somewhere between jedi and jackhole

People have varying reactions to my research presentations, only some of which involve projectiles hurtling toward the lectern. The most memorable positive response came more than a decade ago. As soon as I finished speaking, a woman stepped quickly to the podium and looked me right in the eye, saying, “You’re like a Jedi!” Now, maybe her reaction had something to do with my tunic and belt pouch (I kid, I kid…), but it just so happens that I was feeling clear and good and true about the work I was presenting. If only for this one presentation of a single research study, I felt like I was firing on all cylinders as a social scientist, taking apart a problem and putting it back together in a smart and useful way.

No one has called me a Jedi since (or, if you prefer, “called me a Jedi since, no one has, hmm?”). Though I did not realize it at the time, that sort of clarity and focus does not come along every day – at least not in my career. As we start a brand new year and a fresh semester down at the brain mill, I’d like to challenge myself to do more of this kind of teaching and research and less of the other kind of teaching and research. The trick is that good and true science (and art) simultaneously demands both the self-confidence to think differently and the selflessness to set aside one’s personal interests and prejudices, however temporarily, in pursuit of some higher ideal. I say “temporarily” because eventually the world outside our labs, offices, or studios always creeps back in -- and with it, our vanity and insecurity.

Undue praise, for example, seems to upend the delicate balance of confidence and selflessness, such that being called a Jedi is likely to turn one into a complete Jackhole instead – arrogant, self-serving, and unmoored from all manner of higher ideals. I witnessed a few Jackholes while hanging backstage as a music writer and, truth be told, hanging at professional meetings as an academic. Left unchecked, or perhaps stoked by undue criticism, the Jackhole can quickly degenerate into the more destructive narcissism of the Common Bully, whose envy or resentment is manifest in cruelty. A fourth possibility is the absence of both confidence and selfishness, which I’d characterize (and recognize) as the sad state of Weeniedom. The weenie is neither beating up on anybody nor making any of the sorts of waves one must make to do good work. 

I know that the world is much more complicated than a two-by-two table would suggest, much less a graphic that is loaded with such loaded terms. But sometimes such images can be helpful in personal mojo reclamation projects and some of us have indeed visited all four of its quadrants. Just as Jamey Johnson wants to be filed somewhere between Jennings and Jones, I'd happily reside somewhere between Jedi and Jackhole.

a broader-based response to shootings

I've been reluctant to write about the terrible events at Sandy Hook Elementary School because the wounds are still too fresh for any kind of dispassionate analysis. As a social scientist, however, I'm disappointed by the fear-mongering and selective presentations of the research evidence I've read in reports and op-eds about Friday's awful killing.

Such events could help move us toward constructive actions that will result in a safer and more just world -- or they could push us toward counter-productive and costly actions that simply respond to the particulars of the last horrific event. I will make the case that a narrow focus on stopping mass shootings is less likely to produce beneficial changes than a broader-based effort to reduce homicide and other violence. We can and should take steps to prevent mass shootings, of course, but these rare and terrible crimes are like rare and terrible diseases -- and a strategy to address them is best considered within the context of more common and deadlier threats to population health. Five points:

1. The focus on mass shootings obscures over 99 percent of homicide victims and offenders in the United States. The numbers should not matter to parents who must bury their children, but they are important if policy makers are truly committed to reducing violent deaths. There are typically about 25 mass shootings and 100 victims each year in the United States (and, despite headlines to the contrary, mass shootings have not increased over the past twenty years). These are high numbers by international standards, but they pale relative to the total number of killings – about 14,612 victims and 14,548 offenders in 2011. In recent years, the mass shooters have represented less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the total offenders, while the victims have represented less than one percent of the total homicide victims in any given year. We are understandably moved by the innocence of the Sandy Hook children, but we should also be moved by scores of other victims who are no less innocent. There were 646 murder victims aged 12 or younger  in the United States in 2011 alone -- far more than all the adults and children that died as a result of mass shootings.

2. The focus on mass shootings leads to unproductive arguments about whether imposing sensible gun controls would have deterred the undeterrable. As gun advocates are quick to point out, many of the perpetrators in mass shootings had no “disqualifying” history of crime or mental disorder that would have prevented them from obtaining weapons. And, the most highly motivated offenders are often able to secure weapons illegally. Even if such actions do little to stop mass shootings, however, implementing common-sense controls such as “turning off the faucet” on high capacity assault weapons, tightening up background checks, and closely monitoring sales at gun shows are prudent public policy. But the vast majority of firearms used in murders are simple handguns. I would expect the no-brainer controls mentioned above to have a modest but meaningful effect, but we will need to go farther to have anything more than an incremental effect on mass shootings and gun violence more generally.

3. The focus on mass shootings obscures the real progress made in reducing the high rates of violence in the United States. I heard one commentator suggest that America had finally "hit bottom" regarding violence. Well, this is true in a sense -- we actually hit bottom twenty years ago. The United States remains a violent nation, but we are far less violent today than we were in the early 1990s. Homicide rates have dropped by 60 percent and the percentage of children annually exposed to violence in their households has fallen by 69 percent since 1993. We can and should do better, of course, but these are not the worst of times.

4. The focus on mass shootings exaggerates the relatively modest correlation between mental illness and violence. Those who plan and execute mass shootings may indeed have severe mental health problems, though it is difficult to say much more with certainty or specificity because of the small number of cases in which a shooter survives to be examined. We do know, however, that the correlation between severe mental illness and more common forms of violence is much lower -- and that many types of mental health problems are not associated with violence at all.

5. The focus on mass shootings leads to high-security solutions of questionable efficacy. Any parent who has attempted to drop off a kid's backpack knows that security measures are well in place in many schools. Rates of school crime continue to fall, such that schools are today among the safest places for children to spend so many of their waking hours. In 2008-2009, for example, only 17 of the 1,579 homicides of youth ages 5-18 occurred when students were at school, on the way to school, or at school-associated events. Of course we want to eliminate any possibility of children being hurt or killed at school, but even a 2 percent reduction in child homicide victimization outside of schools would save more lives than a 90 percent reduction in school-associated child homicide victimization. While every school must plan for terrible disasters in hopes that such plans will never be implemented, outsized investments in security personnel and technology are unlikely to serve our schools or our kids.

In the aftermath of so many deaths I am neither so cynical as to suggest that nothing will change nor so idealistic as to suggest that radical reform is imminent. I'm just hoping that the policy moves we make will address our all-too-common horrors as well as the rare and terrible events of the past week.

demolition derby and the social construction of injury

When people ask why I pursued or persist in sociology, I sometimes say that the world just makes no sense without it. With a few basic concepts, some systematic observation, and a little analysis, however, we can at least begin to fathom the unfathomable. Today's new TSP feature on genocide by Hollie Nyseth Brehm offers a grim example, but my favorite physical therapist offered another illustration this weekend. She had just attended a conference on understanding pain and injury -- a big part of any PT's job -- and came across some cool studies on the social construction of these phenomena.

My favorite new example is Neck Pain in Demolition Derby Drivers by Alexander Simotas and Timothy Shen in Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. In the general population, about 10 percent of people who have a car collision will develop chronic severe neck pain. Doctors Simotas and Shen surveyed 40 demolition derby drivers, who had undergone a median of 1,632 lifetime collisions at an average estimated speed of 26 miles per hour, 55 percent of which were rear-end, with no special safety equipment. Yet only 3 of the derby participants (7.5 percent of the sample) reported even mild chronic neck pain and none reported moderate or severe chronic pain.

 In short, the "accidents" experienced on the street appear to exact a much greater toll than those at the county fairground, even though the events involve the same biomechanics: an "acceleration-deceleration mechanism of energy transfer to the cervical spine." The sampling strategy and response rate are not ideal in this study, but I suspect that the basic pattern of results is likely to hold up to a more rigorous analysis.

 In my view, the question is less about whether these injuries are socially constructed than about the relative contribution of various social determinants. From a sociolegal or economic perspective, one might look to financial incentives (e.g., it appears that chronic neck pain after car accidents is far less prevalent in nations (such as Greece) where victims receive little financial remuneration). From a sociology of sport perspective, one might explain the denial of injury among participants in terms of the culture of risk surrounding contact sports. Finally, the fact that offending drivers (the "hitters") experience far fewer symptoms than the targets (or "hittees") suggests that playing social roles as aggressors or victims might also be important. The emotions of the events are obviously quite different as well, with derby likely invoking fun or thrilling feelings, while car accidents tend to invoke fear or worry.

 Of course, the fact that whiplash injuries are socially constructed doesn't mean that myriad other physiological and  psychological mechanisms are not also in play. In fact, my personal explanation for these results is a biopsychosocial theory developed to account for my immoderate pie-eating behavior:  anything this wonderful has just got to do a body good.
     

crime, community, and clostridium difficile

When you take a course of antibiotics to zap a bacterial infection, you can also lay waste to a lot of healthy bacteria that your body really needs. And once you’ve wiped out the healthy flora in your gut, you’re vulnerable to nasty bacteria such as Clostridium Difficile, which brings symptoms ranging from severe diarrhea to life-threatening colon problems. Though I’m skeptical-bordering-on-terrified of organicist arguments in sociology, hearing a talk by Minnversity colleague Mike Sadowsky on “C. diff.” brought some parallels in social research to mind. Before proceeding, I should acknowledge the obvious “ick factor” in this post, but bear with me a moment.

As Dr. Sadowsky explained, one successful treatment for recurrent C. diff infections involves fecal transplantation – essentially implanting a donor’s stool sample in a recipient to repopulate the healthy colonic flora and restore bacterial balance. Within a very short time, the donor’s gut flora is typically brought back to healthy equilibrium. Now that might sound icky (even when said sample is freeze-dried), but it is way less icky than surgical treatments like colectomy. What really got me thinking was my colleague’s big-picture conclusion that much of the past century of U.S. research in this area had been devoted to isolating and zapping the bacterial delinquents, while much of the next century seems devoted to restoring the whole to healthy balance. And, if I understand things correctly, it turns out that the latter approach is actually a lot simpler than specifying, modeling, and manipulating the complex interactions among myriad bacteria that may be “good” or “bad” depending on the particular combination and circumstance.

Of course, certain Ghosts of Sociology Past, Present, and Future think about societies in quite similar ways. No, people aren’t bacteria and communities aren’t intestines, but you don’t have to be a functionalist or an organicist to draw some basic analogies. For example, as William Julius Wilson points out, it is the social isolation of the urban poor that exacerbates the challenge of redressing imbalances and (re)building the institutions needed for basic community functioning. More generally, social interventions, like medical interventions, sometimes bring their own pathologies or iatrogenic effects. Like the overprescription of antibiotics behind the apparent C. diff epidemic, the grand American experiment with racialized mass incarceration, has had untold effects on individuals, families, and communities that are only now coming into focus.

I won’t speculate here about how to restore social systems to healthy balance, but some of us try to at least consider such questions in our research. In some cases, this involves calling out the problems associated with attempts to isolate and zap our more delinquent members. In others, it involves identifying and assessing viable alternative approaches to reducing harm -- regardless of any potential "ick factors" that might be associated with our research.

ass over teakettle

I can't really explain it, but Minnesotans get all cozy and romantic when the temperature drops. Blame it on the sweaters and hot chocolate, I guess. As for outdoor activities, I'm a big proponent of winter running. I tell newbies two things: (1) it is pretty unlikely they'll freeze to death; and, (2) they might actually survive a slip on the ice -- if they'd just learn to fall correctly. I was going to write a quick post on the latter point, but my new cranberry joy diffuser inspired some weapons-grade bad poetry. Time of the season, I suppose.

Ass over Teakettle

When the sun drops at 4:40,
And the roads start freezing up,
Winter runners all fall down,
Eventually.

The ice will flirt and tease,
Until you stretch your stride too far,
Or look where you’re not going,
And then you’re going down.

But in that slide-whistle moment,
With feet so strangely suspended,
Don’t waste your cartoon star turn,
Feeling ridiculous.

And never stiff-arm a frozen street,
With bony fingers and soft palms,
Force equals mass times acceleration,
And hands equal twigs plus crepe paper.

Just loosen up and tuck it in,
Trust your butt and shoulders,
And the ground might catch you gently,
Like a rec-room beanbag chair.

No skin off your nose,
(Well, maybe just a little),
But it beats those indoor treadmills,
High-tech hamster wheels.

Yes! Winter runners all fall down,
Breathing sweet cool air,
In the silver-blue light,
Between stars and snow.

design time

In social science, as elsewhere, an elegant design makes all the difference. When I hear a great talk or read a first-rate article, I'm geeked up both by the new discovery and by precisely how the discovery was made.  And while I try to stay on top of the latest and greatest methodological techniques,  I most appreciate social scientists who can responsibly render the world's complexity in a simple and comprehensible manner.

Design should never say, 'Look at me.' It should always say, 'Look at this'. - David Craib

I doubt that designer David Craib attends a lot of social science presentations, but he might have liked a talk I heard at the American Society of Criminology meetings last week. Patrick Sharkey of New York University spoke about how exposure to violence might affect kids at school. The answer is important both for assessing the social costs of crime and for understanding the sources of persistent educational inequalities. And since an ethical researcher would never want to experimentally manipulate a child's exposure to violence, we need to be especially creative in making good use of the available "observational" data. Professor Sharkey has been pursuing such questions for several years and he's now assembled a lot of evidence from different cities using different methodologies. Last week's talk matched test score data from New York City public schools with very precise information about the dates and places in which violent crime was occurring throughout the city. To isolate the effect of violence, he compared kids who experienced violent crime on their block just before the scheduled tests with kids who experienced violent crime on their block just after the test date. I'd never considered such a design, but was immediately attracted to the idea of using time's arrow in this way. By talk's end, I was convinced that recent exposure to violent crime reduces performance on reading and language tests.

This design is a lot cleaner than trying to name, measure and statistically "control for" everything under the sun that might influence both test scores and neighborhood violence (e.g., poverty, gang activity, lead exposure ...). Another powerful approach in such situations is to use each student as his or her own control, testing whether test scores drop below student-specific average scores after exposure to violence. Professor Sharkey (along with Nicole Tirado-Strayer, Andrew V. Papachristos, and C. Cybele Raver) employ this technique as well as the pre/post-exposure design in a new American Journal of Public Health article. Each method has its advantages, but they are especially convincing in combination. I'd imagine that the pre/post-exposure comparison would be especially helpful in situations in which the researcher lacks a long series of repeated measurements on the same individuals. Since I often find myself or my advisees in such situations, I'm sure I'll be borrowing this idea before too long.

Every designers’ dirty little secret is that they copy other designers’ work. They see work they like, and they imitate it. Rather cheekily, they call this inspiration. — Aaron Russell

Maybe these results seem obvious to you (if so, does it also seem obvious that the effects of violence would be much weaker for math tests?), but conclusively nailing down such relationships is extraordinarily difficult.  Or maybe a design comparing data collected "ten days before" with that collected "ten days after" just seems too simple mathematically to make a convincing case. I'd disagree, as would many designers.

Math is easy; design is hard. — Jeffrey Veen

swing state disenfranchisement image from the prison policy initiative

Here's an election image from the smart and creative folks at the Prison Policy Initiative, adapting some data from our recent Sentencing Project report on felon disenfranchisement. 

vandals strike!

Vandals struck my office door sometime during a morning meeting with Sarah Lageson and Mike Vuolo.  No arrests have been made, but we've put the building on lockdown and identified certain persons of interest to the investigation.

blisteringly good times

Well, marathon #27 is now in the books and it just wouldn't be marathon day without a few reflections and a not-safe-before-breakfast image. I recognize that this is the sort of annoying personal stuff that should be emailed closed-circuit to fellow plodders, but I'll post it for the few far-flung friends who tell me they enjoy the running stuff.

It was sunny and crisp in the MSP and pretty much perfect running weather. I ran happy and healthy, save for the slight blisteration above. My pastiness  exaggerates blisters, with the color scheme resembling nothing so much as my grandmother's rice pudding with raspberry sauce (but yeesh, look at the difference in the arches -- you can still see that torn plantar fascia from 2008). I never really notice blisters until well after the race -- usually when I'm trying to wedge my feet into dress shoes for a Monday faculty meeting. I'm not alone or particularly tough about this. After twentysomething miles, most runners have got too many things hurting below the skin to really notice a blister. This year, there were a few moments that reminded me of an old Dylan song, but the Andy Bernard-level nippular excoriation of 2011 is officially a thing of the past, thanks to a silky new singlet.

The live music was wonderful along the way, with great drums and horns and accordia and something that sounded like Jerry Garcia playing Neil Young. I always enjoy hearing Chic's Good Times as I cross into St. Paul, since the Nile Rodgers chicka-chicka riff sets a lovely pace. Today, though, I couldn't stop smiling at the lyrics, "Clams on the half-shell, and roller skates. Roller skates." I know the seventies are over, but dang. That's my kind of party.

I ran a 3:59, which was 16 minutes off last year's pace, but perfectly a-ok for today. I trained way too lightly for this one and went out way too fast, quickly overheating. I ended up shedding sweatshirt for singlet before the temp was above freezing. At that point, I recalled that "there are old out-of-shape marathoners and there are bold out-of-shape marathoners, but there are no old, bold out-of-shape marathoners." So I plugged along at a respectable pace but not one likely to blow any gaskets. As for next year, once again I face the choice between getting serious about training or just continuing to appreciate running where and when I feel like it. Good times either way...

feelin' the feelin'

I was delighted to read that Nick "The Feelin'" Mrozinski landed a spot on Team Cee-Lo on NBC's "The Voice."  I was fortunate to share billing with The Feelin' (a/k/a Nicholas David) on one of my all-time favorite research presentations a few years back.

TSP grad board member/musician/entrepreneur Sarah Lageson set the whole thing up: why not combine a research release with a performance by an amazing musician and a fundraiser for a worthy community organization? So I gave my first powerpoint presentation on the effects of low-level criminal records at the Downtime Bar. It might seem strange, but the research paired perfectly with Mr. Mrozinski's smart and soulful repertoire -- as well as the strong Surly beer on tap at Downtime. I was nervous at the start of the talk, but loosened up once I got a "right on!" and head nod from The Feelin'. I'm starting to feel a TSP-sponsored concert series coming on, alternating presentations of our featured papers with inspired and inspiring music. In the meantime, I hope that fans of The Voice and TSP might a send a li'l love and support the Feelin's way.

prevalence of violence in households with children

A new Bureau of Justice Statistics Report by Erica Smith and Jessica Truman shows a significant decline in the Prevalence Of Violent Crime Among Households With Children, 1993-2010. The study is based on the large-scale annual National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and it differs from standard victimization reports in its explicit focus on households with kids.

The chart below shows the percentage of households with children in which at least one member age 12 or older experienced nonfatal violent victimization (rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault) in the previous year. This does not necessarily mean that the children witnessed the violence or that they were even aware of it, but it does give us a pretty good sense of whether kids are living with household members who are themselves experiencing violence. And the NCVS provides the sort of high-quality nationally representative survey data that are useful in charting big-picture trends. According to the report, this rate dropped from 12.6 percent of children to 3.9 percent in the past 18 years (the blip in 2006 is due to a shift in methodology). That's an impressive 69 percent decline since 1993. 

 

These numbers still seem high to me, but I think it is because simple assault (which encompasses a pretty broad range of behavior) accounts for the bulk of the violence (about 2.6 percent of the 3.9 percent total in 2010). Which kids are most affected? Children in urban areas, children of color, and lower-income children are most likely to live in households experiencing violent victimization. Rates are significantly higher for urban households with children (4.5 percent) than for rural (3.6 percent) or suburban (3.2 percent) households. With respect to race and ethnicity, rates are lower for households headed by Asians/Pacific Islanders (1.4 percent) than for households headed by multiracial persons (5.6 percent), American Indians/Alaskan Natives (5.3 percent), African Americans (4.9 percent), Hispanics (4.0 percent), and Whites (3.4 percent) (the authors caution, however, that estimates for several of these groups are based on a small number of cases). There is also a very clear socioeconomic gradient to violent victimization: the greater the household income, the lower the rate of violent victimization, as shown below.

 

This sort of story might be familiar to criminologists: the overall crime situation is improving, but victimization is heavily concentrated among the most disadvantaged. Nevertheless, this report is important and useful in showing how children's proximity to violence is changing in some ways -- and not changing in others.

magazine obituaries

If you really love a small publication, I hope you'll someday have the opportunity to visit its offices. Take a firsthand peek behind that impressive professional masthead and you might discover that the whole awesome shebang runs on the caffeine and good energy of a tiny crew with an even tinier budget. Stick around a bit longer and you'll want to buy this crew lunch. And maybe an air conditioner and a few decent chairs.

Seeing the conditions under which your favorite magazine is produced would likely deepen your respect for its staff and your appreciation for its content. The only downside to visiting is that it might sting a bit more if and when the publication can't make it financially -- and you're confronted with an editor's letter that starts reading like an obituary.

With so many good publications struggling to stay afloat, I've been reading a lot of obituaries lately. Around here, the TSP team was especially disappointed to see the Utne Reader leave Minnesota in a cost-cutting move. Founder Eric Utne, Editor David Schimke, and the wonderful Utne staff have been a special source of inspiration and guidance for our own rag-tag crew.

This week, I was disappointed to see FINAL ISSUE! on the cover of Twin Cities Metro magazine and to read Dana Raidt's final editor's letter.

[T]his magazine has always been a labor of love. And you can only expect content of METRO’s caliber to be produced with few resources and little in the way of financial return for so long. You can only work so many hours, fight so many uphill battles and burn so much of your creative energy before it’s time to file the whole situation under “shit happens” and move on with your life. So that’s what we’re doing: choosing to remember the good, learn from the bad, give credit to everyone who furthered our beyond-ambitious mission and honor you, the people who supported the magazine—and therefore, us—by buying it and singing its praises... [P]roducing this issue knowing it is our last has been a challenging, heartbreaking and surreal process.

Ouch. For six years, Metro consistently managed to place well-researched stories on topics like gender inequality and the school achievement gap amid fluffier stuff on the best dive bars and the beautiful people of Glamorama. More personally, I admired Metro's art and illustrations and their engaging layout and design work. While I don't know much about their operations, I know that it requires creativity, dedication, and talent to consistently deliver such well-designed pages on a shoestring.

Publications such as Metro and Utne would seem to have little in common with academic journals, but the best journal editors bring the same passion to their work -- and many express sentiments similar to those of Dana Raidt when that work is concluded. The difference, of course, is that we academic editors tend to have day jobs and steady paychecks as professors -- unlike the talented folks who staff our journals and our magazines. At an independent press gathering in the depths of the recession, one editor assured me that she never worried about losing health insurance -- she'd never had any health insurance to lose.

So if you really love a small publication,  find ways to promote, celebrate, and support those who work so hard to produce it. Don't let your subscription lapse and don't be fooled by their fancy masthead -- they could be dangerously close to writing their own obituary.

baby two-step II

Today my friend Jay celebrates his 6-year blogiversary, which reminds me that I've been at this a long time. Most posts sort of dissolve into the ether, but some seem to get as much (or as little) play as research articles. People rarely cite them in print, but they'll sometimes tell me that they based a paper or thesis on some observation I'd half-raised in a post. Even better, I occasionally hear that a more personal post (usually about failing prelims or acknowledging help or fostering creativity) turned out to hold some meaning for them. One post that pops up in such conversations concerns having children while in graduate school.

I've written a lot about my own kids over the years and have shared many more conversations with students about deciding whether and when to have children. That's probably why there were a few chuckles and what sounded like a "Good gawd!" from the research office on Friday, when Suzy and Sarah saw my old post on babies and the two-step process mentioned in the new issue of The Criminologist, the American Society of Criminology newsletter. In "Parenthood and the PhD" (pp. 28-29), Tracy Sohoni, Stacey Bosick, and Bianca Bersani offer five useful observations and considerations for prospective parents. I'd concur with all they wrote and I've also been referring folks to a helpful comment thread on orgtheory -- part of Fabio Rojas' Grad Skool Rulz.

As of this fall, my li'l nest became empty for the first time since my second year of graduate school. So, as I try to process all that, it was kind of fun to revisit the old two-step process that brought Tor and Hope into our lives. Read it ... if you dare.

babies and the two-step process
12/21/2005

it has been slow blogging since thanksgiving, but i'm energized after stumbling to the finish of another semester. my new nephew leif visited and i showed him the chord changes to a cowboy junkies-esque version of ben lee's catch my disease. most babies love music, but really cool babies seem partial to guitars.

on the day i noted riley wakefield's arrival, julie barrows was welcoming althea kay (shown here with sister lily) into the world. so now my other advisees are looking around nervously wondering who's next. my kids were born during years 2 and 5 of grad school and i've always shared my story with students. i doubt that my experiences have any impact on their weighty decisions, but many have been quite procreant. is it just my imagination, or do professors who have kids during grad school tend to have advisees who have kids during their grad school years? is this due to self-selection, modeling, or meddling/advising?

well, here's the story i tell. in '91 i was broke and nervous about fatherhood, given my luxurious ta/ra/fellowship earnings and my partner's new job. when we asked, "should we have kids now?" the answer was pretty clearly "No!" then, i distinctly remember breaking the decision into the infamous two-step process that led to a different answer.

we asked,

step 1. "do we ever want kids?"

Yes!
step 2. "conditional on #1, is there really a better time to have kids than now?"

No.o.k., that was easy. we had enough money to survive in madison, i was looking ahead to a long tenure run, and i doubted i'd have any more time or energy at 36 or 46 than at 26.

for kid #2, the same thing happened. we asked "should we have a second kid now?" and again returned "No!" then, the two-step got us again:
step 1. "do we ever want to have a second kid?"
Yes!
step 2. "conditional on #1, is there really a better time to have a second kid than now?"
No.

whoa! that was too easy. at this point we placed a moratorium on further two-stepping. i don't know whether you do the two-step, but it might offer a fresh perspective on big decisions.

all about chemistry

I rarely write about crime fiction, since most of it seems completely orthogonal to the phenomenon that I've spent a career studying. Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorcese, and the Brothers Coen are surely gifted filmmakers, but the hyperviolent worlds they create are pure fantasy -- bearing about the same relation to the lived reality of crime as the average pornographic film bears to the lived reality of human sexuality. By confronting compelling characters with horrible moral choices, however, the best crime fiction can actually tell us something meaningful about human frailty, morality, and justice.

I think Breaking Bad succeeds on this level, though I still switch over to the Hallmark channel or America's Cutest Pets during its ugliest moments. I have many questions about the show, but Joe Kleinschmidt's Minnesota Daily article answered one of the biggies. Forget about the crime, how's the chemistry? Mr. Kleinschmidt put the question to Bill Tolman, the straight-up brilliant Minnesota chemistry professor and department chair pictured above.  I was surprised to learn that the show's etch-a-sketch explosive might've actually worked and that the makeshift battery that Walter White constructs in the desert might indeed have started his stranded mobile meth lab:

Walt uses the RV’s brake pad for its mercuric oxide and graphite. This serves as the cathode, which gains electrons. He also gathers spare metallic parts, nuts and bolts, for the zinc they contain. The zinc serves as the anode, where the other electrochemical half-reaction occurs (loss of electrons). With potassium hydroxide solution leftover from their meth-making process serving as electrolyte (to conduct charge), Walt uses a sponge to separate the anode and cathode. Finally, he connects the cell components with copper wire and connects the parallel batteries to the RV’s jumper cables. “The only question now is, will this supply enough current?” Walt says in the episode, posing the only hang-up in his plan. “When he said that, I thought, ‘Yes! That’s the problem!’” Tolman said. But it worked. As Walt sets the batteries up and connects the wires, he creates a spark and the RV is revived. “It was a perfectly reasonable electrochemical cell using mercuric oxide and zinc,” Tolman said.

Of course, the show takes a few liberties -- hastening a body's dissolution in hydrofluoric acid, for example, and tossing around mercury fulminate like a bag of powdered sugar. All told, however, Breaking Bad does pretty well on the chemistry. As for its portrayal of drug markets, I'd have a few more quibbles...

jumping jim and the secret advantage

Jumping Jim Brunzell is profiled in a fine where-are-they-now article from Debra Neutkens of Press Publications, offering nostalgia for Saturday morning wrestling fans and a useful first-day-of-school reminder for students and teachers.

Mr. Brunzell is only 5'10" and pretty much bereft of the macho swagger that characterizes the profession, yet he parlayed his secret advantage into three decades of professional wrestling success. You see, Jumping Jim could sky. A high jumper on his high school track team, Mr. Brunzell's 36" vertical leap was beautiful to behold in the ring. Possessed of the finest dropkick in the business, he earned a reputation as an athletic "high flyer" in an era of earthbound plodders.*

Unlike Mr. Brunzell, we academics often fail to capitalize on our secret advantages. A good advisor or editor, however, can sometimes help us ferret them out. Whether you've worked as a lobbyist or a farmer, traveled the world in a military family or a circus, or graduated from an elite prep school or the juvenile justice system, you've likely gained knowledge and perspective that will interest other scholars and readers. Our job is to help you learn what's news and how best to analyze and communicate it. Sometimes the biggest hurdle is just convincing you that the rest of the world doesn't know about a phenomenon or process you'd taken for granted -- and that you might be the best person in the world to tell the story.

Secret advantages of this sort can arise from tastes, experiences, aptitudes, ascribed characteristics, or plain dumb luck. To really exploit them, however, you need to take inventory: write down where you've been, what you've done, and how you might use it. And don't brush off compliments too quickly -- especially when editors or advisors tell you that you're onto something or that some insight you shared was completely, refreshingly, and delightfully new to them. Pay special attention when you hear imaginary "air italics" in the compliment (e.g., "you're really good on this" or "I've never seen anyone make that connection").

What if nobody supports or compliments you, you've taken inventory, and you're still coming up empty? Well, we've all been there -- at least until someone convinced us we might have something interesting to say. Just go with your strengths and use what you've got, even if it doesn't fit the prototypical mold. Who knows? You might be creating the new prototype.

* I couldn't find a good highlight clip, but you can witness Mr. Brunzell dropkick a future governor at about 1:48 of this Phil Donahue deconstruction.

mutual inspiration feedback loop / running in the rain

The rains came at mile 19. If I turned left, I'd face two hilly miles of trails. If I turned right, I'd be home and dry (apart from the post-run beverage) in 3 minutes. I'd wanted to put in 21 miles today, since I've got exactly five weeks to deflabulate before the Twin Cities marathon. I was definitely leaning rightward until I recalled a conversation with (grad student and TSP board member) Suzy McElrath, where she shared her enthusiasm for rain-soaked running.

So I headed left, plunged down the slippery trail, and staggered up the first big hill, hamstrings tight and calves aching. It was just me on the trail, aside from a gang of wild turkeys and a few rabbits. It wasn't a hard rain and the cool water felt good. As I moved farther from the street, everything got quiet except for the steady patter of rain and reverberating footsteps.

I couldn't see much through the rain and fog of my glasses, which seemed to accentuate the sound. I noticed that the rain almost hissed as it slid through the willow tree by the pond. The big oak leaves brought a crisper midrange sound, like the bite of an apple or a '62 stratocaster. But then I turned a corner and hit a patch of broad leaves that looked like rhubarb, close to the ground. The raindrops played these deep and low like timpani drums, but tapped lightly by fingertips rather than mallets.

Suffice it to say that miles 19 to 21 turned out to be really beautiful, and that I wouldn't have run them at all without Suzy's encouragement. This reminds me that when a university brain mill is really humming, there's a mutual-inspiration feedback loop between students and faculty, which surely ranks among the greatest privileges and joys of being a professor.

So after today's rain-soaked training run, I wanted to add a special note of thanks to the TSP grad board as an addendum to Doug's post about the community that came together in Denver. The grad board generally toils anonymously, though our editorial team and WW Norton take care to recognize their contributions. And, if all goes as planned, you'll soon be hearing more about some new pages on the site to more properly introduce you to their great ideas, vision, and scholarship.

Board members like Suzy (at right), Hollie Nyseth Brehm (at left), and their cohorts probably don't know how much they inspire us to build and sustain The Society Pages. But when Doug, Letta, Jon and I confront a fork in the road, time and again our grad board pushes and inspires us to take the route that is both more challenging and more richly rewarding.

okay violence is down, but have *mass* shootings increased?

Over on facebook, my friends Raka and Jay asked similar questions about the long-term drop in violence discussed in the previous post.

"They asked, and you answered, about “violence” But what they seem to be thinking about is mass killings by individuals. Are those also on the decline in the US? Who has data on that?"
and
"I'd be interested in knowing the rise and fall rates of different kinds of crimes -- one on one homicide versus the movie theater/Sikh temple sort. Michael Hout? Chris Uggen?"

Fortunately, criminologist James Alan Fox has conducted precisely this sort of analysis. His chart below shows the annual number of mass shootings, offenders, and victims in each year from 1980 to 2010.



Professor Fox describes how mass shootings remain quite rare in the U.S. (about 20 incidents and 100 victims per year) relative to other homicides (about 15,000 victims per year), as illustrated in the figure above. Since 1980, I see variation, but no strong upward or downward trend -- a non-pattern that we sometimes call "trendless fluctuation," at least until we can identify its correlates (e.g., a pattern that looks like this).

This is important to bear in mind, as Dr. Fox points out, before (a) we assume there's been a big increase in mass shootings; and, (b) we attribute this rise to factors that appear to be steadily increasing or declining, such as weapons technology or the availability of mental health care. I've no doubt that weapons and mental health care play a big role in such cases, but it is hard to see how either factor could explain the pattern shown above -- that is, to predict something that goes up and down with something that just goes up or just goes down over the same period.

The only points I'd add to Professor Fox's careful analysis is to note that when the numbers are this small the picture could change very quickly. First, it might change if one examined different thresholds or constructed other definitions of mass killings. Second, the chart would look radically different if, heaven forbid, there are more events in the next year or two that push the total number of victims past 150. So, it is probably best to be cautious before making any predictions about the future. All that said, however, it doesn't appear that we're currently in the midst of a steep rise in mass killings.