My blog turns 1,000 posts old

I just noticed that my blog is now 1,000 posts long (or deep?). I started it on a bit of a lark, and who would have thunk, but it's still going.


It has served me very, very well, ultimately leading to a book contract and lots of useful contacts in academics and the media.


When I started the blog, I was writing more extensive essays, sometimes based on data. Now, however, I spending so much time writing for publications (in part, due to the blog), that the blog is more talking about whatever I've happened to notice.


Still... 1,000 posts, that's a lot more than I thought it would be.

How I'm going to promote my book

This coming Thursday my book will be officially released (though Amazon is already shipping it).  I've been wondering how to help promote it (though my publisher has already lined up a series of interviews), and then my son, Gus, suggested the approach shown in this video.  I think that he's on to something:

How many stops is a book tour?

My book comes out this week,and my publisher has set up various publicity things, like articles and interviews. In two weeks I'm going to Winnipeg, Canada to tape an interview on a television show.


Here's my question. Since I'm going there to talk about my book, does that count as a book tour? You see, I've always thought that it would be cool to go on a book tour, so I'm keen to know exactly what constitutes on. If so, maybe I'll get t-shirts printed up, and on the back they will say "Tour Dates" listing the one stop to Winnipeg.

Bad news regarding education

I don't study education, but I have seen these kinds of statistics before, and it always depresses me....


"Research indicates that persons entering the teaching field had lower SAT scores than their non-teaching, college-graduating peer and those leaving the profession had higher scores than those remaining as teachers. In addition, the scores of those majoring in education were lower than those of graduates who majored in another field. Those who came to teaching without prior preparation, such as student teaching, had higher scores."  Source: Social Change in America, The Historical Handbook 2004.  Edited by Patricia Becker.


K-12 teaching is as difficult as it is important, so it's a shame that we can't keep the smartest teachers. I've read before that this is an argument for raising their salaries... to keep the best people (who are presumably also the smartest, though, perhaps not).


Thoughts?

Mark Edwards, professor extraordinaire

Here's a nice article about my good friend and fellow sociologist Mark Edwards. He takes both his faith and teaching very seriously...

When I'm writing....

I've started working at home a lot more this last year, and it works out well for a number of reasons, but one problem has been my my distraction and disengagement when I'm working, even when I take a short break from it. I've tried to deal with this by having set hours when I work, so that Cathy and the boys can know what to expect.


I was reading a book by Orson Scott Card, and in his afterward, he thanked his daughter for having to "deal with a father who haunts the house like a distracted, irritable ghost during the writing of this book."


What a great phrase... captures who I am when I'm writing.

Christians and judgmentalism

On a post last week, I got the following anonymous comment:


"I believe that you have unwittingly touched upon one of the most significant evils within the Christian culture today - the idea that we can judge whether a person we have never met will or will not go to heaven.  I wonder how many people gave the proper answer of "I have no idea. That's for God to decide and not me"?"


I've been thinking about this comment, and I absolutely agree that it's a bad idea for Christians to think that they know who is or isn't going to heaven. Some things God is just better at than us, and this is one of them.


While the comment didn't make this comparison, it got me wondering if Christians are more judgmental than others. It seems that we have that reputation, but I'm not sure it's correct. For one, we're warned in scripture not to judge others (e.g., Matthew 7). Also, we spend a lot of time confronting our failures (called sin), so it makes us perhaps more hesitant to think we've got it all together. Finally, non-Christians can show moral judgmentalism as well. For a rather sad example.


What do you think?

Who is the one person most likely to go to heaven?

This one is easy... among all people, who is most likely to get into heaven? (After Mother Theresa, that is)... you.


When asked "How likely...are you...to get into heaven?"
54% of respondents said Very likely
34% Somewhat likely
3% Somewhat unlikely
3% Very unlikely
4% Don't know
3% Refused


88% think they're likely to go to heaven... that's more than actually believe in an afterlife/heaven.

Who is going to heaven among 1990s celebrities?

The poll that I've been posting about this week also asked respondents about the heaven-prospects for famous people (circa 1997). Specifically, it asks "Assuming there is a heaven, please tell me, in your opinion, how likely each of the following individuals is to get into heaven"


Here are the percentage of respondents who answered "very likely" for the following celebs:


OJ Simpson-7%
Howard Stern-10%
Newt Gingrich-11%
Rush Limbaugh-14%
Bill Clinton-18%
Hilary Clinton-19%
Al Gore-21%
Princess Diana-22%
Magic Johnson-24%
Pat Robertson-25%
Colin Powell-32%
Oprah Winfrey-36%
Mother Theresa-74%


I'm not sure what the trends are here, other than most celebs are best known for something other than doing good.

Who is going to heaven among regular people?

The US News and World Report 1996 poll mentioned yesterday also asked questions about other people getting into heaven. Specifically, it asked "Please tell me, in your opinion, about how many of each of the following groups you think will get into heaven"


The answers:
* 31% of respondents said that most or all Americans will get into heaven
* 42% thought that most or all of their neighbors will
* 55% thought that most or all of their close friends will


This illustrates a larger principle that we tend to think more positively about those near us than those far away. Similarly, many surveys have found that people think that their local life circumstances are fine, but those of the world and nation are terrible.

What does it take to get into heaven?

I just came across a really interesting poll collected by The US News and World Report in 1997 about who will get into heaven and why.


One question is: Which do you think will count more toward getting into heaven...good deeds and moral behavior or religious faith and observance?  (U.S. News & World Report Poll, Mar, 1997)


51% Good deeds and moral behavior

28% Religious faith and observance

13% Both or depends (vol.)

6% Neither or other (vol.)


I'm surprised that more people didn't choose both...

Prom night for Gus

Well, I just got back from dropping off Gus at his junior prom... a proud moment with such a handsome young man.


For reasons that I don't understand, however, he declined to follow my advice to wear a baby-blue tuxedo, and he didn't even seem to pay attention when I showed him some disco moves.  Kids these days.

Pond (pic)

Today's sign that I'm getting old and cranky

Twice in the last two weeks, I've walked into a store and had a clerk (both young guys) shout out, as a greeting, "Hey buddy."  Now, I didn't know these clerks nor am I a regular customer there.  Instead, it's the new "may I help you".  I just ignored their greeting on the grounds that we're not yet buddies.  The greeting bothered me a bit, but I was probably more bothered that it bothered me.  Getting old...

The first review of my book

This review, from Publisher's Weekly, is a nice summary of the book (and the publicist at Baker was really happy it's not negative).


"A sociologist at the University of Connecticut, Wright examines recent survey data on Christian evangelicals to see if they substantiate the often misguided and hyperbolic public perceptions of this faith group. Separating the wheat from the chaff, he explains how some poorly worded, ill-sampled statistics give the wrong impression of evangelicals and why people should avoid giving them credence. Though he often blames the media for gleefully reporting bad news about devout Christians, he doesn’t spare evangelical polemicists such as Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel for their false exaggerations of evangelical shortcomings. His biggest target may be the pollster George Barna, whose surveys on Christianity have generated intense controversy. Wright’s colloquial writing style gives this volume the feel of a folksy college lecture series. The abundant use of graphics adds to the impression the book’s genesis was cribbed from introductory sociology of religion classes. The conclusions drawn here--no surprise--are that the most committed Christians practice what they preach, performing better than the rest of the population on a host of social measures including divorce, domestic violence, sexual misconduct, crime, substance abuse, and everyday honesty. The book would have been more interesting if it were about pirates, though (July)"


(Okay, I added the last sentence)

Family Dinner Hour

I just came across an interesting idea.... Karlyn Bowman has written that the typical number of meals taken together by parents and children in the United States is about the same now as it was at the end of the 19th century. Now, families might miss meals because they are too busy, but back then, it wasn't always considered appropriate to dine with one's children, so the factors wash each other out. (Summarized from Easterbrook's 2003 The Progress Paradox, p. 194).

This may not apply to the golden era of the 1950s, but it does highlight that the past doesn't always fit our idyllic perceptions.

Sunsets (pics)

Same lake, same sunset, just different perspective (to get the log in the foreground). 

Faces of Meth

If you've not seen it before, you should check out the Faces of Meth website. It shows pictures of people before and after meth addiction. The addictive nature of meth, and its impact on the body, is phenomenal.


Here is an example from the site.  The pictures were taken 3.5 years apart, and it looks like she's aged a couple of decades:

My new photography site

Well, I have switched from Flickr to SmugMug as my photography site. SmugMug costs an annual fee, but it looks so much nicer and has a more intuitive feel.


Check it out here, and let me know what you think.

Pharmaceutical companies and methamphetamine

I've recently read Methland, a story about the effects of methamphetamine use on a small town in Iowa. (I also assigned it to my crime class).


Now, I don't naturally gravitate toward a critical/ conflict theory of sociologist (i.e., one that focuses on the oppression by the elite), but this book describes the very real ways that big pharmaceutical companies, and their lobbyists, have made the meth epidemic what it is today.


Meth is made with pseudoephedrine--the stuff in cold medicine. Regulating it seems like an easy way to hinder the production of meth, but on numerous occasions the big drug companies fought against it. They didn't want to keep track of imports or sales. In fact, it's possible to make psuedoephedrine so that it can't be used for meth, but they fought that too. I understand that these companies are charged by their shareholders to maximize profits, but at what cost?