Peer reviewers defeat themselves, again!

Peer reviewers once again self-defeated their own objectives.

'Cause they were like, "this article is too speculative. You have all this speculative language, like "possibly happened" and "seems like." And you draw all these speculative conclusions. We do not like it! Too much speculation."

So I am going through and deleting all of the speculative language, but keeping the speculative conclusions. Now, instead of saying, "It seems like [totally speculative thing] may have happened," it says, "And then, reader, [totally speculative thing] totally happened! For real!"

Mwwaahhaaha!!!

And once again, peer reviewers are going down thanks to their own sucky-ness!  YEAH!

At long last: victory over funding agency

CC found a run-on sentence in the instructions of a funder to whom you have probably applied for money more than once, and if you are like me, have been rejected multiple times, despite spending hours of your and your loved one's time ensuring that your proposal contains no run-on sentences.

The Hills are Alive

Winter goal achieved

I achieved my winter goal, which was to see an icicle growing from the roof of a house all the way to the ground.

It only took me one week to achieve this goal!

In the big time now

Hey reader, check it out--I got my picture taken in front of something that there's a picture of in Making of the West.

The MOW is the textbook that taught me everything I know about European history.

MOW is the one constant and reliable support in grad student life and is therefore beloved. When asked in job interviews how I would teach a survey class: "Well, I would assign MOW..." Some grad-student-taught summer courses are actually (semi) dramatic readings of the MOW.

Personal victory!

I ended my History of the Holocaust summer course by showing the class this picture.

History of pile climbers

Before I left for Berlin, we climbed the New Brunswick dirt pile. You know the one, the 30-foot-tall one near the Rt. 18/Rt. 27 junction? This extremely dangerous climb demanded all the dirt-climbing skills of the international team assembled for the expedition. After a dramatic freak-out 10 feet from the summit, we made it. The view from the top was pretty cool. Dirt piling is mainly a U.S. custom, I learned. They don't pile in Canada.

I petted an alpacha

An ill-tempered alpacha was hanging out in the "petting zoo" (or, small fenced-in area set up in front of the liquor store on 4th Street) at the street fair today. I paid $4 to pet it and its animal associates (including 3 goats, a sheep and a donkey). The Alpacha was the fuzziest animal in the "zoo," so as you can imagine, I wanted to pet it most of all. But, it was suspicious of me and gave me many skeptical looks while keeping as far away from me as it could, as you can see (left).

Finally, I bribed it with food.











My sister heard part of this story and said she always knew I'd pet an alpacha.