on authorship
oxford insists that one must write 80 percent of a book to qualify as its author; anything less, you're an editor.
- alan davidson, "the know-it-all," interview by jonathan reynolds, new york times november 2, 2003
posted November 02, 2003 in printthey haven't been thinking
any person who is intellectually alive changes his ideas. if anyone at a university is teaching the same thing they were teaching five years ago, either the field is dead, or they haven't been thinking.
- noam chomsky, "the professorial provocateur," interview by deborah solomon, new york times november 2, 2003
posted November 02, 2003 in printasking (and nagging and negotiating)
in her new book, unequal childhoods, annette lareau, a sociologist at temple university, argues that middle- to upper-middle-class families today tend to practice a child-rearing strategy she calls "concerted cultivation," which involves, among other things, frequent interventions at school on behalf of your children, active (and often opinionated) monitoring of homework and the organizing of family time around children's extensive schedules of team sports, lessons and performances. (one of the more striking documented changes in how children spend their time is the increase in hours spent watching siblings perform.) children in working-class and poor families, by contrast, are more likely to be raised in a spirit of "natural growth," meaning they spend less time in the company of adults like teachers and coaches and more with other children in the kind of self-directed, open-ended play for which affluent parents often profess nostalgia these days. the effects of these differing strategies—which are not only a matter of resources but also of beliefs and habits—are to reinforce class divisions, helping to prepare middle- and upper-middle-class children for life in the middle and upper classes by accustoming them to asking (and nagging and negotiating) for what they want, and giving them the sense of entitlement that comes from having so much of the family's life formatted around their activities.
- margaret talbot, "too much," new york times november 2, 2003
posted November 02, 2003 in printsociometrics
issue no. 3: are you the center of the social universe or just a satellite? one sociometric issue is centrality (or, as we might have said in high school, popularity). degree centrality is simply the number of people you interact with. betweenness centrality is the contact you're making with people whose only connection is through you. prestige centrality, the most coveted, is the extent to which you interact with those who are most in demand.
"because gwen stefani was the official center of attention, she interacted with a lot of people, and thus had high-degree centrality," gibson observes. "if we set some minimum time requirement on an exchange before we call it interacting, her degree centrality would drop substantially, for while she exchanged kisses with a lot of people, she had time to speak meaningfully with perhaps none of them." try not to become a sociometric butterfly, flitting but not truly connected.
- william middleton, "popular mechanics," new york times november 2, 2003
[mark] granovetter argues that when it comes to finding out about new jobs—or, for that matter, gaining new information, or looking for new ideas—weak ties tend to be more important than strong ties. your friends, after all, occupy the same world that you do. they work with you, or live near you, and go to the same churches, schools, or parties. how much, then, do they know that you don't know? mere acquaintances, on the other hand, are much more likely to know something that you don't. to capture this apparent paradox, granovetter coined a marvellous phrase: "the strength of weak ties." the most important people in your life are, in certain critical realms, the people who aren't closest to you, and the more people you know who aren't close to you the stronger your position becomes.
- malcolm gladwell, "six degrees of lois weisberg," new yorker january 11, 1999
posted November 02, 2003 in crap, music, print