idiotic.  EPIC FAIL, American Beverage Institute.  Just for this, all of my drinking binges from now on will all occur OFF-premises.

Embracing my jetlag

Everyone always complains about jetlag, but since my return to the US, I’ve been embracing it. I’m working with a five-hour time difference that, tempered by my impressive ability to sleep excessively and recent trend toward nocturnalism, ultimately results in me getting up at a reasonable and respectable hour. It’s Saturday; I got up at 7:30 this morning. Who knew that all I needed to return to the Protestant Ethic I was born into* was to have my sleep schedule screwed up by international travel?!

Honestly, I had grand plans to whittle down my travel photos, process them properly in Photoshop, and then post for your procrastinating pleasure, but this whole Protestant Ethic and qualifying exam thing has really gotten in the way (though it apparently hasn’t thwarted my pursuit of alliteration). I did upload (and make public) many of my raw photos on Flickr, though. I think my favorites are the ones from Oxford since we had good luck with the weather:

Sun shining through the cupola of the Sheldonian Theater

The rest of my Oxford photos are here.

There will be a new masthead shortly (once I get inspired); there may be a Caturday Lolcat for Nerds (once I get tired of working); there will probably be a long treatise on the culture of poverty (the exam topic du jour). Try to contain your excitement.

*I’m pretty sure that Max Weber built a time machine, met my father, and then returned back to 1905 confident that his predictions about the Protestant Ethic losing its religious trappings but continuing to impact life would hold true. My dad has probably been awake for five hours by now, has probably checked his email, created some sort of PowerPoint presentation, and engaged in some kind of home improvement project that involves the moving of heavy objects. Seriously.