Ryan and Debi

Category: sociology

  • Portland trip

    We spent the weekend in Portland, OR, attending a conference called: Challenging Assumptions: Religious Faith, Genetic Science, and Human Dignity. It was an intriguing conference. There were probably 50 to 75 people who attended at some point. This was both nice and awkward. It was nice because we couldn’t help but get a chance to…

  • 2 great sociology articles today in the NYTimes

    I generally don’t post links to these anymore on here (though I do include what I’m reading in the widget to the right), but these two articles were too good not to post. The first is by Paul Krugman, who does a great job illustrating that race still matters in the U.S. The second is…

  • something you never thought you’d hear from us 😉

    Debi and I went to a professional football game yesterday – Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. New Orleans Saints. In fact, we even had $250/seat tickets for club seating. Here are a couple pics (from my crappy cellphone camera) as evidence: Here’s Debi at the game: Here’s a shot of the famed pirate ship: And here’s…

  • hard-wired politics?

    I caught this article in the LA Times today about some recent neuroscience studies illustrating differences between conservatives and liberals. Turns out, there are actual biological differences: conservatives don’t respond well to ambiguity and don’t take kindly to change; liberals, on the other hand, are very accepting of change and tolerate ambiguity well. Like the…

  • dinner with the McDonaldizer

    Last week I was gearing up for all of the orientations for the new job when I noticed on the schedule for Tuesday a keynote speaker who surprised me – George Ritzer. The non-sociologists who read this blog probably won’t recognize the name, so you may want to check him out on Wikipedia. The sociologists,…

  • graduation

    Well, it’s finally official – I graduated. I now have a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cincinnati. With a little urging from my adviser, I decided to participate in the hooding ceremony and I’m glad I did. It wasn’t particularly amazing, but it was a nice, ceremonial way to illustrate that one era…

  • articles on poverty and class in NYTimes Magazine

    The New York Times Magazine is running a number of article on poverty and class in America. I highly recommend taking the thirty minutes or so it will take to read through some of these articles. They do a great job highlighting issues of class that increasingly present themselves in U.S. society, especially as the…

  • here’s something fun…

    In preparation for my class on sex work tomorrow (it’s a class on human sexuality) I did a little sniffing around to see what I could find on prostitution in Cincinnati. One of the first thoughts that came to mind was to see if the Cincinnati Police had any statistics on their website regarding prostitution.…

  • Iraq and life update

    I got my dissertation defense date – May 4. It’s a little nerve-wracking, but it will be good to have it done. It’s kept me pretty busy lately. I also need to recommend a new local restaurant to my fellow Cincinnatians – Mama’s Hot Pot (8372 Reading Road). It opened up about a month ago…

  • sitting at the park in Nashville

    I’m in Nashville with Debi, who is attending a professional conference. I have plenty to do to keep me busy, but I thought I’d read outside to enjoy the good weather rather than sit, cooped up, in our hotel room. I checked a local map and found a park by the river just a couple…