Now you have to give us clues as to the source of the pseudonym "Meekins" or we will out you to the entire job market...
And it never seemed to me that the commenters on MR were unusually skeevy...
The prior Meekins post was on cold-brewed ice tea. I read it and started making cold-brewed ice tea, which I still sometimes drink. Meekins added value.
Brad DeLong! What the hell is this, a dream state? Am I now dreaming about comment threads?
Brad, lot of IQ "enthusiasts" & crypto HBD types - plus Randroid dickwads - in MR threads, by my count.
It would be fair to give Meekins clues, though, yeah. Also, thanks for the kind words, kind-word-typers.
I think the key word in Brad's 3 is "unusually"...
Eric Cantor is Meekins? And he had this post set to go up if he ever lost an election?
Well, good luck at the American Family Association.
This is too much of a coincidence. Meekins is Eric Cantor.
Holy shit, it really has been 6 years since that last Meekins post. Well I feel old now.
is the source of the pseudonym "Meekins" itself.
Were you a less than Ace Attorney?
max
['Bigger than a breadbox?']
I also have minions out scouring the country for Bob.
crypto HBD types
Crypto Happy Birthday types?
Anyhow hi, buttfucker.
Of course, you still haven't actually expressed any opinions that would keep anyone from hiring you, unless they work for the Traditionally Made Ice Tea Board.
18. I dunno. Willingness to use a fiendish stratagem to become ruler of earth would play well in a restricted number of jobs, but might be against you most places where the corporate chiefs believe they already rule it.
Of course, you still haven't actually expressed any opinions that would keep anyone from hiring you, unless they work for the Traditionally Made Ice Tea Board.
LB, on the other hand, has committed the unforgivable sin of referring to ice tea.
Iced. Iced.
Is this going to be a fun fight? Let me get some popped corn.
It's an anagram for "Ken Is Me". Referring to the anonymous poster's Ken doll-like anatomy, no doubt.
Back home, people used to make iced tea by putting a few tea bags in a big jar of water and placing it in sunny spot. Then you'd pour over ice to serve, adding a lemon wedge if you were fancy. My family never did that because my parents didn't drink anything caffeinated but coffee. Obviously you can't ice coffee.
23: ice cream is literally frozen cream. Iced tea is not frozen tea.
Iced bros aren't frozen bros either.
I used to be somebody, but after blogging died I became offended by anonymity.
I used to read MR, but then I stopped. I don't remember why, but I assume it annoyed me in some way.
I hate it when I can't tell the typos from the in-jokes.
Really, it should be "Ken doll–like anatomy".
demand that the real me be given rulership of the Earth.
Halford already has staked a claim. Unless you are....
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Hey, remember when we were talking about how we could safely say intelligence has developed multiple independent times on this planet because crows are just as smart as us? They ain't.
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43: Really? What style guide calls for using an en-dash there?
45: I was amazed until they clarified that babies were two year olds.
I want to know how they got the marbles away from the two-year-olds, because that sounds like the hard part. Maybe they used crows.
Also they should have tested the two-year-olds with raw meat, just to be sure.
If Game of Thrones has taught us anything it's that crows know nothing.
Honestly, if I'd known LB was going to come out with this "ice tea" bullshit I'd've never agreed to this stunt.
I thought you weren't supposed to give marbles to two-year-olds because they are choking hazards. Its possible the crows aren't the stupid ones here.
I assume if the children in the study died they would have had trouble publishing it without mentioning that.
"No crows and six children were harmed in the making of this study."
What the kids do with the marbles is the next part of the intelligence test.
My younger kid is a cheeky fucker. He loves to put things like marbles into his mouth and then grin at us.
My younger kid is a cheeky fucker. He loves to put things like marbles into his mouth
cheeks, surely!
Kids like that are the kind you need to be careful to keep guns away from.
Why do you hate the Second Amendment, Moby?
43: Really? What style guide calls for using an en-dash there?
Chicago, IIRC.
Specifically, en dashes replace hyphens with open compounds.
The Chicago Manual of Style, like everything else associated with the University of Chicago, should be burnt off the fucking face of the earth.
Oh hey neb you left this mic on the floor here.
Kendolled Ike.
Eisenhower knew the military-industrial complex would resent the warnings in his farewell address, but he never anticipated the unspeakable form their revenge would take.
43 and 62 are correct. 63 is an abomination.
61 & 65
No. In the CMS hyphens are correct for "Ken-doll." An "en dash" is to indicate distance, as in "May--September" (simulated en dash there). An em dash is for "interrupted speech" and you can even use two of them if you want to (but not three --- "Count thee to two but three thou shalt never count").
Whether this affects the level of hate Halford has for UoC is left as an exercise for the reader.
Typical. Halford refers to "ice tea" twice in comment 4 and gets a pass, but let a woman do it and you sexists are all over her.
I blame the patriaed archy.
I love blamed patriatria archie.
After I finish this glass of iced water I'm going to high five the patriarchy.
76: There are more reasons to use an en dash, DaveLMA, than your version of the CMS recognizes. They definitely recommend them for open compounds; they use the example "pre–Civil War" frequently, for instance.
80
Ah, yes, open compounds. The CMS definitely goes for en dashes in that situation, but only to "increase clarity," since you might be referring to a War that was uncivil and then later become more mannerly.
The more of the CMS on hyphens I looked at, the more the attractiveness of Halfordismo increased.
re: 57.last
xelA does that. He likes to put things he's not supposed to in his mouth and the cruise over and show us. Largely, non-deadly things like tissue paper or bit of card, or whatever. But he has done it with the pickup selector knob on my guitar [tele style], and with a plectrum.
It appears that the Danes and the Swedes are making a serious effort to overcome historical antagonisms, though.
83 is in the wrong thread . Will some FPP please delete it.
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Someone on my FB feed just forwarded the "how different cultures perceive time" piece without comment. I think she means she is approving of the piece. On the other hand, I normally think of her has quite smart and culturally sensitive.
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43 and 62 are correct. 63 is an abomination.
Huh. I found 63 the most pleasing option.
I keep thinking people are talking about the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Tangential fact I find amusing: apparently, that agency is abbreviated "CMS" because when the acronym was being decided upon, the Bush-appointed agency head said he would just mumble the two M's into one anyway.
87.2: I've long wondered about that! It's weird, because it's not as if other government or medical acronyms really seem worried about ease of pronunciation compared to how they're spelled.
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Compassionate Conservatism:
David Cameron's spokesman said on Wednesday it was up to consumers whether they choose to eat prawns that had been produced through the work of slaves.
There is no law against trading in the products of slave labour.
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David Cameron's spokesman said on Wednesday it was up to consumers whether they choose to eat prawns that had been produced through the work of slaves.
In that case, is he amenable to ensuring that consumers are adequately informed in making such a decision through improved product labeling?
Maybe a "This product harvested by slaves" sticker, next to the nutrition information?
Meekins, welcome (back) to this neck of the woods.
Even if it is not an open compound, you would still want an en dash to indicate which association is closer. So ken-doll-like lets you know that ken and doll are together, and like describes the set. And in ken-doll-like ken is describing the set doll-like. Using hyphens in both places leaves it ambiguous which is meant.
dammit. I just copied and pasted the en dashes from word. You will have to imagine where they go.
‐ -> ‐ (as does the hyphen key)
– -> –
— -> —
OT: Argh. I just had to have the talk with Sally about what the academic job market is like in humanities; she came home bubbling about having been particularly clever in a history class (which she was -- the teacher was asking for some reasons for the different political philosophies in Hobbes' Leviathan and Locke's Treatises of Government, and she managed to come up with the dates of publication of each and link them back to the English Civil War and the Glorious Revolution respectively), and how much she enjoyed it, and talking about being a history professor.
And so she got the "It's like wanting to be a an actor or something; you do it if you can't bear to think of doing anything else, but planning to be a professor in the humanities is not a particularly practical life goal -- no matter how good you are" speech. Feh. I hate deflating the kids' ambitions.
Must've been even more awkward than the Doin' It talk.
Now, when a dean and a department love each other very much, and they want to make a tenure line... well, they don't, actually.
96.2: what if she wants to be a blogger?
I bet you could have waited until she was an actual history major for that talk, though.
It's like the Doin' It talk -- one big talk isn't as effective as dropping information here and there.
You should have all the successful people you know who went to grad school in history talk to her abouty what a dead end it is.
Parent like a fox, not a hedgehog.
How she might end up in State College.
102: It's a salient career path, because a good friend's father is a professor of history, and while he's personally impressive, he's not forbiddingly-out-of-her-league, ambition-wise; she looks at him and thinks "I could learn to do what X does" rather than "If you have to be like X to be a history professor, I couldn't possibly". And I had to talk about how X is in his fifties, and the job market has changed a lot since then.
And then she'll say, "Got it. Now I want to be a lawyer like you."
106: Oh, that one I've talked her out of long since.
Seriously aren't there like twenty-five history dissertations in various stages of completion amongst the commentariat? She could be a programmer! She could do something or other with fancy knives! She could, yes, okay, be a lawyer. She could be a comics blogger! She could, uh, be a lawyer! Unfinished history dissertation is like the modal educational path among the commentariat and blogs people here read regularly.
Were we on opposite sides of "no majoring solely in the humanities?" Because I don't think I would have discouraged Sally quite yet (conciliatory qualifications omitted because I'm typing on my phone). I think I'd be worried about discouraging the activity/kind of thinking along with the profession.
My kids are in the tub and one tried to put a bath toy up the other one's butt. I did discourage that.
They probably would have given up soon enough.
"Some experiences you're going to want to save for adulthood, boys."
There's money in putting toys up people's butts.
I wasn't saying 'don't major in history', really -- I just had a moment of panic about academic humanities job markets, and thought that it should be at least in the background of her thinking. (I did realize that she's at a point where 1066 And All That will be funny, and pulled it off the shelves for her.)
111: Damn, another career path gone.
114: It's like the banana stand that way.
Honestly if history (or other humanities) grad school was framed more explicitly as a lifestyle choice for having a poor but relatively interesting, mellow 20s -- an option for bumming around aimlessly but interestingly for a few years in a university town, without making any money but without paying for school and accumulating more debt, with an extremely low-probability professional payoff but without causing much professional harm other than delay and lost opportunity cost -- it would be totally fine.
But the work is pretty tough and the culture is understandably relentlessly pre-professional so it's probably psychologically and institutionally impossible to frame it that way.
You could also write a history dissertation for fun during your downtime as a petroleum engineer in some isolated third world country. Would probably keep you from spending your riches on booze and prostitutes.
You should definitely tell Sally not to spend her riches on booze and prostitutes, LB.
I'm listening to History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters at the gym, the woodworms are marvelous, I'm really rooting for them, but it's kind of dark overall as a book, might be a bit gloomy for your daughter.
118: Don't people usually, or at least frequently, have to pay to go to humanities grad school? What you say makes sense for a subject like math, where you can pretty much always TA, but I think non-trivial numbers of people go into more debt in the humanities.
Well that's just pure foolishness, unless you're paying for it through petroleum engineering.
Standard advice is " don't go if you have to pay." Stipends are low , but most PhD candidates aren't paying.
It really depends on the school, doesn't it? And within the school the department.
I think even in the humanities most students at most schools get funded (of course with way less pay). However, since humanities grad school often takes so long, my impression is that it's much more common for people in the humanities to run out of funding.
I was going to reiterate 124, which is what I'd heard too, but there are institutions where stipends give way to TAships for which the grad students have to compete after n years, or where you have to get funding on your own, or whatever, and it's not as if no one goes to grad school at those institutions at all.
Seriously aren't there like twenty-five history dissertations in various stages of completion amongst the commentariat?
I over-underachieved by not completing my master's thesis. That saved me a lot of time that I proceeded to waste.
122: I think there are different areas. Generally, you're going to pay for an MFA. In a discipline like history, though, my sense is that mostly they should be paying you (at a starvation level stipend, but paying your tuition and in some theoretical sense your living expenses), and if they aren't either you fell through some bureaucratic hole, or your institution is signaling that they really don't think much of you.
Also, given how low the funding can be, it's possible for someone to be fully funded and go into debt.
Ostensibly, you shouldn't have to pay your way at all. But if you're not in one of the very top programs (and I think sometimes even if you are), if you want to live in a university town without several roommates and have a little fun here and there, you often do end up taking out some loans. Especially because funding only lasts 9 months out of the year, and hustling to get jobs during the summer can be difficult. If you've got family money behind you, or a sideline as some other job, or a spouse in a better career, you can avoid that, and it becomes much more reasonable. But living on $15,000-$20,000 isn't very easy. (Obviously.)
Even in math, if you're a bad teacher, an international student, or at a private school, you can find yourself unfunded after 4 or 5 years.
I don't understand discouraging kids from any career path, as long as they're not totally delusional. There are usually escape routes (and if there aren't, well, the whole economy must be fucked up, which happens, but affects most career options).
Seriously aren't there like twenty-five history dissertations in various stages of completion amongst the commentariat?
So "freelance dissertation completer" is a viable career? Maybe she should look into that.
135: I don't understand discouraging kids from any career path, as long as they're not totally delusional.
This just seems like one where totally delusional is a real risk factor for a hardworking and academically successful kid. You can get stellar grades by working like a trouper (and being generally good at this sort of thing, both of which she's got in spades), and it's got to be hard to see that that doesn't necessarily mean a clear shot at an academic job.
My son was telling me he wanted to be a video game tester. I tried to convey to him just how awful that job is reputed to be. "Son, you'll be repeatedly playing level 2 of the My Little Pony Game on Wii U with every single different pony and saddle combination for 80 hours a week." I don't think he believed me.
138: yeah, but by the time she got to the applying-to-grad school stage the realities would be much clearer. Or maybe she'd delude herself all the way to a faculty position.
during your downtime as a petroleum engineer in some isolated third world country.
I know some of these guys. They have no downtime.
140: Oh, true fact -- she doesn't really need the reality check this early.
I guess I'm a little less cautious about discouraging her from things than I might be with a different kid -- she's generally bullheaded. If that's what she wants to do, she'll do it.
I'm always a little mixed up about these things, because although in my current milieu I feel like most people I know (including myself) want to have an interesting and fulfilling career, most of my relatives just work whatever job they can get and do okay for themselves and don't really think in terms of "careers" at all. The whole concept of having a "life goal" seems kind of presumptuous somehow.
118 goes nicely with the acting analogy. It's really not so bad to spend a chunk of your 20s trying to act, so long as you know the odds are low and it's mostly for fun.
If you want to waste your twenties productively, you should have kids.
You can do that, but the kid usually comes out when it's ready.
you do it if you can't bear to think of doing anything else, but planning to be a professor in the humanities is not a particularly practical life goal -- no matter how good you are
This is the sort of shit advice that led to me being a lawyer. What is a practical life goal, in your mind, if being a humanities professor doesn't make the list? And why should life goals be practical, anyway? No big dreams are practical.
My stepdaughter is making her way debt free towards a doctorate, having managed to work part time in a different field along the way (so no break in "normal" work history), and also gain a very high level of proficiency in a sought after 2nd language relevant to both her academic and non-academic fields. She has a ruthless dedication to frugality, an endless sense of fun, a devoted partner willing to move pretty much anywhere and no current or midterm desire to have a kid. She is basically the only person I know working towards a doctorate that I have few worries over.
Her circumstances are pretty much nonreplicable, which makes me question the entire social construction of humanities grad programs.
Oh, I have no idea what anyone should do with their lives. By 'not a practical life goal' I didn't mean 'not something that should be pursued' but 'not something you can get pretty certainly by wanting it and working hard.' If you want to be an accountant, you can be an accountant. If you want to be a history professor, you can work your ass off through your twenties, and that gets you to maybe a one in five shot.
I genuinely do not know what careers are considered "good" choices these days, outside of computer programming and various sorts of engineering. Is that it?
If you want to waste your twenties productively, you should have kids.
Word.
I've got a couple cousins who are trying to make it on Broadway/in theatre, and while they're both amazing and talented, I sometimes wonder if a double major in CS wouldn't have given them some indispensable skills that would help them get a foothold in different organizations. That is, I don't see discouraging my kids from any specific path, but developing some know-how with computers seems like it can set you apart in some of the hardest fields.
If you want to be an accountant, you can be an accountant.
And if you want a history PhD, you can get one.
If you want to waste your twenties productively, you should have kids.
It sort of sucks to contemplate how old I'll be when the last kid graduates, and how old I'll be when I have grandkids, etc. OTOH, my perennially-moving-to-NC friend is going back to school, with three kids, and the idea of having homework and classes and a family sounds like total hell to me. She's excited, though.
'not something you can get pretty certainly by wanting it and working hard.'
That seems like a very risk-averse metric by which to career plan. It rules out a lot of interesting possibilities.
Only if you use it to rule things out. If you want to be an actor, you go for it, but you need to walk into the process knowing that there's a good shot you'll never make a living at it, and thinking ahead for what you're going to do if it doesn't pan out. If you want to be an accountant, you probably don't need to do as much contingency planning.
152: Those and nursing.
And HVAC repair.
One of my wife's coworker's/friends came up to hang out and grill in the canyon along with her husband and two year old. I had a great time with my kids when they were small but good lord I'm glad we're done with that. It's a full time job just to keep him from touching the fire, falling in the river, etc. Mine will be a senior and sophomore this fall and having the older one be able to driver herself and her sister around is great.
Well, sure, and if all you did is convey that point to Sally, then fine. It's obviously good for her to have full information. Your earlier comment made me think you had communicated this information so as to discourage her from the idea.
@162: I think a bit of warning is fair simply because very few people outside of academia have any idea just how long the odds are of ending up with a stable position in your chosen subject. I believe most people think that if you can get a PhD from a good school you're fine.
Unfogged commenters are more aware of the reality than most because so many former or current academics hang out here and complain.
I understand there is a shortage of qualified hydrographers.
gswift, you are so admirably and charmingly consistent in your delight over your children's great advanced age! (I am glad I'm on my current timeline, myself, because I am not at all ready to be done with little kid time, and also, man, would I have been an annoying and unhappy parent if I'd started much earlier.)
I am not at all ready to be done with little kid time
Me either. And I've been feeling depressed recently because I'm near the end. (How did it happen so soon?) Things I wanted to do with my little kids two or three years ago and still haven't done? Those opportunities are gone. We could still go do those things, but they're not little kids anymore, so it would be a completely different experience.
I don't really care about slowing my own aging, but I'd kill for a magic potion that would slow the aging of my kids.
I totally remember wanting them to stay small and cute forever. Then I started being able to take a shit in peace and it was like a whole new life.
I don't exactly want them to stay small for longer. I like them, but I also spend too much time exasperated and feeling like something is very unbalanced. (Not at the moment, because summer, but in general.)(Also, duh I know we did this to ourselves. Questionable choices with our bodies. I just think I'm basically cut out for slightly older kids. Or babies. The first eighteen months are great.)
Without having planned it, because really how could you, I appear to have realized Halford's grad school ideal. I worked for a couple of years after college and saved some money, and then went to the UofC for graduate school in English. No money, but the whole thing, room in the old Shoreland included, cost me about 6K, late 70s. No loans. My dad carried me on his insurance, and I used his credit card for gas and an occasional truck stop meal, but that wasn't very much in my old VW, which I drove only every few days.
Coursework was only a year, but I got a job in the library and just read, while carrying some incompletes because I didn't really want to be done. Apparently did terrific on the MA Final, which several proctors told me, because the Chairman, whom I'd never met, sought me out to explain that my candidacy had been hotly debated, and while they weren't admitting me to the PhD program, they were strongly advising me to continue elsewhere. Which was nice for the ego, but my whiff of pre-professional style had decided me against it by that time.
I am really digging age 4. Yay 4!
167: Keegan has turned into a completely fascinating (and dryly hilarious) young man and he's dead set on going to college far away from here, leaving me with the two that are that horrible in-between age where they never stop talking but have absolutely nothing interesting to discuss.
It's just so specific to the kid. One has been a handful at every age since 12 months. One has been a handful for a limited stretch of a few months. At times I feel quite conflicted.
I've really enjoyed every age, perhaps through lack of ambition never felt there were things I wanted to do left undone, but also think this due to having a kid with very string interests and opinions from a super young age so that has driven a lot of what's happened.
I am looking forward to a nice girlfriend for him as I have a hard time with the late night intense discussion going on and on and on ... delighted he brings that intensity to me up to the point he falls in love with a charming young woman, and then I will joyously hand him over for midnight confabs. Need my sleep, never get enough!
173: Final decision made for the place you mentioned?
I sound more dire than I feel. The last two months of the school year were so awful that I'm still in a defensive crouch, even though things are relatively lovely at the moment.
You don't sound dire at all. At least not for somebody dealing with toddlers. They're assholes.
Yeah, but I don't sound as rapturous as others.
Maybe a whole bunch of drugs then.
Gee, four o'clock already? Let me go start the two-and-a-half hour process involved in getting the little dears to and fro and changed and snacked for swim lessons.
(which should absolutely not be a pity party. Hooray for feeling conflicted!)
So far, I've been happy with each passing year as the kid gets older; having the kid become both much easier to deal with and more interesting is great. I mean I miss some cuteness but the overall tradeoff is net positive.
I'm fearing an end point to this narrative of constant progress at around age 12 but maybe I'll get lucky. And am about to restart at age 0 with another one, so we'll see.
Oh man, little kids. So fucking exhausting. At least once they hit three, every single moment that they're awake isn't spent on the edge of life-threatening. Also, fuck dirty diapers. My younger kid loves, just fucking loves, to shit just as we arrive at the park. I always have a diaper and wipes with me, but today, he shat twice. Fuck you, kid, we're going home.
Maybe you rushed him on the first shit.
I'm fearing an end point to this narrative of constant progress at around age 12 but maybe I'll get lucky.
At a month shy of fifteen, Sally's still getting more fun. I mean, teenage surliness is identifiable, but the trajectory hasn't really changed.
In Nurtureshock, which was the one parenting book I read, I recall some stat about how only 25% of teens go through a rebellious phase.
Final decision made for the place you mentioned?
No final decisions as he hasn't even started filling out applications yet, but it's one of his top two. I'm trying to subtly nudge him toward staying on the east coast.
189: I'd slipped a year -- thought he'd gotten offers and was making a final decision.
The parents of teenagers in my FB feed seem universally charmed by their teenagers. Some of my colleagues are even overbearingly smug about it, but on the whole it's reassuring.
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I feel like someone else mentioned this recently: spontaneously unfogged will stop refreshing and just give a white screen? It happens on all my devices. Anyone else?
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191: You know, anecdote isn't data and all that. But one of the things that makes me really open to the leaded-gasoline crime hypothesis is that the teenagers I know seem surprisingly nicer: harder working, pleasanter, more responsible -- than the teenagers I remember when I was one. I may just be an easier audience as a mother than I was as a peer, but Newt and Sally's cohorts are largely very good kids.
We're having a mixture of tremendous fun and grinding irritation with four and six. For each one of them.
193: Phone yes, computers never. Rebooting the phone seems to fix it.
the teenagers I know seem surprisingly nicer: harder working, pleasanter, more responsible -- than the teenagers I remember when I was one.
To be fair, memories from before age five are notoriously unreliable.
Pretty sure that based on both family history and revealed temperament to date I'm going to have a teen in the rebellious 25%. But who knows. I guess teens today like bands that wear sweaters and play nice, boring music so who knows.
I think Hawaii may be super anxious in the straight As sense, but won't generally be at risk for the risky sorts of rebellion. Can't tell yet with the other two except that pokey seems to be able to charm the heck out of everyone.
193: Yes, both iThingys. Often resolves if I add the "www." in the address.
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The organization that's taken over Mosul is ISIS? This is Archer's fault?!?
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You know, a show has to work pretty hard in making "Yuuup" a reference, and yet Archer managed it.
196,200: now that you mention it, it's just the iPad and phone, and maybe not the computer. Will try the www thing.
Yeah I get that on my iPad and phone. I assume neb screwed something up with the CSS.
189: are you guys crashing here on the college tour, or what?
For me it turns into a white screen in Safari, not on a Windows
It's a full time job just to keep him from touching the fire, falling in the river, etc.
The Calabat climbs everything, and either dives off of things, or fails to notice that they have edges. It also takes him about five seconds to notice that the gate to the stairs is open and to charge up it. (Not walking, but he crawls at a dead sprint.) I assume at some point he'll gain a sense of self-preservation.
157: I sometimes wish I had had a baby sooner, because my kid is freaking awesome and he keeps getting more awesome. But I see a lot of the flipside -- people who had kids young, like gswift and his wife, but who didn't finish school or find a good career, and they're in my office crying about lost opportunities (especially sad when the marriage didn't last). Diagnosis: greener grass everywhere.
210.1 -- Still waiting for my son to gain a sense of self-preservation. He's only 19.5 though, so it's early yet.
210.2: Yeah, I know a few of those. Worked out well for us but things could have gone very differently.
189 etc - so Keegan will (probably/hopefully!) be going to college autumn next year? Same as my eldest. Open Day season is just starting and she has a few booked up. She's looking at mostly reasonably nearby options, although she's interested in a couple of Scottish ones too as they offer such flexible courses. But even St Andrews isn't that far away relative to US distances.
211: my parents would comment that I haven't managed to develop one even now.
re: 213.last
No interest in Glasgow?
[Similar flexibility]
That's the other Scottish one! I think it's nearer to us than St A though?
Yeah, it'd definitely be closer on either public transport or by road. Depends what you are looking for, I suppose. Glasgow's definitely the one with the better student life, if you like music and going out. Perhaps less 'collegiate'.
One issue with grad student funding, at least in some disciplines, is the top ranked schools aren't always the ones with the most money. This the case usually when a flagship state school is the highest ranked.
I'm in a discipline where most of the Ivies are considered pretty crap, and many of the top departments don't have awesome funding. It's also a discipline where people from only about 5 schools really get jobs, so there are people who have to choose between funding packages of 35K/year for 5 years from Low Ranked Ivy U and no stipend or maybe a 10K stipend one year with no future guaranteed funding from Prestigious But Broke State U. If you pick the Ivy, you have a 5% chance of TT job, and if you choose the other, you have a 50% chance of a TT job. There's enough outside funding in my field that it can be tempting, but also there's not enough that you can count on getting any. I would say if the school isn't at minimum waiving tuition and offering free health insurance, then it's a scam pure and simple.
But time to degree is also a problem. Even the most generous schools rarely provide more than 5-6 years of funding, and time to degree can be 9 years. I'm lucky to have gotten about 7 years of funding through various sources, but after that I'll be on my own.
I think part of the problem might be the program can take nine years.
21 month old was forced to stay home because she had a fever for half an hour at school yesterday, reaction to immunizations. So let me narrate the last 10 minutes:
Got out all the kid cups from the cabinet, wanted each filled with a little water, arranged them in a circle on the ground, picked each one up, brought them over to the stairs and put them on the bottom step, drank each one then stacked them up.
Came back in the kitchen, found a crumb on the floor, spent a few minutes scratching the bottom of her foot with the crumb.
Found a pencil, asked to be picked up so she could poke me with it, I gave her paper and put her back down, she started scribbling but the paper got wet and tore so she screamed, I gave her another piece which turned out to be her brother's homework so she scribbled on that. Then an ambulance went by so she ran to the window to see it. Now came back in with her blankie and is asking for something that's very clear in her mind but the words are totally unrecognizable so she's freaking out that she can't communicate.
206: Are you offering?
Ditto Tweety on this one-- absolutely. We've got tons o' space now.
Now came back in with her blankie and is asking for something that's very clear in her mind but the words are totally unrecognizable so she's freaking out that she can't communicate.
Probably just wants to poke you with the pencil some more.
201 - I picture them wearing King Tut–style headdresses & using ankhs that shoot laser beams. Makes my twitter feed much more entertaining.
215, 222: Excellent! I will be in touch.
Keegan will (probably/hopefully!) be going to college autumn next year?
Indeed.
relative to US distances
Right now his top desired locations are in the Boston area (~700 miles away) and the San Francisco area (~2800 miles away). I get the impression he sees the local options of UNC and Duke, while top-flight schools, as seriously lacking in adventure, having lived here his entire life.
If he wants to visit central Texas schools, let us know.
If he watched Kiss the Girls, the forests around Duke might seem adventurous in a Morgan-Freeman-chasing-serial-killer kind of way. At least it did for me.
226 - so hard for us islanders to properly comprehend that sort of continental distance! Have just been looking. 700 miles from us would be Orkney, or the South of France, or almost to Prague. 2800 miles would just about get me to Halifax, NS, or Tehran! Or northern Africa - Ouagadougou university perhaps?
Kid A's current top choice is 30 miles up the road, where she was born ...
226: could you arrange for Kieran Healy to sneak up behind him and, like, pop a balloon unexpectedly?
I assume he's on TaskRabbit. Nobody in the social sciences makes enough money.
The situation in 219 sounds really unsustainable to me. Why don't the ivies poach the professors at these broke schools?
Is there anywhere with a nice explanation of how time to PhD got so long in so many disciplines? Is it inevitable that time to PhD will continue to grow or is it stable in some circumstances?
When I was failing to get my Ph.D., they were just starting a very big push to limit the time. They wanted five years, at most.
so hard for us islanders to properly comprehend that sort of continental distance!
Relatedly: Just where were the Proclaimers walking?
232: Pure speculation, but an arms race among whoever sets dissertation standards as to what's good enough? Standards creep upwards, and doing an acceptable job by the new standards becomes impossible in the old amount of time?
The situation in 219 sounds really unsustainable to me. Why don't the ivies poach the professors at these broke schools?
They do. However, flagship state schools usually have enough money to keep many of their top professors. Plus there's an issue of prestige and loyalty. Many professors in my discipline would rather make $$$ and be at the top school in their field than make $$$$ and be at a school with a crap department. They'd also be perceived as a sellout by many of their peers. The same schools have been top 3 in my field for the probably at least the past 40 years or so, so it's pretty sustainable.
My discipline is famous for requiring very long periods of focused research in addition to coursework and writing. 1 year is the absolute minimum, 2 years is standard, but 10 years is not uncommon. If you factor in 2 years of coursework, 1-2 years of exams/proposal writing, 2 years of research, and 1 year to write up, you're at minimum looking at around 6-7 years. Add in another year to the write up stage or the any of the other parts and you're at around 8 or 9.
232: Pure speculation, but an arms race among whoever sets dissertation standards as to what's good enough? Standards creep upwards, and doing an acceptable job by the new standards becomes impossible in the old amount of time?
This too. Plus, in many of the humanities and social sciences, there's no stigma to being a 20th year grad student but tons of stigma to being an unemployed PhD. Lots of people finish the diss, adjunct or do whatever, and only defend once they have a job in hand. If they they get a job the first go around, this lines up nicely. If not, there maybe a lag of several years after finishing up the PhD before defending, which adds to the statistics.
Relatedly: Just where were the Proclaimers walking?
http://what-if.xkcd.com/58/
From the Battery to the Bronx, at a rate of 15 subway stops per second.
232: ITS THE STUPID LEAD MAKING YOU STUPID, STUPID.
My impression has been that it's not that difficult for rich schools in desirable locations to improve their prestige rapidly if they want to. So that much stasis is quite surprising to me. Any theories on what would make one discipline more "sticky" in terms of prestige than another discipline?
What kind of moral code says it's bad to sell out but ok to have unfunded graduate students? That's messed up.
Also, if they schools can afford to keep their top professors then they aren't actually broke, and their treatment of graduate students is a choice.