you know your sociologist is not american when...

he conflates hood and neighbourhood. 

it was a good theory, dude, but only one of those terms is thoroughly, immediately and unavoidably associated with "so-called 'african-american'" and hip-hop culture.  the other one just means the area around your residence in a lot of american dialects, or could just as easily be associated with gated neighbourhoods. 

still, i should probably suppress this desire to write him a helpful note.  i doubt he'd appreciate it.

i've been trying for three days to return this library book, and i finally gave in and renewed it, which is just as well because now i'm making an outline, which is something i would've done the first time i read it if the process hadn't been so absolutely agonising.