{"id":1763,"date":"2007-09-25T10:49:37","date_gmt":"2007-09-25T10:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2007\/09\/25\/guilty-pleasures\/"},"modified":"2007-09-25T10:49:37","modified_gmt":"2007-09-25T10:49:37","slug":"guilty-pleasures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2007\/09\/25\/guilty-pleasures\/","title":{"rendered":"Guilty Pleasures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sean Carroll is disappointed with academia<\/a>, at least as revealed through the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s<\/cite> article on guilty pleasures of academics<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

As it turns out, compared to my colleagues I\u2019m some sort of cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Caligula. Get a load of some of these guilty pleasures<\/a>: Sudoku<\/em>. Riding a bike<\/em>. And then, without hint of sarcasm: Landscape restoration<\/em>. Gee, I hope your Mom never finds out about that.<\/p>\n

But the award goes to Prof. McCloskey, who in a candid examination of the dark hedonistic corners of her soul, managed to include this sentence:<\/p>\n

\n

Nothing pleases me more than opening a new textbook.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Arrrgh! Stuff like that sets back the cause of academic non-geekiness for centuries!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’m with Sean. Surely, we can do better than this. So, what are your guilty pleasures?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Actually, it’s a little tough to come up with anything that really works, in this age of blogging. After all, a guilty pleasure is something you don’t want other people to know that you enjoy, and a lot of the really good candidates in my life are here for the whole world to see. I read trashy genre fiction<\/a>, and participate in SF fandom<\/a>, which would count as “guilty pleasures” in the academic community, but it’s not like I’m doing a bang-up job of hiding them. There’s the whole blogging thing in the first place, but people have been finding the blog a few at a time for the last couple of years, and since the book deal, I’ve been flat-out telling people about it.<\/p>\n

Probably the best “guilty pleasure” I can offer here that I don’t already talk about regularly is this: Terrible paranormal documentaries on cable. I’m a sucker for “Aliens built the Pyramids” shows, the hokier the better. I particularly like the ones with blurry, overexposed dramatic re-creations, and lots of shots of people with dubious credentials holding forth on the TRVTH and the way that the Establishment is covering everything up.<\/p>\n

But, really, that’s not a whole lot less lame than most of what the famous academics interviewed for the Chronicle<\/cite> piece came up with. So, OK, I<\/strong> can’t do better, but maybe you can…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sean Carroll is disappointed with academia, at least as revealed through the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s article on guilty pleasures of academics: As it turns out, compared to my colleagues I\u2019m some sort of cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Caligula. Get a load of some of these guilty pleasures: Sudoku. Riding a bike. And… Continue reading Guilty Pleasures<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1763\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}