Werthless wrote:Or at least I hope that's his error, because the alternative is that the author is greatly overestimating the breadth of material that can be covered in a single semester.

I'm not current with the status of assistant profs vs adjuncts: are their career/tenure prospects just as lousy, or are they substantially better?

I ask because I agree with you: this article is from hunger. Better had the author shaped an article around this proposition:

"In other words, the economics profession has gotten real, and it's time for Econ 101 to do the same".

Because there's more he could have said, without the pedagogical overreach

The Nightman Cometh wrote:The rebels downed the helicopter, not Turkey.

I would hope all of Turkey wasn't downed.


But yeah, it was rebels; Turkish-aligned rebels called Turkmen.

I thought it was turkey that shot it down and Turkmen who shot hte pilots? story keeps changing


edit: rebel group told NBC News that the pilot landed dead ad was not killed by its fighters.

Plane=Turkey

Helicopter=rebels

There's video of the rebels shooting large caliber guns at the pilots as they parachute.

Kentucky Gov Steve Beshear just restored voting rights for 170,000 non-violent ex-felons.


Maybe should've done this a few months ago.

drsmooth wrote:

Werthless wrote:Or at least I hope that's his error, because the alternative is that the author is greatly overestimating the breadth of material that can be covered in a single semester.

I'm not current with the status of assistant profs vs adjuncts: are their career/tenure prospects just as lousy, or are they substantially better?

Asst profs are untenured, but presumably will ultimately attain tenure. They have offices, benefits, and all the other perks that full time faculty have, and sometimes even more (because the department, as long as it isn't horribly dysfunctional, or an Ivy league, wants its assistants to merit tenure. (However, if say Princeton turns you down for tenure, you supposedly will end up someplace like Georgetown.) It looks bad when they don't). Adjuncts, by contrast, are lower than dirt. Even lower than grad students. They are the very bottom. Why anyone takes such a job is beyond me--you'd make more money and have a better quality of life working as a waiter.

Aren't a lot of adjuncts people with other careers that just want to teach a little bit? There is a woman i work with that teaches one publishing class at drexel every semester

The Dude wrote:Aren't a lot of adjuncts people with other careers that just want to teach a little bit? There is a woman i work with that teaches one publishing class at drexel every semester

Probably that's the case in applied fields, and I suppose it's not a hugely terrible gig for them. I'm talking about the people trying to make a living at $1500 per course. (True story: I was once offered an adjunct teaching gig for $800 or so. I didn't accept it.)

I was reading this old piece about 'Bobby' Jindal being a really weird dude and saw this paragraph:

They were among India’s brightest young minds, but they had dreams wider than their country’s shores. In 1971, they sold Raj’s wedding dowry and moved to the United States, where Raj had gotten a scholarship to Louisiana State University. About four months later, she gave birth to her first son.

Anchor baby!!!!!

That's been out for a while right. He and Cruz

i didn't realize it was so close, though.

read the piece though. he's a really complicated guy.

Yeah I read that a few months ago. He blows

pacino wrote:Kentucky Gov Steve Beshear just restored voting rights for 170,000 non-violent ex-felons.


Maybe should've done this a few months ago.

Actually I think that was a good move. Takes away the appearance of trying to win the election via criminals

Trump can predict terrorism by feel. Historians don't know things because they weren't there.


This guy is spiraling out of control.

I forget, are we at war with Eurasia or Eastasia?

Eurasia. It's always been Eurasia.

The Turkmen are an ethnic group in the Middle East and Central Asia. They are also the ethnic group that forms most of the population of Turkey.

This is an interesting strategic dynamic. The Pan-Turk movement has always been under the radar but it's there. There are Turkmen groups in Syria, Iraq, Turkemenistan, Afghanistan and even Western China (see old maps for where East Turkistan was located).

The Turkic migration is a fascinating story. Quick wiki link here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkic_migration

pacino wrote:

The Nightman Cometh wrote:The rebels downed the helicopter, not Turkey.

I would hope all of Turkey wasn't downed.


But yeah, it was rebels; Turkish-aligned rebels called Turkmen.

I thought it was turkey that shot it down and Turkmen who shot hte pilots? story keeps changing


edit: rebel group told NBC News that the pilot landed dead ad was not killed by its fighters.

Thanks for the link. The other interesting part of the Turkey/Syria/Iraq thing is the Kurds in the middle of it all, and both Assad, Iraq and Erdogan trying to hurt their emerging as a distinct entity. Honestly, it'd be great if somehow Turkey and the Kurds could get along and agree to go their separate ways and we could have three big democratic states (them plus Israel) in that region to whom we were allies. Someone get me a wishbone.


A quick look at the Republican race, the Real Clear Politics average:

Trump 27.5
Carson 19.8
Rubio 12.5
Cruz 11.3
Bush 5.5
Fiorina 3.5
Huckabee 3.3
Christie 3
Kasich 2.8
Paul 2.5
Graham 0.8
Pataki 0.8
Santorum 0.5

Carson is starting his slow descent. Trump went up after the Paris attacks.

pacino wrote:i didn't realize it was so close, though.

read the piece though. he's a really complicated guy.

Jindal was first elected to LA's governor on the basis of being an effective administrator, a pragmatic problem solver, not so much as an ideologue. In the aftermath of Katrina, Louisiana voters seemed ready for someone who could actually run the state. His career started to go downhill when he agreed to participate in the most self-destructive of all American political rituals, the opposition party's response to the State of the Union Address. He then latched on to the reactionary right's rhetoric, shifting his focus from running Louisiana well to running Louisiana in a way that would appeal to Republican primary voters. The interesting thing about this in my opinion was how easily he seemed to make this transition, as if he were an ideologue all along, and the pragmatism was just a facade.

There were other issues--he did not get along with his fellow Republicans in the legislature, succumbing to a problem lots of smart people in politics have--he knows he's right, and was frustrated when others disagreed and blocked his plans.

pacino wrote:Trump went up after the Paris attacks.

Of course he did because, in today's GOP, all you have to do is think of the most radical response to a question/situation, give that as an answer and then sit back and wait (and, frankly, the same goes for liberals and their protesting everything). I guarantee that some crazy old fucker down south somewhere will specifically vote for Trump because they actually believe he can "feel" a terrorist attack coming. The comedic value of the Trump campaign has long since evaporated. Here is hoping a real candidate comes to the fore soon so that I have a reasonable alternative to Hillary.