Turducken

Weekend backpacking trip

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:41:00 +0000

Crossing
Originally uploaded by TheTurducken

I've been intending to get more into backpacking, and this past weekend I finally took the plunge. I and three other women from the hiking group went to the Stone Door area of the South Cumberland Recreation Area for a two-day trip.

My backpack weighed around 30 pounds. A good pack redistributes the weight, and mine did. My shoulders and back don't feel at all sore or tired. That doesn't mean that the weight doesn't have an impact. My legs are tired from carrying the burden, and we couldn't cover as much ground as we could have without the weight. In fact, we probably could have done the entire two days as a one-day trip.

(This was one of the reasons I hadn't taken the plunge. Why backpack to what you can hike to anyway? Well, because you have to start somewhere in order to work up to more.)

The trip was a lot of fun - particularly the sense of accomplishment at the end of it.

Natural lessons

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:26:00 +0000

I finally completed a task I had been putting off for too long. I was procrastinating because the task sounded tedious, long, and annoying. Then I finally did it, and it was quick and painless. Lesson: The mental agony I spent reminding myself, "You gotta do that" probably took more time altogether than actually doing it.

Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:02:00 +0000

University of Iowa: Assistant Professor, specialization open but seeking someone quantitative rather than qualitative.

How hard is it?

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:38:00 +0000

Almost all hiking guides rate the difficulty of the hikes they describe. Frequently this is done on a scale like "easy - moderate - strenuous," where the criteria for the rating are not entirely clear. Some books, for example, will rate a long, flat hike as moderate or strenuous, because it's a lot of miles, but others won't, because walking on flat ground is pretty easy.

I think there needs to be a better system, so I propose a three-part scale. It has the obvious disadvantage of being complicated.

Part 1: The hike length. This is just the distance in miles (or kilometers, if you prefer). Users can judge for themselves whether 5 miles is easy or challenging for them. Guides already include this, of course; I simply propose that it not influence the other two parts.

Part 2: The total elevation gain. Basically, how hilly is the hike? This measure isn't perfect, as it obscures how the elevation is distributed. It's one thing to walk up a hill and then back down, but another to walk down into a valley than back up.

Part 3: The technical difficulty of the terrain. Here we have to get back into categories. At one end you have trails that are wheelchair-accessible. At the other, you have trails that require climbing ladders, holding on to cables, or crossing fast streams. Maybe like this: very easy = wheelchair accessible; easy = mostly smooth terrain; moderate = rock hopping, poorly maintained trails; difficult = cables, unbridged streams, etc.

I was thinking about this on Saturday, when we got into a discussion of how Virgin Falls compares to North Chickamauga. They're the same distance (4 miles). Virgin Falls has almost twice the elevation gain. North Chick has more tricky terrain. The trouble is, when we casually converse about this stuff, there are a lot of other factors influencing our judgments. When we did North Chick it was hot, and that was no doubt one reason I felt so tired. It's also hard to compare hikes when you did them at different levels of fitness. (Would I be as tired now if I did Bearwaller Gap as I was in the spring? Would I just be less tired because now I wouldn't get lost?)

The problem with a three-part scale is that it's not really satisfying. I think it's human nature to distill it down to one rating. So I suppose one could make a composite index, but then it wouldn't ring true for everybody. Someone who does a lot of short, steep hikes and someone who does a lot of long, flat hikes probably wouldn't find trail X to be equally difficult.

Virgin Falls hike

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 13:30:00 +0000

Behind the curtain
Originally uploaded by TheTurducken

This was my second hike to Virgin Falls. Last spring, when we first went, was the beginning of a drought, and the hike was drier than usual. This time, however, it was even drier because of the time of year - the falls are simply wetter in spring than August. (In spring, I'd never want to do what is shown in this picture - walk back around behind the falls.)

The trip was fun, but I won't recap the details here, since the hike hasn't really changed from last time. The big excitement was that this time, a few of us went down to look at Lower Sheep Cave. Then one hiker dropped his camera, stirring up some bees. We booked it back up the hill but were all stung. If you had asked me beforehand, I would have said I wasn't capable of running up a slope that steep, but being chased by angry bees will do it.

We also poked around in Upper Sheer Cave and Virgin Falls Cave. Since the group wasn't comprised of cavers, we didn't do any sort of thorough exploration.

The best part was that we got lucky on the weather. It had been in the high 90s, but on Friday it dropped down to the mid 80s with lower humidity. So much nicer for hiking!

New pet peeve

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 21:48:00 +0000

I've seen this several places recently, and the newspaper today was the last straw. People of the English-speaking world, "illusive" does not mean the same thing as "elusive."

Elusive means something is hard to capture or find. Think of nature documentaries where the narrator says, "Ah, a rare sighting of the elusive red-throated grottlenose titmouse." Illusive means illusory, not real; "The titmouse proved to be illusive, being merely a holographic marvel designed by my archenemy."

In today's final straw, the newspaper reported that cougars are menacing the tony town-within-a-city of Belle Meade (it's where Nashville's celebrities actually live). The headline said that solutions were illusive, suggesting the mayor had tried several that failed. This led me to wonder if the town leaders were gullible or if the cougars were particularly hard to eradicate. Instead, the article revealed they had not yet come up with any solutions to try.

That's animal cougars, by the way, not the new slang cougars. (Which is a horribly misogynistic term that needs to go away.) Or at least I assume, given that shooting them had been discussed.

Safe drinking

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:53:00 +0000

I went to REI today to buy a water filter. We're going backpacking next weekend and had said I would bring one. (It's one of those items that everyone in the group doesn't need to own, not like socks.) I had decided on the MSR Hyperflow. It was Backpacker's "best buy" filter in their 2008 gear guide, and for what looked like good reason; it weighs less than most other filters, and it's supposed to be fast and durable.

Turns out REI doesn't sell it in their Nashville store, and online ordering wouldn't get it here in time. I was surprised at first that they didn't have it in stock, but maybe its slightly high price turned off local buyers. The Nashville store is pretty small, although they are expanding - at this very minute in fact. Rather than settle for another filter, or trot over to Cumberland Transit to see if they had it (I have a store credit with REI I wanted to use), I ended up going with the "other" choice in safe water, Potable Aqua tablets.

They're iodine, and iodine water is yucky. However, they have a version that comes with a second pill to neutralize the taste. We'll see if that works: I want to taste water, not mask it with Kool-aid or Crystal Lite. The other drawback is it takes 30 minutes to make water safe. The upside is that it doesn't require maintenance, unlike a filter. It's also much cheaper ($10), so if I hate it, I can throw it out or give it away. I don't think I'll be a fan, but trying it won't hurt.

By the way, if you read REI's customer reviews for water filters, you'll never buy any of them. Each one seems to be split between "this RAWKS" and "this product doesn't work." I seriously don't see how any one product, let alone an entire category of them, can have such differing reviews. With iodine, now, some people like it and some don't, but it's solely because of the taste. No one argues over whether iodine works or how easy it is to use.

Washington, DC

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:56:00 +0000

Fala
Originally uploaded by TheTurducken

I spent this past weekend in Washington, D.C. I won't bore you with the details (it would be a laundry list of memorials and museums), but it was to have the opportunity to catch up with several old friends who are in the area. The reason behind the trip was the wedding of one of my fellow students, and the event itself was very nice.

Job openings

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:15:00 +0000

University of Toronto, tenure-stream appointment in the field of
Postsecondary Education Policy and Measurement.

Boston College, assistant professor, student affairs/development

Gift idea

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:44:00 +0000

I could sure use one of these.

Looking for tips

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 16:43:00 +0000

I'm going to be in DC and I'll have one day all to myself. The next day I'll be doing some sort of touristy stuff with a friend. Last time I was in DC, we did the "walk around the mall" thing and visited the Smithsonian museum of arts and industry.

So there are a lot of places left that I haven't seen. In fact, the choices are rather overwhelming. Anyone have suggestions for what the must-see attractions are? Or for attractions that are a little unusual and not quite overrun with people? (I'll be getting around by Metro and on foot.)

Honey Creek hike

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:48:00 +0000

Stepping carefully
Originally uploaded by TheTurducken

Yesterday I went on a trip with the hiking group to Honey Creek in Big South Fork.

The day started off in a hurry - for the second morning in a row, my alarm didn't go off. I woke up naturally at 6:16 with an ETD of 6:30. There was no time for a shower; there was barely time to brush my teeth. Smartly, I had packed the night before, so I just had to throw together a sandwich before dashing out the door.

I discovered at that point that it had been raining in the night, and although it wasn't precipitating at the moment it didn't look to be over. I wondered if the hike might be canceled. Surprisingly, almost everyone showed up and no one wanted to back out.

Honey Creek has a reputation as one of the nicest hikes in the area. You probably can't tell that from my photos, because the weather made it very difficult to get good shots. The flash reflected against the humid air and took pictures of the mist and nothing else, while I couldn't hold the camera still enough with the flash off. I took 72 pictures. After deleting the ones that were blurry or nothing but mist, I was left with 39. Many of those just weren't good photos, and I only posted 18. My shots from the overlook came out quite nicely, but this is the rare hike where the journey is as nice as the destination. There were waterfalls, caves, rhododendrons, creeks, ladders, scenic views, enormous boulders, towering cliffs, and rivers. What more do you want?

I can't give you the usual stats for distance, etc. The National Park Service-provided map said it was just shy of six miles. A fellow hiker GPSed it at 8 miles. An outdoors website that uses GPS data said it was 4.61 with elevation gain of around 2,700 feet. My watch said the gain was less than 1,300. So it's a mystery. However, the terrain made for very slow going, as there were a lot of slippery rocks and roots; it took the full five hours suggested by the NPS.

Not to mention that there is a lot of stopping just to look around and admire!

P.S. Also check out Kelly's pictures. For one, they prove I was actually there, and for another, he includes video.

Vegetables are taking over

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:17:00 +0000

Another light soup
Originally uploaded by TheTurducken

I made cabbage soup today for lunch. Now I have seven servings of cabbage soup in the freezer, and they won't be going anywhere fast - I have enough fresh vegetables to eat. That includes two more heads of cabbage. I am not making 16 more servings of cabbage soup because then there will be no room at all in my freezer for anything else. Also, I am not making sauerkraut. Ideas? I need ones that use cabbage in bulk - no rolling things in cabbage leaves.

Tonight for dinner: succotash. On tomorrow's cooking agenda: zucchini bread, except it'll be yellow squash bread. Maybe I'll try the zucchini-banana bread recipe I found. Maybe I'll cook some kale.

Testing Google Maps walking directions

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 19:06:00 +0000

Google Maps has added walking directions. It's a great idea, but it definitely deserves their "beta" designation.

To test it, I asked it for directions from somewhere vaguely near my house to Shelby Park, and it came up with six possible locations for the latter. You can see the result for the location I chose here. Google Maps and Mapquest are both very sketchy about the park. For example, Google shows the nature center in the wrong place. You can drag endpoints, but if I was actually looking for directions, presumably I wouldn't know the location was wrong. Moreover, you can only drag it to what Google recognizes as a street, not to where the center actually is. The map doesn't show all the park roads, including a major entrance off where Lillian dead-ends into the park and the parking lot for the nature center.

The biggest drawback is that Google Maps still relies on roads only. It's smart enough to know you can walk on one-way streets, but it doesn't know anything about non-motorized paths. There is a trail from the dog park (not shown, but it's where Lillian dead-ends) that runs into the park. The greenway isn't shown, nor is the new pedestrian bridge across the river to the Stones River greenway. The upshot is that the path it show me is more direct than it driving path it shows, but it's still not the fastest way to get there.

July to-do list

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:38:00 +0000

Finish state governance changes report by Friday
~~Renew AERA membership~~
Submit research proposal to AERA
Revise and resubmit journal article
Revise co-authored article so we can send it out to a journal
~~Revise lit review and send to advisor~~
Write up cycle 2 of teaching certificate
~~Cook some of my CSA vegetables~~
See a man about a horse
Continue to work on dissertation

North Chickamauga hike

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:48:00 +0000

Nice view
Originally uploaded by TheTurducken

Yesterday we hiked the North Chickamauga trail near Chattanooga. It was formerly owned by Bowater, a paper company that developed some of its land into "pocket wildernesses," before Bowater donated it to the state to make up part of the Cumberland Trail.

The trail starts off at the level of North Chickamauga Creek and heads very steeply up. Then the elevation moderates, and the trail rolls gently up and down for a bit, while scenic bluffs line the right side of the trail. A ladder climbs up the bluffs and the trail truly levels off on an old mining road. Then there is another ladder, going back down, and the trail loses all the elevation it gained to get back down to the creek and a swimming hole. The trail continues on .5 miles further to a campsite, but we stopped at the swimming hole.

For some reason we found this trip to be more difficult than anticipated. My guidebook and an old map say that the trail is 3.9 miles to the campsite; the sign at the trailhead says it's 4.5. The guidebook also says it gains about 700 feet of elevation one way, while my altimeter said it was over 900. But none of these figures make it more difficult than the Walls of Jericho hike of a few weeks ago, yet it felt much harder. Perhaps it's because the elevation gain is concentrated in two very steep climbs. (I should say three of the four of us found it difficult; the college athlete/summertime trail worker had no difficulty at all.)

It didn't help that there were a lot of yellow jackets out. Aimee was stung three times and Joe twice. They really seemed drawn to Aimee, and Joe was stung when he was near her.

Despite this, it was a beautiful hike. It probably would be beautiful in every season. Now in the summer, it's lush and the swimming hole is very refreshing. In fall the colors would be out, and in winter, with the leaves gone, the views would be amazing. I'm sure there are wildflowers in spring, and the waterfalls would also be much more impressive.

If you want more pictures, you can see Joe's here, and mine by clicking on the photo at left.

Today, you can learn something new

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 23:51:00 +0000

I have my laptop back - far earlier than I was anticipating it. In celebration, I offer you a random history of higher education tidbit. It's a bit of academic history that seems to never have received its share of scholarly attention. Seriously, this would be prime material for a historian in this field, but alas I am not one.

Remember the good old days when women went to "finishing school"? I was wondering about finishing schools, specifically, whatever happened to them? You never hear them mentioned by name. Did they close? Turn into "real" colleges? I finally got curious enough to do some searching around.

Wikipedia tells us that American finishing schools were primarily on the East Coast and included the Seven Sisters. There's one more reason not to trust Wikipedia: Finishing schools were distinguished in part by not offering baccalaureate degrees, or by offering no degrees at all, while the Seven Sisters were pioneers in offering education to women equal to that of men. But I couldn't find any article willing to name names, at least for American institutions; there were and are finishing schools in Europe. Finally I found a 1924 article from the American Journal of Sociology comparing marriage rates for Vassar grads to those of finishing and preparatory school grads. It named the five comparison schools:

Lasell Seminary for Young Women: Now a co-ed baccalaureate-granting institution, but it didn't become one until the 1980s. It didn't even offer associates degrees until the 1940s. Its degrees are vocationally oriented.
Brearley School: Sounded familiar. This would have qualified as a prep school rather than a finishing school; today it is still an elite private school for girls.
Ossining School: Can't find anything on it, which suggests it is now closed. Presumably it was in Ossining, New York.
Bennett School: Transformed from a two-year to a four-year school and became a victim of the 1970s. (During this decade a lot of private colleges closed. In fact, the policy wonks were worried it was the end of private higher ed.)
Dana Hall: This name I knew because children's author Cynthia Voigt graduated from there. It remains an elite boarding school for girls.

The upshot of this is that only Lasell and Bennett were actually finishing schools - although we can't tell about Ossining.

Job posting

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:55:00 +0000

Morgan State University, open rank with specialization in student affairs. (Morgan State is a public HBCU in Baltimore.)

Qualitative research pays less

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:24:00 +0000

See the post here. (Note that this is extrapolated from assumptions, not based on something like a salary survey.)

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:12:00 +0000

Well, I have a couple of deep, insightful type of posts half written that won't get posted for a while. Last week ended up being a little crazy. Then yesterday afternoon, my iBook's screen died. I have to take it in Monday - the days when you could get a walk-up Genius Bar appointment are long gone. (I don't understand why they don't do triage, or allow someone to pay extra for an immediate visit. For a lot of us not having a computer almost stops our work in its tracks - it's not like when I needed to have a key replaced a couple of weeks ago, or even like an iPod breaking.) In any case I am now sadly unplugged once again.

Job posting

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:24:00 +0000

Penn State: Open Rank, tenure-track faculty position in Higher Education (Specialization open).

Background info: Penn State has the top-ranked program in higher ed. An open-rank, open-specialization search usually means a department is not trying to fill a gap (i.e., their community college guy retired and they want to replace him) but that they're looking for the absolute most promising candidate out there, be it a newbie or a tenured star. Now search committees aren't silly; they know that a newbie can't have the same record as a full professor. They don't stack them up against each other but against the pool of similar people - that is, would this person be in the 99th percentile compared to those with similar time and experience?

Concentration of higher ed, Part II: Proximity doesn't automatically produce synergy

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:54:00 +0000

(Before I get to this, Smanda has weighed in with some interesting points in response to the first part about how distance education can affect the location of colleges. Scroll down and check it out.)

I know I promised a post on the benefits of colleges working together, but before I get to that, I have another downer post. Even when colleges are geographically positioned to cooperate, and it's in their best interests, they often don't. Of course, sometimes colleges act against their own interests for stupid reasons, like inertia or pride - but it's not always cupidity or stupidity. There's nothing mysterious about this, no conspiracy, just human nature and its organizational equivalent, red tape. Let me give you a specific example.

My sister is a seminarian. Her institution (we'll call it #1) is fortunate enough to be located in a major urban area, in the same neighborhood as one of the nation's elite universities. Right next door to her seminary is another one of a different denomination (#2), and both belong to a city-wide consortium of seminaries. As you may know, seminaries in general are having financial difficulties these days. Costs are rising, their fundraising is minimal, the mainline churches supporting them don't have much more money because they're shrinking, and the alumni aren't in a position to give much back in the way of donations. Moreover, seminaries tend to be below optimally efficient size, and they can't cross-subsidize programs with lucrative new programs, since they have narrowly defined missions.

Under these circumstances, consortia and cost-sharing agreements are a brilliant idea. The trouble is implementing them.

For example, #1 and #2 share a bookstore. This makes excellent sense. But other efficiencies are limited by church policy. You can't run a student health clinic efficiently at that size institution; the obvious solution would be for #1 to pay the major elite institution for access to its clinic. Unfortunately, the church body doesn't allow this, because not all of its seminaries can do this, and they want them to be "equal." (Of course, they're not truly equal now. The one in a rural Midwestern area obviously has fewer local possibilities for internship-type experiences, for example; the urban seminary charges higher rents.) Mandating equality tends to level down, not up.

But if the problems were just caused by these school's denominational affiliations, it would be a problem peculiar to seminaries, and it's not.

For example, there are savings that could be implemented consortia-wide rather than denomination-wide. Right now every school in the area has its own email system and servers. Surely a joint IT department would be cheaper, and it would solve problems such as a server going down and there not being staff on-call to get it back up! Email is not a mission-central core function, so outsourcing it would not be like outsourcing teaching. IT issues are the sort of problem that plague very small schools of any type, not just seminaries, yet cooperative agreements tend to be out of their financial reach because they are broke. They'd have to spend money now to save it later, but they don't have it now.

They're not far different from grad students. Frequently it would be cheaper for me to buy the economy size, or the one-year yoga package, or the bicycle to save on gas, etc. But I can't get up the cash required for the initial investment, and credit card interest rates would negate the savings. Schools that need cooperation the most are in the same boat.

I'm hating Merrell even more

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:04:00 +0000

New ad: "Capsizing in class 4 whitewater and getting back in the boat made for a great water-cooler chat on Monday"

Because you don't do your hobbies for intrinsic enjoyment, but to impress other people. I picture this dude (you know it's a guy) as Drew from Office Space bragging about how he "bagged some class 4" over the weekend while everyone else just waits for him to shut up.

Not buying Merrell products. Ever.

Should higher education be more concentrated?

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 22:57:00 +0000

I started to reply to a comment Jaya left the other day, but my response got out of control length-wise, and I figured it should be its own post. She wondered about the possibility that someday, colleges might relocate so that there would be more schools geographically proximate to each other, which would offer some obvious benefits.

I don't think so, for a few reasons.

One, of course, moving itself is enormously expensive. Long-term, a new location might be cheaper, but schools would have some difficulty getting the money together in the short term. Sufficient incentive may overcome this, but remember that after Katrina, the one thing none of the area colleges did was consider relocating, despite the virtual certainty the another flood will happen again someday. I do know of one school that is relocating in the near future, but from an urban area to a more suburban/rural one - getting farther from its neighbors, not closer. The cost barrier was overcome in this case because its present location is now primo real estate.

Two, most colleges are extremely regional. The best predictor of whether a student goes to college is how close he/she is to one, and the best predictor of which one a student goes to is again location. The subset of schools this is most true of are also the most penny-pinched. Elite schools with a national reach and the students that attend them are an unusual (and small) segment of the educational marketplace. Princeton, for example, is not tied to its region, but it also can afford to stay in New Jersey. Community colleges in particular exist to serve a particular community, not even an entire region. College-access advocates would have a fit if colleges were moved away from local constituents to where other schools already exist, leaving a pool of students without a nearby institution. Of course, one can easily debate the power your average educational pundit has!

Three, most politicians would be opposed to a college in their district relocating. State reps would object to moving their local colleges elsewhere, because they are a key producer of jobs and state revenue for the area. (Even those congressmen who aren't so keen on providing the funding.) Moreover, the cities that would receive the institutions wouldn't be happy, either. Cities that have a large concentration of nonprofits (including colleges) have been increasingly complaining about the reduction in property taxes that results. (PILOTs, or payments in lieu of taxes, are becoming more common.) A city that already has several institutions of higher education isn't likely to think that one more will be a major engine of economic growth.

Now, note that I don't believe all these arguments are socially good ones. I think the access argument is, but the one about costs is not - it's just a reflection of the way things tend to work, not how they ought to. There are considerable benefits to informal synergy and formal consortia; the model of the Claremont colleges ought to be more widely replicated, I believe.

The overall tone of this post is a big "no, not gonna happen," but that's not because I don't believe there are benefits to co-location. (I'm definitely anti-sprawl when we're talking about things other than education, after all). I'm going to save the benefits for a separate post, however.

Good news

noreply@blogger.com (turducken) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 02:12:00 +0000

The emails went out with ASHE acceptances and rejections, and one of my papers has been accepted. (I say "mine," but I'm the first of four authors.) I think it was the strongest of the three submissions. So thanks to Vanderbilt's generous travel policies, my trip to ASHE this fall will be paid for.