It’s just a game

28. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Yesterday, I spent more time than I have a while playing World of Warcraft. More than anything about playing the game itself, I’m fascinated by the way people behave in the game. I myself play WoW the same way other people participate in other leisurely activities. I play a few hours a week, about as much as other people watch tv. For me, it’s a nice way to focus on something completely unimportant and take my mind off any work or life stresses. I’m not the key demographic playing WoW. Many WoW players are aged 15-25 and mostly male. Many, I suspect, have few responsibilities. Though many, I also suspect, have stresses in their lives.

It never ceases to amaze me how seriously some people take the game. The fact that I’m paying about as much attention to the game as to tv reflects in the way I’m geared. The really good gear is in dungeons and dungeons take a long time to go through–on the order of a few hours. I just don’t have that kind of time to commit to playing something I don’t take that seriously. So I have less powerful gear than those who commit the time and energy to running dungeons. I also don’t like going into dungeons over and over again once I’ve figured out a strategy to go through it. People who take the game more seriously will go through some dungeons over and over in order to get every possible item that drops. For me, once the challenge wears off, I’m done. I also don’t do a lot of PvP (player vs. player) though there are some versions of it that I like. Again, PvP is an area that gains you good gear if you’re willing to put the time in to acquire it.

The thing is, those that take the game seriously often give those of us that don’t a hard time. I’ve been in PvP battlegrounds where people have asked me to leave cause I’m going to bring the rest of the “team” down. They’ve yelled at everyone for “sucking.” I’ve called people out for this behavior before, reminding them specifically that they’re playing a video game and to chill out. If someone wants to run a battleground before their character is ready and die all the time, who cares? Does it really matter that much? Isn’t it just about having fun? I’ve also seen people so focused on getting the right gear that they pretty much ignore other parts of the game. Of course, the things I focus on–exploring new areas, raising my professions–are things that would immediately get called “gay” (that’s the most common epithet I’ve seen for disapproval of gameplay).

The incident that prompted this post was a favor I did for someone yesterday. I am a level 70 warrior, the highest level one can get (so far). A much lower level character asked me to run him through a dungeon. This is common practice, a practice I understand but find bizarre because it takes the challenge out of running a dungeon. At any rate, we got to the first boss, a boss that I have never beaten and I almost died. I beat it and I was doing almost all the work. The boss is hard because it spawns a bunch of mini versions of itself throughout the battle that you have to kill in addition to the main boss. So anyway, the guy I was running died in the process, and he said to me, “WTF!? That should have been easy for you. Aren’t you taking this seriously?” At the time I was pissed because I thought, hell, I could spend my time in any number of ways in or out of game and I’m spending it helping someone I don’t know do something in a virtual world. I told him so at the time. Now that I look back on it, I think how funny it is that he wanted to know if I was taking a game seriously. Really.

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Geeky Mom Reviews: Click

26. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

One of my areas of interest is network theory, especially as it applies to the Internet and while this book may not be about network theory specifically, it’s certainly a good demonstration of some of its principles. Bill Tancer works for Hitwise, a competitive intelligence company, meaning they look at available data and try to help companies take advantage of that data to grow or become more competitive. In this book he takes search data and clickstream data and analyzes what that data tells us about ourselves in ways that just weren’t possible using survey or interview methods. One stark example of the different results one gets through this method is in looking at what people are afraid of. Surveys tell us that people’s top fear is of creatures–bugs, mice, snakes, etc. Looking at search data, however, using terms attached to “fear of,” the top fear is flying. Flying doesn’t even rank on the survey list. Often Tancer sees a phenomenon in his data and then digs further to figure out why. Or who, as in the case of who watches porn or gambles online.

The second half of the book is about what you can do with the data, how to be proactive–like being able to predict the winners of American Idol based on the popularity of contestant names in search results. I wonder if he could have predicted our current financial situation by seeing an increase in terms such as “how to get out of debt” or “default on mortgage.” He also looks at finding the tipping point for new music groups, comparing traffic to the band’s MySpace site to their official website. Someone could watch the data and know when a band is going to hit it big.

At one point, Bill tells us that he loves data. I, too, love data and this book was a fun ride through various bits of data that told an interesting story about different aspects of life and business.

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Up for Debate

25. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

If ever there was a time when we needed a debate, it’s now. The very idea that McCain would use the financial crisis as an excuse is just ludicrous. Whatever’s going to happen with that is going to happen. He’s not going to sway things one way or the other. I’m starting to think there’s something seriously wrong with the way this man thinks. He’s equating the failure of some investment banks with the falling of the twin towers which killed a couple of thousand people. I’m thinking that he’s more worried about his rich friends than the American people.

Seriously, when I was out canvassing, a few people told me specifically they weren’t making up their minds until they see the debates. I think there are people clamoring for information and who want to really measure these guys up. Let’s bring it on.

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T-Shirts Anyone?

24. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

On the way in to work today, Mr. Geeky and I saw a pro Sarah Palin sign that inspired me to make some anti-Palin t-shirts. Check ‘em out.

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I feel clueless

24. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Not since my days as an almost economics major have I read so much about money and markets. And I still don’t really have a clue what’s going on. It’s not that I’m dumb, but I think there’s some smoke and mirrors going on. One lawmaker yesterday said that there should be provisions for limiting what the CEO’s get out of this deal. Paulson’s response was that the companies might not take it in that case. And then I and some others are like, are you kidding? Sounds like they don’t really need it. Do broke relatives who come begging for money get to put conditions on the handout? I don’t think so. We have conditions on welfare for crying out loud. And isn’t this basically corporate welfare?

I sort of understand that basically there’s no money to be had and that the $700 billion bailout is a way of getting money out there for banks to lend to each other and in theory, to us and to buy shares in things, etc. But no one’s sure if that will work and we’re not getting anything out of the deal. We will not share ownership in the companies and the assets we hold may be worth less than Monopoly money. No one’s really talking about what scenarios we might be facing with or without the bailout. No one’s saying exactly what will happen except that it will be dire. Well, how dire? Tell us.

The whole thing makes me mad. As I have personally tried to decrease my debt, the country has gone the other way and has encouraged others to go along. “Go shopping,” Bush said after 9/11 and we did. And I was really pissed watching Andrew Sullivan on Real Time blame the people who took out the bad loans for putting us into this mess. Has he been to a mortgage broker or a car dealer lately? They’re selling these things to people–hard. NPR did a story about this not long ago where brokers forced people to lie on applications so the loan would go through. You can’t both say people are dumb and then blame them for being swindled into a loan they can’t afford. Bush’s mantra has been work hard and you’ll get ahead. Well, that’s just patently not true. The real truth is, have friends in high places and you’ll get ahead. And if the current situation doesn’t prove that, I don’t know what does.

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The Gender Gap

22. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as I’ve been working a lot lately. The beginnings of school years often show pretty clearly how much or how little either one of us does around the house. When the work hours bleed into the home hours, there’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t get done. It’s not like Mr. Geeky comes home at 5, picks up the paper and yells into the kitchen to ask what’s for dinner. In fact, our post work hours are somewhat of a whirlwind of negotiating who’s dealing with what kid. I do the cooking, and it’s actually a refuge for me. The kids go off to their own corners and Mr. Geeky finishes up whatever he was working on when he had to leave to do the daycare pickup. After dinner, the kids and Mr. Geeky clean up. In theory, there’s much more housework to be done, but neither of us does it, relegating most of it to the weekend. Instead, we either have work to do, or we choose to spend a couple of hours relaxing. God forbid we relax!

The thing I keep returning to, though, is that I do wish our house were more organized and that we weren’t rushing around half the time to get enough laundry done or to sign papers or whatnot. The only way for this to happen in our current situation is for one or both of us to give up leisure. And that’s just not going to happen. We both value that too much. After spending the weekend trying to catch up on such things, this article in IHE was just the thing I needed. I’m reading through the first part and the whole time I’m thinking, “It’s because the guy doesn’t do housework; that’s why women leave these jobs.” And then, they finally get to it.

While universities and other employers have some of the responsibility for helping women advance, so too may their spouses. Preston cited a survey of married male and female scientists (not married to one another) in which each were asked what share of household chores was performed by their spouses. The female scientists estimated that their spouses performed an average of 34.7 percent of chores, while the men estimated that their spouses perform 65.1 percent of chores. Even assuming equal levels of honesty (and some women in the audience had their doubts about the men), that’s a gap that would have a significant burden on the women not faced by the men. (And the gaps are larger for childcare responsibilities.)

I’d say in our situation that I’m doing 40-50% of the housework while Mr. Geeky does 20-30%, leaving a gap of at least 20% and up to 40%, which sounds about right to me. Childcare is another story. During the year, it’s 50-50, in the summer, Mr. Geeky takes on most of it, so I have no complaints there. If I wanted to ramp up my career in any way, the house and possibly the kids would suffer unless Mr. Geeky stepped up to the plate. And he might, but he has his own demanding career; there’s only so much he could do even if he wanted to. We already have household help. I suppose we could increase that. I think this somewhat accounts for the doctors not having as many problems balancing things. They can afford help. Your average academic can only afford so much.

Another area that I find interesting that explains the gap is the difference in competition between women and men. In a test to measure how competitive women and men are, researchers found that men are definitely more competitive.

Women are much more likely to prefer the non-competitive approach and men gravitate overwhelmingly to the competition. Women are more likely, some studies have found, to go for the competition if it is single-sex and they are competing against other women.

Niederle noted that there could be logic to these choices if men did better on the mazes, but they don’t. The gaps in risk-taking are as much from men who overestimate themselves and figure they will win (when they don’t necessarily stand a chance) as from women who could win, but avoid the competition.

Some fields are full of competition, academe being one of them. Locally, one is often competing for resources, which is sometimes based on one’s success in “national” competitions for publication. What if one is just curious, interested in exploring different issues, sharing those explorations with students and, when appropriate, on a national stage via conferences and journals? Or what if one simply wants to read other people’s explorations and teach? Academe seems to have become a one size fits all operation. The beginning of the article stressed that different women want different things in terms of balance. When an industry only has one path for success, that can severely limit who chooses to take that path.

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Off to canvass

20. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

I’m headed out in about an hour to canvass our town on behalf of Obama. I don’t know all the talking points, but what I do know is that our country can’t take any more of an administration that puts its rich friends ahead of the average citizen, that thinks nothing of sending our young people to a war we never should have fought, that only values the power of women when it comes in the right package, that won’t support our children’s education or health. I feel we’re coming close to a death spiral if we don’t change something. Obama by himself may not be able to fix everything, but he can start us on a road to fixing ourselves.

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Republicans vs. Democrats, take 2

17. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

There are a few comments coming in on an older post of mine. I don’t know if I’d say the comments are interesting since the last few have been full of talking points from various parties. I have to say that I hate it when people use the “this isn’t what the founding fathers meant” argument. The whole point of our government isn’t to figure out what they meant, but to interpret the Constitution for ourselves based on our own facts on the ground. Of course, Thomas Jefferson might not approve gay marriage, but he would have fit in with mainstream thinking at the time. 1776 was 232 years ago. A freaking lot has changed! If we went with what the founding fathers might have thought, we’d still have slaves, women couldn’t vote or own property and talk about having a class system! Don’t use the Constitution when it’s convenient and throw it out when it’s not.

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This is what professors fear

16. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Laptops. I have seen this attitude of banning electronic devices in the classroom. I sympathize. It is somewhat disconcerting to stare out at a classroom full of screens and not know for sure if students are paying attention. Although I think professors being replaced by laptops is extreme, I do think that faculty aren’t thinking very critically about what to do with electronic devices in the classroom:

What I see happening is that professors aren’t making the decision to accept the inevitability of technology infiltrating the classroom and finding ways to integrate these mediums into their lessons, but instead what they choose to do is to bring all of the students down to a level of engagement where theirs is the only voice that can be heard. They hope that without any competition, the students attentions will naturally drift to them, but this tactic is doesn’t solve anything in the long run.

Instead they are trying to force things to remain as they’ve always been.

The solution that this blogger suggests is:

The correct strategy is to upgrade the professors. Give professors the opportunity to integrate these new social media channels into their lessons so at least we’re communicating at the same level. From there the way to stop laptops from being such distractions is to get professors to be more interesting and add some real value to the educational process.

I appreciate the sentiment, but I have to laugh too. From my perspective, I’ve been trying to “upgrade” professors for about 6 years. There’ve been plenty who have, mostly on their own, but there are still some TRS80′s out there and even some mainframes. I certainly think there’s more ways to give professors the opportunity to work with social media, but currently it’s not on their priority list. In the mix of teaching, research, and service, learning new technology is way, way at the bottom. And honestly, for the mainframes, it’s not just about new technology, but a whole new world. Figuring out that new world requires some time to immerse oneself in it for a few weeks or months and I can’t imagine that most faculty will take that kind of time. I think this blogger is right that something’s gonna give at some point, but our educational institutions are pretty rigid when it comes to integrating technology with pedagogy.

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On being a geek

11. September 2008 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Tim Burke writes about his personal experience of growing up as an intellectual, interested in reading and knowledge over other “mainstream” interests. I’ve been thinking about this a lot myself, and writing about it elsewhere. My life took a kind of weird turn late in middle school into high school where I abandoned much of my geekdom (except reading a lot) and opted to attempt to hang with the popular crowd. By my senior year, I’d become much more jaded about what it meant to be popular and tried to be my own person. Honestly, I think I didn’t really become comfortable with who I am until about 10 years ago.

I was struck by a story Tim related in his post, not about my own experience as a geek, but about my experience as a staff member. He talks about hearing a story from an uncle who served in the military about the way soldiers were treated by officers. Ten-year-old Tim offers up the suggestion that this has always been the case, back to Sargon the Great (I had to look it up myself). Tim was trying to make a connection, trying to show he knew something about the topic and that he could relate to the story in some way. The uncle, of course, didn’t see it that way. And Tim recognizes what may have been the key issue:

Still, there’s a fundamental asymmetry. I could take what he said and add it to my knowledge, make use of it. He couldn’t take what I said unless he followed me into formal knowledge, or trusted me so much that what I said was in the books was as good as truth.

Had I been there, had I even been the uncle, I would have said, “Really? I didn’t know that. Who’s Sargon the Great?” But I am always hungry for more knowledge and never afraid to admit that I don’t know something. To me, that’s not a sign of weakness. But what that made me think of was the way that a lot of staff would respond the way I might. I’m not talking just the “academic” staff (librarians and the like), but also administrative assistants, housekeepers, and others. After being around faculty and students, they often take a genuine interest in their work and see that as being a benefit, getting to talk to people about intellectual things, learning something new.

The asymmetry I often see goes the other way. Faculty often take no genuine interest in the thoughts or ideas of the staff. We have among our staff talented musicians, artists, woodworkers, writers, amateur historians, athletes, and more. We have people who’ve done interesting things in their lives and who’ve been to interesting places. And while I’ve seen some faculty take real interest in what staff have to offer, I’ve seen that when staff speak at discussion groups about these issues, fewer faculty attend than when it’s a faculty member speaking about their research. I’ve seen one-sided conversations where staff ask about research or classes and the faculty member asks nothing about what someone might have done over the summer or what books they’ve read or movies they’ve seen. I tend to have the confidence to assert myself in such conversations, but many staff may not, may not see that what they know is of value.

I’m not saying this to say, “Hey you faculty jerks, take some interest.” I don’t think the lack of interest is intentional or malicious. Many faculty must and do spend a lot of time focused on their subject matter and that’s certain to affect what they talk about and how. But it might be another explanation for the distaste “regular” people have toward intellectuals. It may not be just insecurities, but also a feeling of being slighted.

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