Ho, ho, ho.

Suppose a member of your family sent (via USPS) a gift that you didn't like. Specifically, the gift was both inappropriate and offensive to you and your family. This person knew the gift would be offensive and sent it nonetheless.

Given that direct confrontation will not serve any constructive purpose, is it okay to pretend the gift never arrived?

(Merry Christmas, Happy Chanuka, and Happy Kwanzaa everyone!)

An open letter to my fellow parents.

So you've lied to your kid, for "the magic of Christmas" or whatever, and convinced him that Santa is a real person coming to his house on Wednesday night to deliver his presents. That's your choice and I understand why you made it. However, I didn't lie to mine and she doesn't believe in Santa Claus. She knows Santa is not coming and that your son is mistaken.

If our children have a conversation about Santa Claus, that is their business and none of ours. My daughter has every right to tell your son about her beliefs, just as your son has every right to tell her about his. Just as I have told my daughter to respect other people's beliefs, it is now your turn to tell your son the same thing. Telling him instead that he can't play with her any more and treating me like I have ruined Christmas for your family forever makes you look like ginormous intolerant assholes.

And ponder this: no matter what you say or how badly you behave, my kid is going to win this one. Maybe not this year, but she will win eventually. (And mine will grow up knowing that I never, never lied to her.)

The mitten factory has closed.

My holidays have themes. This year was mittens. Last year was little FIMO ornaments. (William, I was going to make you a length of oh-so-festive necrotic bowel for your tree, but you would have had to tell me what it should look like and that would have taken the fun out of it, so I gave up on that idea.)

The Icelandic wool was a little harder to work than I was accustomed, so my gauge was screwed up and they were bigger than they should have been. Luckily, they should shrink up and get nice and felty. Instead of giving her a badly-written term paper, I gave these to my mythology professor, who had, coincidentally, outed me as the Angry Professor in the last few weeks of class. That will teach me to use Eliade as a sleep aid. Welcome to my world, Angry Folklorist!

I knit one twined mitten with Shetland wool before the Icelandic wool mittens, and one after. Knitters, DON'T EVER DO THIS. My gauge was so screwed up by the Icelandic wool that the second twined mitten was about 20% larger than the first one. I tried to avoid knitting a third mitten by shrinking the mutant mitten in the dryer. Yeah, no. Don't ever try to do that, either. So I knit a third mitten. These went to the teaching assistant in my daughter's kindergarten.

Finally, I churned out a pair of plain old "classic" mittens in grey wool for my daughter's kindergarten teacher. I took this picture with my new cell phone, so it isn't the best. I'm done with knitting for a little while.

I am in a bad, bad mood.

I picked up a virus after Thanksgiving. I finally recovered last week, only to be knocked on my ass again this week with another one. I'm grouchy and unpleasant and I have absolutely no Christmas cheer. I haven't been blogging because while I can't get out of the real world, I can sure as hell get out of the virtual one. I haven't even been checking my email. The last time I did, I found the dreadful message attached below. I long for the days when reprint requests came on little index cards and when, if someone needed to ask a question, he made damn sure it was important, concise and relevant before he picked up the rotary dial phone.

From: Ducerveau Demerde
To: Angry Professor
Subject: Advice

Dear Dr. Professor,

I read your paper ["Modern Statistical Techniques for the Analysis of Measurements: Why ANOVA Sucks and How You Can Avoid It"] recently and it was very helpful as I was trying to understand my data. I am currently confused by something and I really need your help.

My area of research is [Frybread Studies] and my dissertation examines [relative utility of maple syrups absorbed in pancakes, crepes and waffles]. I have run a series of experiments in which I collected measurements that I wish to analyze using ANOVA. According to my hypothesis, there should be an interaction between type of syrup and type of bread. Unfortunately, pancakes, waffles and crepes absorb syrup differently, leading to a great deal of variance in my measurements, and the interaction is not significant.

I have read all of your papers, the one I cited above, as well as ["ANOVA: The Rape of a Social Science"], ["P-values Are Meaningless"] and ["You Can Do Better Than ANOVA"], and based on what you say in them, I think I can process my data differently so that the interaction (via ANOVA) is significant: I can use the inverse of the measurements to reduce the variance. I have used SAS, SPSS, and SYSTAT, but even using the inverse, the interaction is still not significant. However, I found another program online that seems promising (it is attached) and I have several questions that I hope you can answer.

<snip an additional page of questions about preparing the data for an ANOVA>

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope you can help me because if this interaction is not significant my dissertation will be a disaster.

Sincerely,
Ducerveau

<snip attachment of several megabytes of executable incompatible with my operating system and an Excel spreadsheet containing his raw data>

I wanted to respond, "Just increase your degrees of freedom! That's what I do."

But no. Despite my aggravation, I responded very politely. I can understand the desperation of a graduate student thinking his dissertation experiments are for shit, but I can't understand how anyone who has read my work could even dream of sending me this letter.

I have a question about twining.

I just finished my first mitten by twining from both ends of a skein. Twining means you have to spend some time after each round untwisting. Unfortunately, untwisting the two strands also seems to result in unspinning the strands themselves. Am I doing something wrong?

Also, I'm starting another set of twined mittens with unspun Icelandic wool. I predict that this time untwisting the strands will spin them. I'm nervous about using the Icelandic wool because it seems to pull apart so easily. Any advice? Encouragement?

I wish I had heard more.

Picture two students, walking against the wind.

Female undergraduate: And sometimes, you know, I just hate myself. I really hate myself.

Male undergraduate: Cool. Like, I think that's cool.