Weren't you a tiny bit tempted to write 1,063 more words?
Congratulations on achieving only-increasing status on your ratio!
I'm surprised the ratio of the first number to the second isn't higher.
Slacker.
Clearly, that chapter could have been shorter.
Congratulations on finishing your diss. Can we call you Dr. Nose-Flow now?
Your thesis has almost exactly 3 times as many words as mine did. I'm afraid to think about how many words I've written here.
Is your first book going to be a reworked version of your dissertation or a compilation of your writings on unfogged?
And how much have you written on your own blog?
That would be much more of a PITA to find out, because I don't have direct access to the database and the last time I tried to use the API I couldn't get it to work.
I should have an a gyro for lunch.
Is 100K words normal for a US doctorate? The max. word limit on mine was, iirc, 75K. And congratulations on finishing it.
I think it's on the long side, but not abnormally so.
Yep! No revisions! (Well, the committee has accepted it, though they haven't actually signed the signature page yet; I suppose the registrar could still find fault with the formatting or something like that.)
18: Some have quibbled with the characterization but no one has outright complained.
Sincere congratulations! So it'll be back to Burger King on Monday morning,then?
Let me be the first to address you as "doctor", doctor.
That'll do, Neb. That'll do.
After the committee accepted my dissertation I had to confront someone I only remember as "The Dean of Margins" who did not like a thing about how my dissertation was formatted. She was really terrifying, because I had written the whole thing in MS Word, and getting Word format very large documents properly is a screaming nightmare.
Why is dissertation formatting a thing? I've heard that it is, but I don't understand it. How arcane can the requirements be?
It's a binding/preservation issue, or used to be, I think. Acid-free paper, margins that won't lead to text being obscured once bound, etc. Theoretically, dissertations are supposed to be preserved permanently by the degree-granting institution (or someone they assign for that purpose).
But some of it is also probably just arbitrary style.
But what is it about?
It's about choice of font, point size, margin depth, headings and above all the format of footnotes and endnotes. And there remain a few bitter enders who also care about the treatment of the topic.
Why is dissertation formatting a thing? I've heard that it is, but I don't understand it. How arcane can the requirements be?
It's to prepare would-be academics for the vicious and pointless battles that will become their lives.
How arcane can the requirements be?
I don't know, but I do know that people applying for federal grants will double check margins with a ruler on the grounds that the federal flunky who first processes the applications has a much easier life the fewer applications there are to process and will therefore first look to dump applications on technicalities.
How wonderful! Congratulations, Dr. Ben!
I think it also seems traumatic because formatting a book length document is not something that most Ph.D. students know how to do but are required to do in a short time frame at the exact moment you think all the trials and tribulations are over.
Its like you think you've killed the alien, and just want to strip down to your underwear and go into your hibernation pod, and you are there with all your soft, pink, human flesh exposed and suddenly: Bang! Shriek! the monster is back and you have to flush it out the airlock or something.
Not only that, but you have to make sure your underwear covers the relevant content with adequate margins.
36: As a state flunky who processed grant applications, we hated people who ignored our technicalities. If they ignore our technicalities when they're begging us for money, they'll ignore our technicalities when they're invoicing us and those ones are important. It never happened that they didn't format their grant applications the way we told them, but then they were totally conscientious and responsive grantees for the rest of the three years. As flunkees, we wanted to trash them the second they didn't follow directions, but our bosses had policy concerns and kept them in. Then they were pains in the ass for the next three years, as already knew they would be.
31
Why is dissertation formatting a thing? I've heard that it is, but I don't understand it. How arcane can the requirements be?
Don't courts often have weird formatting requirements for written submissions? That cause novice lawyers a certain amount of anxiety. I imagine it is the same sort of thing.
They did the best they could, being lesbians from Syria.
I think it also seems traumatic because formatting a book length document is not something that most Ph.D. students know how to do but are required to do in a short time frame at the exact moment you think all the trials and tribulations are over.
I smell a market opportunity. Could kinkos make a killing offering to do this for $49.99? (Or, hell, $299.99?)
Oh, nevermind, that smell was just me. I still haven't started back with the soap.
45: Really? How long has it been now?
I dunno. Heebie's got a post in the archives somewhere,logging in. We started together.
Kinkos could, if I still existed. Do copy shops exist in thriving form anywhere anymore? I had to use one near USC a few months ago (former Kinkos, now FedEx) and it was incredibly decrepit.
The FedEx shops by here seem fine, if not the busy hubs they were in 1995 or whatever.
47: Since I hadn't heard anything, I figured everybody quit.
I have two friends/colleagues who think I could translate in the wrong direction. I've been close to being offered swedish to english jobs projecsts times but it's never worked out, so.
Crap. I mean, congratulations, Ben!
I think 48 implies either Kinkos can make a killing or Halford has been a philosophical zombie for up to a few months.
But I'm not sure, since I'm not a doctor.
Ugh, the formatting for our dissertation was pretty awful. You had to schedule an appointment with a mean lady who busted out a ruler and measured if the names of your committee members were indented exactly this many inches, with the space for their signature exactly this many inches below. And it seemed to be totally made-up conventions, arbitrary all over the place.
Also I was the last year that got to do everything on carbon copies, and put the yellow copy in the orange box on that end of campus, and the pink copy in the tan box on that end of campus, etc. That part wasn't stressful, just anachronistic.
Also, if my dissertation is 67 pages long, at an estimated 250 words per page, then Neb's was nearly 6 times longer than mine. And mine has a lot of equations and pictures.
52: Maybe because Swedes are close to humorless.
40: If they ignore our technicalities when they're begging us for money, they'll ignore our technicalities when they're invoicing us and those ones are important.
Megan with the Van Halen brown M&M defense. (Which all things considered is a pretty good defense.)
No wonder your margin was 1/8th of an inch off.
Thanks everyone!
But what is it about?
It is a defense of the claim that a person acting intentionally has nonobservational, noninferential knowledge of what she is intentionally doing.
Dude! You wrote your dissertation on mens rea!
Ugh, the formatting for our dissertation was pretty awful. You had to schedule an appointment with a mean lady who busted out a ruler and measured if the names of your committee members were indented exactly this many inches, with the space for their signature exactly this many inches below. And it seemed to be totally made-up conventions, arbitrary all over the place.
Let me tell you, nowadays when you have to base it on a .doc file template that they provide for you, and then send it in as a pdf to the mean lady, and she responds with 25 complaints, it's even worse, because it LITERALLY TAKES DOZENS OF HOURS to even figure out how to get Microsoft Word to follow her instructions, such things as "have the figure legend one space, not two spaces, below the figure" and "change these things so they aren't bold anymore" that might not be quite so difficult with hand layout.
Maybe because Swedes are close to humorless.
Talk to the Sedin brothers after tonight's Canucks-Bruins Game 7, Stanley Cup finals. Go 'Nucks Go! (I already congratulated neb)
On the other hand it would also probably take dozens of hours to retype the pages instead of fiddling fruitlessly with the formatting. But at least I would be sure that it's possible to do it by putting in a certain amount of work, instead of doing the modern equivalent of reciting a series of magic spells while thinking that the problem might be solved within ten seconds, or within ten hours depending on what the computer decides to do.
getting Word format very large documents properly is a screaming nightmare
Welcome to my working life, day in and day out.
Congratulations, neb!
No way this dissertation was written in Word, though. LATEX, surely?
68: Macros. Lots and lots of macros. (Back when I was editing textbooks, Word was an advance--manuscripts would come in in WP5.1, Lotus, straight up .txt, the occasional primitive OCR (OCR being nearly brand new ca. 1997)--anyway, it was a giant clusterfuck, and I needed to get it all to flow relatively smoothly so it could be dumped into Quark for layout and output to film.
Shit. When describing a job you used to do involves explaining technologies that no longer exist, you're officially old, huh?
I once had a job doing statistical programming on a mainframe. (I shouldn't have had -- I had no idea what I was doing -- but I did get paid for it.) Mainframes do still exist, but that makes me feel older than dirt.
45: Mrs. Chopper asked me to back on soap last week because while (she said) I didn't smell bad per se, she preferred how I smelled when I washed with scented soaps. Now my skin feels all weird and the texture of my hair feels wrong, and my BO is actually worse because I haven't reintroduced deodorant (can't find it). Point being: don't go back, Urple!
I once had a graduate class doing stats programing on a mainframe, but only one. After that, we went to windows.
71: Well, it could have been plain TeX, for all we know. Or XeTeX or something.
65: Let me tell you, nowadays when you have to base it on a .doc file LaTeX template that they provide for you, everything just works and there are no problems at all.
Although I hear my advisor has reinstituted his policy of forcing defending students to beat him in p/ng-pong, which is fairly sadistic.
78 is just heroically nerdy, even for unfogged.
71: Well, it could have been plain TeX, for all we know. Or XeTeX or something.
Actually it is typeset using XeLaTeX.
Plus, GB has to get serious nerdiness points for formatting the 'A' and 'E' in LaTeX that way.
Yes, but then I lose them again for not having even known about XeTeX.
Congratulations, neb! Onward and upward.
The reap question is how neb found time to write this post while being neck deep in the traditional celebratory hookers and cocaine.
It's probably going to take him a while to decompress. Once he does, he simply won't know what to do with himself. Take up gardening? Try to stop squinting? Go hiking! That's the ticket.
Hiking is actually not at all the ticket for someone recovering from tendinosis.
89 is a tacit admission that Nosflow has been sleeping with hookers and doing a ton of cocaine.
89: Ah. You did mention physical therapy recently. Sorry for that: physical therapy is going well, I hope. I [heart] physical therapists, to be honest. Still, the decompression from dissertating might, I imagine, be tough.
Aromatherapy!
It sounds like neb could use a massage, actually.
Come to New York and drink a lot of fancy cocktails!
Let me be the first to suggest Fresh Salt.
Well, the committee has accepted it, though they haven't actually signed the signature page yet; I suppose the registrar could still find fault with the formatting or something like that.
For the love of God, make sure you fill out the signature page appropriately. As I was explaining to Josh and Magpie last week (in person!), I had a bit of trouble with mine. At my now former institution, custom is for the signature page to be brought to the closed session with the committee after the seminar where it is signed by all members upon successful completion of the defense. Well, back in April, I did that defense and got a signature page signed.
About a month later I get around to scanning the page in so that I can send the pdf off to my school's mean lady (who is actually a mean man). In the process, I notice that where it should say "Doctor of Philosophy in Neuroscience", it instead of says "Doctor of Philosophy in Program Name".
I utter some expletives and try to sneak it past the mean man. He says no way and tells me to get another one signed. I freak out a bit: "What if my committee decides they don't want to pass me after all?" (You see, the signature page is, in the graduate division's eyes, the single piece of evidence that your committee has approved your thesis.) After freaking out and contemplating doctoring it, I go back sheepishly to the university and get another copy signed. One of my committee members was out with a medical issue, so I had to leave the page with the department administrator, who manages to catch said member during the few hours he's in.
I go back the next day and retrieve the page from the administrator, intending to ferry it over to the other campus on the other side of the city to get a signature from the committee member who works over there. When I'm picking it up, the committee member clues me into the fact that where it should say "[Otto's real name]", it instead says "Your Name". Yes, I fucked it up twice.
This time I'm so embarrassed that I head to Fedex Office over the weekend and attempt digitally correct my mistake. No dice, my Photoshopping skills are not good enough. Now I'm running out of time and if I don't get the thing in by last Friday, I'll have to register for the next quarter in order to graduate. So I leave the page with the administrator, who manages to promptly get the signatures again. (I owe him so much beer.)
But, in the end, it appears that I got the page in in the nick of time (and went back and correctly paginated my library release form, which was the mean man's other complaint about my first submission), as the mean man sent me an email on Saturday that I had graduated, so long as the registrar didn't find any I or U grades on my transcript, and that my diploma would take 6 months to issue, for some unstated reason.
Hiking is actually not at all the ticket for someone recovering from tendinosis.
Hike the Appalachian Trail. And congratulations, Panie Doktorze.
Otto! We should say "Dr. Otto" of course. Congratulations. Aromatherapy for you as well. May you never look at another signature page again.
I'd like to use some kind of true version control if when I start writing, but I'll probably end up doing some horribly inefficient copy/rename system instead of using some subversion thingy.
Jesus. It appears that fucking Boston could win a championship in what they consider to be a major sport. Fuck that noise. Let's go Vancouver! Win this incomprehensible Canadian ice game!
I feel vindicated for going out shopping. This would be embarrassing, if I really cared about hockey.
Congratulations, Otto!
Also, looks like tonight's riots will be of the angry variety. Good thing I live in the middle of nowhere.
100: you realize the degree to which you're only encouraging us with that?
The dueling homers as color commentary are reaching new heights of lol tonight.
Sadly, I find the CBC fairly boring, although the intermission stuff is where that really stands out. As the half-times did when for some reason they didn't use the US studio broadcast for NCAA/NBA games.*
*Unless you've got Steven Nash on, I'm really not interested in Canadian commentary on American college basketball.
The basketball wasn't on the CBC, though.
It turns out that watching a sport you don't understand solely motivated by hate isn't all that fun. Especially when the side of evil seems to be prevailing.
still, the decompression from dissertating might, I imagine, be tough.
I decompressed from dissertating in the two weeks between sending my committee the draft to be defended and the defense by reading Middlemarch and trying to start an argument.
so long as the registrar didn't find any I or U grades on my transcript
Hm.
Reading Middlemarch I understand. I want to do that, or finish it. An argument about Python? It sounds like fighting words, certainly; don't know whether it worked.
OT: Why does Gloria Allred jump in the news every time a penis hits the news?
112: Did you try to turn in a paper on Saw II?
From a contribution to the Python fight neb started to fight:
In my opinoin, these '{!#%}'.format(**{'!#%': 10}) cases are not real.
I'm sure this totally makes sense, but it did make me laugh.
s/b the Python fight neb tried to start, that is.
The most disappointing thing is that it isn't even a good game and hasn't been for a while, so you don't get the benefit of the atmosphere that even a one goal Vancouver deficit would create.
GODDAMN. Net already empty and... GODDAMN.
This is so pathetic, I hope they don't even bother rioting. The team isn't worth it.
Also, I'm no expert on the matchups, but you've got to think that a team that had lost in such huge blowouts on the road and barely won their home games just wasn't going to get it done.
In other news, a friend of mine had a class canceled - the final day of the class, which was supposed to be entirely student presentations, which were part of the grade - because of game 7. Not postponed, but canceled.
Congratulations, neb and Otto!
I've probably told this story here before, but my mother found out she was pregnant with me on the day of my dad'd dissertation defense and (possibly because she's always been a sadistic guilt-tripper) told him just before he went before his committee. I've never gotten a straight answer about how uncomfortable that must have been since that would necessitate discussing emotions, but luckily it all worked out fine.
Congratulations, neb and Otto AND THE 2011 BOSTON BRUINS!
It turns out that having consistently good goaltending throughout the playoffs is a key to success. Who knew? No joy from either hockey or basketball this year, oh well. I'm from NE Ohio, I can take it.
Am I the only one who thinks hockey should have ended a while ago? It's halfway through June.
And congratulations to the two masters of format and content.
my mother found out she was pregnant with me on the day of my dad'd dissertation defense and (possibly because she's always been a sadistic guilt-tripper)
I'll say. It isn't like somebody shouted the end to Harry Potter while she was walking down the street. She had to take some kind of action to check and to check on that particular day.
Ben, we're all so proud of you. Proud, proud, proud, proud, proud.
The odd thing is having the hockey playoffs end after the NBA. They started earlier, had the same number of rounds, and both leagues do best of seven for all rounds. Either the breaks between series were longer or the NBA rounds had shorter series. Every round had at least one 7-game series in the NHL, I think.
Upside down, burning cars on the news. Oh well.
Proud of Otto too, goddammit. It's not like neb's dissertation was in neuroscience. We don't know whose dissertation had more words.
We don't know whose dissertation had more words.
I think we can make a reasonable guess.
135: I've never asked about the mechanics, but do know that after she'd found out they went to pre-defense mass together and that convinced her she should tell him. I'm not aware of other convenient divine inspiration iher life, but that's the story.
137: The NBA "overtook" the NHL after both NBA semis only went 5 games. The NBA Finals only started one game earlier, but then 7 versus 6 games made a 3 day difference.
I'm not about to actually read the Python-fight instigating message, but I find the very idea of it hilarious. And I approve of Sifu's gloating.
I think it's pretty silly that the NHL finals go 2-2-1-1-1, so that you're potentially--as actually happened, this year--flying across the country *four times* in the course of *one series*. What's wrong with the baseball 2-3-2 format? Tired players makes for worse (and possibly more dangerous) games, one would think.
All the NHL playoffs and all of the NBA except the finals go 2-2-1-1-1. Baseball's the exception.
congratulations, neb! well done! the SoT and I have been dueling it out in an epic battle of wills, willing you ill and well respectively, and thanks in small to my perseverance, the side of right has prevailed. it was 99.9% you writing the diss, though.
Well, if I cared about or understood ice stick game, this would be more emotionally impactful. It does make me cry a little to think of some smug white dude in Boston happy. In some ways, though, an epic game 7 collapse would have been worse, because then you would have heard endless moaning and pseudo-philosophical blather about the role of fate in the universe a la 1986. So at least we avoided that.
143: Hockey's just like that man. You fly, and you sweat, and you skate, and you sweat, and you fly and sweat and skate and sweat and eat a lot, I would imagine, in between. 'tis the nature of the sport.
Seriously, I don't know. It does seem like a bad idea. Hockey players often seem like athletic robots to me: how can you keep doing that?
All the NHL playoffs and all of the NBA except the finals go 2-2-1-1-1. Baseball's the exception.
But isn't 2-3-2 objectively better?
U.Va.'s in the college world series! Who's with me on following that sports story?!
[crickets]
Anyone?
God, Thomas is a mensch.
He has a really likeable face, especially considering what a violent game he plays. I suppose goalies tend to receive rather than inflict violence, though. What a great beard he has!
Really, I think the idea is that if you go 2-2-1-1-1 then the team with the home advantage will never find itself down a game if the home team wins all games. Also, the sports with the format require breaks in games. In baseball it's no big deal to play three consecutive games in a row, so you might as well stay in place to do it.
Also, baseball is dull and it's all there is now.
Now double elimination, that's a format I only understood very briefly and then realized I was watching way too many sporting events.
2-3-2 makes sense earlier in baseball due to the NL-AL thing. You're not going to get an East Coast - West Coast series before the finals in the other sports.
You're not going to get an East Coast - West Coast series before the finals in the other sports.
Xtreme Competitive Hip-Hop.
It does make me cry a little to think of some smug white dude in Boston happy.
Says the white dude in LA. Who is also I am sure very happy that his favorite sportswriter is a fellow LA resident.
No wonder sports discussions aren't my purview. I'm gathering 2-2-1-1-1 vs. 2-3-2 has to do with where the game is played. I can see how this would be fraught.
The 2-3-2 in the NBA finals was put into place by Red Auerbach for some Celtics-favoring reason that I've now forgotten. I don't think it makes too much of a difference either way; my only major gripe is that the NLDS and ALDS should be seven games (or, preferably, not exist at all).
149 Nope, don't know anything about cricket.
157 -- did I mention that I saw Bill "Worlds Most Despicable Person" Simmons at a bar? I came so close to throwing a drink in his face -- even closer than the time I saw Mickey Kaus. But of course I didn't; it turns out that I am a giant pussy.
U.Va. won the men's lacrosse national championship, too, which is a bit odd, if you think about who would have been on that team.
For a few series in the '70s the NBA used a 1-2-2-1-1 format.
149: If you're going to Omaha and want to know how to find the places that were good 15 years ago, let me know.
164: If I were going to Omaha, I'd mostly try to hang out with Conor Oberst to give him a hard time for my inability to get this song out of my head.
I'm not entirely sure who he is, but I've been down the street he named his record label after.
I take it there are riots in Vancouver over the NHL final? I really thought people were so civilized there. Or are you still over up there?
The people of Greece have a great deal to be upset about.
The people of Vancouver, not so much.
168: Yes. They rioted in 1994 for the same reason and they clearly take hockey seriously here. Also, there's enough disaffected teenagers/youth* for there to be some who would take advantage of a flimsy excuse to riot. I'm kind of surprised that people are surprised, but people seem to be.
I wonder if they could have planned security better. I was in Barcelona in 1999 during the champions' league final** and I have never seen such an extensive police presence in my life. But they expect the worst out of soccer fans. Probably a good thing that Manchester United won.
*It appears to be mainly teenagers.
**Not to attend it, just happened to work out that way.
172 before seeing 171. Yeah, I am surprised. I understand Van (as I think you call it up there) is a varied and passionate metropolitan area, however, not just the gentle region we stupids down here seem to imagine.
To be honest, now that I've turned to the news, it seems smaller than they're making it out to be. Once you've cycled through the same burning stuff footage a few times, it starts to look like there isn't much except for a few isolated pockets. But they're taking more precautionary measures now to keep things from spreading further, hopefully.
Well, good. Goodnight! Vancouver is still a nice place, I think. I hear one still has one's ne'er-do-wells and suchlike, but they don't burn shit down over a hockey game, as far as I know.
Congrats, neb and Otto.
40 would get me into so much trouble, as my current job has completely trained me out of respecting (pointless) technicalities and correct process in favour of just getting stuff done.
Is the SoT in alamedia's comment the ToS? Is that the new thing?
That was how I understood her. I figured it was a new thing she made up especially for you, neB.
Looks like the places that were damaged did take a lot of damage. Police still trying to clear the streets but it seems calmer.
my diploma would take 6 months to issue, for some unstated reason.
They have to get the formatting right.
my current job has completely trained me out of respecting (pointless) technicalities and correct process in favour of just getting stuff done
You've joined the riot police?
181, 182: Newest member of the Supreme Court.
Congratulations to neB and Otto.
"LaTeX" - I think that's one of those things that only exists on the Internet, like "Bloomsday" and "the Flying Spaghetti Monster".
I HAZ CORPOREAL EXISTENCE!