Sidenote: I'm writing this while sitting through an interview talk rendered in Comic Sans. No way this guy should be hired, right? Bad fit?
It occurs to me that, since getting tenure, I've started using Comic Sans in my presentations. I never did before.
Hiring for lawyer jobs, I always got the impression that the only thing the interview could do was hurt you. Paper credentials determined whether you were good enough to be offered the job, and the interview was either a tiebreaker or to find out if you were too interpersonally horrible to be allowed in the building.
Celebrated programming languages researcher/implementor Simon Peyton-Jones uses Comic Sans for the slides in all his talks.
There are a lot of considerations for grad students besides "can make it through the program." At least in the natural and social sciences, you need some kind of character assessment. Will this person steal my data? Will they falsify data? Will they get me in trouble with an IRB or other ethics oversight board? Will they hog resources and create a lot of drama in my lab? Will they be an effective supervisor for undergrad RAs? are all relevant questions. I don't know how well an interview does at assessing the answers, but it doesn't always serve PIs well to have a bunch of brilliant assholes as grad students, particularly not if part of that PI's motives are to build a good educational environment, not just to churn out papers.
The PI of the lab where I went to graduate school cared a lot about fit and actively valued quirkiness, kindness, and humility, and I think he somehow managed to do a reasonably good job of assessing that, because I really could not have asked for a kinder, more supportive group of fellow grad students. He must have been using some kind of information to make that determination.
I am shocked that employers would hire people based on how well they are perceived to fit into the workplace.
I view interviews as a good opportunity to:
1. See if the person is capable of communicating effectively in person (you'd be surprised how many people apparently have someone else write their application)
2. Check for philosophical agreement and weed out objectionable behavior (e.g., anyone who is a "diversity tourist" is right out, as is outright sexism or similar overt biases, etc.)
3. Listen for *how* the person tends to approach problems/questions (this is more important than their specific answers), and seeing if that seems broadly compatible with the job we need them to do
But mostly it's about giving people enough rope. If they're terribly objectionable, I want them to out themselves in an interview so I don't hire them.
diversity tourist
Interesting. I've not seen this term before. Witt, what are these people signalling that classes them as tourists? And what is a diversity tourist?
Hiring for lawyer jobs, I always got the impression that the only thing the interview could do was hurt you
Is this a universal you, or specific to those who differ from the pedigree of the law firm?
In interviews I've done recently, the interviews absolutely and without question gave me information that I wouldn't have gained from a resumé. Significant and important information, at that. Admittedly, I was asking them to actually do tasks in the interview, rather than just offer regurgitated and longer versions of their resumé, but still. I'm deeply sceptical of the claim in the OP.
First, my impressions are pretty narrowly based, so take them for what they're worth.
But I'm not sure what you mean by 'differ from the pedigree of the law firm'. That's what looking at your resume and (for surprisingly senior people, even) your law school grades is for, so they don't interview anyone who doesn't have exactly the sort of academic/professional background they're looking for.
I think I've noted before that one of the joys of academia is that interviews consist of actually talking about your area of expertise, instead of bogus personality tests and other HR bullsh*t.
And in terms of the information gained, for example, I discovered that one person was a complete flake who was clearly completely unable to actually do the job. Both in terms of lacking the relevant technical knowledge, and in terms of having terrible communication skills. Something that wasn't obvious from his CV, as he had years of relevant experience in similar roles. Another person clearly had the technical knowledge, but also had terrible communication skills. And so on, and so on.
7: Basically, it's the attitude (often but not always coming from a white American) that their co-workers are there to provide "flavor" or seasoning to their own lives.
That is, they themselves are "normal" and other people are providing a little sprinkle of "diversity".
It often manifests in people saying things in an interview like "I really like exotic people!" or "My family is just normal Americans -- I think working here will be really good for me."*
(Obviously, the general idea of learning something from the place where you work, or learning from your co-workers, is entirely unobjectionable. But the key here is that people are thinking of their co-workers not as partners in doing the work, but as props or background in the scenery of their own, foregrounded, lives.)
*N.b. this doesn't just come out in an immigration context; I've been in settings with all-American employees of diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds and it pops up there too.
and to ttaM's point, when I'm hiring for a very specific role I always try to have the person actually do the task (data entry, qualitative interviewing, etc.) on the interview. That tells me so much more.
This is one of those topics about which I have strong and contradictory opinions. The couple of times I've been involved in interviewing people the interview provided information which was strongly predictive of how the person turned out as an employee. On the other hand, I hate being interviewed* and I feel like they do have the potential to introduce pernicious biases.
* I feel relatively comfortable talking in small group settings, and think that I am somebody who is both sane and easy to work with, but in job interviews I always feel like I'm coming across as an awkward weirdo -- I suppose that just means that I really need to do practice interviews the next time I'm starting to apply for jobs.
First, ask people you talk to in settings that aren't job interviews to be sure you don't come across as an awkward weirdo there.
13: Huh. It seems as if it'd be hard to tell the difference between an unexceptionable "I'm hoping to learn a great deal from the breadth of my coworkers' experiences" and the sort of "Golly, aren't foreigners and brown people quaint" touristic attitude you're worried about. Unless you're talking about really egregious phrasing, where I suppose it'd make sense to ding an applicant for inappropriateness.
Absolutely need interviews but you can usually tell in 5-10 minutes whether reality matches the resume, there's no need for the 6-8 30 minute interview slots we typically do. But there are people who will put down knowledge of some instrument or method because they once stood next to a postdoc in grad school who ran the experiment. Not that specific experience with all the exact things we do is essential- I often point out that I wasn't really qualified for my job when I was hired- but you also get a sense of whether people understand things enough to learn them or if they are only capable of following recipes without any idea why they're doing something.
I have strong and not at all contradictory opinions. I hate being interviewed. And I've interviewed a lot of people and never once felt like it provided any useful predictive information about job performance. I've gotten "I really like this person" or "I'm not sure I like this person" vibes, but I don't think that's a legitimate basis to make hiring decisions. Those are not rational judgments; they're lizard-brain impressions. For the same reason, I hate completing evaluation forms on interviewees. There is usually nothing I can say that feels like a fair critique or a fair compliment. I don't trust that my own vague first impressions are valid sources of that sort of information. (I've never had an interviewee do anything wildly imappropriate, and I suppose that could and should be disqualifying. How frequent is that?) The only information that an interview gives me that a resume doesn't is a read on the attractiveness of a candidate. And that's not how we're supposed to make hiring decisions.
Recommendations from former employers, or other people that I know/trust who know or have worked with a candidate, on the other hand, are invaluable sources of information, when they're available (which is rarely).
you also get a sense of whether people understand things enough to learn them or if they are only capable of following recipes without any idea why they're doing something.
Exactly.
For what it's worth, I don't mind being interviewed. I'd much rather be interviewed than have someone just go off my CV alone. I've only ever had one interview I didn't get, and the bastards at that one essentially told me I had the job [I presume one of the later candidates they interviewed was better, but at the time of my interview I had stood out as significantly better than the other candidates they'd seen so far].
'differ from the pedigree of the law firm'
I meant pedigree in the sense of dog-breeding: are you white and waspy, for a waspy firm, or Jewish for a Jewish firm, or X for an X firm.
Right, when I'm on a search committee, we make the candidate teach a class to a bunch of undergraduates. It's not just based on whether I'd like to have a beer with them.
I do interviews, but I find them pretty useless and perhaps (as the OP suggests) actively counterproductive.
However, like ttaM and Witt, I make people do stuff. That's very useful.
I've never talked my way into a job I shouldn't have gotten, but I did talk my way out of two such jobs. On the other hand, I've also screwed up interviews for jobs that people were wise not to hire me for, so I guess those interviews were useful.
When i was a recent engineering grad I went to an interview where a pompous fellow threw me a piece of chalk (this was back in blackboard days) and told me to give him 5 minutes on my senior thesis. I threw the chalk back to/at him (he dropped it) and gave a 5 minute description. I didn't get a job offer from him but I did from a fellow in another lab (same company) who very politely asked me why I was interested in my topic, asked a bunch of questions, and basically treated me like a human being.
Features: Refined. Ordinary. Coarse. Dissipated.
The study appears to have asked interviewers to predict the next semester GPA of five interviewee students based on either their "academic record" (transcripts?) alone vs. academic record + interview. This doesn't sound very generalizable, at least not if the generalizations sought have to do with interviewing and not with the quality of research being done or the reporting being based on it.
From 29 of Richard Nixon (on-topic because interview fro FBI):
He is manly appearing, possessing a good physique, and it is felt that be could successfully contact persons of all walks of life and that he would inspire confidence.
I'm sure I'm being too harsh in 30.last but it triggered my "yet another study based on a small group of college students who are supposed to stand in for something else" reaction.
No. It seems like a reasonable reaction. I think predicting GPA is different enough from predicting job performance that the study sounds unless anyway.
I just meant my snarking about the people. The study remains useless-looking (though there's always the question of whether it matches the summary).
I think "I like this person" or "I don't like this person" are totally legitimate reasons for hiring or not hiring someone you'd be working with, assuming that one is starting with a reasonable belief in the person's ability to do the work. I've only been an interviewer at relatively small sized work places, but I've absolutely dinged people who seemed relatively competent because they also seemed like annoying assholes, because there's never been a shortage of competent non-assholes and, you know, I actually have to work with these people. I assume most employers do the same.
there's never been a shortage of competent non-assholes
Finally, some recognition. Thank you.
No, 30 was what I was trying to say in the OP.
32: On the contrary, I think you weren't nearly harsh enough. But I'm a grouch.
And to 18: You'd think (or at least I did when I was 22) but you'd be wrong. Remember, they don't think there's anything wrong about their beliefs.
They're not trying to conceal anything, because it's not embarrassing to them. So they just come right out and say incredibly condescending and/or clueless things.
IME over the past 15+ years, you can be snowed by someone who's good at interviewing, but it's much rarer for the reverse to happen. (Measured by the number of times I have thought "Whew! Dodged THAT bullet" when someone I interviewed later does something boneheaded at another organization.)
I think "I like this person" or "I don't like this person" are totally legitimate reasons for hiring or not hiring someone you'd be working with, assuming that one is starting with a reasonable belief in the person's ability to do the work has confidence in one's ability to correctly draw those distinctions based on a brief interaction in the very contrived circumstances of a formal job interview.
I don't disagree with this, given the corrected assumption above. But I think most people overestimate their own abilities on this score. Once you get to know them in other contexts (such as: a normal working relationship), the guy you thought you didn't like may be just fine, and the one you thought seemed great can turn out to be a tool.
39 -- mostly, I just save time by dinging anyone who went to the University of Chicago law school, absent some strong countervailing evidence of non-assholishness. It's worked well so far.
I don't know how you can tell who is an asshole or not just from an interview, but the process of fixing an interview time is good way to tell who actually wants the job.
I think of it as: there's a wide range of people I find acceptable to work with. If I think you're well outside of that range, it's a deal-breaker, but I'm not going to shade the spectrum within that range to distinguish people.
40: but this is information you can pull from their resume!
41: Someone who really does not seem to be holding a back and forth conversation is a big red flag for me. If I ask a follow-up question in order to get you to answer the question, and you still don't, that's a red flag.
I try to ferret out someone's political beliefs, since we have them for a whole day on campus. If they're shitheads, I don't want that here, if I can help it.
Let's clarify: I don't think interviews are horrible as pure screening devices. I.e., if the stance is: we're planning to hire anyone we take the time to interview, unless they do something bizarre and disqualifying during the interview process. Because we don't want to work with anyone who's an asshole or nuts. That seems fine.
What bothers me is the more common scenario, where the interview isn't a pure screening device, it's the final stage of candidate selection: we're bringing in eight people to interview for a position, and the "best" one will be offered the job. In that context, I'm extremely skeptical that employers typically are really gathering legitimate predictive information about job performance (including intangibles like "what this person is like to work with") that allows them to make a better informed decision about the job candidates, in order to decide who should be given the job offer.
Interviews where you are asked to demonstrate real job skills are also different, and probably more useful. I have no experience with those.
we're bringing in eight people to interview for a position, and the "best" one will be offered the job.
Who has time for that?
45: That may be illegal depending on the state.
That's why I went presidential.
40: I thought it was just the U Chic economics department you were supposed to hate. What's wrong with the lawyers?
HR makes us do at least 3. We interviewed someone last month, said yup, hire her , and they still made us waste our time and the time of two other people we had to bring in the next week.
I think the interview can be reasonably helpful for the "what would the person be like to work with" question, at least when combined with resume and, the most important thing as you say, past references. I mean often there's a range and of course the information is imperfect (sometimes a bunch of people seem about equal and you end up basically flipping a coin), but it provides some information, and can certainly be a useful weeding-out tool.
We have to interview more than one person if more than one person meets the qualifications, but that never happens.
51 -- hyper-competitive, weirdos, largely indoctrinated by the economists who teach in the law school, often conservative, are my negative stereotypes. But I wasn't actually being serious about hiring.
Quickly, the study they're writing about is aimed at why interviews aren't good predictors, not whether they are or not, so they were trying to model why interviews don't improve predictive ability, not model real world job applicants and interviewers. The second paper referenced is a 1994 analysis of several large datasets that collected rankings of candidates for entry level jobs with they supervisor reviews after one year. They do say that the structure of the interview is very important, with more structured interviews (ie all applicants asked identical questions and scored vs a benchmark) giving higher validity, but even those have a ceiling.
I'm a lousy interviewer, FWIW.
entry level jobs
This seems important.
I like interviews because I'm good at them. If my resume can get me in the door I can probably make it happen.
Quickly, the study they're writing about is aimed at why interviews aren't good predictors, not whether they are or not,
For the record, I knew I was going off-topic in this manner in my take of the OP. But I'm on a hiring committee right now, and we're doing phone interviews, and it's what came out anyway.
scored vs a benchmark
We should have hired the bench, but it wanted moving expenses.
59: No worries, just wanted to clarify that the study correlating interview rankings to supervisor reviews was not this study with college kids predicting next semester's GPA, since that seemed to be what 31 was thinking.
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Fantasies of the master race:
http://imgur.com/TmdaK9X
Races of the master fantasy:
http://selfiesatfunerals.tumblr.com/
Masters of the race fantasy:
http://www.makezine.enoughenough.org/mohawksdreads.htm
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We signed the HPs up for a little kid soccer season. We just found out that they moved the season up a week and the first practice is tonight...when I have to be on campus for phone interviews. I'm sad that I don't get to see their first soccer practice EVER.
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I don't think the GPA study was framed well enough to snow anything, why or whether, having to do with interviews related to jobs. I know there eas another earlier study referenced but it wasn't discussed in enough detail for me to comment on it.
But I posted 34 because often you read a short description of a study, come up with objections not addressed in the description and then find later if you look at the study itself that actually they address them.
This topic is fraught for me right now, to say the least. I have had one interview since getting here, and I am pretty sure I sensed a loss of interest when the guy asked me "what's your management style?"--a question that I don't have an answer to, both because I am not a spewing fountain of bullshit and because I have no real management experience. Which my resume makes perfectly clear. After my half-assed answer, he asked if I'd ever been in a position to hire and fire people, and I simply said "no" instead of "did you read my resume?"
It was actually a pretty low key and generally ok interview, as they go. I just hate the whole hiring process so much. I have gone on my "cover letters are the stupidest" thing lately and needn't rehash it.
delurking and late to the party.
We've doubled company size three times this year, so hiring is pretty much a constant activity, and something I'm putting a fair bit of energy into.
I find I use resumes & contacts (mine, not theirs) to say yes and interviews to say no if that makes sense.
aside: I miss you all whenever I get a chance to, like now.
I am not a spewing fountain of bullshit
You'll never make it in this town, kid.
From the OP: I suspect that interviewing largely results in making decisions based on "fit," reinforcing existing homogeneity in a given workplace.
I think there is actually a deeper problem here, at least in some cases, where people rely too heavily on "personality fit" because they don't have good ways of resolving disagreements about how someone should do their job. If you expect that any disagreement about work will have to be resolved by you begging and cajoling the other person to do it your way, because no one here actually has the authority to resolve this conflict, then all of a sudden "personality fit" becomes a lot more important that it would have been otherwise.
45 and 49 are bumming me out more than they should.
I can sympathize with 45 and 49, especially depending on the subject being taught.
I just got promoted and will probably be participating in the interviews to fill my previous position, so this topic is of interest to me. I don't really have strong opinions about it, but maybe I will after the interviews.
Congratulations. Did you have to sell out or anything?
Not any more than I already had. And thanks.
Re 73:, interviewing for your own position is weird, but also an interesting window into how you and others view your (old) position.
Congrats. They always promote the kid who's learning Yu'pik. That shows hustle.
Congratulations, teo. I knew that if you believed in yourself you'd make it in the end.
Congrats, teo. Hope you have lots of good candidates to chose from.
Full disclosure: I'm not sure where that apostrophe goes, or whether or not there's an extra u. Also I'm driving.
Choose someone less competent than you; you'll look even better in retrospect.
I'm not sure where that apostrophe goes, or whether or not there's an extra u.
The correct spelling is Yup'ik. You were close.
Also I'm driving.
I would be more concerned if it weren't so likely that "driving" in this context means "stuck in endless gridlocked traffic."
Congratulations! Also, what 83 said.
Mazel tov. Also watch 78. I think nosflow is developing a theme.
I'm actually not sure what sort of applicants we're likely to get. I suspect the job pays less than most other jobs that require the same skill set, so we may not get a lot of applicants with extensive relevant experience. I assume that's how they ended up hiring me, at least.
I basically never look at the cover letter. The resume is just there to make sure the candidate has vaguely relevant skills.
The interview is to make sure they know how to actually listen to a question before answering it. Usually I ask how they would approach a "hypothetical" problem my team has already worked on.
The other thing you can learn from interviews is whether someone knows how to explain a thing they did to someone who doesn't already know all about it. Physicists seem weirdly good at this compared to other mathy people.
I hire the first qualified person who can do these two things.
Whereas I hire the first person who can get me a muffin chop-chop, who knows the difference between sparkling and still water, and who isn't afraid to lean in when applying a second coat of wax. Jesus fuck, it's hard to find good graduate students help these days.
I guess VW's given up on enticing me into grad school.
I guess VW's given up on enticing me into grad school.
I had the same thought. Now we see the oppression inherent in the system.
25 Right, when I'm on a search committee, we make the candidate teach a class to a bunch of undergraduates.
My worst job interview---at least it felt like the worst, although I eventually got the offer---required me to teach a "mock class" where I was supposed to cover undergrad material, but everyone in the room was a faculty member. And they asked weird annoying questions trying to emulate what they thought undergrads would ask, and generally tried as hard as they could (pretty successfully) to derail my lecture.
Those fake teaching things are hideous and horrible.
I interviewed a bunch of people for sort-of law jobs, and the interviews made a big difference. (We interviewed more people than there were positions.) Sometimes I strongly disagreed with another interviewer about what the interview told us about the person.
Having had many roommates over the years, with many more interviews for prospective roommates, I realized at some point that I was pretty bad at picking roommates from interviews alone. Or maybe it was the group process -- as a group, the roommates often chose someone who ended up being not great.
I guess I'd say the interview has as much potential for misleading you, or for being fodder for a conflicted and dysfunctional group decision-making process, as any other source of information about a candidate.
a conflicted and dysfunctional group decision-making process
Augh!
perhaps I overlooked it, but I find it hard to believe that no one has posted this obligatory (humorous, SFW if disturbingly ohrwürmlich) link.
92 Oh my god, I interviewed for a job...well this story goes into the realm of ridiculous at the outset, because I was interviewing for some job that involved dealing with kids--I don't know, at some point I still believed I could fake being able to talk to the little fuckers--and the guy asked me to role-play some teaching situation with a 6-year-old, so I sat there and pretended, one on one, that a 50-something guy sitting on a hemorrhoid cushion was little Johnny. This was a really long time ago and I wish I remembered it in greater detail because it was probably pretty funny, but all I can remember was sitting there thinking "this is a low point in my life."
we're totally fine about your past as a sex worker, mr. smearcase. you don't need to change details (inventing the imaginary 'kids'--we know too well to think you'd ever do child porn!) to talk about them. you can speak freely here. tell us more about your role-playing with the man on the hemorrhoid cushion who wanted to be "little jimmy." this sounds like it could get interesting. I mean, I understand why you might have felt, at the time, like it was a personal bottom for you, but at the same time, maybe there was someone behind one of those dollys, maybe a key grip, maybe even--unlikely as it seemed at first--"little timmy" (as everyone called him) who taught you a lot about how to live, and about how to love.
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I choose this as my thread for off-topic sports commenting!
Sorry in advance.
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Did I tell you guys I've been reading the Fire Joe Morgan archives just to get in the mood? McCarver sure does still suck!
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It's pretty amazing that the guys from FJM are also the guys from Parks & Recreation.
101: and they enjoy comedy writing enough to have a funny blog as a lunch break hobby while writing for the office!!
I assume everybody in this, the baseball thread, has seen this?
Holy crap, what was Pedroia doing all the way over there?
It's called a shift, dude. It's been commonly used for about 5 years against lefty power hitters.
110: man the bruins have really taken it on the chin scheduling-wise this past week.
Golly, that was a long-ass foul. That's promising!
Pedroia- ugliest Sox player ever or just ugliest second baseman?
Lowest-rated Bruins telecast ever?
The beard is not the best look for Pedroia, admittedly.
Alternative history: If Babe Ruth had stayed in Boston would Tony Conigliaro have been hit by that pitch?
The key for Boston is to not let it get to game seven. Brilliant Fox analysis- if they can do that they're guaranteed to win the series.
Lackey does not look good. Single saved by shift, near wall ball, wall ball, ground out.
And another near wall ball. He is not going to last long.
Gomes really has a lovely beard.
Freese has little tufts of down stuck to his batting helmet. Did he get tarred and feathered at some point or something?
117: Yeah, looked up his Wikipedia entry, did remember all the details of his death.
Maybe the game will be decided by someone's beard getting hit by a pitch.
Barney Frank just on Chris Hayes. Prerecorded or not a fan?
Come on, Sox, you can still royally fuck this up.
wacha is looking a little less dominating so far this game
Protip: It's important to pitch well with men on base.
Pleasepleaseplease let this series end tonight. My daughters got me to grow a beard for the rest of the season, and I really really want to shave it off now.
131: that rules. Go your daughters.
Ahhh that's the kind of half inning I like.
I have turned down Fox and am playing nosflow's mix as the background for the game. Interesting.
Man how is ortiz going to maintain his .733 average if they intentionally walk him?
132: Meanwhile, they're late for watching the game because they're getting their hair cut off to donate to Locks of Love.
Fuck this intentional walk.
Is there a locks of love for beards? Maybe for like merkins?
135- Are you serious? Your baseball fan card is revoked.
Where's your control now, Wacha?
Huh, this is kinda getting good.
135: wait, what? It's possible I'm missing something, but average is H/AB, so... what?
H/PA. BB change OBP but BA is unchanged. So getting walked will precisely maintain his BA.
Sure, use something in the game to distract from your baseball stat ignorance.
I swear my whole life I thought it was all at-bats. That's much less shitty stat than I thought. Obviously if I'm trying to actually figure out somebody's value I just estimate EqA in my head.
The most interesting one is that sac fly or sac bunt is also a plate appearance but is not an at bat so if you don't have any walks and do have a sac fly you can have an on base percentage that's less than your batting average.
I swapped the terms above- walks are a plate appearance (all times facing a pitcher), at bats are only charged when there is not a sac bunt, sac fly, walk, or HBP.
OH MY GOD MCCARVER JUST MENTIONED CLOGGING UP THE BASEPATHS
He also mentioned the 2004 ALCS, shocker.
99: I sort of regret that the man on little hemorrhoid cushion conversation was not showed allowed to develop.
If there's a game 7 my brother's company makes another few hundred thousand dollars selling tickets to stupid Boston fans. Why do you hate my family?
He asked if I wanted to go tonight, I said, eh, maybe tomorrow.
I wish I was at a bar but I decided I was too daycare-sick to go.
You miss daycare so much you can't wait to go back?
My immune system misses daycare so much it decided I need to be reminded of it all the time.
I'm surprised this article didn't mention the poor racial history of the Sox (don't know about the Cardinals, need to ask Rob the Masshole about them.) The last paragraph is bullshit, anyway, so probably they weren't really interested in anything but getting to that conclusion.
liked the guy in the stands with the bobby orr shirt. must have gotten lost.
They're just setting up for a Grady Little-Pedro situation.
"look at the supportive look in the eyes of Yadier Molina": that was wicked romantic.
I'm too busy watching the game to identify exactly why I hate that piece in 162. Rob the Masshole is probably too overcome with joy to comment at all.
This is my favorite game yet. If the sox keep this up they have a good chance, I think.
167: if you let SP troll you successfully the... well, the yankees still won't have won. So that's fine.
Oh man, taking out another one.
Not missing the Fox guys over here on BT, and maybe Cards fans are getting some value from that stiff upper lif British soccer commercial.
If they keep it up. Ghad, I am such a pessimist with the Sox.
Oh yeah baby, gimme more of that:
Red Sox fans, when they're rarely willing to acknowledge the evidence of PED use among some of their own, will say "it was the steroid era, every one did it," but they were singing a different tune for many years before. They were chanting "steh-roids" at Jose Canseco in the 80s, Jason Giambi in the 90s, and were ecstatically self-righteous after George Mitchell outed a bunch of Yankees in 2007. The "everybody did it" narrative began the moment Ortiz was outed in 2009 and lasted exactly as long as it took for A-Rod to get busted again (this time in the Biogenesis scandal earlier this year).
Honestly, I wouldn't harp on Ortiz's PED past at all, if it weren't for his unconvincing denials (also much like Barry Bonds) and Red Sox Nation's continued collective delusion that that they are the only organization whose players become pure saints as soon as they put on the uniform. To their credit, it isn't just Yankee players whose PED use they harp on -- the Fenway faithful made fools of themselves chanting "steh-roids" at Jhonny Peralta (another Biogenesis client) during this year's ALCS.
I agree that interviews where you ask the candidate to do something relatively simple related to the job skills required are more useful than interviews where you just BS for 30 minutes. I still remember one interview I did years ago. The candidate had graduated from a school I'd never heard of before with an electrical engineering degree. I asked if he could draw me the transistor schematic for a CMOS inverter, which is a standard textbook example. Sure enough, bam, he sketched it out for me in seconds. Then I asked if he could do the same thing for a CMOS NAND gate, which is just two transistors different from the inverter. If you understand how the inverter works, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out where the extra transistors should go, even if you've never seen the NAND gate schematic before. Instead, I got a blank stare, and not even the beginning of an attempt to work out the problem. I made sure he understood the logic function I was asking for - that wasn't the problem.
More questions followed, with the same type of results. If the answer was something you could give by quoting directly from a textbook, he usually could do it. But if I asked him to solve a closely related problem that wasn't as likely to be in the book, he was stumped.
I submit that that interview was useful in deciding whether to hire that guy.
I'm not satisfied. I want the Cardinals to feel pain and shame. This is our fucking city!
Ok, that one was a little rude, pre- and post- bombing and whatnot.
He calls Boston a shithole like a true Bostonian.
The best thing about Pedey's delightfully ugl beard is the goofy-ass high school surfer moustache he pairs it with.
Has Joaquin Andujar thrown a temper tantrum yet?
I had never seen an unsuccessful rundown. About time for McCarver to talk for 5 minutes about when the last one was.
They're not that uncommon (maybe 10% of the time?) but usually someone throws away or drops the ball, not often the runner gets past the containment. That was a mistake by the pitcher.
SP, why do hate that little girl with the prosthetic leg, the sweet suffering child who sang the national anthem? Why?
She sang at the ALCS game I went to, don't the Sox have anything new to show us?
Blowing a lead like this would be new, even for the Red Sox.
SP wants more crippled children, pass it on!
That was a fairly routine play at second, come on Joe.
There are probably others out there but if they're minorities Sox ownership wouldn't want them on the field.
I was totally expecting Lackey to blow it tonight.
I was definitely not expecting Wacha to blow it.
Your trolling is missing the zone, SP. Ogged is going to have to come out of the dugout and replace you with mcmanus.
If Uehara or Tazawa come in, do I have to post some Japanese porn?
Just start saying "konichiwa!":
He noted that Detroit fans taunted him by calling him "Ichiro'' and "Daisuke.''
"They also say 'konichiwa,' " he wrote, which means "hello'' in Japanese. "This isn't an insult, though.''
Bad call- I don't know why McCarver said he went around seeing the replay.
Only if you can explain its cultural significance, citing sources and dropping the occasional Japanese phrase.
"This isn't an insult, though."
In Boston anything can be an insult.
The taunts I heard when they were playing Detroit were "Detroit's bankrupt!" and "Detroit's a war zone!"
197 to 194, just in case that wasn't clear.
They were playing the shift with men on 2nd and 3rd? That's bizarre.
Posada's double was on Pedro's 100th pitch, wasn't it?
this is the type of anxiety fandom that i am used to.
I want to use Japan as a mirror, that Orientalizes and Otherizes much more than I intend or feel. In many ways, Japan is a much more International and cosmopolitan society than America, and I hope to learn about the world through the eyes of the Japanese (in addition to my American ones), hoping that specific aspects of Japanese history and culture, like colonial target and then Empire for instance, will help.
Manga is more complicated, because stories you couldn't imagine in America come out first in manga form in Japan (HS romance with blind boy/girl;everything)
Way to keep bob warming up in the bullpen, dude.
When they warm up but don't come in it's known as a dry hump.
Thank you for not making me terrified, Workman.
Spiriva has a pretty fucked up chemical structure.
Bullshit he's never missed a game in 65 years. Why is the media in the pocket of Big Baseball?
Hooray for confused and/or lying old people!
I mean, you think a reporter's going to go out and check that story tomorrow? No, it's too good to check, they'll just leave this warm and fuzzy propaganda hanging out there!
Just like the Marxists!
A balk?!? This series is wackadoodle.
It was intentional so he wouldn't have to face Ortiz.
You know if they lost it now, Tweety would think about at least once a day it for the rest of his life.
When Tweety's heart breaks, it breaks like the weather.
games six have not been very very good to me. ok, one in particular.
221: in '86 I had written (and practiced) a special victory ode for the euphonium. I sat there with my instrument at the ready, waiting. So, yes, agreed.
Do you still remember it? Or have the music?
I am afraid I do not. I don't have a euphonium anymore, either.
I watched in LA with a New Englander. He called his young children into the room with 2 strikes. "You'll remember this the rest of your life, boys."
I just want to note that the world series following the birth of my first, second, and fourth kids were won by Boston. Should anyone care to subsidize by children, I have a Paypal account set up, although I guess the modern thing to do is a kickstarter.
(The third kid was followed by a NY victory.)
I tried to wake up my kids- one had asked- but he declined.
209-210: SP's inner bob is more frightening than ordinary bob, because it catches you by surprise.
Now I can go to bed and dream of flipping cars.
Do I need smiley-faces and irony tags? Are ascents into solipsistic self-mocking absurdity banned in Unfogged comment threads? Was I trying to set someone up, or was it a driveby dadaism, the comment equivalent of Harpo's horn?
My favorite part of 209 is "through the eyes of the Japanese (in addition to my American ones)".
YES first year ever I made it past the end of the Stanley Cup or whatever it's called without knowing the names of the teams!
Have you not been reading these threads, or what?
I guess not. I wasn't even aware the Triple Crown or whatever it's called was going on until yesterday.
That's actually pretty impressive, since IIRC none of them have been identified as baseball threads in the post title or content.
I guess you can probably tell which threads they are by the number of comments relative to the other threads.
That is a serious effort on smearcase's part given that he commented on a post of mine elsewhere that was actually about this series.
No, he's just pretending. It's a common genre of internet comment.
"*Sigh*. Tweeps, is it worth it to find out what this 'Gangnam Style' is that all the plebs are excited about?"
Actually, this flurry of comments was unusually opaque if you weren't following it at all from the real world news. I don't think anyone said "Red Sox" for a really long time -- I figured it out because of a combination of "Rob the Masshole" and the fact that Sifu particularly was losing his mind, but I missed anything that explicitly named the teams playing each other. Most of the commentary was along the lines of "Wow, did you see that?", which doesn't communicate anything to people who didn't.
I'd like to think that all the teams are called Stanley.
Oh, darn, that's ended and it's now the Triple Crown, I guess. Well, all the teams should be Stanley there too.
totally mandatory elements for shojo manga that have no counterpart in american writing today story elements: print on girl's underwear is mocked at start of vol. 1 (usu. in flasback to primary but sometimes in real time as at the beginning to gakuen alice); heroes with life and death struggles must simultaneously deal with the bureaucratic hassles of paperwork, organization etc. of real life by serving on student council at some point--this is even more pronounced in korean manhwa but I am just starting to think about this in relation to the world as will as representation--cf. "prince" yuki in furuba; cross-dressing play will be put on at school in which each character is reversed for maximum effect in a true saturnalia of gender roles in fairy tales.
do you know what, guys? everything I just wrote there is 1000% true, except me caring about schopenhauer at the moment. also, I'm about to start reading chobits. oh yeah, I'm going there. I'm going there, and I'm going to build a stall that sells candy bars there, and I may not even come back from there. chobits! they're published by the same people as gakuen alice a and fruits basket, and have the same "we keep the incest to a minimum" rating, so, it's cool. my older daughter, humorously, has adopted as a defense of japanese cultural obsession with incest (idk obsession, greater salience, whatever) an observation I had made a long time ago that although we have a strong instinctive revulsion to sibling incest, it's not going to just start producing mutant babies on day 1 or anything; plenty of people in the world marry their cousins for generations, and marrying your sibling for half as long (considering that your parents in the comparison cousin group were also possibly uncles and so forth) would be the same (i.e. cause problems eventually but not for everyone and really, not for ages and ages) and sometimes you even got unusually good results, like cleopatra. I'm like "I know, I told you this!" wev, japan. I think maybe we'll go for spring break. her new mandarin classes are weaksauce so I have to get her a tutor, I don't know if she has time to learn japanese, but she's already learned soooo many of the characters, it's her thing, if she really wants to do it ok. I think she has to go 3x a week for it to work, though. am I being crazy?
I guess you can probably tell which threads they are by the number of comments relative to the other threads.
I kept being fooled. "Ooh, conversation!" I'd think, then click through to find instead a bunch of
WHOA
Wow, boy, no kidding.
Next time, it's going to be a Thorumpian Kingblot.
HOLY SHIT WTF go Mudhens!!
heroes with life and death struggles must simultaneously deal with the bureaucratic hassles of paperwork, organization etc. of real life
Nick (drunkenly watching Bad Boys II): Well, I won't deny it was a no-holds-barred, adrenalin-fuelled thrill ride, but there's no way you could perpetrate that amount of carnage and not incur a significant amount of paperwork.
250. They don't play baseball in Accrington, lad.
sometimes you even got unusually good results, like cleopatra
I feel like saying something biting here but it might be considered SPOILERish for the late history of Ptolemaic Egypt.
254 and previous/related: I did apologize in advance, I'll note. And picked a dormant-ish thread.
259: that guy from the movie.
255: imdb thinks they were watching Point Break.
ajay's so drunk, he's watching Hot Fuzz but seeing Bad Boys II.
I somehow understood the parentheses to refer to ajay and not Nick. I'm so ashamed, let's all pretend 261 doesn't exist.
254 -- You're right about that, sorry. Hearkening back to my post-wingding comment about having a thread via google hangout, it seems to me that there might be a promising business opportunity for an app that allows a closed chat running along the margin of a sports event. There are setups with open-to-the-public chat, but the only thing worse than conversations made up of utterances of the kind you mention in 254 from people you know (and presumably like) would be similar conversations from people you don't care about at all.
Oh, I didn't resent it, I was just amused at how repeatedly I managed to be surprised by it.
Right, it was cute. Just impenetrable if you don't actually care about the sports event involved.