My Next Paper Must Have a Food Reference

From Amazon's Current 10 Best Sellers:

2. Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search For ...
5. Plum Lucky
6. Body Drama: Real Girls, Real Bodies, Real Issues, Real Answers
7. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
8. Eat This Not That: Thousands of Simple Food Swaps...
9. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission To Promote Peace...One School at a Time

Okay, three of these aren't about food/weight but their use of the topic in the title is also telling. The top 25 also includes The Omnivores Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Skinny Bitch, and four additional weight loss books.

Also, eight of the top ten have a subtitle. I'll have to do that too.

From the Comments

Renee Denfeld, Who wrote this book, All God's Children, IS SEVERELY MISINFORMED!! Where the hell did you get your information? Did you make it up for a more interesting story? I am an original member of NGP and sickboys, (i was a sick chick) and the stuff you wrote in your book is so off that it makes my blood boil. You are putting out slanderous info about a very vulnerable and lost group of people. Shame on you. You should find a way to right your wrongs.

Hazel 5150

This comment was in response to my previous post on Denfeld's claim that increasing initiation costs increased the demand for street family affiliation. Just to be clear, the "you" is most certainly referring to Denfeld and not myself. It isn't surprising that her book [amazon] wasn't well received by the street family community. I also wouldn't be surprised if it contained inaccuracies. (Although it was pretty compelling for the most part and didn't seem to confuse speculation for facts all that much.) In any case, I've followed up with Hazel and will report back if I get a response.

Stay Tuned

The lack of posts lately is because I've been busy trying to finish writing a paper, preparing a presentation for another paper, and dealing with the regular end-of-quarter workload. Sometime in the next few days I may post a small piece of investigative journalism. I have a strong bit of evidence of price discrimination by a major online "player."

What's up with that?

Last night I played tennis with a friend. It was after dark but the courts were well lit. Adjacent to the tennis courts was a basketball court. No lights. This isn't the first time I've noticed such a design. Why not light those as well?

Is the bouncing of a basketball so loud that it's a nuisance? I'm inclined to think this isn't the answer since the park was a good distance from any homes. Is there greater demand for tennis at night than basketball? Are they trying to keep away the types of people who would play basketball after dark? Is there something else I'm missing?

Why didn't I realize the absurdity before?

#1: Balance budget multiplier. An introductory and intermediate macroeconomics concept. If you raise lump sum taxes and government spending by equal amounts, GDP will increase by that amount. (Then why not just have a command and control economy? To clarify, much of introductory and intermediate macroeconomics has always seemed absurd to me--but it is especially so in this case.)

#2: "You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you." (But by addressing "you" it is about "you." Yes, I realize the absurdity may be intentional which would make it ironic, I suppose.)

I know it's a bit early but...

today I'm thankful for realVNC.

For quite a while now, I've had a bit of a problem. I do and store all my work on my home computer. This makes it difficult go to campus, or anywhere, and do work. My usual solution has been to put files on a flash drive and take my laptop. Of course, this is a pain and I usually forget something.

Many of my colleagues just store all their work files on department servers which can be accessed from anywhere. I have a psychological hangup that has kept me from doing this--I want *everything* to be in one place. On top of that, UNIX is a pain.

Enter realVNC. With this nice program, I can access my home PC using my laptop from anywhere with internet access.

EDIT: Before I was having some problems connecting with my current laptop. It appears to only be a problem when I connect from home which, obviously, is not necessary. Yay!

Seth Godin on PowerPoint

This post on PowerPoint is too good to quote. There are only a few blogs where I read every word of every new post. Seth Godin's Blog is probably the only one on the list that isn't written by a friend.

Everything Levitt Ever Wanted From His Children

My 4 year old has figured out how to read an opponent and take advantage of them.

Levitt on his 4 year old daughter "destroying" his other daughter in rock-paper-scissors. Seriously, though, I would be proud too.