The Watering Hole: September 8 — Topiary garden

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Topiaries in the Children's Garden, Oregon Gardens

Photo by Zooey

Open thread y’all — you know what to do.

51 thoughts on “The Watering Hole: September 8 — Topiary garden”

  2. And watch the Orange Boner wail and weep for the ‘small businesses who will struggle against a socialist tax burden’…. or some such tosh.

  4. Zooey….ick! So they’re no longer using live fish. Dare one ask what the alternative is? Blech.

    Not even gonna look at the Lady Gaga thing, LOL.

    As for Obama…I sure hope he sticks to his guns and doesn’t cave on the tax cuts, but I won’t be holding my breath. He’s disappointed me way too many times already.

  5. We just have to keep reminding the righties that these tax rates are below the rates during Bush 41, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, and far below the rates during Eisenhower’s terms during the 50′s.

    So they can weep all they want.

  9. For the longest time I thought Lady Gaga was probably a guy (and no, I don’t get out much). Today, having seen the Vogue cover, I’m reminded of what the Flat Earth Society said when presented photos of the earth from the moon: “To the untrained eye, it does appear round.”

    To the untrained eye, Lady Gaga … umm … appears to be partially covered in meat.

  12. On an entirely different note:

    In celebration of Labor Day and a spasmodic gesture of hope over experience, I have commenced this seasons academic job frenzy/dark night of despair with my first 3 job applications (I’m not counting the two local colleges that I applied to somewhat earlier.)

    For those who don’t know, this is an exercise in egregious self-flagellation, even beyond the ordinary, non-academic job process. First off, it is seasonal, and the jobs that begin to get advertised now are for Fall of 2011. Also, the sheer volume of materials one is asked to send is staggering: my typical app will include some 60 or so pages of materials. Even with document management services like Interfolio (you can see my online profile here: http://www.interfolio.com/portfolio/GHerstein/ ) the time and expense of getting all of this shite out the door is considerable. (Absent Interfolio, I would find the process undoable.) The frustration of this is not diminshed by the realization that at least half the places you apply to will simply throw your entire portfolio into the garbage the instant they see you are not from one of the top 10 schools in the country — your qualifications aren’t important, only your pedigree matters.

    On the vanishingly small chance that they actually bother to look at your application and then actually like what they see, you (and about 9 others) will be asked to come out to the Eastern APA (American Philosophical Association) meeting for a first interview. The Eastern rotates its meetings between the five most expensive cities on the East coast, always in a 4 or 5 star hotel, in the middle of the Christmas/New Years tourist/holiday season when prices are jacked up. You are expected to come out on your own dime at a period of your life where you are not only unemployed, but you’re dragging around $30,000.00+ of student debt as well.

    You are then supposed to wander around this huge meat market, go to your interviews, pretend to be charming, intelligent, enthusiastic and likable amongst a bunch of people who really don’t give a shit about you and just want to get back to the bar. The littlest, little gaffe or flaw on your part is death: this entire process is not the positive process of choosing the best candidate, but negative process of culling as many cattle as possible.

    If you are fabulously lucky, you will be amongst the three who will be given a second invitation, this time for an on-campus interview. This time, at least, the bastards will pick up the worst parts of your travel expenses.

    All of which so the final offer can go to someone else, because while they will never say as much or in so many words, I will always be eliminated because I’m “too old.” This despite a fabulous teaching and publication record. (On this latter, it is all but unheard of for someone in the humanities to have his dissertation turned around as a book from a respected press in just one year.)

  17. Hey, Z: to be fair, many of the smaller schools do skip the whole APA FUBAR and go to phone interviews for their initial culling. These smaller schools will often be the ones that I am more interested in: the tiny Liberal Arts colleges where real education can often occur.

    There is a whole second wave of advertisements and job searches that comes immediately after the Eastern, driven primarily by just those schools who can’t afford to compete against those who can afford to hire the Ivy Leaguers.

    That said, this whole process is nucking futs. Every job advertised will have 200 — 300 applicants minimum, while the actual hiring will be from local people to fill in perma-temp adjunct positions that have no benefits and no hope of advancement. 40 years ago more than 75% of the jobs were tenured or tenure-track; now it is less than 25%. While faculty salaries have barely kept pace with CoL, College costs have skyrockted. The faculty get blamed even though, as a matter of demonstrable fact, they’ve contributed negligibly to such rising costs. The administrations of the Corporate University pull in 8+ figure salaries while they gut the teaching infrastructure.

    The modern University began in the Germanies at the end of the 18th Century. It died in America at the end of the 20th.

  19. You would think that a successful society would make it possible to be highly educated and employable. There is no incentive to be a philosopher outside of one’s own ambition and desire for knowledge. In our society, it makes more economic sense to practice your desired craft in your downtime from being a plumber. As a bonus, being a plumber means you can get part time work and semi retire in an exotic location. No one is looking for a 65 year old philosopher.

    I wish you the best Gary.

  20. Thanks dycker

    Actually, among the jobs I’ve applied to is an intelligence analyst for the FBI. I would be terrific at this, for consider what it involves: the logical analysis of a wide range of pieces of data and the ability to synthesize this into a coherent whole and compose that whole into an intelligible presentation. These are exactly the skills I’ve gone to such lengths to cultivate.

    But do the Federales appreciate this? Nooooooooo.

    (Apologies for evidently hijacking this thread.)

      • One of my psych profs — one of those associate professors, not on tenure track, paid by the class, no benefits — joined the FBI earlier this year. She had a PhD, was a great teacher, and really loved teaching, but she couldn’t afford to continue that way.

  22. “the logical analysis of a wide range of pieces of data and the ability to synthesize this into a coherent whole and compose that whole into an intelligible presentation.”

    That’s some great skills. I could see them being of great use in sports statistics, politics, advertising, city planning… Seems like there should be many areas that could use that talent.

  23. I’m thinking she was a lecturer paid at assistant professor scale? An associate professor is almost be definition not only ON a tenure-track, but already tenured.

    The “orthodox” scale is:

    -o- Lecturer — an adjunct, not on TT
    -o- Assistant — most likely on TT, but not yet tenured.
    -o- Associate — Tenured, making good money.
    -o- Full Professor — the Holy Grail; they pay you just for the privilege of mentioning your name. If you actually show up, people fall down on their knees and quiver in inarticulate ecstasy.

    (OK, I exaggerate on that last.)

    These are not “definitions” and are not set in stone. The president of the main academic union, the AAUP (American Association of University Professors), Carey Nelson, is a 20 year perma-temp: not tenure or tenure track (“TT”), but an annual contract. Who knows (he knows) what they call him at his school. But such folks get paid by the class, and if that class goes away then the food stamps you are already on do not suffice to cover your rent.

  24. “Seems like there should be many areas that could use that talent.”

    But they see the title of the degree and calculate your age, and after that they can’t be bothered to notice that you are standing there long enough to point you to the exit.

  28. Well heck Gary, sometimes I’m glad I chose to just dig in the dirt. If you need to interview in DC, I can put you up and drive you to the metro in exchange for an evening of listening to you talk.

  29. OIMF: DC is one of the 5 cities where the Eastern is held, although this year it will be in Boston. But I have been known to take up those persons foolish enough to make such offers in the past. So keep the spare bedroom handy.

    (Thanks, by the way.)

  30. You’re welcome. There is not actually a spare room, we displace the child, and there is only one bathroom. There is however fresh food in abundance, a hot tub, and a good supply of wine.

  35. Good gawd, check out the bp-cali schools thread at TP.
    The parasitic nematodes have figured away to hi-jack and vote themselves up up and up and all the regular posters down and out!

    Here’s a sample just in case the thread takes a header out the window.

    The Decider says:
    So, I hear this November is going to be like ‘94 only worse.

    September 8th, 2010 at 7:39 pm Vote Up | Vote Down | (0) | Report Abuse
    cd (temp spokesman for satan) says:
    This comment has been voted down. Click to read.

    P.D. says:
    This comment has been voted down. Click to read.

    Badmoodman says:
    This comment has been voted down. Click to read.

    Tired Of It All (November WATERLOO!) says:
    This comment has been voted down. Click to read.

    SoapBox says:
    This comment has been voted down. Click to read.

    Gary Herstein says:
    This comment has been voted down. Click to read.

    tombaker says:
    This comment has been voted down. Click to read.

    They even managed to up vote the spammer:

    Temple0909 says:
    Your satisfaction is our greatest motivation.

    Site main product,N I K E , A I R M A X ,J O R D A N ,SHOES,$33

    September 8th, 2010 at 9:14 pm Vote Up | Vote Down | (9) |

  36. oh, sorry didn’t mean to copy and paste the idiots web site – can you delete that part, please?

    I just couldn’t believe when I logged onto TP to see that crap.

  37. Hi all,
    Long time no speak… sorry.

    Think Progress is a shambles. I sent them a nasty note regarding what 2ebb points out. Think Progress has lost control of their own blog and it appears they have no compulsion to care. This has been going on for far too long to be incidental. Constant thread jackers are one thing, but the add spam and tolerance of blatant racism is quite another. It appears as if TP is more concerned with a political image and far less with maintaining policy, purpose, and principle from which they influence. I am all but done with them until they pull it together and show their base, that they care about maintaining decency and order.

    • The top 10 comments on the BP/school thread on TP are trolls, except for one — Eugene. The bottom 70 or so are regulars.

      That place is lost.

      I sent Faiz a note telling him the trolls have demonstrated their ability to take over his blog. I’ll let you know if I get a response.

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