Do you experience feelings of "time famine" -- the feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it? This is a pretty common feeling with me, so I am intrigued by this paper from Melanie Rudd, Kathleen Vohs, and Jennifer Aaker entitled "Awe Expands People’s Perception of Time, Alters Decision Making, and Enhances Well-Being."

Relying on three experiments, the authors conclude that "awe, defined as the emotion that arises when one encounters something so strikingly vast that it provokes a need to update one’s mental schemas ..., can expand perceptions of time availability." 

If you don't feel that you have time to read the paper (ahem) ... at least watch the video.

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Readers, I am happy to report that we welcomed our third child to the world on December 21st.  That gives Baby  a 12/21/12 birthday that will, if nothing else, be easy for his aging mother to remember.  I've had all three children while in academia, but this is the first one I can say was well-timed from the perspective of staying at home--I will be spending this semester with the baby, trying to fit in some research and hopefully getting back into blogging.  Here's my first dispatch from my mommy semester.

Those readers who have had newborns probably understand my use of quotation marks in the title of this post.  In speech I find de rigueur admittedly annoying air quotes when I mention my semester "off."  Why?  Because after 2 1/2 weeks the rhythm of my days has settled into more or less:

1:30ish am: Feed Baby.  Hope he settles back down quickly so I can sleep for 2 hours straight.

4:30ish: same.

8ish: Help get girls out the door for school. Eat breakfast.  Feed Baby. Clean up from breakfast.  Attend to life's miscellany

12ish: Feed Baby.  Eat lunch, take walk.

2:30ish: Feed Baby.  Shower, nap.

5ish: Feed Baby.  Help get girls fed, bathed, and in bed.

7:30ish: Feed Baby, eat dinner, clean up.

10:00ish: Feed Baby, go to sleep.

Repeat.

A leisurely life it is not, especially since "feeding Baby" takes about 45 minutes.  Mind you, I'm not complaining.  A 2-child veteran, I knew what I was getting into with a newborn and (the key point) I know that this schedule doesn't last.  

Moreover, I've happily happened on an old series on early parenting by Michael Lewis.  Known to many of you for his writing on the businesses of finance and sports, Lewis also wrote some columns for Slate after the birth of his second and third children, which he later used as the basis of his book Home Game.  I haven't read the book, but can report that the columns are not only are well-written and funny, but pieces like this also make me feel like this I have some company. Plus, you can read them at 2am on a backlit smartphone!

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1. I mightily enjoyed Glom emeritus Vic Fleischer's Standard Deduction column explaining why Facebook is paying the tax tab on employee compensation.  Answer: it really isn't, and it has to go through these machinations because of Zuckerberg's use of restricted stock unit awards instead of restricted stock to compensate employees.  And that's because he wanted to keep the total stockholder number below that old, defunct-thanks-to-the-JOBS-Act magic number 500.  Good stuff.

2. Congratulations to TOTM's Josh Wright, nominated to be the next FTC Commissioner.  Of course, as a legal academic blogger Wright already commanded vast amounts of prestige and influence.  I'm sure the FTC will be nice, too.

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Trending on my FB this week was an article by Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, called "I Won't Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar.  Here's Why."  The article, from the website of the Harvard Business Review, went on to explain that Wiens gives every applicant a grammar test, regardless of whether writing is a part of the particular job description.  I don't get the sense that the grammar test is unduly hard -- there's probably no testing of the use of the subjunctive ("I wish I was in Paris right now"/"I wish I were in Paris right now") -- but maybe it tests basic punctuation and common mistakes such as "their/they're/there."  Wiens explains that for every job at his company, he wants someone who is detail-oriented and pays attention:  "If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use "it's," then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with."

The responses in the comments were shocking to me.  I would think that if I were reading the HBR, my first response would be "Wow.  I wonder if other people think like that, too.  Let me go check my resume."  But apparently, that was not the modal response. 

You're a pompous [___].   That was the number one response -- the "kill the messenger" response.  I'm not sure why thinking grammar is an important life skill is being pompous.  (I'm not even sure that "pompous" is the word commenters meant.)  Wiens didn't say that he hired only people who learned a foreign language or played a musical instrument, both of which would reflect certain qualities or abilities that might make for better employees but reflect a certain kind of education or upbringing to which not everyone has access.  It's not that expensive to learn when to use the possessive apostrophe.

Your article has errors.  This is the "defense mechanism" response.  From arguing that not all the words in his title should be capitalized (n.b. -- the title is correct according to the Chicago Manual on Style and the MLA) to criticizing his ending a sentence with a preposition, readers were all over him.  Some argued that Wiens used the term "grammar" when his examples were mere mistakes in spelling and punctuation, not syntax.  Others discounted his thesis because one of his colorful examples seemed to use the term "apostle" and "disciple" interchangeably to describe a particular set of folks in the New Testament.  However, none of these quibbles, even the few that were accurate, refutes the proposition that errors on a resume or the inability to pass a "grammar" or "punctuation" test gives information to prospective employers about an applicant's attention to detail.

My take.  If my son or daughter were applying for jobs, I would share this article.  The reader might be persuaded that yes, grammar makes the employee, and be more careful to keep "texting language" separate from "work language."  Or, the reader might disagree, but might accept that those with the power to hire her think likewise.  In that case, the end result should be the same.  Perhaps it's like polishing your shoes.  Does having polished shoes make you a better employee?  No.  Does being the kind of person who ritually polishes his shoes mean that you are a better employee?  Maybe, maybe not.  Does being the kind of person who thinks that a prospective boss might notice the scuffiness of his shoes and think poorly of him, so shines his shoes before an interview mean you will be a better employee?  Yes.

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I know many Americans send their dogs off to dreamland each night by saying, "You're the best dog in the world.  Yes you are!"  But they are all mistaken.  Hank was the best dog.  Ever.  He sat beside me throughout grading legal writing memos and BA exams, writing articles and editing books, prepping for class and writing movie reviews.  He stoically endured the births of three children and the introduction of two cats.  He survived vet malpractice and the heartworms that went undetected for over a year, as well as glaucoma and the removal of one eye.  We lived in six different houses the last 14 years, but it didn't matter to him because his home was curled up beside me.  And for the last few years, we knew we were living on borrowed time with our one-eyed cowpoodle who couldn't hear us much anymore.  I posted this photo on the blog in May 2005, and it's how I remember him.   There's a movie trailer out right now with a little boy telling his parents that he doesn't want his dog Sparky to be in heaven, he wants him to be there with him.  We know how he feels.

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David McCullough, Jr., this year's graduation speaker at Wellesley High School, doesn't pull any punches with the graduates:

Contrary to what your soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.

While I am sympathetic to the notion that "we Americans, to our detriment, [have] come to love accolades more than genuine achievement," I still think there is something to be said for Mister Rogers. Especially when he says it like this:

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If you are an alumni of the University of Illinois, then the Alma Mater statue probably has a special place in your heart.  I merely have the privilege of teaching here, and I love this statue, which welcomes you to campus.  The words on the base of the statue send shivers:  "To Thy Happy Children of the Future, Those of the Past Send Greetings."  Alma Mater gets decorated for graduation, holidays, etc., and children young and old climb all over her.  So, Alma Mater is going off-campus for some refurbishing.  We will miss her until she returns.

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From the transcript (translated) of the conversation between Captain Francesco Schettino, commander of the grounded Costa Concordia, and Captain Gregorio De Falco of the Italian coast guard in Livorno. Schettino was ordered to go back aboard his listing ship, but the coast guard said he did not go back. Schettino was arrested on land.

"Unforgivable."

UPDATE: Now, a t-shirt.

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So I admit, I was a little skeptical about the staying power of Occupy, Athens, GA.  It hasn't been quite 2 months since I first blogged about our local chapter, but they are still going strong.  I see about 5 tents on my way to work each day.  I spoke with two quite genial occupiers, who said first of all "We're a very diverse group."  Indeed, one was a self-described "capitalist war vet smoking a cigar."  But he thought corporations should "get out of government."  His friend, however, was "against capitalism"--although at first he said he wasn't.  Obviously a lot of camaraderie and tolerance going on. 

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Friend of the Glom Mike Guttentag pointed me to Brian Leiter's pointer to this.  Gordon Smith, in character.  I love it!

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All of the dreadful news about tornadoes in the Midwest brought back childhood memories of sitting in the basement of our Wisconsin home, waiting for my world to crumble around me. For me tornadoes were not just an imaginary concern because a tornado actually struck our family farm when I was about eight years old.

On that occasion -- in the middle of a summer night -- I wasn't in the basement, but in the upper bunk in an upstairs bedroom. I didn't know about the tornado until morning, several hours after it touched down. When I awoke, my older sister was in the bottom bunk, which was unusual because that bunk belonged to my brother, who was away at college. I said, "What are you doing in here?"

"Our barn was blown down by a tornado."

I didn't believe her, of course, so I ran out to the hallway, which had a window facing the barn. Or, rather, the place where the barn used to be. It looked like photos I had seen of buildings that had been bombed in WWII. Fortunately, the walls of the bottom floor of the barn were made of cinder block, which withstood the tornado, and all of our animals were safe, if a bit scared.

Later that day, our farm was swarmed by neighbors who came to help us clean up. They offered to help us build a new barn, but we ended up just selling the whole farm and moving to the City of Osseo. The scariest part of all of this was finding the rail from the hay mow buried six feet into the lawn just a few yards from our house. It had been flung like spear about the length of a football field and deposited there by the tornado. 

And that's why I always went to the basement when the siren for a tornado warning sounded in Osseo.

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Yesterday, I drove three hours to Dekalb, IL and back to teach in a bar review course hsoted by Northern Illinois University.  ON the way back, I was enjoying my NPR app and was laughing out loud to this Studio 360 segment called "My Poet/My Novelist."  A real-life couple, one a novelist and the other (you guessed it) a poet, narrate their day together.  (The novelist keeps asking the poet how much she's written today, and she keeps reminding him it doesn't matter because they are all going to die.)  The Internet was cutting out between I-80 and Bloomington, so I had to look for it this morning to finish it.  I would suggest listening to it with your (dog person/cat person or chocolate person/vanilla person) significant other!

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• Daniel Drezner argues that Europe is likely to come out of the current crisis pursuing even more integration, and I must say, I'm betting on that as well.  It's all well and good to decry the loss of control over monetary policy that the Euro represents, but it's also quite the form of status quo bias (and the decrying is the province of the always far-seeing macroeconomists, for that matter).  In fact, I can't really see how seeking the Euro breakup is different than arguing that Massachusetts ought to be able to mint its own fiat Romneys, or whatever, oh, and also reinstall border controls and implement free trade policies with other states in its own unique fashion.  And if that seems silly, why would Portugal want to do the same thing?
• Stephen Bainbridge is now distinguished, and not just by his impressive holiday recipes.
• And Brian Galle opens what - as he himself will tell you - is a sure to be transfixing series of posts on unemployment insurance, which I'm sure he seeks to own the way I own American foreign investment regulation.

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• Sally Katzen's testimony on the REINS Act - she sees a possible take care clause problem with the statue and otherwise makes the argument that when one act amends hundreds of them, there might be an issue.  Both are worth thinking about, but what Congress giveth, it can taketh away, I think.
• Adler on the REINS Act, if you haven't seen it.
• Suzanne Craig on the financial crisis commission report - the highlights.
• Here is a Davos version of nobody-knows-what-to-do-about-banking.  The banks themselves appear to be using the forum to complain about how they - your friends and neighbors - are tired of being demonized.

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