Margaret Soltan provokes the latest professorial discussion of modes of address between students and faculty in email. I have taken to aping Frequent Commenter Scott by signing off emails to students with my initials (followed by the standard sig block), although if it’s 3 am and I am dispatching the latest email in a 17-round volley with a student I may slip up and use “Chris” like I would in correspondence with anyone else.

As for how to address students, I uniformly use the first name they have petitioned to go by (some schools like Duke are these days kind enough to include this on class rosters; at others, I have had to learn as I go). Alas, I am nowhere near being old and crusty enough to get away with “Mister” or “Miss” except in the most sarcastic of veins.

Update: Michelle Dion shares her thoughts on the matter.

Since I suspect a slight plurality of my six regular readers have been hanging on my Profound Expert Judgment on all and sundry matters that transpired during my vacation/apartment search/housesitting trip, I will now indulge you with my thoughts on said matters:

• The latest (alleged) NSA brou-ha-ha: same as the previous NSA brou-ha-ha. My copy of the Fourth Amendment apparently omits the clause where it says “when the president says we’re at war, this amendment shall be inoperative.”
• The immigration reform stuff: for once the president gets it exactly right, and gets to play the role of a mid-1980s fictional centrist Latin American leader for his efforts.
• Congressional corruption investigations: a missed opportunity for the Bush administration to do a good old-fashioned J. Edgar-style logroll: “you pass my immigration reform bill, and I tell the Feds to back off.”
• Absent that… well, if you think William Jefferson’s the only corrupt congressman in D.C. (much less from his own state), I have some lovely swampland in Florida I’d be glad to sell you. Then again, I once argued with a straight face that outright vote-buying ought to be legal, so it’s not like I’m particularly worked up about this scandal.
• Whining that Google celebrated Arthur Conan Doyle’s birthday but isn’t commemorating Memorial Day: getting worked up about corporate tokenism is silly. I place this on about the same level as all those non-Canadian companies that somehow shoehorn a maple leaf into the logos of their Canadian operations… symbolic nonsense that signifies nothing. (In fact, were I Canadian, I’d go out of my way to avoid spending money any place that slapped a maple leaf on its logo. But maybe I’m weird.)
• The Rebel baseball team winning the SEC: well done. Now kick butt in the NCAA playoffs.
• The Duke women’s lacrosse team: I can’t say they took the subtlest of approaches, and I won’t be caught dead wearing a “Free the Duke Three” t-shirt, but any faculty member who would ever discourage a student from standing up for her convictions (no matter the content) would be doing her a disservice.
• Houston Baker: interesting that he took the big bucks from Vanderbilt instead of going to a school that manages to reek less of “white male privilege” than Duke—i.e. pretty much any place but Vandy.
• Mike Nifong: still a putz.

In lieu of substantive content, I’ll just play Instapundit for this post:

• To Daniel Drezner (and others) on abolishing visa requirements for foreign academics who want to compete for U.S. professorships, I say indeed.
• To Steven Taylor, a hearty amen on his comments on the Jefferson investigation and a mighty heh on the unseriousness of Congress.
• To both Joy and Amber Taylor, I declare I now know too much information on clothing sizes for smaller women. (Update: I wouldn’t want Michelle Dion to feel left out.)
• And, finally, to Megan, I say that this logistic regression model doesn’t seem to be working. It’s more than Glenn would say, but I’m feeling generous.

Primary thought of the day: I should take vacations more often. While I sorta-kinda housesit for my mom in two different locations, here are some miscellaneous odds and ends:

• Trying to get a Compaq PC made in 1997 to do much of anything with the Internet is a royal pain in the ass. Much as I complain about Windows XP, it at least is more manageable than Windows 98.
• Frequent commenter Alfie and I had dinner and beers on the patio at Huey’s Southwind last night, with a surprise guest appearance by Alfie’s fiancée Annie.
• My grandparents took me out to Fazoli’s tonight, which was surprisingly good.
• Lots of recent photos are here, including a large batch from the wedding and a photo of Kamilla and me from last week in Jackson.
• I’ve been trying to catch up on my movie/TV watching while on vacation; I watched the first season of The Office (US version) on DVD, along with Jenna Fischer’s directorial debut in Lollilove, both of which were very funny.

Anyway, I’ll be spending another 36 hours or so in Memphis, and then I’ll be headed to St. Louis to look for an apartment. Toodles!

As you may have gathered from the lack of posting, I am on vacation in Memphis with Internet access that could be best characterized as “spotty.”

Those of you that care about the lacrosse thing can read the latest here, as well as the news that Our Favorite Cabbie Moez Mostafa was arrested on an outstanding warrant in what may be the clumsiest effort at witness intimidation since, well, the last time Mike Nifong threatened someone involved with the case with something.

For those of you who don’t care about the lacrosse thing, I’m enjoying my semi-working vacation. More soon, maybe…

My brief return to Durham to administer some finals and pack for my big trip has been a tad hectic—I’m currently in the calm between finishing up the grading for my southern politics class (who produced almost uniformly excellent final examinations) and having to assess 60 methods exams that I will administer tomorrow and Friday.

I mostly enjoyed my visit to Saint Louis University—the travel was about as painless as air travel can be, and my soon-to-be-colleagues were uniformly pleasant and supportive. I remain somewhat unentralled with the prospect of spending a year under the microscope as an internal candidate for a potential tenure-track position, although perhaps at least I am two years wiser than my previous time doing that and also have quite a bit less invested in the idea of staying, at least at present. Nonetheless I bought some SLU swag: a hat (black), a refrigerator magnet, a window decal, and a lapel pin, as well as suitable gifts for the parental units.

Perhaps slightly more importantly, now I have feedback from two audiences on the strategic voting paper I’ll have the opportunity to work on some revisions before sending it out again. Alas, I’ve gotten no real advice on a venue—it’s already been rejected at APR, and I think even with some revisions (primarily in terms of the battleground/non-battleground dichotomy and possibly the sophistication measure) it isn’t a Top 3 piece, which probably leaves the options looking like Electoral Studies, Political Behaviour, PRQ (although I already have a manuscript there), or maybe QJPS. I hate worrying about these things.

Life otherwise goes on. I got CC’d on a report on the Next Big Thing for the Duke undergraduate political science program—it still seems awfully unstructured to me, but then again, who cares what I think? They are going to require a stats class of students, but it will be a general ed stats class so I’m not at all convinced it will be particularly worthwhile unless followed up or accompanied by a scope-and-methods class in the discipline proper. Really getting how to use stats to analyze substantive questions in politics is a hard thing, and I don’t think stats classes aimed toward a broad range of majors really accomplish much beyond annoying students with what will seem to them like a “useless” math requirement.

Outside the academic realm, I watched Shopgirl after getting back Tuesday and quite enjoyed it. I do agree with critics who say that a different actor from Steve Martin should have done the narration, but it was only a minor issue. Jason Schwartzmann definitely made the Jeremy character work; I think the early encounters between Mirabelle and Jeremy are even more satisfyingly (and hilariously) disastrous on film than they were in book form. Dropping the Vietnam subplot was fine, as was ditching the shift in venue from LA to San Francisco late in the book; neither did that much for the original narrative.

I’ve been reading From The Archives for the past couple of weeks, upon recommendation from the Marginal Revolution gang, and I have to say it’s well worth it.

Incidentally, if I didn’t know any better I’d swear Megan was someone of past acquaintance based on this post alone, although I’m quite certain we’ve never met. Plagues and locusts indeed.

Wherein I post about things that have nothing to do with current events:

• The boss gave me tix to see the Durham Bulls in action against the Charlotte Knights Saturday evening at DBAP; here are some photos. The game was rained out in the top of the 7th, but it was pretty fun nonetheless.
• In what has to be one of the most thoroughly bad ideas in human history, my Southern Politics students browbeat me into joining Facebook. Next you know I’ll be streaking all over Durham like Will Farrell in Old School.
• I picked up this Plain White T’s album at Best Buy today; it’s surprisingly good, especially for a band I’d never heard of.
• Most of the remainder of the weekend (other than the time I spent sleeping), I looked over around 20 draft papers for my quantitative political analysis class. Although having a huge stack of papers to grade at the end of the semester isn’t the most fun experience in the world, it’s still cool to see some of the questions—and answers—that students come up with as part of the paper process. Particularly fun is seeing the students who go after underexplored questions and find fascinating stuff.

When kids learn how to do word processing (whenever and however they learn it—I know I don’t teach it), apparently nobody bothers to teach them to create page breaks by using the “Page Break” function instead of just hitting return a bunch of times. Thus, when I print it out on my printer, everything ends up FUBAR.

This is, in one word, annoying—so annoying, in fact, that I am considering a “no sending me papers via email” rule in the future.

Update: Of all the posts that someone would complain about, it would have to be this one… sheesh.

Well, I don’t think I made a fool of myself or the university in my brief via-webcam appearance on CNN’s “On the Story” this weekend; it was actually rather fun, but a little nerve-wracking at the same time. There were a few hiccups with the audio on the iSight they sent me—probably some QoS issues on the upstream link from the Mac mini—and it was a bit weird not being able to see anyone I was talking to, but otherwise it seemed to go well.

Incidentally, the reporter/producer I talked to on the air, Abbi Tatton, was very nice and something of a fan of the Monster Raving Loony Party growing up.

I doubt I’ll be going into podcasting or vidcasting on a regular basis, but it was still somewhat neat to be able to broadcast nationwide (worldwide?) from my living room.

I went shopping today at Southpoint, and outside Barnes and Noble a street performer called “Juggleboy” was, um, juggling, with some Eurotrash rock in the background. I was 99% tempted to shout “it’s not a trick, it’s an ILLUSION!” at the top of my lungs, but I didn’t want to be evicted from the property. Plus, nobody would have gotten it anyway…

I like to think that most people, at heart, try to do the right thing. Moreover, I have to wonder how people can get along in their daily lives operating under the assumption that people who don’t agree with them do so out of malice or spite. It seems like having that attitude would destroy one’s soul after a while.

Then again, maybe I’m just in a melancholy mood from putting together a bunch of IRB paperwork and finishing up my lecture notes on multiple regression, or perhaps just from stopping Love Actually at the emotional low point of the film.

Priceless: DSG forum attracts no attendees:

High hopes were not met as candidates for Duke Student Government’s 2006–2007 executive offices crowded around an empty lecture hall in the Terry Sanford Institute for Public Policy Wednesday night.

The contenders arrived at Sanford prepared to share their platforms with members of student organizations, who traditionally choose candidates to endorse.

No students were present, so the forum was cancelled.

Perhaps Duke students are more Downsian than I give them credit for being at times.

Laura of 11D recommends Consumating to those seeking “a tattooed man from Austin or a 15 year old, bass-playing chick.” I can’t say I’m in the market for either, but I suppose it beats giving fifty bucks to that eHarmony guy.

I can no longer feel guilty about having no scholarly accomplishments over spring break, as I finally got the R&R of The Damn Impeachment Paper™ out of the way, along with my measly contribution to July’s issue of PS. Maybe tomorrow I’ll do something with either the strategic voting paper or do something with the silly economic voting idea I have floating around in my head.

In other news, I found out that I have at least a week’s worth of gainful employment for the summer. Now to see if I can con someone else into hiring me for another month or so; although I could pretend I was going to get a lot done over the summer on my scholarship, the reality is that nothing in my life ever gets done without some degree of time pressure—idle hands and all that. Employment would probably make me get something done, as opposed to sitting around the apartment watching World Cup games.

This ad was seen in the ACC Tournament preview in the Duke Chronicle:

These people must work for ESPN in some capacity.

I’m afraid I’m being thoroughly useless today as I try to recover from about four weeks of sleep deprivation; all I’ve really done today is check my mail, listen to the Battlestar Galactica finale podcast from Ron Moore, and crank up iTunes in the living room.

The good news is that this coming week is spring break, so at least I should be able to get some research done, including finishing up the R&R I have from PRQ so I can get it back to the editors.

It is generally a bad sign when I get home and fall asleep on the couch watching Pardon the Interruption around 6 or so, because inevitably what happens is after a 30-minute nap I’m nicely rejuvenated to the point I can’t fall asleep again until the wee hours of the morning.

I guess the upside is that at least I can sit in front of the computer and work on some job applications to kill the time I’d otherwise be spending staring at the ceiling trying to fall asleep.

Is it just me, or does the combination of an hour-long research presentation and teaching a 75-minute undergraduate class seem like a bit much for a campus interview? I guess teaching other peoples’ classes is just karmic reward for cancelling my own classes while on these junkets interviews.

In other “interview follies” news, I’m currently playing email tag to arrange another phone interview for a one-year job in the Midwest. As it turns out, today is also a crunch day in the Spreadsheet of Death, with about a half-dozen application deadlines spread around the next week or so—my part in these applications is all done, but presumably this is the point where serious application triage begins at the recipients’ ends (and, from a self-interested perspective, where competing offers might be most useful).

Finally, my name showed up in an ad in the campus newspaper today; to my disappointment, I was not identified as a member of David Horowitz’s enemies list in the SAF’s full-page ad—instead I was merely being recognized as one of the honorees at this evening’s HOPE Banquet.

InsideHigherEd reports that the new basic Carnegie classifications are out today, which no doubt will increase the sales of Maalox on college campuses across the country; look up the new status of your favorite institutions here.

Mr. Baude on the Federalist Society Symposium in New York:

Why do women keep dragging me towards the bar?

I’m sure they’re only interested in Will’s thoughts on sovereign immunity.

At conferences, usually it’s Dieter or Scott who ends up dragging me towards the bar (at ICPSR, it was more the lure of karaoke; I do an interesting interpretation of Foreigner’s Cold As Ice). The implications of that are rather disturbing.

Some folks are making a big deal about U.N. ambassador John Bolton’s nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize, for no good reason. As Eugene Volokh pointed out when Stanley “Tookie” Williams’ Nobel nomination was being ballyhooed, the pool of people who can nominate Nobel Peace Prize candidates is rather broad, and includes all professors of the social sciences: I, for example, could nominate Friday for a Nobel if the spirit moved me to do so.

Some wags might argue that a dog would be more deserving than many past recipients of the prize, much less random nominees.

What possible value could a search committee for a non-tenure-track teaching position find in a sample of my research? I’ll concede that recommendations are valuable (if something of a chore to orchestrate), but I simply fail to see how a writing sample could be of any use whatsoever.

Serrabee comments on a list of “10 things every single girl must own.” I’m not sure anything on that list (at least, of the things that are supposed to appeal to guys) would really impress me, but then again I may not be typical of the single male population.

Sexual intercourse is alleged to improve public speaking. Factoids like this one (until now, a null set) make me wonder how much better a lecturer I’d be if I had a girlfriend.

þ: PtN.