Year: 2007

To having a paper accepted by one of the big 3 with summary comments from two reviews like:

Publish and minor revisions. I think the revisions would be pretty modest and should be easily manageable.

…and…

I think this is a very good and interesting contribution to the literature on social policy in Latin America and the developing world more broadly. I suggest that the author be given the chance to revise and resubmit based on the aforementioned suggestions.

Only to be derailed by reviewer #3. What did I ever do to him or her?

UPDATE 2/15, 2:15pm: I’ve already made the revisions suggested by and addressed the concerns of the reviewers and sent the manuscript on to another journal.

The description of the forthcoming book on pension reform in Latin America, in which I have a chapter, includes this gem:

This section concludes with two chapters with differing views on reform and the role of gender (an important and understudied topic).

My contribution on the role of gender in pension reform.

I use STATA for my quantitative research needs, but have always taught SPSS in my statistics course for our M.S. in International Affairs. I chose SPSS because it’s easy to use and because it was the second most popular statistical package (after SAS) listed in job announcements on monster.com. Today, I received this email from a former international student who has a good job with a large MNC whose headquarters is in Atlanta:

Dr. Dion,

I just wanted to say hello, and I wanted to let you know that I AM using SPSS. :-] One part of my job is to analyze marketing communication effectiveness. We work with few outside companies who collect and provide data for us (they are using SPSS for all their analysis). So, during our first meeting they were VERY surprised and impressed that I know what SPSS is and that I understood their whole presentation.
So, thank you for teaching us how to use that program… the hard work really paid back!

I’ve just been busy and am about to get busier. Today, I polished off revisions to an article that had already been conditionally accepted for publication and to a book chapter for an edited volume under contract. Now if only I could get comments back on that other paper out under review at a place that shall not be named for fear of jinxing everything.

I still haven’t resumed normal browsing of the news in Mexico. Luckily, Greg has been keeping the ball in the air with his coverage of the tortilla issue. I did read somewhere, however, that Calderon had made an agreement with producers to control the prices of tortillas. Since this is a voluntary agreement, the administration has said it’s different from the official or mandated price fixing of tortillas that ended in the late 90s or early 2000s.

Soon, though, readers can expect to be bored to tears with excerpts and discussion of my book manuscript! Yay! Something to look forward to… she says with a wink.

This post could be about me. I have very little in common with David Brent, and in fact, he makes me cringe. However, those that know me well will know that I find it hard to tell short stories.

Hi. My name is Michelle. And I am an anecdotalist.

Happy new year all. We arrived back from Austin early Saturday morning, and I’m not really ready yet to face the new semester. I have a ‘to-do’ list a mile long, but I’m not alone in that.

I can’t imagine when I’ll get around to posting again, so in the meantime, enjoy this image of a sign hanging in a South Austin bar-b-que restaurant. I grew up south of the river, and east of the Interstate. The latter is perhaps a bigger social blunder than the former.