Academic identifiers

In response to my post about forms of address, specifically about the "first-year, second-year, etc..." distinction in effect at the U of C and UVa, the good Mr. Aufderhaar of Georgia Tech informs me that such a distinction also exists there. Once again, precision seems to be the key. The reply continues:

"How else would you be able to tell the difference between 7th and 8th year management majors?"

Indeed.

Summer reading

The New York Times has a story about two guys who wrote a book that has been compared to The Da Vinci Code. This is a good candidate for summer reading, but why do I care? Because the authors grew up in Fairfax County (my home) and went to the same high school as many friends of mine. After going to high school at a place where the smart go to get smarter, they attended college at institutions were the smart go to be told how smart they are (where they may or may not have been further educated). Sorry, I couldn't resist. Anyway, hooray for Jefferson, NoVA, and summer reading.

Forms of address

Will Baude posts about the semi-false Chicago tradition of calling everyone Mr. or Ms. X, rather than Dr., Professor, Judge, My Lord Chancellor of the Exchequer, or anything like that. I agree with his analysis and experience as follows:

Short answer: No, the undergrads don't do this either. I think it's a rather nice idea, but a bunch of 18 to 22-year-old kids face with some of the top minds in their fields rightly err on the side of being too-formal rather than being too-informal or disrespectful. That's how the "first-year, second-year, third-year, fourth-year" designations (rather than "freshman, sophomore, junior, senior") manage to stick, but this does not. Too risky.

And incidentally, while I've occasionally had professors invite me to call them by their first name, I have never addressed a Professor as "Professor X" to have them correct me and say, "Please call me Mr. X," so it doesn't seem like they're longing to bring back the rule either.

However, as far as I can tell, proper address in society at large is to address individuals by title and last name unless they have requested or indicated that you should do otherwise. Thus, I start with Dr. or Mr./Ms. -- Dr. if the person has a PhD or MD (JD's, by custom do not go by "Dr."), and Mr./Ms. if the person does not have a doctorate (as has been the case with some of my instructors). I find "Professor" to be no good for a few reasons:

1. On occasion, the individual is a graduate student, not a professor of any stripe, nor a holder of a doctorate, thus "Mr." is appropriate.

Example:In the Spring of my first year, one class I was in was taught by one Edward T. Barrett, a graduate student. I addressed him as "Mr. Barrett", not "Dr." or "Professor" because he was neither (I suppose I could have called him Major Barrett, as he's an Air Force officer, but that is neither here nor there.)

2. Professor isn't a title so much as a position. It sounds improper and perhaps even a little Commie to call someone "Professor".

Example:In the Air Force, Mr. Barrett would be called "Major Barrett"; by his rank (title), not by his job: "Pilot Barrett".

3. "Professor" is imprecise. Sometimes these individuals are not professors, but rather Assistant or Associate Professors.

Examples:Professor Lipson, fine. Associate Professor Pape, weird. R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor Mearsheimer, totally bizarre.

I think my real concern is with precision and maintaining general social convention in the academy.

As a side note: I'm also in favor of maintaining general social convention in society. When phone solicitors call me and address me by my first name, I cannot express how much such rudeness annoys me.

Another note: I'm a big fan of the "first-year, second-year, third-year, fourth-year" designations, as they allow for more precision. I am a third-year, but also a senior as I graduate in June. Incidentally, the only other place I know of that does this with their undergrads is my new academic home, The University of Virginia.

David Brooks needs a vacation

His need for a vacation is really the only plausible excuse for why he has written essentially the same editorial twice. In today's New York Times, Brooks talks about how the situation in Iraq is Bush's big gamble. While it may be fine for Bush to gamble his presidency on something that's one of his articles of faith, but I'm not sure this is the best thing for the country that has been more-or-less entrusted to him. Moreover, today's column seems to just be an extension of last week's column when he talked about our characteristically American manner of getting it right because we do it twice.

It seems that this repetition is not uncommon for Mr. Brooks. Reading this review of his latest book, it sounds like someone agrees with me. Although I haven't read the new book, from the review it sounds like a lot of it was cribbed from Bobos in Paradise.

To be fair, I'm aware that Tom Friedman can be somewhat repetitive as well. However, Friedman is less repetitive than he is formulaic (for the formula go here). But, I'd rather have repetition of form (Friedman) than repetition of content (Brooks), good or bad, and in this case, bad.

Things they don't tell you in high school biology

This is just kind of hilarious (and blatantly stolen from a friend who works in a lab doing PCR):

"Would I have invented PCR if I hadn't taken LSD? I seriously doubt it. I could sit on a DNA molecule and watch the polymers go by. I learned that partly on psychedelic drugs."

- Kary Mullis, inventor of Polymerase Chain Reaction

Incredible.

A joke

In the course of writing a paper about development in the Indian state of Kerala, a joke occurred to me, which goes as follows:

Three Empiricists and David Hume are in a car, driving through the Scottish countryside when one of them spots a black sheep in a field. He says: "Look, a black sheep! Now we know there are black sheep in Scotland." The second empiricist replies: "No, all we know is that there is at least one black sheep in Scotland." The third empiricist disagrees, saying: "Not so. In fact, all we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland that is half black." At this point, Hume chimes in and says: "You're all wrong. The most we know is that there is at least one sheep in Scotland that is half black some of the time."

This is not the joke most people expect when you say "I have a joke about David Hume [or any Scotsman, really] and sheep." But that's why I'm here, to break down stereotypes and build bridges through education.

Kandyland?

It appears that I've screwed myself over in several avenues regarding my future academic pursuits. Not due to poor grades - due to absent mindedness, laziness, and apathy. I'm not at all happy with myself about this.

Memo to self: at some more reasonable hour, write a post about modernism and aesthetics.

I spent this evening at a fine bar named Guthrie's, which among other commendable qualities has a stock of board games for the usage of its patrons. Games played included Scrabble, Clue, Candyland, and a bastardized trivia session using the questions from a game without instructions. I continue to be baffled by my relative shoddiness as a Scrabble player. My verbal intelligence, standardized testing and anecdotal evidence would indicate, is fairly strong, and yet I routinely get schooled at Scrabble. Ms. Jones equates her skill at Scrabble with her skill at crosswords - another arena in which I'm fairly weak. Perhaps it's the imaginative/spatial element of both that stymies me. I've never tried my hand at Boggle, but I'd probably suck. This is all in fact a preamble to my thoughts on Candyland.

Candyland is, admittedly, a game to be playable by children who are barely (if at all) literate. Its rules must therefore be simple, relatively nonverbal, and the game ought not to require much in the way of skill or strategy. I had also never played Candyland before this evening. Although I fared decently, I didn't enjoy the game at all, because I had nothing to do with it. I was a passive participant in a series of events entirely determined by the shuffling of a card-deck. And it occurred to me that I don't enjoy, or even understand the enjoyment, of a single game of chance. The idea of playing a slot machine for any extended period of time bores me. Due to the late hour, I'm failing to come up with other examples of games which rely most heavily on chance, but I'm sure there are many to be found among the youth-oriented games of Milton Bradley et al. Why would a person engage in an activity in which he played no effective part? I'm not speaking of passive media consumption, but the gathering of a group of people to sit around and pretend that they have something to do with the events unfolding inside their circle.

The allure of money - and the attendant thrill not only of gaining it but of losing it, depending on your nature - is obviously powerful for some people (although most truly-random gambling situations, like the roulette wheel, concern brief events which rely upon repetition to create the promise of future success. Maybe the ball landed on Red 32 this time, but the game's starting over in a second and who knows where it's going to land?! I can't imagine anyone but the most pathologically desperate gambler laying money down on the outcome of a game of Candyland). Similarly, small children may derive pleasure from the colors, the activity of moving their pieces, the sugary overtones of the game - although I wonder if I would've found that rapdily boring as a child. I was an odd child in some respects, and for one example I remember Tic Tac Toe losing much of its lustre when my father explained to me that above a certain modest skill level the game was essentially unwinnable, a fact I learned long before I actually achieved that level of facility.

I don't particularly understand gambling, but I understand gambling on sports or poker much more than I understand gambling on roulette, to return to a previous example. Sports gambling posits that (a) there are overall predictable forces at work in a contest and (b) that I have enough understanding/insight into the contest to predict its outcome (I still feel confident that the Pistons will win the series, incidentally, despite their loss tonight). Poker or any number of other games even more directly involve betting on my skill at whatever is relevant. I can't imagine betting on roulette more than once or twice. I can't imagine ever wanting to play Candyland again, unless it was with a small child for whom I held a great deal of affection. I don't get games of chance. Perhaps I just have insufficient belief in the small scale powers of luck. Over long periods of time I waver between believing in karma vs. chaos; over short periods of time I just don't buy that there's any such thing. But maybe that's just because I have bad luck (despite doing alright at Candyland, I was in last place when the game was decided, because other people had the luck to get cards which enabled them to jump long distances ahead of me; the one such card I received actually reversed my progress).

Also: Candyland's board has such an intense focus on alliteration that it posits King Kandy as lord of the Candy Castle. Way to confuse the kids about spelling, guys.