Death and Taxes: 2009 Poster
Have you seen this fantastic poster from WallStats?
I'm digging interesting visualizations even more than usual lately, and I especially like this one of our federal spending. I'm not posting it here to start an argument about how we should spend; I just really love the poster and how it shows us where we do spend.
Thanks, FlowingData for telling me about the poster. You should all go visit and subscribe to FlowingData immediately. You may even be able to win a Death and Taxes:2009 poster. I won't enter because I'm trying to cut down on the stuff I buy and will eventually have to move. Please, someone, win a poster and show it to me!
Best Jobs of 2008: Professor
U.S. News included "Professor" on its list of 31 best jobs for 2008. That's cool. They even provide an executive summary of why they like it so much. They're right that tenure is pretty sweet, if you can get it. They're not so right that being a woman helps you land a tenure-track job though. Beware the popular press. Well, all the press really. Just beware.
I don't mean to be a stampeding feminist, well, maybe I do. Doesn't matter. What does matter is that the gender gap in tenure-track hiring and tenure awarding is not closed, and women are most certainly not getting the advantage U.S. News claims.
Quick look at references about gender bias in tenure-track hiring:
Stenpreis, R., Anders, K.A., and Ritzke, D. (1999) The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study. Sex Roles. 41(7), 509-528.
von Anders, S.M. (2005) Why the Academic Pipeline Leaks: Fewer Men than Women Perceive Barriers to Becoming Professors. Sex Roles. 51(9-10), 511-521.
Chronicle of Higher Ed - 11/6/2006 - AAUP Report Blames Colleges for Gender Inequity Among Professors
Free filing my taxes
I'm a happy TurboTax customer and recommend them if you're looking for a free filing option. I was able to file my federal and state returns this morning for the low, low price of $0. My AGI is less than $54,000, and I am less than 30, so I had a lot of free file options. I also have a tiny bit of interest and dividend income, and sometimes that additional income means I can't use the free filing option that the big boys like CompleteTax, TurboTax, and H&R Block offer. Not so this year, TurboTax was easy-to-use and totally free. State returns aren't free in every state, but Michigan offers a free file option. Many of the federal free file options won't file your state return for free, but TurboTax will.
If E*Trade would send my 1099-DIV before January 31, I would file my taxes even earlier. I'm not interested in giving the government any extra time with the interest-free loan I provide them all year. Granted, that loan is teeny, but to me, it's a bunch of money. Someday my taxes will be complicated, and I may even want the extra couple of months to get together money to cover taxes I owe, but now while I'm broke and itching for that refund, I file ASAP. Good luck to you with your own taxes!
Poll miscalls redux
Andrew Kohut, of the Pew Research Center, thinks race is to blame for the pollsters problems in New Hampshire. Well, not race really, but "the difficulties race and class present to survey methodology." Basically, he thinks that less well-educated, poorer white people are less likely to respond to pollsters' questions, and the ways pollsters account for those refusals gets the numbers wrong. Interesting.
Why do I care? Because I really wish I could be following these campaigns with all my energy. It's a strange and wonderful time for America when the race is wide open and people besides old white guys have a shot at the Oval Office. But alas, I must dissertate.
Gloria Steinem's op-ed piece in the Times was great too. Thanks for the link, Naomi. Ms Steinem points out that "gender is probably the most restricting force in American life." I remember ranting to family in December about race and gender in regards to the Democrats running, and I think I ranted prematurely. They'll know what I mean.
RE: How wrong were the polls?
I was confused this morning to find that Senator Clinton had won New Hampshire. Here's a post from TheAtlantic.com that helps me make sense of my poll knowledge and surprise at the actual results.
Basically, pollsters had Senator Obama's numbers right (small variance between actual and projected results). They underestimated support for Senator Clinton. Matthew Yglesias offers the undecided voters as one explanation. Upon rereading, I notice that commentor Brian actually pointed out that pollsters had Senator Obama's numbers right. I wish I'd paid more attention yesterday and today so I could've thought of this myself. Well said, Commenter Brian and Blogger Matthew.
Go Dems!
Paranoia and the public blog
The Chronicle forums have a somewhat popular thread in the job hunt category in which someone asked whether search committee members read candidate's blogs or check their records on RateMyProfessor. I'm not generally paranoid about my online persona - as evidenced by the "me on x" links in the navigation - but I sense a higher level of paranoia among academic job seekers.
When I think about what about my blog sends the wrong or an undesirable message, I tend to focus on how the Kiwi WordPress theme I use doesn't actually work. I've made some adjustments to the theme, but I haven't spent hours making sure the "Recent posts" section on a blog entry page is providing some useful set of links. Yes, I have the technical skills to fix that. No, I don't think doing so is worth my time. A mistaken calculation? Time will tell. Maybe when I'm more explicitly on the job market making my blog work perfectly will be a higher priority for me. I hope that the rest of my blog demonstrates that I care about things such as civil rights, gadgets, collaboration, sustainability, and travel (not necessarily in that order). I do care about those things, and I write about them occasionally.
I expect to see an increase in the pace at which I blog, and I wouldn't be surprised if I start to blog more about my dissertation than I have to this point. It's tough to decide how much of the proverbial sausage-making to describe here. I don't want my blog to dangerously oversimplify the process of dissertation topic-selecting and eventual research, but I'm also pretty sure search committees don't need to know every time I doubt myself or my research. I'm human, and that much is clear from my work - whether on my blog, in the classroom, or in peer-reviewed publications and conferences.
Happy Halloween!
Update: I removed the "Other Recent Posts" part from the single post view. Apparently blogging about my irritations with the Kiwi theme gets me to edit it.
Re: The New College Try
In Monday's New York Times, Jerome Karabel of UC-Berkeley contributed an interesting Op-Ed piece called "The New College Try." In it, Karabel rails against the top tier universities in the country (and the systems that support them) for failing to provide access for low income students. As an Alumni Schools Committee co-chair, I spend quite a bit of time thinking about college admissions and even talking with high school seniors during their application process. At the June meeting of ASC chairs, I was disappointed to witness some of the privilege perpetuation that Karabel describes. The University of Chicago provides some advantage for the children of graduates, and probably of big donors, but it is working to provide some admissions (and tuition payment) advantages for lower income applicants as well. I'm anxious to see if those efforts are fruitful. Karabel recommends a lottery system for 5-10% of an entering class where applicants who met some high academic threshold would then be selected at random. Schools could then compare those students' performance to the other 90-95% to see if their admissions processes were good predictors of academic success. That certainly sounds like an interesting study to me.
While I recognize that there's a problem of access for low income students to top tier universities, focusing on the problems at that point obscures a greater problem - impoverished academic opportunities throughout their school lives for low income students. I'd probably add rural students to the mix too, given the shared problems of securing funding and attracting the best teachers that low income urban schools and rural schools share. Without opportunities during elementary and secondary school to discover their academic interests and strengths, students will not be able to compete come time to apply for college. Poor schools - those that don't challenge students, that have deteriorating physical resources, that have no community support, etc. - are likely to produce poor students. I wish I had solutions to that particular problem, but I don't. Perhaps Karabel's column and its challenges to top tier schools will help remind readers and others who can make a difference that the problems of access are central to our problems of education.
Good question, Dan
A reporter from the Chronicle of Higher Education covered the NSF Symposium about which I complained in Argh. Again., and you can read his story online - What's So Super About Supercomputers, Anyway?
His story doesn't answer the question, but it does get some computer scientists on record saying essentially that CS isn't the be-all end-all some might have us think. "Computing is a means to an end." Well said, Clas Jacobsen. Well, to many ends, maybe.