Wanted: common sense

Of course we need to protect consumers from flawed merchandise that can hurt them when used exactly as a normal person with common sense would use it. For example, it's not unreasonable to drive a Ford Pinto at legal speeds on a road. You wouldn't expect it to blow up on you when hit by another vehicle. However, it is unreasonable to assume that hot coffee won't hurt you if it spills on you.

It seems very easy. It is not.

The latest example.

My 18 month old niece has one of these chairs and she loves it. It always sits on the floor. Why? Because common sense tells you that a foam chair with no rigid edges would easily topple over. When it's on the floor, the baby can't fall very far, and thus the experience becomes part of the normal knocks and bangs of life. You do not put it on a table or other high surface. Why? Because a child sitting in it could easily fall out of it and off the surface.

Now a fun and useful product is being recalled, because some people put it on a high surface with a child in it, and the child fell off the surface. Some were seriously injured. Charming.

I don't think the toy should be recalled. It's the people who put the child in a foam chair on a table that should be recalled. Or at the very least returned for the installation of a common sense patch.

Gooo Cats!!

UK is having an amazing football run. I've never been a major football fan, because it just wasn't a big sport in Kentucky. But it is now! We beat LSU yesterday. That was a great experience - I loved watching it. Now I'm excited about the next game.

Tuesday, Jan. 16 - Prospectus design

I have a copy of a prospectus from my school. I snagged it because of the topic - rural policing. However, I'm now using it as a model for my prospectus. I went through it tonight and made an outline of what I need to cover in my prospectus. Here it is, with the number of pages in the model:

Prospectus

Introduction - about 2 pages
Summary statement of proposed research
Brief discussion of what research will hopefully accomplish
Study hypotheses

Literature review - about 30 pages
Discussion of what other researchers have found and theorized
This will be divided into sections - I will have to divide mine into sections based on
the information I find. For example, there will be sections on how journalists select what to cover, how they've covered crime generally, and how they've covered homicide in particular. I will also have some discussion of social typifications - stereotypes - since the theory I'm operating from says journalists use typifications to guide their story selection.

Research plan - about 5 pages
Research question - mine basically is, "Is there evidence that journalists select which homicides to cover based on which will reinforce racial and gender typifications in this society?"
Operational definitions - such as, what is a typification?
Statistical methods - what tests will I run on the data to find out the answers I'm looking for?
Data collection - what data will I use and how will I go about getting it?
Storing data and preserving anonymity - this won't be hard, I'm not using any personal identifying information about victims or offenders that hasn't already been published in a newspaper.
Appendices - any data collection instruments or other important materials will be added here.

And that's it! Next step - doing the readings for the lit review.

Dissertation drive

This year I will complete my PhD. Right now I'm working on my dissertation prospectus, or proposal, which explains to my dissertation committee what precisely I intend to do. It will have the following parts:

The literature review - this discusses what other researchers have learned or theorized about my topic

Topic explanation and justification - this will describe what topic I plan to research, and what questions I have about the topic that I will try to answer with my research. It also explains why the research is useful/necessary, and makes it clear that my same questions haven't been asked and answered by anyone else already.

The research plan - this details exactly how I will go about doing the research. It will explain what data I will use, how I will collect the data, how I will make sure the data is "clean" - not biased, how I will "clean" the data if it does have the potential for bias, and what statistical formulas I will use on the data to find out the answers to my questions.

Once I've written this proposal, I'll send it to my dissertation chair and the other committee members. They'll look at it, make comments and suggestions for change, then send it back to me for revisions. I'll revise according to their suggestions, and send it to them again. When they think it's ready, my dissertation chair (hereafter, "Chair") will set up a date for me to make a public presentation on the proposal. That will be at my school, and open to anyone who wants to attend. By the time I get to that point, the committee should have reviewed it often enough to be able to approve the proposal without substantial changes. There's always a possibility another professor or student will make a suggestion that could cause my committee to request big changes, but as far as I know, that rarely happens.

Once the committee has accepted my proposal, the Real Work begins. I have three datasets - Birmingham homicide data for 1991-1992, newspaper articles from the Birmingham News for the same time period, and the 1990 US Census data for the Census grid areas containing the address of the homicide event (not the victim or offender address, but where the murder happened). I will choose the appropriate information from each set, run the statistical analyses I've identified in my proposal, and then analyze the results to see if what I expect to see is what is actually happening.

"What I expect to see" is my theory. The "null hypothesis" is the default to my question. In this case, research indicates that typically news stories are selected based on the rarity of their occurrence. My theory is that journalists select which homicides to cover not based on their rarity, but rather on which homicide stories will most reflect what society already tends to believe about the group(s) involved in the homicide. So the null hypothesis is "journalists select which homicides to cover based on their rarity". The results will either support my theory or will support the null hypothesis. Naturally it is more interesting and fun if my theory is supported, but it is just as important to find that my theory is not supported. The study I am replicating concluded that the null hypothesis was NOT supported and that journalists DO select homicides to cover based on what will reinforce what society wants/tends to believe already.

I'm going to use this blog to report my progress every day that I work on my dissertation. A lot of friends and family have shown interest, and my dissertation group as well. I'll also use it to think out loud about what I'm doing. I find that explaining things to other people often helps me think more clearly about it myself.

Or that's the theory, anyway :).

Can you be a Scrooge at Halloween?

I really wanted to get in the Halloween spirit this year.

Several weeks ago I covered my front door with black fabric and attached a Scream mask to it. Elegant and scary at the same time, I thought. And yesterday I went to Wal-Mart and spent about $20 on candy. Not an outrageous amount, but it filled up a mongo bowl pretty well. So I was set.

I left the front door closed because my bug guy says huge roaches come in when you leave it open. Even on Halloween, I don't want big roaches. I expected that the trick-or-treaters would see the scary door and the porch light, and assume I was open for business. They did. Unfortunately.

The first set was two boys about 13 years old - really too old to be trick or treating. They rang the bell. I was in the kitchen. Before I reached the door, they rang the bell again AND knocked. My house is not that big - say, 10 steps from where I was to the door? I don't know that I would have had time to open the door before the second ring if I'd had my hand on the knob when it rang the first time! I gave them candy, probably 10 or so pieces each.

Then my nieces came by. That was the best part. No complaints.

I went back in and started back in the kitchen. The door bell rang. I came to the door. Three ghoulies this time - two kids, 10 or under, cute with pumpkin buckets. Nice. I gave them candy - probably, again, about 10 pieces each, about 4-5 mini-candybars in the handful. As much as I could get in one handful. The third was probably 16 or older, the older brother bringing around the kids. Nice of him, but he also had a Wal-Mart bag open for me to give him his share. Sheesh. So I did. Same amount, as much as I could get in my hand at one time.

As he walked away, he said, "You're going to have a lot of candy left."

And Happy Halloween to you too!

I remember Halloween as a very happy, exciting fun time. We lived in the country so there weren't that many houses to go to, and back then we were as likely to get an apple or a homemade dried apple hand pie as we were a candybar. It was all good! We still had enough candy to make ourselves sick for a week. And we always said thank you. Then when we were 12, it was all over - no more trick-or-treating.

So what's with this older kids thing, no adults in sight, behaving impolitely and making snide comments about how much candy they got? Why do I feel like Scrooge when it's only Halloween??

It makes a body wish she was a real monster. Then we'd see a little tricking. Heh.

A new blog photo

I decided to change the photo displayed with my blog to an image from a wall hanging I'm working on for my Mom. The section shows an English paper-pieced Grandmother's Flower Garden block, made using (obviously) orange and yellow fabrics. I love orange! The block was appliqued onto the blue background, and you can see little bits of some of the blocks adjacent to it.

I've been working on this wallhanging for YEARS but I'm nearly done. Yay! This is my favorite block on the quilt, made from one of my favorite fabrics - the orange and yellow roses. It's no longer available, of course. I always regret not having bought yards and yards of fabrics I love.

Isn't that what we said?

The liberal blog Firedoglake included a post today on a book called, "50 Simple Things You Can Do To Fight The Right". Here's a quote from a quoted section of the book:

"One lesson about democracy stands out above all others," comments one thoughtful progressive. "Bullies…cannot be appeased. They have to be opposed with a stubbornness that matches their own."

Imagine that quote with just two words changed:

"One lesson about terrorism stands out above all others," comments President Bush. "Bullies…cannot be appeased. They have to be opposed with a stubbornness that matches their own."

Interesting. It appears that GW and our FDL friends are in agreement on how to deal with your enemies! Nothing like bipartisan support for the war on terror.

Then there's tactics. Here's another quote from the FDL post, this one in the form of questions that the post author is asking his readers - those progressive progressives:

What tricks do you use to counteract right wing propaganda? What guerilla tactics do you use to push progressive change?

Tricks and guerilla tactics. An intriguing idea, that counteracting "propaganda" with "tricks" is morally superior - I'm sure their point would be that tricks are okay when your politics are correct, it's employing tricks when your politics are non-progressive that's bad, bad! It would be interesting to see their definition of "propaganda" too, since on several occasions what they (that is, liberals in general) have identified as "propaganda" is actually fairly readily identified as "truth".

And finally, this:

Our beliefs are part of a tradition that grows from the ideals that compelled our founding fathers to fight for America. ...part of our dedication to progressive change comes from a recognition of the threat the Right poses to the survival of things like workers rights, environmental rights, free speech, and reproductive rights.

Funny, but the bits on "environmental rights" and "reproductive rights" must have been edited out of my copy of the Constitution - or even the Federalist Papers. And what I've seen put forward as "workers rights" seem more in line with oh, say, Marx than Jefferson or Madison. I do seem to remember something about religious freedom, not being forced to do things against your religious beliefs, the government keeping its grimy hands off my religion... but apparently that part was edited out of the copy of the Constitution the FDL folks have. Maybe they got theirs in Connecticut, which is, according to this post:

a state where 78% of the population thinks that emergency contraception should be avaliable at Catholic hospitals (including 74% of Catholics)

Me, I have nothing against contraception, although that "emergency contraception" is a bit fishy. I do have a lot against abortion. But their point here is, people should be forced to go against their religious/ethic beliefs if the government says they should. So, if that's the case, why would they laud those who performed abortions when abortions were illegal? Sure, those folks felt it was against their ethical canon to deny abortions, but it was the law after all, and if the government says you should behave in a certain way, well, sheesh, ya just gotta! It's not in the least admirable to stand against the gov't if its rules are against what you think is right! Even if it has laws against abortion and decides to go to wa...

Oh. Um, nevermind.

Update: Just looked at the post on Ann Coulter, where this gem was dropped:

I think it’s pretty clear by now to anyone who’s paying attention that most of our Punditocracy are from uniformly wealthy backgrounds.

Well, it is true that wealth translates into idiocy. I mean, just look at George Soros, John Kerry, Barbra Streisand, whichever Hollywood brain trust has opined on world events this week. Oh, wait a minute... You don't think those are on their list of wealth-created idiots? Hmm. Well, at least we can agree with them here:

These people are creatures of cradle-to-grave entitlement... It’s an intricate web of familial and corporate connections dating back more than a hundred years...

Exactly! Look at Ned Lamont, Ted Kennedy, Al Gore... Oh... um, right. Sorry.

Nevermind again.

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