I can’t even pretend to care about the ACC-Big Ten challenge (much less college basketball in general), and I was falling asleep on my sofa a few hours ago while watching good TV, yet for some silly reason I’m wide awake and watching Duke–Indiana on TiVo delay with Dickie V anyway.

They must put drugs in the water supply here; that’s the only explanation.

For those unable to read between the lines of my recent posts or comments, I’ve declined the offer. I won’t be publicly identifying the university in question, but let me say that I was treated well by them and my decision is in no way a reflection on the fine folks there—rather, in the end it boiled down to a question of whether or not it would be fair (to either party) for me to take a tenure-track position knowing in my heart-of-hearts that I wasn’t planning to stay.

I believe I’m still in a good position to secure a tenure-track job that is more compatible with my interests as a teacher and a scholar, and I have been assured I have a fall-back position here at Duke for the next academic year, should it become necessary. So… back to the salt mines (or at least Emacs).

Apropos my newfound popularity, I just volunteered to take on a second section of Quantitative Political Analysis in the spring in exchange for a modest pay bump and a TA to handle the grading for the two methods sections. The only real downside is that it looks like I’ll no longer have Tuesdays off.

As someone broadly sympathetic to the idea that students should have full disclosure about the courses they take, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out this effort at student-run evaluations launched by Duke sophomore Elliott Wolf. He further articulates his motivations in this op-ed in today’s Duke Chronicle.

And, in the interests of full disclosure, he’s my one lonely rating thus far.

I currently have 11 students on the waiting list to enroll in my methods class in the spring semester (in addition to the 30 already in the class). Apparently my rep for evilness hasn’t propagated very widely around campus yet…

Note to self: grow a thick skin:

“The visiting professors are not up to the quality that the Duke professors are,” said senior Kate Abramson, a political science minor and public policy studies major. She added that she was deterred from majoring in political science partly because of the lack of professors.

After all, we all know that having 17 APSRs on your vita makes you a better teacher.

As I predicted, it was one lousy day for Chris in the college football world: Ole Miss does its impression of being a good team, but doesn’t stop the key drive at the end; Duke leads at the half against Georgia Tech, then completely implodes, and the one day of my life I root for Notre Dame fricking USC wins for the bazillionth consecutive game. At least Joe Pa’s Lazarus impersonation is coming to an end, as the Nittany Lions lose to a not-particularly-great Michigan team.

My Wallace Wade observations for today (on a great afternoon for football, at least weather-wise):

• Song college bands should not perform under any circumstances: Kelly Clarkson’s “Since You’ve Been Gone.”
• Song college bands should perform on a regular basis: Jimmy Buffett’s “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” If you can get enthusiasm out of a Duke football crowd with this song, imagine what you could do with it in a real football stadium.
• Things you should not do before a Duke football game: get fall-down drunk. Although I have to say watching inebriated sorority pledges stumble around the stadium was somewhat amusing.
• Things that need to visit a tanning bed: the Georgia Tech cheerleaders. I’m not saying they were pale, just that I’ve seen albinos with darker skin tones.

Next week: Kentucky comes to Vaught-Hemingway in an untelevised game—finally, I can pencil in an SEC win for the Rebels—while the Seminoles cruise into Wallace Wade, where the real wagering action is on whether FSU fans will outnumber Duke fans.

To my infinite shock, today’s Duke Chronicle actually has three well-written, vaguely-intelligent op-eds:

• Andrey Fradkin notes new Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling’s contribution to understanding self-segregation in society.
• Boston Cote writes on the new life of BoSox fans post-Curse.
• Sarah Ball tries to justify her dating preferences.

Ok, I did say vaguely intelligent.

At the other place: I consider the difference in student attire between Duke and Millsaps, and the nature of the causal mechanism involved.

I now have the smiling faces of all 68 of my students (34 in each class) in my grubby little hands. At this rate, I might be able to put names with the faces by the end of the semester…

I had seven groups in class today do the following: come up with a way to test whether peoples’ blaming of the government for an inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina was affected by media coverage.

I think I had about ten answers. Which is as it should be, letting many flowers bloom and all that, and which goes to show that a seemingly simple question can be answered by social science in lots of different ways—sometimes with different answers. One strongly suspects the group that would have exposed different experimental groups to Shep and Anderson Cooper would have found a bit different results than the group that measured self-reported media attentiveness in a sample survey.

Here’s everything you need to know about the Virginia Tech–Duke game today:

Duke finished with 35 total yards on 53 plays[.]

If it’s possible, the game was worse than that stat. Now I know how Vanderbilt fans feel (except usually they at least score). About the only thing worthwhile about the game—besides the impromptu first down celebration a few of us had over in general admission in the third quarter and the game announcer’s almost-British level of understatement*—was the scenery.†

Now my debate for next week: do I use my (paid for) ticket to see Duke play VMI (which at least should be a competitive game), or do I stay home and pay twenty bucks to Time-Warner to watch Ole Miss–Vandy on GamePlan?

* Almost verbatim, after a 3rd and 23 screen pass that barely made it past the line of scrimmage: “the pass is complete, but short of the first down.”
† And, if my arms and legs are anything to judge by, most of the scenery is now sunburned. I never got sunburned at Ole Miss games; weird.

I made my intro class do a group discussion exercise today; I had intended it as a debate over Beard’s “An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution” thesis, but I guess my questions were general enough to become a debate over non-economic self-interest too. The kids seemed to enjoy it—for the first time, they seemed as engaged as the methods kids—and it saved me from having to lecture as much.

The class also picked up one of our 50-or-so refugees from New Orleans today, a student from Tulane. I had planned to get the class to discuss the Katrina situation next week—we’re covering federalism and state/local government, so it seemed pretty apropos—but maybe that would be a bit insensitive. Thoughts?

Since Mungowitz End is, well, ended, I suppose I’ll have to do a Will Baude-style “MungowitzWatch.” To that end, read Mike Munger’s column on ballot access in North Carolina from today’s Raleigh-Durham News-Observer.

Thus far, I have an office, business cards, and an email account. My apartment looks less like a warehouse than it did a week ago. My interview calendar at APSA is filling up. AC is still working. Dad left, Mom arrived.

Next projects: moving stuff into my office, hanging pictures at home, arranging a few more APSA interviews, finishing syllabi, revising the Quantian piece, and sorting out the study.

Use Google Maps to measure the distance along a route of your choice (in this case, how far I will live from the office in Durham). Very cool… and, given the distance, very unlikely I’ll walk it on a regular basis.

þ: Colby Cosh.

Duke trivia fact of the day: faculty and staff members can go to all the football and womens’ basketball games they like for $60. Which sport is functioning as the loss-leader for the other is left for reader speculation. Mind you, $60 to see both FSU and Virginia Tech in person from good seats isn’t a bad deal at all… particularly if you don’t much care whether the home team wins.

Today’s Washington Post carries a front-page article that (inadvertently) explains why empirically-oriented political scientists* like myself for the most part avoid doing anything that has anything close to real-world implications. And, it’s a no-win situation unless you’re a raging lefty “new politics” type (i.e., the sort who wouldn’t be hired by Democrats or Republicans to do this sort of work in the first place): somehow I doubt those in our discipline who want our discipline to be more “relevant” will be cheering the efforts of my future colleagues Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi to reinforce public support for the Iraq war and the War on Terror.

James Joyner’s comments further underscore the reasons for this reluctance:

Peter Baker and Dan Balz have a front page editorial, er “analysis,” at the Washington Post pointing out that President Bush is a politician who crafts his public speeches with his audience in mind. Even more damning is the suggestion that he hires experts to advise him.

Another data point: a few weeks ago, I made the mistake of trying to explain 50 years of empirical public opinion research to a reporter for the Jackson Free Press (for this article) who was asking why nobody voted in Jackson’s mayoral race, and all I got for it was being accused of being a “cynic.” Talk about shooting the messenger.

According to CNet, Duke has released the results of its evaluation of its iPod giveaway to last year’s freshman class. It was a qualified success:

Humanities students, particularly those studying music and foreign languages, made the most use of the devices, though the whole first year of engineering students had to use the device in a project for their computational methods class, the report said.

Among the classes that took part in the experiment were those for Spanish, in which students were evaluated on iPod recordings of themselves speaking the language. Electrical and computing engineering students, meanwhile, used the devices to record pulse rates.

“The iPod increased the frequency and depth of student interaction with audio course content through portable and flexible access offered by the iPod,” the report said.

You can read the full report here in all its nitty-gritty detail. I have to say I’m not sure what I’d do with one as a professor—beyond loading it up with music to listen to on the East-West Bus on the way to and from work, that is—at least until someone ports Stata (or R) to the iPod.

þ: Infinite Loop.

I feel like I actually achieved something this morning—I finished packing all the books in my office, except the ones I’m using for classes this summer (and the ones I’m bequeathing to my successor):

Now I get to deal with the shelves full of books at home.

Mungowitz announces his departure from non-anonymous blogging and Michelle Dion takes the opportunity to shoot a promo on him. Are we seeing the beginning of a heel turn for Mungowitz, with Hollywood “Grease” Mungowitz donning a goatee and strutting down the ramp with some hard rock entrance music? Or is he going to turn face and stop tormenting the retail minimum-wage-slaves of the Triangle? Inquiring minds want to know.

Surfing around via Technorati, I found this blog post with satellite photos of the Hernando DeSoto Bridge and a few other Memphis bridges.

Not entirely conincidentally, I started Engineers of Dreams: Great Bridge Builders and the Spanning of America on the flight back from Durham, and probably would have finished it if I hadn’t fallen asleep on the Baltimore-Jackson leg; what I didn’t realize, since I bought the book at least a year ago, but only now got around to reading it, is that the author is a future colleague. Small world and all that.

If you go to North Carolina, you’d probably expect you won’t see anything from Jackson there. If you did, you’d be wrong:

More photos from Duke and Durham are over in my Flickr photostream.

Well, I managed to get back from Durham OK today in more-or-less one piece. I don’t think I’m entirely conscious at the moment, since I had to get up at 6:15 Eastern to make my flight, but that’s OK. I think I have an apartment, but all the i’s and t’s aren’t properly dotted and crossed yet. Durham photos coming sometime soon. Last, but not least, huzzah and kudos to the incomparable Kelly (and Friday) for a ride back from the airport.

I spent today looking at more apartments than I really care to remember. I don’t know that I accomplished much, but I think the day at least let me narrow down my possibilities a bit.

Now if only I could get over the massive high-speed Internet withdrawal I’m suffering I’d be set—dragging my butt to various places with WiFi is a poor substitute for having my own access at the hotel.