Halloween is for lovers.

  

Laughing is Fun.

Most will agree, laughing is fun. For me, laughing is especially fun whilst reading. It’s no wonder books like A Confederacy of Dunces, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay are on my personal favorites list.

For those who like him, Larry David, of Curb your Enthusiasm fame, has a hilarious short essay over at HuffPo about the election and the long wait until Nov. 4th. Both Meagan and I had healthy belly laughs to this one. Read it here.

Here is an excerpt:

The debates were particularly challenging for me to monitor. First I tried running in and out of the room so I would only hear my guy. This worked until I knocked over a tray of hors d’oeuvres. ”Sit down or get out!” my host demanded. “Okay,” I said, and took a seat, but I was more fidgety than a ten-year-old at temple.

I’m switching areas…

…to football.

Growth v. Progress

When I worked at Citibank, there was a time when I was an acting administrative assistant to executives in the Student Loan Corporation. I recall one instance when my acting boss commented her job was to grow the business. This made some sense to me but I also thought “Why?” Why can’t a business just keep on trucking at current levels, alternatively why can’t a company just get better at what they already do? The notion I have is, considering the current state of economic affairs (i.e. no growth), perhaps we should re-frame the way we think about success. 

In my view, growth in business today is conceptualized as sales, or number of employees, or for some, number of stores but businesses cannot grow indefinitely. Will businesses be considered unsuccessful when the times comes and they grow no more? I believe success (i.e. growth in today’s terms) should be reconceptualized as progress in efficiency, or achieving better results with the same amount of resources. 

One problem, with this idea may be start-up businesses, or interest bearing bank accounts. Will start-up businesses still be able to get commercial loans and will any bank accounts bear interest payments? I don’t have a great answer to this question (see disclaimer) but my feeling is that both would be answered in the affirmative. Furthermore, some companies will still be more attractive investment options than others because they will be more adroit at doing things better.  Related, companies can still vie for market share, hire new employees and open new stores if they are successful.  

Disclaimer: I’ve not taken economics in high school, college, or elementary school for that matter. If this notion is glaringly naive, gentle corrections are preferable to harsh ones.

Fantasy Schlep and Other News

Fantasy Update:

I’ve written about my fantasy football endeavors previously, Fantasy Bubkis, it appears that my current team is destined for a similar record, and its certainly not for lack of attention on my part. I was a victim of the tear heard ’round the league when my first string QB Tom Brady went down in the first game of the season. It followed then the NE defense starting going south. Now I’m starting Phillip Rivers of the Chargers and the New Orleans defense. I have a 2-3 record and am currently losing today’s matchup. My one bright spot has been Ronnie Brown’s 5 TDs a few weeks ago. 

Research Update:

Experiment 2 of the training metacognition project I’ve written about previously (metacognition) is up and running and appears to be going well. We have promising results from two exams, students in quartiles 2 and 3 are becoming more calibrated. In contrast, students in the bottom quartile, or the poorest students, are not benefiting from feedback. Given there are 5 exams throughout the semester, the pattern of data is bound to change, hopefully for the better. 

We will also begin collecting data for Experiment 2 of another project regarding the effects of affirmation on older adults’ memory performance, which is cross-disciplinary and in the vein of social and cognitive psychology. Generally speaking, this research is about stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is a cognitive/affective state in which an individual fears he or she will affirm a negative stereotype about his or her in-group (i.e. gender, race, social status etc…). For example, there is commonly held stereotype that men are better than women at math. So, if one administers a standard test of math ability (e.g. GRE – quantitative) the results will probably confirm the average score for men is higher than the average of women’s scores. But this is not the end of the story. 

Surprisingly, if the same math test is administered but framed as non-diagnostic OR if the proctor mentions there are no differences in men and women’s scores, the score differences mentioned above are eliminated. Women do just as well as men. Score differences between Blacks and Whites also evaporate under the right conditions (Steele & Aronson, 1995). The cognitive mechanisms for stereotype threat are still relatively unknown, most likely ST causes anxiety which reduces working memory capacity and attention.  

We’re wondering if traditional score differences between younger adults (18-25) and older adults (65-80) in memory performance can be eliminated by allowing Older Adults to affirm a personal quality and thereby reduce anxiety they may feel about a memory test. Furthermore, we attempting to clarify the theoretical mechanisms of ST by including a recognition and source test (more to come on this later). 

Other News:

Good Kansas friends John and Jennie came to visit us this weekend. They arrived Thursday evening, we ate edamame, miso soup, sushi, and chicken katsuish at home. Friday I went up to school, while Meagan, John, and Jennie walked about campus. John also met with faculty members about the PhD program. Friday night we headed to Houston for dinner and a Cat Power show at the Warehouse Live downtown. Cat Power was just okay and the opener, Appaloosa, started out like a train wreck but also ended like one. Appaloosa is a French electronic/ambient duo with close to zero stage presence. She definitely reminded me of Nico, of Velvet Underground fame. Although Appaloosa’s performance didn’t get better, I got more interested and ended up enraptured, much like the movie Last Days.

So we got a cat…

His name is Webster. He is 5 months old. Meagan and I are both fond of the dictionary reference. If you know us, you know we’re competitive about our Scrabble and the dictionary is a necessary evil for competition. Perhaps the next cat we’ll name Scrabble. As much as I don’t want this blog to be entirely about a cat, I think he deserves a mention. We’ve been wanting to get a cat for awhile, but then Meagan went to Austin for training, so we couldn’t, and then Hurricane Ike rolled through Texas, so we couldn’t. But last Saturday we went to PetCo where the Brazos Feral Cat Allies group had felines for adoption. 

For the better part of Saturday he spent his time under the futon, a true scaredy-cat. Slowy he’s become more curious and now trails Meagan or I around, jumps on counters, does laps in the apartment, pounces, etc… Earlier tonite we got him a collar that had a little bell on it. He attempted to get it off and ran around crazed, it was hilarious. We’ve since taken the bell off…

 

Furniture Sale in Sioux Falls

For those of you living in the Sioux Falls area, Meagan’s mother is having a refurbished furniture sale AND she’s got a blog with pictures!

Check it out: Robyn’s Nest

The Brothers Castro

Watched the VP debate last night in Austin, TX at a place called the Alamo Drafthouse. It was neat, there were fewer seats than a normal theatre but in front of each row was a table/bar where you could eat or place your drink. They also had a full menu. We ordered a bucket of New Belgium Mothership Wit, organic beer. It was pretty good, definitely better with a lemon. Anyway, the crowd at the theatre was decidedly liberal (Biden even got boos when talking about gay marriage). I think the crowd was unfair to Sarah Palin. Don’t get me wrong, Palin is scary, but the crowd laughed, booed, guffawed, and scoffed at nearly everything she said while remaining silent when Biden spoke equally laughable lines. Granted there were fewer laughable lines from Biden, maybe the crowd just missed them. Republicans/conservatives often get characterized as close minded, biased, and dumb to name a few but I was disappointed in the democrats/liberals last night and think they could have been characterized as narrow-minded. They could have at least listened to what she had to say, they could bash her later. The answer of the night for me came from Joe Biden when he talked about making a shift in his thinking. He said he no longer questions the motives of the people he disagrees with but rather questions their judgement. Like George W. Bush as our president, I respect Sarah Palin and do not question her motives, I believe she has the best interests of the American people in mind, however her judgement is poor. As we’ve seen with W., Palin would have poor judgment when making decisions and poor judgment when asking the questions that lead to big decisions. 

Overall, I thought Biden was on the spot and Palin certainly did no harm to the McCain campaign. I suspect this debate will not have a large impact on the polling numbers, therefore I believe there was no clear winner (although Biden did a “darn right” good job.) On the way back from Austin this morning I listened to the Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh shows on the radio for their account of the debates, they made me want to puke. 

P.S. did anyone understand Palin’s dig on the Brothers Castro?

See below for a funny drinking game that our waiter gave us at the theatre.