BE BE: the bloggable brody

Test

2006-06-14T17:17:00.000-05:00

Test post. working on phloggable brody site

On Positive Affect

2005-11-13T13:49:00.000-06:00

I'm beginning to understand positive affect. For instance, this week I passed my qualifying exams. Though a big milestone and thus somewhat stressful, exams were easy, really. More like a check-up than an operation. After exams though I've noticed some subtle differences. People congratulate me more than they used to. Its more than ABD - where I used to brood now I converse. Where I used to be sarcastic now I'm witty. And suddenly pretty Lithuanian sociologists take notice. Frankly, it's taken me by surprise.

Positive affect extends to the smallest, most inconsequential, most tertiary aspects of life. Take my fantasy football team. I had a shit draft, lost my best receiver in the first week, and have been in the basement ever since. Yet things are looking up. While it's true that I'm a lowly eighth out of ten in the standings, eighth place makes the playoffs in our league. And come playoff time I should be the team to beat. How could this be? Because l-a-r-r-y-j-o-h-n-s-o-n spells TOUCHDOWNS. Look for me in the winner's circle, my friends!

A bloggable update

2005-11-09T00:29:00.000-06:00

The way our qualifying exams work, your committee gives you three questions to write over three days. A couple of days after submitting your written exam, you meet with the committee for an oral defense. I'm in the pre-orals purgatory stage, and can't help but feel nervous. I'm fine! I'm in trouble! I'm fine! I'm in trouble!

Really I'm fine. No problem. But still, I can't help but feel nervous. Its a gut reaction. I meet with my committee Thursday morning. It should be a good conversation.

I've been meaning to send a couple of posts - one on a Sam Peckinpah film and another on how I'm set to win my fantasy football league, but y'all'll have to wait with baited breath until this weekend.

Qualifying Exams

2005-10-31T19:25:00.000-06:00

I just got the questions for my qualifying exam. The written work is due this Thursday, with an oral defense the following Thursday. Well, in case you're wondering - and I know you are - I'm including the questions below. I mean, why start on the exam when I can just blog about it...

1. Peter Hall, in the book “Cities of Tomorrow,” states that in the U.S., social pathology has been divorced from any discussion of urban design solutions. What role could design, as conceptualized by both current and earlier generations of planners, play in addressing social problems like urban poverty and the permanent “underclass”? Discuss the various theoretical viewpoints about the role and limitations of design in addressing social problems. What are the methodological and empirical factors that complicate the attempt to use design in solving social problems? Discuss why solutions that have to do with city design are controversial. Construct a framework around which the many complexities can be organized and understood.

2. You have identified several approaches to design inquiry rational models, problem solving, conversational description, abductive reasoning, sense making that focus primarily on how design happens. Other normative approaches classical, modernist, new urbanist focus on content and form, on what should result rather than how it is designed. If your intent is to influence urban design through teaching, advocating, designing, or meta-designing which of the approaches to design inquiry and normative outcomes will be useful, in what ways, and why? What do we not know about any of these approaches that might be knowable and ease your task of influencing urban design? In other words, what can an urban design scholar add to what we know?

3. In addition to the scholarship on inquiry in design, which considers design as a process of inquiry, there is also a substantial body of work that is inquiry about design itself. As a complex, messy process, much of which is hidden from view, design represents a challenge for those seeking to study it. What are some of these challenges and how have they been addressed in the methods used in these studies? To illustrate how choices about methods might be made, please identify a very simple (even simplistic) question about design and discuss how you would deal with methodological choices in an empirical study of that question.

BB on DD

2005-10-25T16:46:00.000-05:00

who would have guessed that wysp, as good as it is already, could possibly eclipse itself? sure howard stern is pretty good, but soon we'll get david lee roth, and diamond dave is a kind of god among motrals. finally a radio format with the potential to be free -- free, people, truly free! infinity answered the prayers i never knew i had...

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1512155/20051025/
roth_david_lee.jhtml?headlines=true

Russian proposal spam

2005-10-21T17:50:00.000-05:00

I just got this email through Friendster. The capitalization is the best part...

I searched here for you very long and already thought, that was not existing for I suitable person. But when I saw your profile, me At once it became interesting and that it in my heart has pricked. I thought, That it - the mark from above also has decided to write to you this letter...

My name - Maria. I still very young, but very much restriction of the girl. Life of me checked up very much and now I write you this letter. Who knows, what with us will be tomorrow? But I want to get acquainted with you and Is simple to continue a stream of life. I very lonely girl also search for the same The lonely person who will steal my heart and will open for me doors In heart. My very serious purposes. I believe in love in, and I believe this The love always will spend fortunately and to creation fine families. Certainly, the love may bring and is torn, but I want it, these tears were only Tears of happiness. Probably you may represent me happiness, and I shall answer you The same happiness. I have chosen you from a set of people because you seem to me such person, With which it is possible to continue edge of light and to not be afraid for life. You seem To me very interesting and very clever person. I think, that you have feeling The humour and with you it will be never boring. The same as well as with me...

I shall look forward to hearing from you very much. Please, write to me on mine e-mail: [I deleted this] I necessarily shall answer you, and I shall inform more about me directly, and also I shall send Photos. I have made a choice and it - YOU. Now you make a choice and Do not leave my letter without the answer. Will entrust to heart, and listen only Directly.

Have good time of days, it is sincere and with
the big interest, to you - Maria.

Netflix

2005-10-11T20:10:00.000-05:00

I'm a new Netflix customer. I love it! I love the convenience, I love what I'm watching, and I love the packaging. Those envelopes are cool!

Netflix has helped feed my West Wing obsession. I watch it in three hour, four episode marathons. I think like Sam Seaborn and Josh Lyman, in smart and biting tones. I've even started dreaming in West Wing: the content is the same - I still lecture to my students and question the authority of science, but now I dream about lecturing to my students and questioning the authority of science in the confines of the White House, and its the chief of staff's daughter I'm kissing instead of, well, nevermind...

Do you run Netflix? We should exchange reviews and whatnot.

2005-10-04T18:14:00.000-05:00

Speaking of, I'd like to recommend the music oriented blogs of a couple of friends in case you don't know them or haven't checked out their blogs before. Links to Dough and Anne's blogs are on the right. They're good! Informative! Suitably knowledgeable and esoteric! I especially like Doug's recent post making fun of rockers with bad teeth...

Birth of an aesthete

2005-10-04T18:07:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about the first songs that I ever picked out as liking on my own. I mean the very first songs here, even before I got a sense of what kind of music I liked, long before I had favorite bands. When kids are young - say in third or fourth grade - they haven't yet formed a personal identity, about anything really. So there are worlds to be explored. Because my parents hadn't yet gotten cable, I had to test the waters of Philadelphia radio: WMMR, WYSP, that pop station that was at the top of the dial (I forget its name - I think it went oldies or talk radio by junior high).

Anyway, here are the goods:

1. I wanna dance with somebody/Whitney Houston
2. Aqualung/Jethro Tull
3. California Girls/David Lee Roth... Okay I'm lying on this last one. (Would that I had been so cool!) Acutally its more like Taco's Puttin' on the Ritz.

This goes a long way to explaining my curiously bad taste w/ certain things...

The evils of caffeine

2005-09-28T18:04:00.000-05:00

Closely related to the whole napping-is-evil thing is that caffeine is evil too. One vicious cycle feeds into the other, mandelbrot-style, until life is pocked by bursts of insomnia, wiredness, crashing, naps, wired naps, crashing insomnia, and dreaming about insomnia and waking up from naps and being wired.

In college caffeine was a kind of necessary evil. It is only in the past couple of years that I've come to like coffee - only as I discovered things like La Colombe, the New York Times, and pretty girls who like coffee. Now I really like coffee. It's a part of life. There's little disconnect between the aroma of coffee and the feel of books and newspaper. When I taste 'coffee', my mind tastes 'smart', and I'm a man of the wor(l)d.

Pop is similarly set deep in experience. It tastes good, sure. It's sugary sweet. But moreso it tastes like my youth, and like summer, like the REM green tour or ballgames at the Vet, or picnicing. The taste of pop is comes with an American appeal, one that's familiar, innocent and likable.

So while napping is a bad habit, caffeine is more insidious. Not napping becomes another kind of habit: it might be tough to make the transition, but napping and not-napping are reasonable substitutes. Not caffeine, though, means a loss of me.

The evils of napping

2005-09-13T21:37:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago in Chicago Fresh Water Mussels was talking about how bad napping was for you. The problem, for her, was that naps were habit forming. Take a nap one afternoon, and you can't help but want to take one the next. And soon you're like Rip Van Winkle, Sir Sleepsalot, Nappy McGee. I remembered it being kind of funny and endearing, because later when we got back from the 40-year old virgin and discussed meeting friends for drinks she said she was just going to take a nap for a bit to rest up. I thought she was kidding. A midnight nap? Hopeless! I'll talk to you in the morning I said (correctly).

Lately though I've been trapped in a sick kind of marraige of insomnia and narcolepsy, and it's affecting work. So I'll concede her point: naps really are evil. And habit forming. Buckminster Fuller, he of the extemporaneous fourteen hour lectures on Spaceship Earth, once maintained that he had trained himself to exist on six twenty minute naps a day and nothing more (think of the efficiency!). Let's face it though - Fuller is a less than ideal role model.

As soon as I can get a good night's sleep, I'm quitting naps. I swear it.

So I joined a bike gang...

2005-09-11T18:20:00.000-05:00

I recently joined a bicycle gang. We're calling ourselves the Hill Street Bike Gang - Hill St. is our territory. This all started around a month ago, but yesterday was our real debut. We made iron-on shirts with menacing looking images (dead squirrels, wolf's heads, and crows flying in for their kill) and 'represented' at a couple of the local bars. You don't want to mess with HSBG.

This whole bike gang idea really is just as stupid as it sounds. Still, making t-shirts is fun. And we're actually not the only gang in town: surprisingly, we came across a rival gang from Urbana (the Cobras) on our very first night out. Now we have to rumble. We meet next Saturday in downtown Champaign.

Santorum Suggests Stick

2005-09-07T08:07:00.000-05:00

The problem in New Orleans, apparently, is that dysentery, starvation and possible death aren't significant enough disincentives to staying.

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/
special_packages/hurricane_katrina/12577970.htm

Our future president is an asshole. Have some compassion Rick. Some people have their homes, their lives, their souls in New Orleans. An evacuation seems like a good idea, sure, but that shouldn't mean that people should be punished for not doing what they're told.

the saints come marching in

2005-08-30T21:28:00.000-05:00

I have a morbid fascination with watching natural disasters unfold. I admit it. After calling Jen Sunday I was glued to the computer looking for updates. Yesterday it looked like Katrina might not be as bad for New Orleans as feared, but today it seems worse.

A massive hurricane is only the start for New Orleans. In most places floods recede over time as water travels downhill. New Orleans, though, is the downhill. Katrina not only flooded New Orleans directly, it also damaged levees enough that both Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi are draining into it. Recovery doesn't start until the water subsides, and it will have to be pumped out. In the mean time, a city has no electricity and no potable water, and detritus from oil refineries, chemical plants and, grimly, cemeteries is sifting through the Mississippi delta.

SoI keep watching, spellbound. It's a lotfiller in real life. And much like the last American disaster I think about the planning implications. Will this push the country into a recession? Will they valmeyer New Orleans onto higher ground?

Virgin is the New Rich

2005-08-23T16:11:00.000-05:00

I saw the 40 Year Old Virgin this weekend with oh let's call her Fresh Water Mussels. I expected this to be funny, but was surprised that it was so good. Steve Carell was able to carry the movie as a lead, although he never quite broke out of his comedian's mug. Catherine Keener was more than we deserved. The overall arc of the movie was painful when it hit close to home. And the details were good - Carrell's character's Comeauesque toy collection, e.g., was more than fodder for mockery: he uses it as a crutch during a burst of frustration.

The thing is that since Wedding Crashers I've been whining about lotfiller comedies that are merely kind of funny without being anything more. Movies like Animal House in its exuberance or Ferris Bueller in its exuberance and moments of teen angst transcend feature length sketch comedy. 40 Year Old Virgin manages to transcend this as well, at least to a degree. Without giving much away, my favorite part might just be the movie's ending, a bit of incongruity reminiscent of the ending of Slapshot or other films from cinema's golden era.

Lose Weight Now!

2005-08-18T21:13:00.000-05:00

Ask me how!

I'm so entertained by the content driven advertising that Google has been sending lately. They're all about weight loss, even though I gave up the Lohan-related branding. It makes me wonder what else I can get to the blog. I might go for pharmaceuticals next.

The bloggable brody is up to $1.88 in revenue, in case you were wondering...

Guns Germs and Steel

2005-08-15T15:05:00.000-05:00

After a couple of months, and a couple of disparaging posts, I've almost finished the Dan Brown I mean Jared Diamond book Guns Germs and Steel. To his credit, Diamond is pretty knowledgable. A couple of thoughts, though:

1. Guns, Germs and Steel is a shitty name for this book given its emphasis on the ecological forces shaping human societies. A better troika lies in the concluding chapter, where Diamond recaps themes of Environment, [intra- and inter- community] Interchange, and Scale. Diamond's emphasis on the ecological/processural rather than technological/object-oriented is useful and fitting, so it's disappointing that he apparently felt the need to juice up the title.

2. Others could correct me if I am wrong, but this approach isn't exactly groundbreaking, is it? I would think that Braudel's A History of Civilizations is likely an earlier, more significant contribution to historiography. (Of course this wasn't necessarily Diamond's intent).

3. Back to the title, well, I think it matters. In calling his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, Daimond calls attention to determining factors in the superiority of one community over another in matters of war. (Even here the title does not reflect Diamond's thesis, as it ignores literacy and both guns and steel cover the same territory.) Never mind that Diamond likely picked the title merely to pander to a popular audience. What should we make of this book? What should we take from it? From one reading of Guns, Germs, and Steel, we might gain an awareness of ecology, and seek to interact with our environment in a more sustainable fashion. From another reading, one might view human history the development of separate competing communities in which common ecological concepts of dominance, invasion, colonization, etc. are accepted as a matter of course.

4. Science - particularly written to a popular audience - is a servant of human activity. If one insists that science has a kind of objectivity to it, surely one would acknowledge that how we persue scientific activity, how we write science, and how we choose to make use of it are all matters with an ethical dimension.

Many times I found Diamond's line of questioning incomplete and misguided. When we study human societies we should, first, not seek merely knowlege but also understanding and second, participate in an ethical discussion that considers whether actions are good or right. We shouldn't let science overtake the responsibility inherent in human volition. Too often throughout this book, Diamond asks why X conquered Y, giving intelligent, detailed, well-articulated answers that sum up to "because X could".

File under abstract

2005-08-15T14:20:00.000-05:00

A rather disconcerting bit from anotherbrody's blog:

Instead, I've been visiting friends and my brother all across the midwest, which is just as good -- a lot of these people will disappear into the abstract "people I used to know" part of my life soon.

I'll try to stay concrete.

Anyway, I've taken him to our world class university computing labs so he can catch up on stuff, so I'll try to catch up too. I've been meaning to write.

Four Brothers

2005-08-15T13:54:00.000-05:00

Anotherbrody and I saw Four Brothers last night. Anotherbrody found the plot tiresome, reminiscent of trite TV crime dramas like Cold Case that seem to involve an endless string of police interviews. But I liked the movie. It's a good entry in the modern cowboy genre, where the protagonists take justice into their own hands.

We also both saw The Island separately within the past week. (You might have seen adverts for this one right here on bloggable brody.) I liked it overall but, again, anotherbrody didn't. But then I'm the cinema optimist of the family...

Design and Corporations

2005-07-28T22:54:00.000-05:00

Because all you ever hear about in school is individual genius, and because I like design, and because it's earnings week and I read the Journal, I've been thinking about great design companies. Let's recognize firms that design well, or for whom design is central to their organization. It's a top three list for now:

3. Toll Brothers: They're detailing is way beyond what, e.g., Hovanian is able to do. More importantly, they've been good at developing whole new categories of residential development (think 50+ active living communities).

2. Apple: No other company is as closely identified with design. And they're products *are* good. The ipod, itunes, ilife: they're transformative. And I generally like the packaging.

1. Starbucks: Okay, first they helped introduce coffee to the mass market - or moreso changed where and how we consume it. But it's not about the coffee (and Starbucks knows it). Starbucks is giving people a third place that you can visit during the day.

Honorable mention: Proctor and Gamble, IKEA.

Lindsay Lohan to fight Duran-Duran

2005-07-21T21:16:00.000-05:00

Rumor has it that Lindsay Lohan is slated to play the, er, titular role in a remake of Barbarella. She better start snacking again. It's not like you can save the universe on an empty stomach, Lindsay...

Food for Thought

2005-07-18T19:39:00.000-05:00

Like most of the world, I'm disappointed with Lindsay Lohan. Her trajectory from young girl to young woman to young celebrity is an ugly camel's hump. The Hayley Millsesque wholesomeness of her early years was endearing enough, and the milk-fed beauty she displayed in recent pictures is a kind not often seen in Hollywood. Between filming and publicizing her recent lotfiller Herbie: Fully Loaded, however, she's gone downhill. Her well-publicized weight loss is, at best, a questionable career move.

Miss Lohan's argument that because she is a celebrity she should be shaped like one carries little weight. Rather it feeds a growing crisis in our society as the gap between the images we promote in the media and the snacker's lifestyle we maintain becomes ever wider. I have been hoping that the national publicity surrounding Miss Lohan's recent evolution would turn into national outrage. Perhaps blogs like this may help.

I, for one, am the kind of person who hungers for real, natural, healthy beauty. Are our ranks so thin?

The Bloggable Brody in Review I

2005-07-15T18:01:00.000-05:00

As this blog is coming up on its one hundredth day, I wanted to review its progress. All in all, it has turned out better than I expected. Just as intended, I have infrequently published a mix of posts about both me and topics that interest me -- though I should note that I'm publishing less infrequently than some other bloggers that I follow. I have found writing to be a rewarding experience that sharpens my thinking about important subjects. What do you think? Is there something more/less that you'd like from the bloggable brody? Have there been particular posts that you've enjoyed more than others?

The Bloggable Brody in Review II

2005-07-15T17:49:00.000-05:00

I started working with AdSense a couple of weeks ago - no doubt you've noticed the tastefully unobtrusive content-linked ads on the site. I see the ads as a first step in monetizing the bloggable brody brand. Not much happened the first week, but on July 8th, bam!, I made my first 41cents.

In case you're wondering, this site has totalled 221 page impressions, 12 clicks, and $1.03 in total earnings since I first placed ads on the site July 1st. Peak numbers were 40 impressions, 4 clicks, and $.63, all on different days.

$1.03 is a start, but I intend to make much more. Though I'm no expert, I think my 5.4% click through rate is actually pretty good. If I can significantly scale up the number of page impressions while maintaining this rate I should be sitting pretty. I'm going to work hard on this - look in the coming week for new content and a subtle rebranding of the site so that it will reach a broader audience.

Yankees at Midseason

2005-07-12T15:24:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of pessimism about the Yankees' prospects this year. At the all star break, we were stuck in third place in our division, behind Boston and Baltimore, and our record is not much better than .500. Several Yankee observers cite the team's age, defense, pitching, and farm system as causes for concern.

I am more sanguine. Though streaky, the Yankees' chances for a World Series title are better than they've been in a couple of years. Five things are coming together for us that few seem to appreciate:

1. Derek Jeter has turned into the legitimate leadoff hitter that we've been missing for a while.
2. The team's on-base percentage leads the majors, and we've drawn 146 more walks than we've given out. With Stottlemyre and Mattingly's help, the Yankees work the count better than any other team.
3. The Yankees have gotten significant contributions from rookies (Cano, Wang, and now Cabrera) for the first time in a number of years.
4. Though only three deep, the bullpen has stabilized. Rivera remains a top shelf closer.
5. With Womack, Jeter, and Rodriguez, the Yankees can now balance power with speed.

Yes, our outfield defense has been frightful at times, and our starting pitching brittle. But we have Al Leiter again - a decent bandaid - and we'll have seven starters by late August when everyone is healthy. Is there anyone else who wouldn't mind seeing eminently available Corey Patterson in a Yankees uniform come August?