The Left Speaks!

Well, the Rightist speaks on the left's behalf over on my new favorite blog, crack skull bob.

The artist's left hand goes out of control and commits a comic strip on love. Here is the explanation the Rightist gives:

This was a comic drawn many years ago by my left hand unbeknownst to the rest of my body. This was a frequent problem during my youth, my left hand being sullen and resentful because of the adulation showered upon my right hand. Kind of a Left of Eden scenario. Righty got to do all the spectacular cross-hatching and trumpet-fingering and imperious gesticulating, while Lefty was given menial jobs such as holding my penis while I urinated. Over the years he has mellowed somewhat, but every so often I will feel a vicious pinch on my left side, and will have to stop what I'm doing and stroke my left hand gently, crooning "Never you mind, left hand. Never you mind."

In my own corporeal dispensation it is the other way around. Occasionally I take the right hand out for a trot around the writing pad just so it won't get too sulky.

Though it shouldn't since I grew up in a rightist imperialistic dictatorship (aka the family) that forced, forced I say, me to learn to play all sports with the right hand.

Bookmarks are for sissies

I found a blog that looked interesting, smart, and amusing, not in that order. Just so I won't lose track of it, I am linking to it here. Perhaps it will divert me and Carmen as we get buried under 10 + inches of snow tonight.

I'm too lazy and inept to organize my bookmarks in any meaningful way.

Quote for the day

Napping, writes James B. Maas, a Cornell University sleep expert, “should have the status of daily exercise.”

from the NYT.

Right and Left - it's how you feel

Nicolas Kristoff has an odd little column on the mental peculiarities of people who strongly identify as 'Liberal' or 'Conservative' in politics. It seems there are some basic personality traits for both types. I am not yet sure what I think of this, but it is interesting.

Studies suggest that conservatives are more often distressed by actions that seem disrespectful of authority, such as slapping Dad. Liberals don’t worry as long as Dad has given permission.

Likewise, conservatives are more likely than liberals to sense contamination or perceive disgust. People who would be disgusted to find that they had accidentally sipped from an acquaintance’s drink are more likely to identify as conservatives.

The upshot is that liberals and conservatives don’t just think differently, they also feel differently. This may even be a result, in part, of divergent neural responses.

I actually display some elements of the conservative type, yet most conservatives find me too left wing, in a wishy-washy sort of way. My ailing colleague Trotsky thinks I am an anarchist at heart. So I would be an anarchist who respects authority. I see myself sort of floating around not so much in the middle but at the margins of both. Very much the way I am about handedness. I am a lefty who does many things right handed without giving it any thought.

though there was that unfortunate incident with the iron designed for right handers the first time I ever attempted to iron my own clothes. Stupid iron.

So there.

Just in case anyone thought I (or you) was spending too much time browsing the Internet.

Understanding the Financial Crisis

As an economist I make a pretty good historian. I simply listen to what people say about the financial crisis, don't understand it, and look at the past to see who was wrong, who was right, who was clueless, in the past, and make my assessments.

Doesn't always work.

But today I found this neat little video on Andrew Sullivan that explains the whole fiasco with cute little pictures and elementary school words.

At last I understand.


I think.

Personal update

I have been busy this semester. It was a real shock to go back to work after being off to work on my own research for six months. And since I am no longer ass't chair I had to go back to teaching three classes. I am also on the Departmental Personnel Committee which is time consuming under the best of circumstances and this year will not present the best of circumstances. Not even remotely. I have already told the school lawyer (who is not really a lawyer) that I thought their opinion on personnel matters was nonsense that did not even pass the test of common sense - or something like that - and expect it to get a lot worse as time goes by.

Oh, and I went to Georgetown in the District of Columbia for a conference this weekend.

All of which is just to say that I have not been blogging much in the last few months, but expect to pick up the pace again. For my own mental health if nothing else.

My new weird little machine, the NEO

It's not really a laptop and its not really a typewriter (remember those?). What is it good for? I have just read two articles that help explain my thinking after the fact - at the time my thinking was more intuitive than rational.

Rob Pegoraro in the technology section of the Washington Post makes the point that "Laptop design has advanced a great deal over the past decade, but a few things still generally hold true: Batteries won't last through a cross-country flight, and affordable laptops weigh too much." This is certainly true - and it's the "affordable" part that hurts the most.

Jon Miller in an odd little blog I found this morning called Gemba Panta Rei makes a slightly different point.

As much as I love the bells and whistles of modern day word processing, there are built-in interruptions and flow-stoppers on my laptop that make me wonder if we wouldn’t be better off going back to our manual typewriters, telephones, and other examples of pre-21st century office productivity tools.

In other words, the laptop has so much stuff crammed into it that it is a distraction all by itself. While you are typing, you can also check your e-mail, play solitaire, cruise the web, get instant messages, and watch a cartoon on You Tube. He concludes

Economist use statistics to tell us that information technology has vastly improved productivity. Perhaps. There are times like this week when I wonder if a single-function machine wouldn’t serve me better.

My solution to this was to buy a Neo by Alpha Smart. This is what it looks like. It only does one thing - type. It has a full featured word processor in its little brain and can produce text files that are then transferred to your computer in whatever application you wish.

I've just gotten it and will keep you posted on how useful it is, but it sure solves the problems listed above. It is cheap (not even $225). It is as light and as small as a notebook. I mean a real notebook, not a computer. It is rugged, since it was originally designed for children. Also very simple to use. And you won't be distracted by anything else emanating from your own machine. It doesn't do anything except produce text. And perhaps best of all, its three AA batteries will keep it going for about 700 hours.

It will be perfect for on the bus, in a bar or coffee shop, and above all, in a library doing research. I can type up my notes, take the little machine home and dump the files into my WordPerfect files on my computer.

Attempts at a new schedule

Now that school is back, I am going to have to try out a new schedule. One thing is clear: I have to be productive first thing in the morning if I want to get anything done. I am no longer very productive late in the evening, perhaps because of sleep problems or simply advancing age. I used to get a lot done after midnight but now all I can do in those hours is surf the web and play spider solitaire neither of which will look good on my annual report.

I will try to get up before 7 every morning, do my little routine, and hop the bus by 7:30 or get in the car and leave by 8. I want to be in my office working by 9 and to stay until 6 or so. Then when I get home I can relax, read, and play with my blogs.

The only problem so far is that it seems to take me about 2 hours to actually become fully awake. I drink a little pot of coffee first thing, but caffeine has never had all that much effect on me. Writing my matins helps as much as anything. I will give it a try. I certainly have to try something - the last few years have seen me falling further and further behind in all of my work. I blame it all on incurable sleep apnea.

i.e. ... it's not my fault.

Update

After getting back from that place down south I immediately had to start acting like I still had a job, i.e. the new school year started. Monday bright and early I went off to several meetings where I was told all kinds of irritating stuff. For instance the senior checks which are time consuming and detailed will no longer be done by administrative staff trained to do it, but by the professors. I guess they didn't think we had enough to do. But as I have always said, the good folks of North Carolina can either pay me to teach their children or to push paper. Seems like they are content with the latter.

Tuesday classes started. After six months out of the class room I am trying to get back into the swing of things. So far so good. I am determined to try to get most of my work done during the day and not have things hanging over my head every evening and weekend so have been unusually busy the last few days.

Hence, very few posts. I am not sure how much blogging I will do this semester, but we'll see.

Mora loses another one!

After weeks of truly inspired procrastination, just when it looked like my own personal demon, Mora, would win another round, I came from behind and completed my paper. I admit it was a little too close for comfort. I only had half of it done when I got on the plane with Maeread's mother, Maire (pronounced almost like 'Mora' now that I think of it). We got to Detroit an hour late, thanks to NWA, got a rented car and drove across Michigan. Other than a fortuitous stop at a great German restaurant it was a pretty dull trip. We got to our rooms about midnight and I went right to bed, plotting carefully in my mind exactly what I would have to write today.

Got up early, spent almost the whole day in my room writing the rest of the paper out in longhand - making great use of one of my favorite fountain pens by the way - and got it finished 25 minutes before I had to rush downstairs and deliver it.

It was a great paper. Everyone said so, although they were a little puzzled why the ink was still wet.


.

The Chariot Paper: An update

Ha! It is 11:30 on Friday night and the paper is finished. Covers the spread of chariots from Greece to China, and from Siberia to Egypt. Spent the afternoon selecting four or five pictures for a powerpoint presentation. The paper is brilliant - well, by definition a mediocre paper that is done is better than a brilliant paper that is not done. I learned that in graduate school.

So bright and early I will run up to school and listen to the keynote address by a BIG NAME from California (why do they always end up in California) and then find a place where I can nap until I deliver my paper at 1 pm.

(and, of course, thanks to Anactoria for that little update on how time was running out).