Overheard on gmail chat

Since overheard in the gradlab is on hiatus for the months of January, I present the following message sent to me by the ever hilarious Mike McDonald, who should be studying for his comp.

Background: Mancur Olson (famous in polisci for his work on collective action problems) was faculty at UMD's Econ department before he died.  There was a bench dedicated to him behind Tydings.  It recently disappeared.  Jim sent out an invite to join a facebook group to protest the bench being taken away.

5:38 PM Mike:
dude... no body wants that Mancur Olsen bench back more than me, but I
am not going to join the facebook group. I'm going to free ride

5:39 PM me: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

5:41 PM Mike: actually, i dont care about the bench

 what are you up to?

this is seriously hilarious

Apparently some government grad students at Hahvahd made a spoof of the office. The montage at the beginning featuring free food and restocking printer paper speaks to GVPT students at UMD too.  It begs the question though - how do grad students at Harvard have so much free time, especially at the end of the semester?  See especially around 6:40 when the faculty start talking about grad students and their work ethic and 9:10 when they talk about firing the theorists.  Ha ha ha (w/apologies to my theorist friends).

   

New blog to add to your blogrolls/feedreaders

I just got an email over the epovb listserv and it seems that some of my professors at GW have started a political science blog.  They currently have some really interesting analysis of the NH primaries up.  If you are into this kind of thing, go check it out.

Vegas poker time

I got back from Vegas 4 days ago.  In those four days, I've been up for sunrise every day, except one.  I feel like a vampire.  Not much incentive for me to get back on a normal sleep schedule either.

The Dividing of Assets Sucks

Have you ever tried to go through and divide up belongings from someone you have lived with for seven years?  It's not exactly a fun process.  People accumulate a lot of stuff together without even realizing it, and then after you've been together for awhile you also consolidate belongings too.  There's all kinds of things that you use on a daily basis that you take for granted until you are faced with the prospect of not having them anymore.

Advise and Consent

For Christmas I got this dvd set of controversial movies.  Out of all the different movies, the only one I'd seen before was The Blackboard Jungle.  Anyways, I dug into the dvds today and started by watching Advise and Consent.  It's directed by Otto Preminger...and I can't believe I've never seen this movie before.  Henry Fonda plays an appointee for Secretary of State and the movie is all about the party politics of the congressional approval process.  I'm not sure I liked the very end of the movie, but overall it was good and I'd recommend it to anyone who likes political movies. 

Belated Happy New Year

I have never been one to really care about New Year's.  I don't usually get all decked out...usually just hang out with a few friends drinking, or I cook something special and we stay at home being lame.  But this year's New Year's in Vegas was pretty damned fun.  We went to the spa, got all gussied up, played some table games, and then went out on the strip to watch the fireworks.  New Years is also probably the only time I could order champagne from the cocktail waitress and not feel like a total tool.

Anyways, just got back from Vegas this morning.  It was a good trip and I actually came back slightly ahead (though actually not if you count $$$ spent on food).  I'm still trying to recover from my Vegas hangover (you know, coming into contact with so many germs through chips, dry air, drinking, lack of sleep, cigarette smoke everywhere...), but I'll try to get trip reports and pictures up in the next few days.