You know those give-aways you get at conferences? The favorite one I ever saw, which I did not get because they had run out of them, was a magic wand. It was wand-shaped, with sparkles floating inside, they had a vase full of them with a note that this was the magic wand some people…
For the first time in two years, an application came in my email for a technical position from a person under 30 who was an American citizen. This isn’t because I don’t look for people. I have talked to lots of young people I know who are pretty good with computers and asked if they…
I try very hard not to laugh at a student in class, no matter what he or she says. One day, I was talking about the Kinsey Report finding that, by their mid-twenties, one out of every four or five males has engaged in a homosexual experience to the point of orgasm. I pointed out…
On my way back from Tunisia via Paris I ended up in a redneck dive bar somewhere in Georgia reading the New York Times on my Kindle while the lady next to me asked the very drunk waitress if she knew who had won at NASCAR this weekend. This sounds like the beginning of a…
This is why: A. I support affirmative action B. I think some kids succeed in math and science while most don’t. For the past several days, this call has been heard in our house at least once every five minutes, “Mom! Dad! I need help!” It is science project time for the sixth grade at…
I’m at Seattle this week, at SAS Global Forum, and it is even greater than usual. I go to several conferences each year, some because I am presenting, some because there is a topic that particularly interests me, but there are three I go to every year. Of these, SAS Global Forum is the one…
Easter. It being Easter weekend I have tried not to do too much work. The world’s most spoiled twelve-year-old has assisted in this goal insisting she needed to be taken shopping for books, nail polish and things to put in the Easter baskets. Since two of her sisters are in their twenties we need more…
Occasionally it has seemed to me that I see things a little differently than other people. Several years ago, I was co-authoring a paper on outcomes for married people with mental retardation. My co-author was an extremely intelligent person with far more knowledge of the issue than me. Looking at the first set of figures,…
When you’re a student arguing with a professor about some topic in the field, there is always the presumption that you’re wrong and the professor is right. While statistically, I would say the odds do favor that position, it seems dramatically unfair to the student at the time, especially if she is not inclined to…
Two or three lifetimes ago, I was an Associate Professor at a small, liberal arts college, teaching, among other things, lifespan developmental psychology because, well, somebody needed to teach it and I had published several articles on assessment of families and other semi-related issues. One debate in the field, I learned, was how much of…