Recent Comments

1. 2 days ago on Doonesbury

   > We only have to endure the next 1,461 days. Easy.

   Thank you!! I have just had it up to … my neck … with people losing their ever-lovin’ minds over the Dems’ failure, once again, to nominate someone able to beat even Trump. But he’s already a lame duck, and the infighting over his succession (which has probably already started) will likely make it really hard for him to get much done, except by executive orders that will be rolled back as soon as he’s on Marine One on his way back to Mar-a-Lardo for the last time. Just take a Xanax, if you have one, or a toke, if it’s legal, and chill. It’ll be over before we know it.

   And seriously: if you just know I’m being too complacent, take all that misguided energy and put it into getting an actually good candidate this time, for a change. I mean, the 3 weakest major-party Presidential candidates of the last half-century were Kamala, Hillary, and Donald. Go ahead, try to prove me wrong! (Shameless troll, but I’m making a legit point.)

2. 2 days ago on Dog Eat Doug

   There are (a minority of) good child psychologists. They’re the ones with functional kids. When we were raising our daughter (who became a highly functional adult and even a good Mom), she had a few friends whose parents were psychologists (one, a psychologist and a psychiatrist); they were her most functional, and least functional, friends, depending on whether their parents did what they were taught in school.

3. 2 days ago on Calvin and Hobbes

   The funny thing is, it’s been established that Dad is a patent attorney.

4. 3 days ago on Doonesbury

   Bigger companies like to have indicators of status, the more fine-grained, the better. A “promotion” and a tiny raise is better just than a tiny raise. Generally, I think working at a big company raises your BS tolerance, so you’ll put up with this sort of thing.

5. 3 days ago on Working Daze

   Really just more of the same. The state where I live does not require them in the first place. Science teachers need to pass a test in (only) their specialty(Bio, Chem or Physics), or can take a (pretty easy, IMHO) “broad field” test that’s mostly Earth Science to be certified to teach ALL sciences, even ones (s)he literally knows nothing about, which I passed based mostly on my 9th-grade Earth Science (with no review at all). I suppose English teachers probably have to pass an easy English test, and similarly for Math teachers. So long as teaching is a low-status job, the worst students will keep ending up in the School of Ed, and schools will keep having to lower their standards to have someone in the front of the room, and the cycle will continue.

6. 6 days ago on Doonesbury

   My daughter started singing that in middle school. I don’t think I heard it before then. Any idea where it comes from?

7. 6 days ago on Pearls Before Swine

   The Atlantic has an excellent article in the latest edition (available now on the web) in which the author notices that in all the “inspirational, aspirational” videos on Instagram and YouTube featuring billionaires or wanna-be billionaires waking up, exercising, taking a cold plunge, showering, having a kale smoothie, meditating and “diarying”, the same thing is missing from every single one: another person.

8. 6 days ago on Doonesbury

   That’s exactly what I had with the engineering intern. The school calls it a “co-op program,” and the company calls them interns or co-ops, but “regular” people are familiar with “intern”. I try not to use jargon non-ironically.

9. 6 days ago on Doonesbury

   I know for sure that engineering interns are paid because I had one on my team about 20 years ago, and I have heard recently that the school still has that intern program. A very good friend is a CPA with an intern currently on her team.

   In both cases, the interns are/were paid more than half of what they would expect as a starting salary on graduation.

10. 6 days ago on Doonesbury

    In STEM fields, internships are very often paid, just less than a “regular” employee, regardless that there is academic credit involved. There are some exceptions like rotations in PA school.