Ryan, Debi, and Toren Cragun's Blog

Debi just returned to Florida from a weekend visit to Utah for a baby shower.  She very much enjoyed the trip and the shower and loved seeing everyone.

Lucky her, she returned when I was about half way through redoing our spare bathroom.  We redid our master bathroom over our winter break.  The spare bathroom has been on our to-do list ever since we bought the house.  The previous owner did about the most superficial cosmetic make-over ever.  She removed the old medicine cabinet, but couldn’t find one to fit the hole that was left as a result, so she put a mirror in the hole and left it that way.  She also painted over a spot that had water damage from a leaky roof (which is probably what led to the roof being replaced a few years ago).  So, a large chunk of one wall had paint that had bubbled up from the water damage.  Saturday, I tore the crappy mirror out, reframed the hole in the wall to fit a modern medicine cabinet, and scraped off all the crappy paint.  I then patched everything up on Monday and put a first coat of paint on Tuesday.  We painted for a couple of hours last night after she got back (“Welcome home. Now paint!”)  She’s finishing most of the painting today.  Hopefully this evening I can put the bathroom back together.  Once that’s done, all that will be left is some caulking and touch up work.  Hooray – we’ll have fixed that bathroom.  Only four more rooms to go… :(   (We’re only going to do one more before the baby comes; too much other stuff going on.)

On a completely unrelated note, while doing a Google vanity search (i.e., I was searching for me) after reading this Slashdot story I came across a book being published with my name on it. As an academic sociologist, publishing a book is important for tenure and promotion criteria, but I actually didn’t publish THIS book. Here’s what I can gather… I am the primary author of a Wikibook and it looks like some unknown publisher – Seven Treasures Publications – has taken my work (and the work of a number of other people who have contributed to the book), put it in print, and is now making money off of it. I was never contacted about this, but the book is being marketed as though I am the primary author. I guess, in a sense, I am, but I never gave permission for anyone to sell it on Amazon.com or publish it in print. Now I’m not sure what I should do.  I’m not sure if this is legal given the GNU Free Documentation License of Wikibooks.  But I’m also concerned that someone is making money off my reputation as a scholar.  Thoughts?

I received an email from Michael Paulson, a religion reporter for The Boston Globe, yesterday asking me if I had time to talk about a new study coming out today.  The study is the latest wave of the American Religious Identification Survey.  Having worked with the principal investigators – Barry Kosmin and Ariela Keysar – on the original design of the survey and some of the analysis once the data was collected, I can say that I’m quite familiar with the survey.  So, I agreed to chat with him last night.  He called and we talked for about 20 minutes.  He mainly wanted to know whether I thought the survey was accurate and well-done (it is) and what I thought was most interesting about it.  I mentioned the significant losses of Catholics to non-religion in New England as the most interesting finding.  He was very nice and quite knowledgeable.

Anyway, I ended up in The Boston Globe today.  I’ve been interviewed by three reporters in the last week – one an independent journalist and one for my school’s newspaper (on unrelated topics).  But The Boston Globe!!  That’s pretty cool!

For additional coverage, see USA Today’s site.  The videos are pretty groovy too.

Our conversation as Debi got out of the shower this morning:

Debi: When I look down I can’t see my legs.

Ryan: Your legs are gone?  Did someone steal your legs?  Did they go invisible?

Debi: I know they’re there; I’m standing on them.

I had to beg Debi to let me post this.  She agreed on the condition that I note that her response falls into the category: “stupid questions that deserve stupid answers.”  She is, of course, right, but I still thought her answer was hilarious.

For those wondering how she is progressing, let me put it this way: she won’t be getting less sleep when the baby comes.  Her reflux is not being very kind to her.  Also, I would post the weekly pictures I take of her growing belly, but she also won’t allow that (email her and say you want to see them; maybe she’ll relent).

In other news, Debi was accepted into the PhD program in Public Health at USF.  We’re still awaiting details, but she can at least rest easy now knowing what she’ll be doing this fall.

Oh, and we finally decided on a name for the baby…  But, of course, there is a story here.  I had the bright idea of suggesting that we let Google decide.  Here’s what I was thinking: We had narrowed the options down to two: Ronen or Toren.  I figured that we could try to get email addresses at gmail for each of these: ronen@gmail.com and toren@gmail.com.  If one of them was taken, we’d go with the other.  Alas, we were foiled by gmail.  Turns out the address has to have at least 6 characters and neither of the names do.  ronencragun and torencragun as respective email addresses were, of course, not taken, but that didn’t get us any closer to deciding (shakes fist at Google for not making a decision for us!).  Then it dawned on me that I have, in the past, used “rcragun” as my username on some websites.  If we went with Ronen, he might run into the same problem (’cause I’m sure my son will set up accounts on slashdot and NYTimes.com just like his old man).  So, Toren it is.  Oh, and the email address is registered: torencragun -at- gmail.com.  If you email Toren, he may respond…  Try it!

An article I co-authored with Michael Nielsen just came out in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. It takes a look at some claims made by the LDS Church concerning the coverage of the FLDS raid in Texas last year.  If you’re interested in more details, let me know.

TimMinchin.com (courtesy of the SGU)