Sean, Chad, and Steinn ponder the lameness of academics in self-reporting their “guilty pleasures”.
Quoth Sean:
I immediately felt bad that I couldn’t come up with a more salacious, or at least quirky and eccentric, guilty pleasure. I chose going to Vegas, a very unique and daring pastime that is shared by millions of people every week. I was sure that, once the roundup appeared in print, I would be shown up as the milquetoast I truly am, my pretensions to edgy hipness once again roundly flogged for the enjoyment of others.
But no. As it turns out, compared to my colleagues I’m some sort of cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Caligula. Get a load of some of these guilty pleasures: Sudoku. Riding a bike. And then, without hint of sarcasm: Landscape restoration. Gee, I hope your Mom never finds out about that.
Chad kind of blames technology:
Actually, it’s a little tough to come up with anything that really works, in this age of blogging. After all, a guilty pleasure is something you don’t want other people to know that you enjoy, and a lot of the really good candidates in my life are here for the whole world to see.
Steinn rejects the original question:
I’m not into guilt, and there are real academic pleasures; emotional states that come with the job.
We should revel in them.
As someone with a professional interest in ethics, and — perhaps more importantly — raised by two parochial school graduates, I know a little something about guilt. Let’s see if I can make Sean feel a little less like Caligula.
Avast, ye bloglubbers!