Seriously now. This is from "The Curse of Natural Resources" by Jeffrey D. Sachs and Andrew Turner, published in the European Economic Review in 2001:

"With the emergence of the petroleum-based economy and revolutions in global transportation, cheep energy can be transported today in a way that was impossible earlier." Followed a few paragraphs later by "One of the consequences of resource abundance in the 1970s was that other businesses in resource-abundant country's had to try to compete with higher than normal price levels."

Really? Really?? The first error, well maybe there's some kind of baby-chick-powered engine that I'm blissfully unaware of, but are you telling me a former adviser to the UNDP, IMF, World Bank, OECD and World Health Organization and current Harvard professor DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO USE THE PLURAL POSSESSIVE?! And nobody at the presumably venerable European Economic Review caught that either?! The current article I'm reading (which is from the Journal of Development Economics) is having problems with subject-verb agreement and comma placement. Are they getting their copy editors off of Craigslist?! What the hell? It's a good thing I'm not the editor of an academic journal, because people would be getting fired.

In other academically-related news, my research on the resource curse in Latin America (whereby economies that depend heavily on natural resource exports suffer low or negative growth rates) is revealing numerous parallels with coal mining in Appalachia. Which does make my research for my paper on economic alternatives to coal mining easier, but is extremely depressing.

Also, I think tomorrow I'm going to have to break out my puffy coat. It's not even December and I'm already wearing two pairs of pants.

Winter Weather Terror Level (WWTL): Yellow

It has begun again. It snowed last night. And not the pretty, big, white flurries that look like Christmas. No, this was the pointy sleety kind, the kind that really hurts as it blows directly into your eyes at 30mph. I was pretty much blinded as I was stumbling towards the car to go to the grocery store. Not the most auspicious beginning to the winter. Plus, stupid daylight savings time means it's totally dark by 5:30 so I just want to sleep all the time. Bring on the hibernation!

I haven't updated in awhile because my life is pretty much just work and school. There seriously are not enough hours in the day to get my crap done. By which, of course, I mean there are not enough hours in the day for me to get my crap done while also watching TV, wasting time online and going to bed early.

How much longer till the end of the semester?

Winter Weather Terror Level: Blue/yellow.