an observation

I've always valorized the excitement I feel about thinking about a new idea, or seeing an old problem in a new way. This is why I went to grad school and why I actually want to do this dissertation; I also assume that somehow this (either through obtaining a PhD or for whatever brilliant ideas I come up with along the way) will lead to some sort of career success.

But let's say this gets me nowhere. Will this sort of excitement I see retroactively look like some sort of manic state (there are definitely episodes of productive hypomania, though these aren't the only times I'm productive), or, even worse, a delusion?

I don't think so, because a lot of the ideas that I've come across in the last few years of my life have changed my life, sometimes even for the better. Studying depression in college really helped me, and I think looking at close relationships and the development of our capacities for them might be a good thing in and of itself.

But I might want to examine my assumption that intellectualizing and wallowing in ideas is a virtue.

bias for action

This is what I need to work on:

“I want you to have a bias for action,” one of my basic school instructors told
our class of boot lieutenants. “When there’s not enough information to make a
great decision, I want you to make a good one. When there’s not enough for a
good one, I want you to make any decision. Indecision kills.”

Not to equate my fairly dull and priveleged life with combat, but I often get stuck at the information-gathering (or -binging, like I've posted about before) stage, to the detriment of getting anything done.

That is all.

"anything is possible!"

I haven't been writing a damn thing, paperwork excluded, for the last week, so, yeah. Whatever. I don't know why, maybe I'm just cranky, maybe I just have nothing to say. A lot of things in my life seem to be ending right now, and not many things beginning in their place. Times of transition, self-doubt, disappointment and a sense of opportunities lost, blah blah.

So I'm just going to briefly go back to last week's big story in my life, the NBA Finals; specifically, the much-discussed Kevin Garnett interview. Many cynical viewers I've talked to and read felt there was something distastefully performative in KG's display. My take was perhaps more naive; I was genuinely moved (as pointed out to me by a thoughtful observer, Garnett's accomplishment and his place in life are pretty meaningful to me right now, given my sense of transition), and felt like it was one of the more striking emotional displays I'd seen televised before. It felt like he was simultaneously emotionally regressing and growing and being pulled in a million different directions at once.

Whatever was going on with KG at the time, after hearing other peoples' more cynical takes on the interview and his season-long tendency to very publicly, before games and at key moments in front of fans and teammates, acting out exhuberantly, got me thinking the role of emotion in team sports. The friend I referred to parenthetically in the previous paragraph suggested that, from a group dynamics perspective, KG had been "holding" a lot of emotion for his team. Basically, the psychology of groups suggest that, within groups, individuals take on certain roles for the group, be they leader or scapegoat, the soother, the leader, etc. It's easier for us to notice this in other people's families, or for therapists to see it in a group, but I haven't heard it mentioned in professional sports, and I think KG this season has been a great example.

I'm often irritated by how sportswriters and fans single out athlete's behavior for analysis- I'm not talking about Kobe in Colorado or other extreme examples, just how athletes are often described as pouty or unpleasant, or "down-to-earth" and a team player. Part of what makes this irritating and stupid is how tied up in race this tends to be, but I'm not going into that here. But if we take Garnett 07-08 as a mini case study, I think we might consider how displays of intense emotion on the part of athletes can sometimes say more about the team and the moment than about the individual. One of the things that was compelling to me about this last year's Celtics team is the flip side of what a lot of people whose opinions I value dislike-- they're a little bit cobbled together and stylistically uneven. Although they played defense with an almost hive-like unity, they're players who for the most part just started playing together in the last season, which has often been reflected in their serviceable if uninspiring offensive play.

What interests me about a team like this is how difficult it must be, in a behind-the-scenes kind of way, to try to get a team like this to unite and win. Star players like Pierce, Garnett, and Allen, united in a common purpose but lacking one singular narrative to unite them. Their most compelling narratives (Pierce's long history in Boston and his 2000 brush with death, Garnett's conflicted and painful departure from Minnesota, Allen's family turmoil and uneven career) were, other than that of PP, intense, but having little or nothing to do with the grand narratives of the franchise and city for whom they played. Garnett's physically, affectively, and verbal veering and swooning in the post-game interview reflected this. I guess it enabled us-- disappointed not-so-young-anymore adults, pained Timberwolves and Lakers fans, vindicated Boston fans-- to fit it with our own narratives of what this season meant. Was it insincere? I don't think that question is useful very often at all, and it isn't for looking at KG's interview. Whether it was a display or an affectation doesn't take away from the meaningfulness of it all. I don't want to say that it had to happen, but it fit.

For the writers

First of all, since I decided I'm going to get serious about my dissertation proposal, one of the more subtle procrastination tactics my unconscious is employing is geeking out over recording gear. This task took me to the self-described "technical communication blog" http://www.idratherbewriting.com/. Now that I've decided to be less technophobic, I've decided that I need to incorporate some understanding of technology and communication into my worldview. Anyway, this blog led me to this post about essay writing, which got my mind going a little bit. This, combined with a meeting with a professor who offered a few very specific suggestions about exercizes to generate ideas and writing, have me feeling much more mentally equipped than I did this morning.

Unfortunately, game 4 in LA is likely to wipe out any productivity that otherwise may have occurred this evening.

Only writing for one month, and I already have a jinx to call my own.

So far, every time I've posted about something as an inevitability, it hasn't occurred.

I wonder what President McCain, NBA Finals MVP Kobe Bryant, and my ex-wife all think about that.

133 Parents' Stories Reveal That Parents Don't Matter

Look, I love research that challenges sacred cows. If you designed a good study that showed that watching baseball while eating apple pie baked by one's mother turned people into sociopaths, I'd talk about it to everyone and high-five you into oblivion.

But do we really want to take a verbal response to "several stories" as a reliable stand-in for what parents provide their children, even if it (somewhat) predicts how children will use a particular toy? Seriously? Do we think this correlates with the environment they provide their children? What if how they respond to these stories correlates with how the family's day is going? With any of the dozens of ideas that seem more likely to correlate with responding to a specific story than the entire effect of all their parenting practices do? The ways they respond to their (specific, real) children when they're being really annoying, or particularly cute, or particularly upset? Their ability to repond affectionately but competently across a variety of contexts?

Read the article, and if I'm way off in thinking this study is weak as hell, please, PLEASE, let me know. Look, parenting, making babies, etc, aren't freaking magical. But, to my eyes, these people are massively overstating what their research design is capable of showing.

mission postponed

Not moving to LA just yet after all...

Decided, after consulting with several people whose advice I trust, to postpone my move, at least I finish my dissertation proposal. Which means I'll be in Chicago at least through the winter.

Don't feel like writing much write now, other than to say I'm watching one of my new favorite shows, "Shameless," and it's great. Probably my favorite British TV show ever, other than Father Ted. A few years ago, I planned on doing my research around Britain's hysteria over "anti-social behavior*," which led me to read a lot about the British literary class' disaffection with Britain's white working class. Shameless does a good job of humorously and affectionately, with a minimum of condescension and/or romanticism, portraying what Americans might call "white trash" Britain.

Whether this is a sign I'll soon be back to working on an escape plan to Britain or Ireland, I dunno. My dissertation research will definitely be taking place in the US, so I doubt it.

(*"Anti-social," in this particular discourse [if you're interested, google "ASBO britain" or something], doesn't mean the same thing that, say, American clinicians mean, as in markedly unempathic, sadistic behavior. The British punditry meant it in much the same way Giuiliani and allies might use it in their "Broken Windows" approach approach to crime reduction**.)

(**Don't want to get into this, but NYC's decrease in violent crime during Giuiliani's tenure wasn't much better than those of cities that took on a much less authoritarian approach to social order, and analysts who did think that New York's crime rate went down for any specific reason usually, as far as what I've read, tied it to initiatives associated with previous mayor David Dinkins, or massive gentrification.)

I wanna live in Los Angeles, not the one in Los Angeles

Off to a couple job interviews in LA next week.


I promise that I will never become a Lakers fan.

I was always a hater, in the sense that I hated people who were successful, people who were happy, people who have it easy and have it made. Of course there are as many, well, probably more, unhappy etc people in the Los Angeles area, but it was that very hater in me that always assumed I'd hate LA. Sunny weather, presumably attractive people, simultaneous proximity to ocean/desert/mountains/forest, and generally just being American shorthand for the opposite of the Serious, Moody, Dark midwesterner I'd always seen myself as, perpetually digging myself out from snowbanks , dodging tornadoes, doling sage advice and directions to clueless strangers. LA was the d-bag at the party in the sunglasses even though it's dark who wants to do coke with your girlfriend. I saw myself as the guy who had to clean up the next morning.


That was stupid. At some point in my life, I learned that I could stop beating my head against the wall and enjoy myself every once in awhile. (Coke and hitting on people's girlfriends are still lame. Coke Zero, tangentially, is the best.) I know I'm not heading off to golden age hollywood or Ventura Highway by America, that my life there will be like my life here, just with more sunshine, traffic, and possibly cheaper produce. But I like it that I'm off to live somewhere I never would have as the know-it-all hater I used to be.