Tuesday, December 06, 2005

ethnography for dummies

yet another day of being-in-jschool-is-so-humiliating -- sat and stared at an ATM in Lerner for two hours. aahhh!!! courtesy of prof. sudhir "blind date" venkatesh, also known as prof. sudhir "how does it feel to be black and poor" venkatesh. results: a lot of North Face is being worn around the ATMs at Columbia. conclusion: those who wear North Face are more likely to withdraw money from ATMs, or those who withdraw are more likely to buy North Face than those who don't. AHA! Also, none of the bathrooms have soap.

main info gleaned from today: species-area curve controversy. Developed by amateur ecologist who just happened to be reading over some data in a book one day. But he seemed pretty interesting because he didn't go to grad school or anything but just read a lot and then submitted a collection of publications in lieu of a dissertation.

oh, and lisa fauci's leech animations are pretty crazy.

good good link - i'm sure this will come in useful: http://www.realclimate.org

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