Okay, so I'm still alive. In the last ten days, there's been a lot of vacationing going on. There was the drive to Michigan (2 days, it is a LONG trip). Then there were the days leading up to Christmas. And then there were the days after Christmas. And that is all.

It's been great working 0 hours per week instead of 100 hours a week. It's also been great spending time with my family and being back home. That's all for now!

Before about three days ago, Barney had never howled. My previous video showed what happened when I 'sang' in his ear.

Well, I sing and play my acoustic guitar all the time. Barney sometimes looks annoyed, but he's never said anything about it or made any noise whatsoever while I was playing. Today, I pulled out the electric guitar, which he'd never seen before. Turns out, he likes poor approximations of Jefferson Airplane. Never mind my lack of ability. Keep your eye on the dog.

Here was the feedback I got for the class that I wrote that paper for (note: this came in an email with no subject line and with no other information whatsoever--no hello, no goodbye, no nothing):

Social Cognition Course Grades

Hypotheses A

Presentations A

First Manuscript B

Second Manuscript B

Course Grade B

As you can see, the 100+ hours of work (and 36 additional pages) I put into the revision did not improve my grade. What you don't see is the fact that a "B" is lowest grade you can get in my program and still pass. It is also the lowest grade I have ever gotten in any subject at any level.

This from the same professor who is the graduate program adviser. From the same professor who made me re-take Stats I (despite having taken Stats I and II previously) and will make me re-take Stats II. From the same professor who made us come to class when the university was closed for fall break and all classes were canceled. From the same professor who assigns a paper--every year--that ruins Thanksgiving break. From the same professor who runs a 2.5 hour meeting every week that could easily be finished in 50 minutes. From the same professor from whom I have to take three more classes in the next three years.

I'm not surprised by my grade, but my current question is this: can I put up with this guy for 4.5 more years, or should I quit and get a job?

After hundreds of hours of work, I finished the paper (almost, I still have to read through it and do the editing, etc., but that can wait until tomorrow). It's not as good as it would have been if I had a month to do it, but at least it's finished. For now. I'll have to work on it again if I try and publish it or use it as thesis/dissertation material. In reality, I never want to see it again. All 60 pages of it can be boiled down to what you see below.

Undergraduate students (n = 162) thought and wrote about a time they were excluded or a time they were accepted. The students rated photos of men and women on 9 dimensions of attractiveness, on anger/aggression, and on the desire to befriend the person in the photo. The students also estimated their ability to attract a mate and rated their degree of agreement with statements about their desire for sexual partners. Compared to the students who wrote about acceptance, the students who wrote about exclusion gave higher ratings on humor, physical strength, social influence, and facial attractiveness, and they gave similar ratings on the other dimensions. The students who wrote about exclusion believed it would be easier to attract a mate and expressed a greater desire for both short-term and long-term sexual partners.

The results paint a pretty nasty picture about what happens to people who are subjected to social exclusion. They show that even remembering a time when you were excluded (and then writing about it) makes you think other people are more attractive, makes you think you're more likely to find a mate, and makes you want to have sex more often.

Turns out, social exclusion is just like beer. Or so I'm told.

I'm not sure what they were doing before I came in the room, but I'm pretty sure Mowgli knows it was inappropriate.

This is what happens when you write a paper for too long and the dog won't leave you alone.

I mentioned a certain professor who ruined everyone's Thanksgiving break by assigning a paper that could only be completed over the break. I did not mention that I have to take this class, with this professor, every year for the next three years. So I have that to look forward to.

The professor gave back my paper on Tuesday with 'suggested' revisions. I say 'suggested' because he insinuated that he would throw it in the trash if I didn't make them. So nice to be threatened with failure. Anywho, I have about three more days to do the revisions, and they're going to take so much time that I won't be able to study for my exams to nearly the extent that I would prefer. It's a good thing I prepared during the semester and don't need to 'cram'. The probable scenario is that I end up getting lower grades than I would prefer but that I don't get so hurt that I flunk out of my program. I do say probable scenario.

I'm about 1/3 to 1/2 of the way through my revisions now, and my paper has already grown from its initial 24 pages to a still-expanding status of 33. It would have been a pretty good paper if I'd had a month or two to do it. Finishing in a total of two weeks, though, is going to result in about 50 pages of trash. Good times.

You may hear a news story today about a man who threw tomatoes at Sarah Palin while she was doing a book signing in a mall. I just want to go on record saying that it wasn't me.

Our city is in the middle of a metropolitan area with millions of residents. Our house is in the middle of a city of hundreds of thousands of residents. I just looked out the window and happened to see two people riding horses, bareback, down the sidewalk and across all of my neighbors lawns across the street.

This is the South.

The weather has turned 'cold' here in the South, the high temperature today is only expected to get into the 40s. It even snowed (big flakes) for 40 minutes this morning during my train ride to school. I did not expect snow in early December, especially given it was 70 degrees two days ago.