Post #51

Not much bloggable stuff going on, and given the kinds of stuff I usually blog about, that's saying something.

Stuck in My Head: Chet Baker's rendition of "Do It the Hard Way" (*sigh*)

Stuck in Mr. Banality's Head: Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls" (but this now alternates with "Runnin' with the Devil" because I'm reading a book called, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal by Robert Walser, and whenever Mr. Banality sees the cover, he starts singing, "da DA . . . da da DA DA.")

Music tip of the week (as though I have enough music tips to provide one every week--HA!): Melody Gardot. Her single, "Worrisome Heart" is free this week on iTunes. Very smooth stuff.

A quick post . . .

1. I'm grading exams here at home. I poured myself a mineral water, lit the evergreen aromatherapy candle I got for Christmas (it's supposed to give me endurance . . .), and put on some Moby. It's like I'm grading in an Aveda salon.
2. Very soon, I'll either get rid of this blog or go password protected for a while. Let me know if you'd want the password.

The Prostitutes of Door County . . .

. . . understand the importance of having multiple profit centers.

During our trip to Door County last summer, we purchased pickled beets made by Bea's hos. I had forgotten about the beets and dug them out of the cabinet last weekend. They're tasty. Those b*tches know how to do pickled beets right.

I have nothing pressing to do right now. Tomorrow, I'll have 40 exams to grade. On Wednesday, I'll get about 40 more, and Thursday will bring with it twenty-three 25-30 page papers, which is kind of a lot of reading for me to get done by Monday.

To answer your question about the hearing aids, they actually don't have volume control. They don't have an on/off switch either. Here's a picture of the Oticon Delta 6000:

Note: This is so not my hand. One way you can tell is the lack of paper cuts and nasty cuticles on the pictured hand. This is obviously the hand of a professional hand model.

Of course, I chose the Oticon Delta 6000 because there is also an Oticon Delta 4000 and an Oticon Delta 8000, and people tend to choose the middle option. This is detailed in Dan Ariely's book, Predictably Irrational, which I have yet to read because Mr. Banality is reading it right now, but I know a lot about the book because Mr. Banality loves to provide me with spoilers. You might think that you can't have spoilers for nonfiction books about behavioral economics, but, oh boy, you can.

You know what else? I'll bet that there's no Oticon 2000 because no one uses "2000" in a product name anymore because "2000" is so . . . 2000. My hearing aids are pink, like the ones pictured. There were multiple colors and patterns available, including zebra striped, golf ball textured, and hibiscus print. Oticon has jumped on the "of course we support breast cancer research" bandwagon, so some miniscule percentage of the profit from the pink hearing aids goes toward breast cancer research, but I just chose them because I like pink. However, I should take advantage of this opportunity to feel all self-righteous about supporting breast cancer research. I'm so morally superior to those jackasses who buy the golf-ball textured hearing aids.

Irritable Banality Syndrome

There's a reason uncontrollable noise is used as a stressor in health psychology research. I've never been so agitated as I've been over the past week. Plus, I'm constantly distracted by "loud" noises, especially in noisy environments, which causes me to lose my train of thought and create awkward pauses in the middle of my sentences. The hearing aids should come with a warning: Sources of noises are not as close as they sound. Speaking of which, woman in the hallway on your cell phone, I do not want to know your plans for dinner tonight. Seriously.

This didn't help either:

"can i use wikipedia as a source for my paper? im having a hard time finding good sources."

This came from an e-mail message from a senior who has (supposedly) spent all semester creating a reading list of the current scholarly literature in a particular area of psychology for an advanced topics course. The paper should be 25-30 pages in length and should serve as a critical review of the extant literature in the discipline on the topic. It should include not only summary of the recent scholarly literature, but a synthesis of current views expressed by theorists and methods used by researchers in the field and an evaluation of conceptual approaches, methodology, and practical application. Is Wikipedia an appropriate source? Sweet fancy Moses. My response: "Are you seriously asking me if you can use Wikipedia as a source? For a critical review paper? Please tell me you're joking." See? Irritable.

And then:
Student: Is the exam over chapters 13 and 14 or chapters 14 and 15? Because at the top of the review sheet, it says 13 and 14, and then later it says 14 and 15.

The Banality: Well, the review sheet and syllabus say that the exam will cover the chapters on abnormal psychology and therapies. Which chapters are those?

Student: 13 and 14

The Banality: OK, so it's 13 and 14 then.

Student: Yeah, but it says 13 and 14 in one place and 14 and 15 in another place, and chapter 15 is over social psychology.

The Banality: Social psychology was covered on the last exam.

Student: Right, but on the review sheet . . .

The Banality: Well, as it says on the review sheet, the exam will cover the topics of abnormal psychology and therapies. And the review sheet lists the questions that will be covered on the exam. And those questions cover abnormal psychology and therapies. So, that means you'll need to read whatever chapters will help you answer those questions. The chapters on abnormal psychology and therapies. I think those chapters are even called, "Abnormal Psychology" and "Therapies."

Student: Right. I just didn't know which chapters they were because it says 13 and 14 in one place and 14 and 15 in another.

The Banality: Is this really confusing to you or are you just trying to point out the typo that I made in that one place on the review sheet?

Student: I just wanted to be sure.

I'm going home.

SO TO KEEP YOUR MOM FROM GRUMBLING, AND STOP YOUR STOMCH RUMBLING, AND KEEP YOUR LEGS FROM STUMBLING WHEN YOU PLAY . . .
The other morning, I put some bread in the toaster and then walked away to do something else. I heard it pop up, and when I went back into the kitchen, it was on the plate I had placed next to the toaster. It was 6:00 a.m., and Mr. Banality was still fast asleep, probably dreaming about riding around in a fuel cell car with President Obama or something. How did this happen? My first hypothesis: toast elves. I knew it couldn't be more general kitchen elves because if we do have kitchen elves, they suck at their jobs because they never do the dishes. To test the possibility of toast elves, the next morning I waited around while the bread was toasting, and I watched the toast as it flew out of the toaster and landed smack dab in the middle of the plate. So, now I know the true cause of this phenomenon: enchanted toaster.

SPEAKING OF EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE
Merrie suggested that perhaps it wasn't the Black Keys that made me want to drink cold beer, but it was the act of grading itself. To test this, I conducted a single-subject, quasi-experimental design study of the effects of music and grading on motivation to drink cold beer in a loud bar. Music type (no-music control, The Black Keys, Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, and The White Stripes) were completely crossed with grading type (no-grading control, introductory course exams, advanced course book reviews, introductory course assignments, advanced course rough drafts). All grading was conducted during early evening to control for diurnal variation in beer craving. Because motivation to drink cold beer and motivation to be in a loud bar are likely to be orthogonal factors, they were measured using separate self-report scales. RESULTS: Although motivation to drink cold beer remained high during all conditions that involved grading, motivation to be in a loud bar was present only during music-present conditions, and this was especially the case during The Black Keys condition. CONCLUSION: There are never simple answers in social science research. And also, I can't believe how quickly I can write this kind of crap.

IF IT'S TOO LOUD, YOU MIGHT BE GETTING USED TO NEW HEARING AIDS AFTER 20 YEARS OF PROGRESSIVE HEARING LOSS
The advantage: I can hear people talk! The disadvantage: I now know that I've been greatly underestimating the base rate of insipid conversations. I got my hearing aids on Monday. I've had a headache for six days now. I'm very disoriented. And also, damn, those chapel bells are friggin' LOUD.

A Teaching Tip . . .

Don't try to grade critical review papers while listening to The Black Keys. You will immediately become highly unmotivated to grade critical review papers and instead will immediately become highly motivated to drink one too many very cold beers in a dark and loud bar. And maybe shake your moneymaker a little bit, which is highly incompatible with grading papers. Or so I've heard.

Flashback Friday

It's not Friday, but I couldn't resist the alliteration.

This is a rare thing: a photo taken of me during childhood. I think this was taken on my 5th birthday. This picture illustrates several things:

1. Chocolate cake and I go way back.

2. I used to have blonde hair for reals.

3. I think we can safely blame my mother for my lack of table manners.

Although it might seem as though my mom is charmed by my attempt to shove as much chocolate cake into my gaping maw as possible, don't let her adoring gaze fool you. She's not paying any attention to me at all. Instead, she's congratulating herself on successfully color coordinating the kitchen curtains, her turtleneck, and my birthday cake. The woman is obsessed with turquoise and brown.

When this picture was taken, my mom was only a couple years older than I am now. In this picture, she is a mother of a 5 year old, a 13-year-old, and a 15-year-old, and she's rockin' the pageboy haircut, which she'll continue to do for the next 33 years of her life . My life today is nothing like her life was then, but we both can bake a tasty chocolate cake.