jameyhasnolj

I'm briefly breaking my silence to point people to a few sources of information on the current campaign that I have found either especially useful or especially moving.
First is my favorite horse-race polling website, http://www.fivethirtyeight.com The author is a well-respected SABRmetric (baseball statistic) guy at baseballprospectus whom I trust from his non-political regression modeling work that I followed for a few years. I recommend it for perspective whenever you feel worried (or wonder if you should feel worried) by some piece of polling data that you hear. The ~2 points that the lack of cell phones in most polls is costing Obama is quite heartening.

Secondly, and most importantly, is this clip of McCain. To say that it is shocking does not do it justice. I only hope that everyone takes the time to watch it, hopefully sitting down, and possibly with a stiff drink. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TiQCJXpbKg

The philosophy department at UMass Amherst has kindly offered me a spot in their PhD program, starting this fall, and I have accepted. I get to spend the next 5-6 years doing philosophy, with the school picking up the tab (the norm in the field, as philosophy isn't exactly lucrative enough to inspire sane people to go into debt getting a PhD). Score.

This means I will be leaving Providence by the end of the summer, which sadly means leaving a lot of truly excellent people I've gotten to know over the past few years. Still, Amherst is only a two hour drive (or slightly longer bus ride) from Providence or Boston, and I'm pondering getting a car to make that distance less of a barrier. It will be odd moving to a town, as I've lived in medium-sized cities all my life, but at least it's a nice one with a truly ridiculous number of students around (the median age is 22!), so there ought to be a lot to do for the size.

Now back to regularly-scheduled non-LJ-having.