So your employer is self-insured and is just using the private provider as a claims administrator? That's pretty normal for larger organizations (It does manage to end-run around some requirements placed on insurance providers, though).
1: I'm not at all clear on what's going on. I have to talk to the HR people now, which is always mildly awkward.
The claims administrator thing is indeed a way to get out of lots of regulations, including a number of those in health reform.
Huh. What a trainwreck of a system. In any event, no matter how rude the CS person is to you, definitely don't get rude back to him or her. Especially ill-advised is use of the question, "Are you a doctor, or did a doctor at some point weigh in on this decision?" It will get you nowhere and leave you feeling like you were a dick to some stranger on the phone.
Dental insurance is perpetually a nightmare. Aside from the fact that I never get back dental services anywhere close to what I pay in (they just paid all of $1000 toward my son's $5800 orthodontia bill and that's a lifetime, not annual, cap for him for orthodontic care), the very fact that I have to have an entirely different insurance provider and policy for my teeth than for every other part of my damn body is just nonsensical. It's not like one must have separate vaginal insurance for your regular gynecological exams and cleanings (yet).
I've never actually had a gynecological cleaning (other than, you know, bathing) and find the thought somewhat disturbing. It's not like you get tartar buildup, or at least I haven't noticed any.
It's not like you get tartar buildup
Somebody isn't getting enough oral sex.
the very fact that I have to have an entirely different insurance provider and policy for my teeth than for every other part of my damn body is just nonsensical.
I guess you're fortunate enough not to need regular eye exams.
Oh, I need them. I just don't get them. But that's insane too. Eyes are part of your body.
your employer is self-insured
The phone calls policies are coming from inside the house your company.
I don't know how it relates to ACA, specifically, but my understanding is that with self-insured plans Federal ERISA is the controlling law instead of state-level insurance regulation. And that might be better or worse depending (could well be that in general it is a regulation dodge, I don't know). But in the specific instance it is your company ultimately calling the shots and setting goals, although possibly indirectly via contract incentives etc. Not trying to defend the administering insurance company--they almost certainly would have advertised their mad cost control skillz when they bid the business--but they are not the man behind the curtain in this case.
I've never actually had a gynecological cleaning
That sort of neglect can lead to fillings, LB.
And Stanley's larger point about the insanity of the overall system within which the decisions and delivery are taking place is completely valid of course.
12: I am bemused by the fact that this comment failed to include the word 'drill'.
I'm worried I've got a cavity.
Eyes are part of your body.
Not necessarily, I suppose. Same with teeth--maybe a serviceable pair of dentures would be less expensive long term than routine cleaning, maintenance and repair.
I suppose health insurance companies could offer "vital-organ only" policies at a discount rate--they'll pay to keep you alive, but nothing more. If you want to insure your limbs or your ears or your eyes or your teeth, well, that requires a separate policy.
Some fruit is so low that it is dishonorable to pluck.
I can't tell if 15 is a joke. I got a filling replaced yesterday, and I'm not yet sure if it fixed the toothache that I've been having for months. The dentist said there was some decay under the filling, so I'm hopeful.
"Jenna Bush's Federally Protected Wetlands Now Open For Drilling". I always loved that headline, from back when the twins turned 18.
I can't tell if 15 is a joke.
It was a joke. I do have a cavity down there.
I can't tell if 15 is a joke.
17: Then again, maybe not.
I am bemused by the fact that this comment failed to include the word 'drill'.
It originally included a root canal reference, but thought I'd go for understated elegance instead.
To tie 19 back to the OP, the dentist also told me they "accepted" my dental insurance, right up until the point where it was time to pay, when they said "okay, here's the process, you pay us now and then you submit a claim with your insurance and they'll send you a check directly as reimbursement. The checks usually don't always cover the full cost of the procedure (even where your insurance is supposed to cover a procedure in full), because our billing rates and their reimbursement rates don't completely line up." And I said: "That's never how I'd had to do it before. It sounds like you don't actually accept my insurance after all." She insisted that, no, they did accept it, but it seemed to be transparent bullshit. I came close to walking away without paying, and still think I probably should have.
I have to talk to the HR people now, which is always mildly awkward.
I once called our HR department while standing (standing, got it?) in my gynecologist's office. I had scheduled my annual like a week earlier than it was the previous year and my doctor told me that insurance companies are typically quite literal about covering only one exam a year. We're self-insured, so I asked HR if they would cover the claim when it came in, which they did. And then I found five specula.
25: Oh, man, I hate that 'exactly one in any twelvemonth' thing. I'm always in trouble on summer camp -- they need a recent checkup, and the year is always up two days after camp starts.
25: one exam per plan year is what I've always heard. Assuming you don't have the exam during the few weeks around your plan renewal date, that gives you plenty of flexibility to schedule at your convenience.
Literally saying you can't have a second exam within 365 days of your prior exam is insane. Are there really plans written like that?
For mine, it's the calendar year. Lucky I had my exam in late summer so I could max out the 2011 cap in October and then max out the 2012 cap in February.
28: Lucky
Assuming you don't need another ob-gyn exam until next January.
Not trying to defend the administering insurance company--they almost certainly would have advertised their mad cost control skillz when they bid the business--but they are not the man behind the curtain in this case.
What is the fault of the administering insurance company is their asshole procedures designed to deter people from filing claims. Have a procedure for me to submit the claim electronically? Nope. Allow me to fill out a PDF online so I can print it out rather than writing the same information over and over and over again? Nope. Direct deposit the claim check? Nope. Mishandle the payment for the same damn claim I make repeatedly? Yup.
Literally, same therapist, same diagnosis, same price, same everything. Sometimes they just pay it; sometimes they find a reason to hold it up and don't bother to notify me; sometimes they incorrectly send her the check; sometimes they send it to me. (Admittedly, I'm lucky to have mental health coverage at all.)
I know I've mentioned this before, but any politician who doesn't support single payer should be required to find and pay for his or her own insurance policy and handle all of the paperwork personally. Voila, Medicare for all!
24: My dentist works the same way. Apparently they hate dealing with dental insurance companies even more than I do.
asshole procedures designed to deter people from filing claims
A.k.a mad cost control skillz.
My dentist also has lots of patients with the nutty 12 month rule. I get asked that every visit
What's the point?
To make a profit by taking in more money than they pay out.
The discussion reminded me to call and make an appointment with the optician which I just did; I have some manner of exam every x, new lenses every y with my plan and I know I'm past on both.
Heebie U switched insurance last summer, and there has been a huge uptick in shitty behavior, IMO. Our HR department tends to be very defensive, so I don't think there's anything to be done about it.
I know I've mentioned this before, but any politician who doesn't support single payer should be required to find and pay for his or her own insurance policy and handle all of the paperwork personally. Voila, Medicare for all!
I find it hard to believe that so many people willingly put up with such shitty treatment from insurance companies. I mean, really, nearly everyone deals with this crap, nearly everyone hates it, and yet the possibility of single payer isn't even really part of the national conversation?
40: "If you think it's bad now, wait until the government takes over."
yet the possibility of single payer isn't even really part of the national conversation?
"The financial sector is far and away the largest source of campaign contributions to federal candidates and parties, with insurance companies, securities and investment firms, real estate interests and commercial banks providing the bulk of that money."
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Oh, I get that, it's just... still sometimes hard to believe.
I find it hard to believe that so many people willingly put up with such shitty treatment from insurance companies. I mean, really, nearly everyone deals with this crap, nearly everyone hates it, and yet the possibility of single payer isn't even really part of the national conversation?
The corollary to this that boggles my mind is that tons and tons of businesses would save so much money, if they disentangled themselves from the benefits mess. Yet I suppose they just don't have a well-formed lobby, and plus they like shitting on poor people.
Yet I suppose they just don't have a well-formed lobby,
Right, what the business community is sorely lacking is a well-formed lobby.
I have a terribly dumb question. Is the chamber of commerce part of the government?
Anytime. I think what was throwing you off is that the name is so pompous.
46 was unfairly snarky, of course. It's perfectly obvious that, e.g. the "Health Care Issues" platform of the U.S. chamber of commerce was outsourced entirely to its health-insurer members. Which makes perfect sense of course--they're the ones with the expertise in the industry!
And from Wiki:
1993 the Chamber lost several members over its support for Clinton's healthcare reform efforts. The Chamber had chosen to support healthcare reform at that time due to the spiraling healthcare costs experienced by its members. However, House Republicans retaliated by urging boycotts of the organization. The Chamber operated its own cable television station, Biz-Net until 1997 in order to promote its policies. The Chamber shifted somewhat more to the right when Tom Donahue became head of the organization in 1997. By the time health care reform became a major issue again in 2010, the organization opposed such efforts.[2]
So, they did. Until they didn't.
don't have a well-formed lobby, and plus they like shitting
I am currently conducting an irritable bowel syndrome literature review to try to determine what constitutes clinically meaningful changes in weekly average stool consistency according to the Bristol Stool Scale, and in weekly average abdominal pain. Comment 45 bears a remarkable resemblance to many of the search strings I've tried.
If only our politicians were more attuned to the concerns of business community!
Years ago, I recall an NPR(?) piece comparing and contrasting some Big 3 auto plants union contracts in Detroit and Windsor--so very similar demographics etc., etc., but big difference in health plans. But I completely forget the "conclusion".
When I was at the stock brokerage, Aetna came in one year with their song-and-dance and sold HR on switching over. I, and many other people who'd dealt with Aetna previously, predicted that it would not last long, and sure enough, once the executives started trying to submit their claims and getting the most intricate and infuriating run-around in the US insurance business, it was not long before we were informed that we'd be switching again at the end of the year. I think it took about 4 months for the decision to go through. Definitely a benefit of working with a lot of assholes who are used to getting their own way all the time.
Employers also like anything that makes their employees more afraid of losing their job, more unwilling to quit.
What?! That's not very free market of them. Don't they want the employee to have the freedom to find the best possible job out there?
56: Anyway, it seems that multinationals (including mine, I should ask around ... discreetly) would have a lot of internal data on costs and what works or doesn't for them--I guess it is so conflated with the overall tax rates etc. that the answer might be "hard to say". In the bigger picture it should be as fucked for them a sit is for us, and yet...
"If you think it's bad now, wait until the government takes over."
See also, "Keep your government hands out of my Medicare!"
58 in part to 60, of course. It's the intangibles like that.
In the bigger picture it should be as fucked for them a sit is for us, and yet...
Except as costs increase they're scaling back massively on the percentage of the costs they incur. Paying 25% of a the premium on a plan where the employee has a $6,000 annual deductible (and covers the other 75% of the premium) may well be an acceptable cost to incur in order to have a workforce that lives in fear of losing their health coverage if they lose their jobs.
My dentist works the same way. Apparently they hate dealing with dental insurance companies even more than I do.
I assume this is what they think, but I can assure them it is not true.
Plenty of big employers would forego the alleged advantages of a workforce that stays for the benefits if they could jettison the hassle and cost of maintaining a health care plan. (In fact, they'd rather have a majority of the workforce be contingent and have no benefits and no job security whatsoever.) But they don't want single payer because of teh socialism (it really is party ideological with some of the US Chamber types) and because of teh taxes and regulations. So they'd rather offer health care and steadily push more and more of the cost onto employees.
I was very annoyed at my doctor's office and my insurance company a few months ago because my insurance does the exactly one year for paying trick and at around the 11.5 month date my doctor's office was refusing to fill a prescription until I came in for a checkup. You can't just drop certain prescriptions for two weeks!
Apparently they hate dealing with dental insurance companies even more than I do.
This seems to be universal, even with single payer. My dentist spends the whole session whining to his assistant about paperwork. It's hard to yell "STFU and concentrate on my teeth" when your mouth is full of steel doohickies.
There was some comment several weeks ago to the effect that any large company can send you a bill for a modest amount of money and there isn't much you can do about it. Health care providers take this to another level, they can send you a bill and not even tell you what it's for and still expect you to pay it. We got a $14 90-days past due bill from our dentist with no indication of what it was for, turns out it was for prescription toothpaste for my wife that she doesn't even use and never bought.
||
I just found out that the person I wanted to advise my Ph.D. thesis is not allowed to have female students because of past sexual harassment. Despite many conversations with people in the department about how my research interests are _________ and I am thinking of studying with _________, no one ever mentioned it to me until now.
|>
Does your psuedonym imply that you still actually can work with this person, but aren't sure if you want to?
I think I'd need to know more about the case before I decided it was appropriate to shun him.
OTOH, if he can't actually work with you, it sucks that you weren't told earlier, but at least you know now, because you probably didn't really want to work with him.
69: Jesus fucking christ. The guy's a sexual harasser, and the upshot is that female students at the institution are effectively barred from whatever his area of specialization is (unless there's another possible advisor who covers exactly the same areas)? That's making sure the punishment hits the right target.
If whatever he did was bad enough to bar him from advising female students, shouldn't he maybe have been fired?
As in, fired because he can't do his job, because his job includes advising female students.
Good lord.
LB is right, and you should ignore the typo in my last post.
No, I'm a lady Abraham Lincoln. There is another person who works in a similar area (or has in the past, at least; I'm not sure what she's doing right now).
Also, I have been asked not to divulge this to any other students, which is awkward because of course lots of them know that I was hoping to work with ________. What am I supposed to say??
I have been asked not to divulge this to any other students... What am I supposed to say??
"Go fuck yourself"?
72 gets it right. Part of the guy's job is to advise female students. If he can't do that job, he should be let go (or required to have no students whatsoever, or publicly shamed, or whatever else might be consistent with tenure). A situation in which he is secretly banned from taking on female advisees -- who aren't allowed to say why -- ends up punishing the female students for this guy's sexual harassment.
I don't know academia well enough to give real advice, but maybe the right answer is to simply ask him to be your advisor and see what he says; if the department wants to prevent that from happening, they need to implement a formal, explicit rule on point. If he is your advisor and he sexually harasses you, sue the shit out of both him and your department.
Boy, I really want to advise you to make a huge stink because this is absolutely unacceptable and the administration should be shamed. But of course making a stink screws you over, doesn't it -- I don't know the details, but I can perfectly well see that you don't feel in a position to blow the lid off.
Is there anyone really sympathetic you could go to in the faculty or administration to talk about how truly grotesque this is? Is there any chance of moving to a different institution, and then publicizing the problem once you're safe?
Seriously, "asked" by who? Him? The department chair?
75: Would a bad thing happen if you went ahead and divulged it anyway? Just because they asked doesn't mean you have to do it.
I have been asked not to divulge this to any other students
Fuck that.
This puts you in an awful position--and, without a good advisor in your field, a truly vulnerable one. You really, really need a PhD advisor who is 1) in your field and 2) academically powerful. It is difficult to finish and find a job without one. And what really sucks is that there isn't exactly going to be a good remedy.
Maybe there's a dean of graduate student affairs you can talk to, someone outside the department.
78.last sounds like a good plan. It's much easier to leave a bad situation for a good one, than to fix the bad situation.
If, based on your pseud, you're considering studying history, I invite you to e-mail me at my work address. I'm more than happy to discuss this with you, as the situation you describe is intolerable. Not to mention, it sounds like the department in question is putting you in an impossible situation. Also, LB and urple both get it right.
I don't know about universities. But is there an EEOC officer you could talk to who's outside the department structure, where you could say "I'm being punished by the secret '[X] doesn't take girl students' rule. I came here to work with [X] because I didn't know about the problem, and now I find out that working with [X] is an opportunity reserved for men. I don't know how to solve this, but it seems like the sort of thing that's a Title IX problem, and maybe you can help broker a solution."
If he is your advisor and he sexually harasses you, sue the shit out of both him and your department.
This isn't exactly advice, but this situation is surely fucked up enough, in a not-gender-neutral way, that I honestly wonder if you couldn't sue the school about it right now. How is it not discriminatory to have faculty on staff who--AS A FORMAL POLICY--will not advise female students?
Again, not actually advice, but jesus.
But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was grad school?
Halford also gets it right in 77.2. Unless you want to have an academic career, that is, in which case you should long since have forsworn justice and profit anyway.
LB both pwned me and turned my not-actually-advice into concrete advice.
I honestly wonder if you couldn't sue the school about it right now.
Yes, me too. It seems to me that you probably could.
If this department has any sense of what being in this position does to a PhD candidate, the chair should try to pull strings to get Abe into another program. Or find a good substitute advisor in an affiliated university. Or advise Abe on good people in adjacent fields or departments (sometimes you don't realize who's really good and appropriate because of the vagueries of academic specialization).
The dean of graduate students (university-wide) or the graduate student advisor (department-specific) needs to be personally on the hook for this. These are people who are probably not in your field, so talking a bit more forcefully to them isn't going to destroy your career.
Abe, do you have any advocates on the faculty? Anyone who can carry water for you to the dean? Because though Jackmormon is right, this shouldn't be your fight. Too many things can go wrong for you if you make it your fight.
Yikes, sympathies, Abe. You don't have sunk work with the dude yet, so that's something. Definitely do not fade away quietly. As much detail as possible about his past will help you in talking with anyone else-- in which years did he harass people in the past, for instance?
Good luck.
Also, Von Wafer offered to lend an ear, and I would really take him up on that. Having someone outside the school who has insight into the process from the faculty side has to be useful: lawyers can get outraged about how unacceptable this is, but a history prof may have real practical advice.
a history prof may have real practical advice
There's a first time for everything.
I'm afraid of making a scene because my situation as a grad student without an advisor is precarious. In fact, I think having an advisor by the end of this year is a condition for funding next year. I also don't feel that I have an advocate on the faculty. If all the faculty members have been concealing this obviously pertinent information from me, why would they advocate for me now?
That's really what bothers me most about the situation. It's not true that I came to work with [X]. In fact I've changed directions since I came here to try to be more employable outside of academia. So I can adapt, and work with someone else; it might take me longer to finish but oh well. I'm just overwhelmed by the feeling that no one on the faculty cares about me at all.
Thanks for the offer, VW, but I'm not in history. Just presidential for privacy.
97: The thing is, if there's not an obvious next best advisor who will work with you, you're screwed enough at this point that while making a fuss may be a problem, not making a fuss isn't necessarily going to help.
When you were told this, did whoever told you say anything about what the department would do to help you through this situation? Or was it just "If you're thinking about working with [X], no soap. He only takes male students. Figure something else out."
That is so abysmally depressing. Have you considered burning everyone on the faculty's homes to the ground?
Or, more seriously, is there literally no one at the university you can talk to, maybe in some university wide position? Are grad students unionized where you are?
98: feel free to get in touch anyway, if you'd like. It's not impossible that I might be able to help.
Also, not to put pressure on you, but when your immediate emergency is solved (that is, you have an advisor or you're in another institution or something) I think you're responsible for spreading the word. However you think you can do it without tanking your career, but you should really get the word out somehow.
98: Or we have a broadish spectrum of academics here -- if there's someone in a more appropriate field, I bet they'd make the same offer VW did. If there's a commenter whose email address you don't have, and you don't feel comfortable identifying them here because it'd identify what field you're in, email me -- I might know how to get a hold of them.
Having someone outside the school
Assumes facts not in evidence!
102: my inclination is to say that this is wrong, that Abe isn't in any way responsible for doing this, that, actually, the faculty is on the hook to spread the word, and that suggesting that Abe should is asking her to bear a burden that isn't in any way hers. She didn't harass anyone. She didn't set up an elaborate conspiracy to protect a harasser. She's just found herself caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. I do, though, think she needs to find someone on the faculty who will behave properly: by going to the dean, spreading the word, etc.
Further to 105, experience suggests that most collections of tenured scholars are not so united as to reliably maintain a united front about anything, much less some bullshit like this, and thus there may be someone who, if asked, will do the right thing.
Are you in the humanities? Because honestly suing the fuck out of these shitbags might be the most lucrative option available.
107 is somewhat self-interested, tbs.
105: You're right that 'responsible' is the wrong word to use -- none of this is her fault or her responsibility. A much better way to put what I was thinking is that if she can spread the word without hurting herself, now or in the future, that would be an actively good thing to do.
I am so angry about this. That the department identified this guy as a sexual harasser, and actively took action, that makes life difficult for the female students? That in 2012 they could think that was acceptable?
106: The problem, of course, is finding an advocate without getting in trouble by trusting the wrong person first.
All I was told was, "[X] is not allowed to advise female students. Perhaps you could work with [Y] or [Z] instead." I'm not sure [Y] would take me; she has a lot of administrative positions in the department. [Z] is a very junior T-T faculty member. I think he just got his Ph.D. in 2008 or something. I don't know if that's important, if I'm not gunning for an academic job.
I have no idea who to talk to outside the department -- I'm at a huge institution, with about a million "schools" and "colleges," each with an array of executive deans, associate deans, deans, vice provosts, vice chairs etc. Seriously, you should see this org chart.
Do you have a professor who you were close to at your undergraduate school? Especially if it's someone powerful/connected, they might have good advice, they might be able to call the appropriate people in the dept. to make sure that you're being taken care of, and they might be able to get you a smooth transition to another school if that's what you prefer. (I know the odds of your having gone to a research school and being close to someone who is politically astute are low, but it's worth suggesting.)
Abe, I'm sorry to hear your situation is so fucked for reasons beyond your control. When my grad program was equally unhelpful, I got no traction by going to the Chair or Department Head. Basically their only answers were "work harder to overcome this structural deficit in the program."
Eventually, I started crying everyday on my drive home from school, until I quit with a masters and eventually got gainfully employed outside of academia. I am vastly relieved to be out of that system.
Walking away from the problem was my best solution.
109.2: I share your sense of outrage. This is truly an infuriating state of affairs and it shouldn't be allowed to stand. If Abe decides to e-mail me and will allow it, I plan to burn some shit down (without invoking Abe's name, of course).
110: yup.
(For what it's worth, my understanding of the research is that for a given professor the earlier students tend to be more successful. So going with Z might not be a bad idea, especially as with someone young it's more likely that they weren't aware of the situation with X and so you might not feel resentful as you would with an older professor who probably was aware.)
111: In your shoes, I would phone someone with any kind of administrative job title, and say that you want to talk to someone about an issue related to sexual harassment, but you're not comfortable talking to the administration in your department: could they please direct you to some kind of university-wide Title IX/harassment ombudsman person, or the appropriate dean, or whoever you should be talking to. You could even not give a name -- just say that you were a grad student and were scared of retaliation. Anyone in the administration should be able to find someone appropriate to refer you to, and then you've got a contact point outside the department.
Abe, there's some chance that I might be able to say something useful given a few more details. Please email if you're so inclined.
I hate to say it -- and know nothing, really, about academia or your situation -- but I probably wouldn't do 116 without talking to a lawyer or someone knowledgeable first. The administrator/Title IX harassment person (if there is one) is likely to be some low level flunky whose main job is to keep the university out of trouble.
Actually, just talk to VW.
Crap, on reading 118, it's probably right. This seems so self-evidently unacceptable that I was thinking that getting a complaint to the overarching university administration would trigger someone's 'Hey, we're going to get sued' reflex. But it might not. Yeah, VW or NPH are your best advisors at this point.
To those of you on Team Sue the Shitbags, probably the rationale for the obviously discriminatory policy was that there are extremely few female Ph.D. students in my department (fewer than 10%). Does that make it better, or worse?
Huh. Wonder why the number of female students is so low. Any chance it's got anything to do with the fact that the department's a bunch of shitbags? I mean, I'm assuming you're in a discipline where that's not a freakish percentage, but it's got to be low even for such a discipline.
It's completely outrageous that you're put in this situation, Abe.
As for the rest of the world, the restriction rings more to me like an incompetent administrator's 'solution' to an inconclusive investigation of harassment allegations. If there wasn't enough fire in the allegations to take an actual disciplinary action, but enough smoke that the admin people were spooked, then maybe this is the compromise. It doesn't help Abe, but I'd be pretty cautious getting involved in the controversy, certainly to the point of avoiding repeating allegations that are contested.
The sense that no one actually cares about Abe is probably completely justified. The administrators who thought up the solution, if I'm right, didn't even think about her. Except as a potential harassment complainant, which she isn't now.
We do have an assortment of fine physicists and mathematicians who might have insight for you, if I can speculate about what kind of discipline might have that kind of percentage.
Without knowing anything else, probably better for you and worse for them. But IANreallyAEmploymentL and you should really talk to NPH or VW.
If it's math and you'd like math specific feedback feel free to contact me, you can get my name/email from LB. Though I'm young enough that I don't really understand university and department organization well enough to necessarily give the right advice.
It doesn't help Abe, but I'd be pretty cautious getting involved in the controversy, certainly to the point of avoiding repeating allegations that are contested.
Barring concerns of personal/career safety (which are overriding), I wouldn't be cautious about it at all. Obviously, you don't have first-hand knowledge that this guy did anything. However, you do have firsthand knowledge that the department is barring him from advising female students, and telling the students it's because he's a sexual harasser. That's not contested, that's first-hand.
Whether the allegations about the professor are true or not is the department's problem. The fact that the department is limiting the educational opportunities available to female students on the basis of those allegations is a scandal that should be public.
probably the rationale for the obviously discriminatory policy was that there are extremely few female Ph.D. students in my department (fewer than 10%)
I'm confused--by "the rationale", do you mean the reason they might have thought it wouldn't be a problematic policy? Or that this is the "official" rationale, while the sexual harrassment is the unofficial, real rationale?
I'd still like to know the answer to 79, and whether any rationale at all was given for the request.
My days of university employment law are long behind me, so I'll third (or fourth?) the rec to engage NPH.
In my experience there's an amazing lack of understanding, among career administrators, that a PhD student would join the department specifically to work with one specific faculty member. There's no questions about that on the application form ... people in the department office seem offended by the idea that you could be only there because of a particular lab, instead of being in love with the department as a whole ... the first year of classes, most people talk to you as if you're just going to be taking classes until you get your degree, like in undergrad.
However, you do have firsthand knowledge that the department is barring him from advising female students, and telling the students it's because he's a sexual harasser.
And telling you not to tell other students! I mean, jesus, does he have office hours? Are female students barred from that too? If not, why is he safe enough for that but not to advise a graduate student? (I understand the practical answer to this question, but as an administrative policy is makes zero sense and is completely unsupportable.)
I'm an ex-physicicst, male. No admin experience with this kind of problem. Sympathies on a shitty situation, really. Knowing something about the guy's past (did he do it once or often? When?) will help in deciding what to do, since any internal investigation will rest on what can definitely be said about his past behavior. Few past female students will make a pattern easier to deny, so that doesn't help.
My personal opinion about contacting an ombudsman is that it's a good idea, because it'll put this shitty non-solution which is now hiding in the shadows on paper, though that'll only be an internal University investigation. Not sure if that's worth personal anguish to you.
by "the rationale", do you mean the reason they might have thought it wouldn't be a problematic policy? Or that this is the "official" rationale, while the sexual harrassment is the unofficial, real rationale?
I mean the reason they might have thought it wouldn't be problematic. I'm just speculating; I don't know how "official" the policy is.
I have no details on the specific allegations or when the incident(s) occurred, but some circumstantial clues lead me to believe that it was in the last few years.
Knowing something about the guy's past (did he do it once or often? When?) will help in deciding what to do, since any internal investigation will rest on what can definitely be said about his past behavior.
For reasons already pointed out by LB, I disagree. You don't need to show that the guy is in fact a harasser to demonstrate the horribleness of the department's unofficial policy. Rather, it's that the department is hurting the prospects of the department's female students in order to cover up the potential for scandal.
Depending on who told AL, "unofficial policy" might not be the right word. If this was say, the vice chair for grad students, who told you this then it's *official* policy.
Hey, you know who might have a useful perspective? Female Science Professor - I don't know her, but she blogs on this sort of stuff and she seems sensible. I'm on my phone, so I'm not linking, but her blog shows right up on google.
I don't know how "official" the policy is.
I'm not sure what this means, but it makes me think I'd push on this point a little bit. "Thanks for the warning, but I'm willing deal with the risk of a little harassment if necessary in order to work with Professor X, whose work seems best suited for my academic interests."
(You're not actually waiving your right not to be sexually harassed, of course.)
Maybe that's horrible advice. I' not sure.
The university should have an ombudsperson. Office. Something like that. I think their activism/efficacy varies but they are bound by confidentiality rules and are ostensibly at least not automatically on the side of "protect the institution". That might at least be something to look into?
This is horrible for you, Abe.
A fleeting thought: might it be that the reason Abe is told that she can't work with X is actually two-fold? Because X might harass her / the university/dept. needs to protect itself; but also because if Abe were to work with X, any recommendations and kudos X might eventually provide for her when she goes on the job market might be suspect?
That is, the university/department may not have kept the sexual harassment allegations as truly secret as it thinks: academia is quite a gossipy environment, and people in the field may indeed know that X is a harasser. I hate to put it so plainly, but it might be thought that Abe, er, complied with X's harassing ways, such that her own credentials are suspect.
Conclusion: don't try to work with X despite all this. It could damage your career. This is a really grim line of thought, of course, and I apologize if it's even more disturbing.
I'd be tempted to tell the vice chair for grad students that this is unacceptable and that you no longer feel comfortable in a department that handles business this way, and that he (the vice chair) is going to personally make sure that you get accepted to transfer to another school (pick one with someone in the same field with a comparable but slightly better reputation) for the start of next school year.
Also, LB's suggestion of emailing FSP is sensible. FSP is fantastic.
One thing that I wish I had done in retrospect is calling out bullshit as it happened. It wouldn't have changed anything, I don't think, but it would have felt better to be saying something directly to people's faces. "Are you saying that you've adopted a policy that punished female students because one of your employees is a harasser?" At least make the people say explicitly what is going on, in plain words. That way, later, you won't feel like maybe you could have worked a political angle or something you didn't think of in the moment, because you will have had the deal explicitly confirmed.
It can be really validating, although not helpful, to hear, 'yes, actually, we decided that people in your position get the shaft, so suck it up.' Then you know you are really hearing what you think you're hearing and you aren't cooperating with the pleasantries.
Abe, this totally sucks. If you're in the social sciences and don't mind sharing some information, drop me an e-mail. I'm only a first-year professor myself, but if you're in my discipline then I know some folks who would happily lob (rhetorical) bombs on your behalf.
It does suck, Abe. I am fairly sure I have no useful pull, but like everybody else, I am damn curious about what field you're talking about.
You've probably already got these bases covered, but I hope you're keeping a written record to the best of your memory what you were told about this situation when and by whom. It might not have been the kind of thing you think of in the first shock of wtf, but at this point it could matter. Especially since it sounds like this policy about the prof not advising female students is quite likely not written down anywhere, and if people stand to get in hot water they may "forget" having told you certain things.
Man, I can see that everyone's having a strong reaction to this, but seriously, it almost makes me physically ill. Not that anything particularly closely analogous happened to me in my grad program, but the feeling of powerlessness is just so familiar. And the casual fuck-yous to women.
On a very practical level, 97's I think having an advisor by the end of this year is a condition for funding next year might be the first priority. It sounds like Abe may need to approach Y or Z to be advisor at least in the interim, until something or other (unknown) is ironed out.
Or telling the person who told you this that they're going to make sure that requirement is waved while you have time to decide what you're going to do. That's really the very least they can do.
I haven't done the research, but I'd expect it to be pretty much a lay-down Title IX case if you could prove that the institution created or tolerated a situation in which a faculty member is available to advise male students but not female students.
I agree with a lot of what's been said above, but would also wonder about a variant of Charley's thought in 122: that administration tried disciplinary action but couldn't make it stick, and this was the compromise. Doesn't help much, but might mean that there are people there somewhere who believe the guy is a bad actor and would like to be able to act on that.
The Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is there to deal with this sort of stuff and could be helpful if you're ready to call in the cavalry. But you'd want to be clear on what you wanted the cavalry to do, and if at all possible you'd want to have documentation or to be pretty sure that documentation would be forthcoming from the institution when OCR asked them to respond to the complaint. If what you've been told so far is strictly oral, it would be tempting to try a follow-up conversation via email, but it would have to be carefully done to keep them from smelling a rat lawyer.
pretty much a lay-down Title IX case
If it were and AL had perfect evidence and it were open and shut, what would be the remedy? Buckets of cash for AL? The right to work with the harasser?
What would the timeline look like?
The problem with actual court cases is that it's unlikely that the financial reward will be larger than the harm to your future earning potential. I'm still disappointed about not getting to sue any of rwm's employers (the one that pays their female employees 10K less, the one that forgot that they gave her a raise and haven't been paying her the right salary for a year), but as she points out you need reference letters from someone.
It would be sort of good to know how many people in the department know about the sexual harassment allegations and the (unofficial) no-female-advisees policy. Given that Abe has, per 69, discussed her research interests and advisorly intentions relatively widely, either quite a few people she was talking to didn't know anything about the state of affairs, or else they did, and they've been talking quietly amongst themselves about this for a while now, deciding what to do and say.
151: Assuming Abe is more interested in a degree than a lawsuit, what she'd be trying to do would be to enlist OCR's help in making the institution find a solution that works for her and then keeping an eye on them to make sure they follow through. That might involve working with Professor Creepy and watching him very very closely, or other.
Please pretend that last comment was coherent.
Barring concerns of personal/career safety (which are overriding), I wouldn't be cautious about it at all.
I think it's worth considering* that such concerns may not, in fact, be overriding. Sometimes people have an opportunity to make a difference, and in the process, they get fucked over. Sometimes people decide to fight knowing the consequences, and they fight anyway.
Abe has already indicated that she isn't committed to an academic career, which mitigates the potential damage somewhat.
No matter what Abe decides, I'd suggest taking good, contemporaneous notes of every conversation on this subject. And even if Abe were to fight this directly, she ought to be cagey and careful about it.
*I only offer this because it is, indeed, a possibility to stand up and fight the fuckers and win, and I thought that option was getting short shrift here. What Abe is willing to risk is, of course, entirely her decision.
Yeah, I dunno, I've certainly heard of enough similar situations to what Abe is describing that I kinda figured there was at least one such "understanding" on every campus -- probably a lot more than one at the big land-grants. It's certainly an invidious situation, and the most irritating part is that many of the options for dealing with it carry such a high risk of blowback for Abe & her career. The last thing you want, IME, is to get the department heads feeling like they'd better circle the wagons, even if they know it's morally wrong. (Especially if they know it's morally wrong -- that will make them fight twice as nasty.)
What's funny is that the only institution I've ever seen where the policies and practices around sexual harassment were fairly and consistently applied is the big student newspaper I worked at. Mandatory high turnover probably had something to do with it, as well as the fact that even the Young Republicans who did the business side of things were pretty idealistic about fairness. You don't see much of that after people have their 20 years in.
Sorry to be such a negative nellie.
As indicated in comment 97, the main problem from my perspective is that my department seems more interested in covering up for Professor X than in my education. Allowing Professor X to advise me would not constitute a remedy. What I really want is (i) the funding requirement for next year waived, (ii) a faculty member who is willing to go to bat for me, preferably well-known and with lots of grant money, to volunteer to be my advisor, and (iii) heartfelt apologies and fruit baskets from any shitbags who knew I was thinking of studying with Dr. X and knew I wouldn't be able to and didn't say anything. Also, (iv) a pony. Buckets of cash would be nice, but I'm too scared of being branded Troublemaker and never getting a job to sue.
I'm too scared of [...] never getting a job
It's academia. You're never getting a job. Start a ruckus.
Also, I'm firmly on Team Document The Fuck Out of Everything.
I'm on team Document The Fuck Out of Everything And Also Sue The Fuck Out of Everyone, but, uh, it's not my career, either.
Like everyone else, I am pissed off on Abe's behalf. I work in an E/E/O policy office (on dis/ability stuff). This is just the half-assed "fix" that blows up later.
Oh, Abe's field is something something broadswords something in pits.
(Hey Messily, would you like to file a Re/hab Act complaint against my department for me? It involves captioning.)
I am not at all suggesting that this is a productive thing to do. But just so you have a sense of your options (and of course I can't make binding promises on anyone else's behalf) if you decide that making a big public stink is something you want to do, I think Tedra Osell, now of Crooked Timber, would be interested in blogging your story. I would too, if at some future time you wanted noise made, but academics actually read CT.
Oh my god, Abe. That's horrendous. I'm on everyone's horrified team. Definitely document everything.
If it's math, email me, (my gmail is under my pseud on this comment.) I know some decently high-powered feminist mathematicians.
(i) really should be easy, (iii) is not going to happen. (ii) is tricky now because you're early on, but could happen with time.
I always tell people to pick an advisor, not a subfield. You might want to get the dept to give you extra time to find a different subfield so that you can avoid X entirely.
Honestly, this could probably be submitted to Chronicle of Higher Ed if you wanted to write about it. Even pseudonymously.
158: I'd say take that itemized list in order, perhaps trailing off once you approach the demand for a pony.
We're talking really practically here (and I get that this is an ideal scenario, not remotely easy to do) : approach whoever told you that Professor X can't take female grad students and say that you're really shocked by this. You had no idea of this and it's thrown an incredible wrench into your research plans, and you're stunned that no one let you in on this before. Say that your first concern is that the next-year funding be taken care of, and you don't believe you should be left adrift in this situation, so why doesn't he (presumably) help on that front.
Maybe this should be an email.
That's (i) and (ii).
Another person to consider contacting is Isis, at On Being a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess (I don't know how to link but it's here: http://isisthescientist.com/). She does biomedical science and can write a rant like no one else.
Good luck Abe. I'm a real believer in the academic gossip so I'd be unofficially passing on information to others. I cannot believe they told you not to tell anyone! Who are they Penn State? The Catholic Church?
I don't have much advice for Abe Lincoln except to caution that Unfogged opinions may not be representative of the wider world. Abe's situation did remind me of the Mary Daly case . Professors can get away with all sorts of stuff if no one is willing to make a fuss.
169: My breath, it is taken away that you think these situations are somehow analagous. Even for you, James, this is remarkable.
I'd be unofficially passing on information to others
Casting back to my grad school days, I probably would too, if only because people should know what's what in department politics. But on the q.t. -- not putting an expose in the Chronicle of Higher Education. There are complicating issues about the whole thing, after all: the sexual harassment is, apparently, alleged. It may not even be true, for all we know.
Once again, while the sexual harassment is only alleged, the policy that limits the educational opportunities open to female students is something of which Abe has first hand knowledge. While Abe's not responsible for fixing this, and is perfectly justified in doing what's best for her career, an ideal outcome would involve wide public exposure of the invidious policy.
Even if it's unproved allegations, the policy is rediculous. They could ban him from having *any graduate students* if they wanted to.
Oh, totally agreed that the policy is unconscionable.
They could ban him from having *any graduate students* if they wanted to.
Yeah, if they were really between a rock and hard place, that would have been the more sensible solution. Put it next to his name: not available in an advisor capacity.
Does that make it better, or worse?
We so need a "yo, is this sexist?" blog. "Let's just have him not advise female students, problem solved!" is exactly the kind of dumbass move I've come to expect from philosophy departments. Not your field, I'm guessing. No, this is not okay. "He fucked up, so it's your loss and you're out of money." Man, that's going to be fun. Document the hell out of it, and get someone whose responsibility this is to deal with it. The problem isn't directly his harassment; it's how they're dealing with it.
Christ.
Talk with VW, but I think the important thing is to figure out how to document this and how to ensure that you get funding while you figure out how you want to proceed. University administrative groups vary in their effectiveness, but you need someone on this who isn't in the department and doesn't have to placate the asshole.
I wouldn't go public yet -- there's usually a lot of internal options that you'll want to exhaust first. And you're probably operating with the assumption now that you're not going to work with this guy.
They could ban him from having *any graduate students* if they wanted to.
They could even fire him, probably, even if he has tenure, since advising graduate students is normally considered part of one's job.
Though they'd be reluctant to fire him or ban him from advising 90% of the grad student population if he has a big name, which is presumably a large part of the reason they want Abe to keep quiet.
As indicated in comment 97, the main problem from my perspective is that my department seems more interested in covering up for Professor X than in my education. Allowing Professor X to advise me would not constitute a remedy.
It is sometimes socially useful for people to undertake legal actions on principle, but it almost never works out to the benefit of the person undertaking the action. You don't know what Professor X did or why this (idiotic) solution seemed to be the right answer, and if he behaves properly toward you, you don't really need to care.
Which is just to say that the problem you need to have fixed is the advisor/funding problem, not the sexual harassment problem. You're entitled not to be sexually harassed, but not necessarily to an adviser who has never engaged in sexual harassment.
178
They could even fire him, probably, even if he has tenure, since advising graduate students is normally considered part of one's job
I don't think you can ban someone from advising students and then fire them for not advising students. And I am not sure that not having PhD students would be a firable offense for a tenured professor in any case.
Contrary to appearances, English is my first language.
You certainly can't fire people for not having PhD students. The only consequence of not carrying your load in terms of number of PhD students is that it gives people an excuse to not give you raises.
They could even fire him, probably, even if he has tenure, since advising graduate students is normally considered part of one's job.
Depending on how old he is, they could bump him up to Emeritus status, effectively retiring him. I imagine that's happened before. I'd guess that this might be more of a problem for science fields, where the funding that comes with outside grants is extraordinarily important, and may fund an entire lab .... It's always struck me as a problem for science-related fields in the academy, which make themselves party to third-party (sometimes corporate) interests.
182: I can imagine a thought process something like:
1. He has engaged in sexual harassment, so we can't trust him with students.
2. But if he can't work with students, we'd have to fire him, because that's an important part of the job.
3. But what he did really wasn't bad enough to justify firing him.
4. So maybe we should just not let him work with the girl students, since there aren't hardly any of those anyway.
Problem solved!
I fear I was straying from the topic.
I don't think you can ban someone from advising students and then fire them for not advising students.
No, that wouldn't be very fair. But you could fire someone for not being able to work with students.
There's a prof at stanford who isn't allowed to teach undergrads, now that I think of it, but not because of harassment.
188.2 is mystifying: he isn't allowed to teach undergrads .. because he sucks at it, really badly, and everyone knows that? Because he can't manage to grade anything in a remotely acceptable manner? There was someone at my graduate institution who should probably have been put on that status.
OK, I e-mailed the chair of the graduate studies committee to explain the situation and request that the committee take it into consideration when deciding about funding for next year. Hopefully they will waive the requirement, and if they don't at least it will start a paper trail. I also compiled a list of likely-sounding administrative names in case I decide to kick up a fuss.
Thanks for the sympathy and advice, 'shaft.
Because he teaches only esoteric, Kabbalistic mysteries in which undergraduates may not be initiated. He holds the True Wisdom, but who is ready to receive it?
Having stepped away from the discussion for a bit, here are some uninformed recommendations, Abe, based on my sense that your foremost concern is your funding status and education for the coming year and beyond, and also the fact that you're at a large university:
1) assuming your program has a DGS, contact that person asap (take up the issue of acronyms);
2) said contact should be of the, "Gee, I don't quite understand what I've been told, but it sure seems like, given this idiosyncratic problem I'm facing and the program's structural constraints, it's going to be impossible for me to be funded next year" variety;
3) if the response to 2 is, "Oh, that's not the case at all, sweetie, I assure you that we've got you covered." then maybe you're all clear, though I'd get the guarantee in writing and also broach the question of who will advise you*;
4) regardless, under cover of anonymity (or, better still, through a proxy), I would then bring the matter to the attention of the relevant parties, ideally the dean, provost, and the university's sexual harassment person;
5) but if the response to 2 is, "Well, that's hard luck, isn't it? I'm so sorry about that." I'd seek out a trustworthy, senior graduate student in the program (or an allied program), someone who has a reputation for decency and political savvy;
6) I'd then try going back to 2 but with the senior graduate student, hoping that you'd get some good advice about what to do next.
Whether you want to involve bloggers or journalists or anyone else in this is entirely your own business, and, in my view, should be considered only after you square away the more immediate concern about your funding next year and who's going to advise you. If LB or I or someone else here wants to bug you about this issue via e-mail, and then we want to try to make a stink about it, that shouldn't be your concern at the moment.
* Given that you don't want to work in the academy, it's unclear to me how much of a problem it might be for your advisor to be young (you said this was one option, right?) or somewhat far afield from the sort of work that you'd ideally like to be doing. If either eventuality would be a big problem, I think you might need to leave your program, in which case I would probably broach that subject with the DGS. I would also probably consider seeing a lawyer.
Department of General Services, who runs all the contracting for the State of California??
that is where the real power lies. In the Ziggurat! Go to the Ziggurat!
(delurking, young STEM tenure-track academic)
186: Step 3 may not have been "can we fire him", since universities so rarely fire anyone anyway. More likely, I think, is "if this happens again, it'll get escalated to University lawyers, who will criticize the half-assed way we handled the previous X incidents, and we'll spend the next five years attending sexual-harassment policy training sessions."
If that's the case, then the chair may give you whatever you want from the within-department authority, but nothing from the outside-department authority. (Your "find an advisor" funding deadline sounds like an in-department thing.) I have no idea how such a chair would respond to a lawyered-up student---it could be "offer conciliation", or could be "obfuscate and deny".
That's one of the nice things about talking to anonymous, sworn-to-secrecy university ombudsperson---it gives the chair a point of negotiation that (a) has power over him and can't be bullied, but (b) is not the paperwork-generating, lawsuit-fearing arm of the university, and needn't be lied to.
190: Sounds like a good first move, Abe. The chair will presumably be talking to people in your department about what the hell is going on. Some people in your department may start to look at you funny -- or not! if the chair of grad studies is appropriately circumspect -- but don't worry about that. They will talk amongst themselves for a bit, probably.
As Commenter said in 142 and I said in 90, you should start with the person officially tasked to represent the interests of graduate students. Dean, provost, vice-chancellor, whatever. If you have any kind of graduate student committee or union, they may be able to direct you to the best person, if nobody leaps to mind. (BTW: Even if you have a crappy socialite grad student organization, someone in there may be worth contacting.)
Go in with a plan. This isn't the place or time to talk about lawsuits. You are seeking remedies and understanding. The lawsuit talk is useful for buttressing your resolve, as this stuff is scary.
(I take this stuff about advisors very seriously because I'm 50-70% sure that if I'd had an advisor, I'd have finished my PhD and at least tried the market. Instead my recruiting advisor was refused tenure, another prospect was torpedoed in the press, the old guys wouldn't take students, a couple of cross-departmental prospects didn't pan out, a senior faculty hire came and went, a junior faculty hire turned out to focus on the wrong period, and I just said fuck it.)
That said, Abe has said that there are some other options in her department. Abe: talk to the other professors. Who the fuck cares whether [Y] has a lot of administrative positions in the department?" Talk to [Y] about your entirely imposed limitations!
Enlist [Z], who is most closely attuned to the current job market, and is closest to your age. Go carefully--and most important, seem casual at least at first--as [Z] may still be figuring out his or her position within the academic hierarchy. At the minimum, [Z] will be able to give you insights into the departmental bureaucracy.
Remember, however, that you can go outside the department for help. That's hard to do, but these are the safety valves set up for exactly this purpose.
Another resort: if your graduate education is funded by an outside foundation or donation, maybe you could find an alumna there to whom you could write a letter? That might work very well, actually.
198 before seeing 190
OK, I e-mailed the chair of the graduate studies committee to explain the situation and request that the committee take it into consideration when deciding about funding for next year.
This may help with the immediate crisis, but it doesn't fix the problem.
YOU NEED AN ADVISOR.
Jackmormon is right. A fair amount of why I left without a Ph.D. has to do with not having an advisor. I can now recommend leaving with the masters, but it wasn't my intention and still feels unfinished.
Indeed, to 202. However. I've known people who've finished the Ph.D. more or less on their own. That's presumably less possible in the sciences.
Wow, what a horrible situation.
I don't have much to add, except that different schools and departments can work in very different ways, so there isn't a single best way to handle this.
Also, how would you prefer to resolve this situation? I'm guessing you wouldn't want to work with Professor X now, even if the department said it was fine? In that case, are the other options workable? Would you prefer to transfer to another school?
my department seems more interested in covering up for Professor X than in my education.
Perhaps Prof. X is famous? That would explain it...
I found that my graduate group chair was way more interested in getting along with a lifelong colleague than he was with helping me. I don't think the professor has to be famous. Even without that, the incentives aren't in favor of backing the student, who is far more likely to be transient.
That's why you look for the professor who has a grudge against his lifelong colleague. Incentives aligned!
This is a terrible situation, but please don't underestimate the "circle the wagons" mentality in academia.
BTW, the director of graduate studies, assuming it's a faculty member, will have far more loyalty to other faculty, and to the (presumably agreed upon) policy they have implemented. The ombudsman will probably be useless. This does not sound promising:
The ombudsman can:
Help the visitor develop strategies and weigh options
Help clarify interests and goals
Strategize about a conversation with a manager or colleague
Assist in writing a response regarding performance management or disciplinary issues
Facilitate a difficult conversation or negotiation
Facilitate contact with human resources or dean's office
Identify other resources at the University available to the visitor
Clarify policies and practices, provide information
Oh, and Shearer is right, but not perhaps in the way he imagined. Only that you may run into similarly jerky people along the way.
But it's also a situation that's awful in a way that could generate a strong "you did WHAT??" if you find the right person in a position of power. There are administrators out there who would be appalled by the situation itself and others who would be appalled by the prospect of having to explain it to OCR.
Almost certainly true. But how do you find that person without stepping on a mine? You'd be taking a big chance. And the higher up the hierarchy you go, the more the likely response will be CYA.
What NPH said. Circling the wagons is one thing. Knowingly circling the wagons inside a box canyon, with Injuns occupying the high ground, is quite another thing. Wait, that was racist, wasn't it? Unless Abe Lincoln is Native American, in which case it was just fine!
Anyway, you should all have Martin Luther insult you. It's fun!
211.last is not my experience at all. The top of the hierarchy may not engage at all or may refer the problem back to the people who created it, but when they are paying attention they tend to have a better idea of how this sort of thing can end badly.
Adding my voice to the "YOU NEED AN ADVISOR" chorus; though I know things are very different in the hard sciences, my impression was that if anything it's even more important.
The Greatest Healthcare System in the Galaxy!
...Are you Sirius?
209
Oh, and Shearer is right, but not perhaps in the way he imagined. Only that you may run into similarly jerky people along the way.
Well as long as I am the designated jerk, I don't see the advantage in getting the deadline for choosing an advisor pushed back. Abe is likely to have about the same options next year and will have just wasted a year. But perhaps that is what the people who are telling her she needs an advisor are saying.
I'm catching up on the thread and want to express my sympathies again. I'm in philosophy, which is probably the only part of the humanities that has the kind of gender imbalance and boneheadedness that your department has. Unfortunately, I have no advice or influence to offer.
We are rooting for you.
probably the only part of the humanities that has the kind of gender imbalance and boneheadedness
My department had about the same number of male and female grad students, but just as much boneheadedness.
It's weird--I always liked the university environment, but (almost) everyone I know in grad school makes it sound hellish, and stories like Abe's always gets nods of "yep, that's pretty extreme, but is a familiar sort of situation". I don't really understand what about the setup would so commonly make things so toxic, but sometimes it makes me glad I avoided the scene. (And then other times I wonder if the complaints are mostly the result of grad school failing to live up to high expectations/ideals, rather than truly being objectively that awful, and if I wouldn't actually have been a lot better off going to grad school. But I think probably not.)
220
... I don't really understand what about the setup would so commonly make things so toxic, ...
Well as the saying goes "power corrupts" and professors often have a great deal of basically unaccountable power over their students. And you have a large number of people competing for a small number of prizes.
220: I only spent a year as a graduate student, but I loved it, even though it meant living on a very small scholarship and eating mainly lentils and rice. Great fun. I had a lot of respect for my supervisor, colleagues who were fun to work with, an interesting topic...
Academe is a world of winners and losers where the scorecard is kept hidden. If you go through winning, you may never notice what is happening to everyone else.
I had been in my program for several years before I found out which of my professors had been hit with sexual harassment suits.
I talked with my Novel Writer, and said "It's very readable! It's got a pretty right-wing slant, though."
He said something like "It slams everybody. Just get a little further in."
I said, "The professor character is particularly offensive."
He said "I based him on Paul Krugman. I really hate that guy."
Me: ".....!..."
Jesus christ.
Well as the saying goes "power corrupts" and professors often have a great deal of basically unaccountable power over their students. And you have a large number of people competing for a small number of prizes.
This is also true (to a lesser extent) at the undergraduate level, isn't it?
Academe is a world of winners and losers where the scorecard is kept hidden.
This makes sense in theory, although I honestly don't think I understand what it means in this context.
Urple: Mostly I mean that if someone is being dicked over in your department, it is entirely possible that no one will tell you about it. In fact, someone could be dicking you over and you won't even be able to tell who it is.
JP: Does this guy know Krugman, or does he just really hate his NYT column?
I have to say I am really curious to read this novel now. Any chance you could post a chapter, Judge?
I'm in philosophy, which is probably the only part of the humanities that has the kind of gender imbalance and boneheadedness that your department has.
[Sniff.] Happy memories.
224: Your friend hates the conservative caricature of Paul Krugman, which is probably all he's really familiar with. I'm sure that's who is professor character is based on. Krugman is caricatured with some frequency by Limbaugh-types.
Did you happen to ask what by Krugman your friend had read, that gave him such a bad impression? I suspect the answer is "nothing"; it's all secondhand.
226: if he's developed a hatred of Krugman based on significant actual exposure to Krugman's NYT column, and not second-hand accounts of it, I'd genuinely be impressed.
See what happens when you start delving into people's real thoughts and feelings? Don't do it, people suck.
Mostly I mean that if someone is being dicked over in your department, it is entirely possible that no one will tell you about it.
Oh, okay, but that doesn't really answer why it would be the type of environment where so much dicking over would occur. (Or, arguably it does, if you have an especially dim view of human nature, but I don't think so.)
Abe Lincoln, in the unlikely event that I'm in your field, please feel free to get in touch at the email address listed here (I would probably write back under my real name.) As everyone else said, this sucks and is completely unreasonable.
OT: Lindsay Lohan looks and sounds terrible. Drugs are bad.
I just sent Novel Writer a text saying "Do you actually read Krugman's column? Can you send me an example of the type of thing you hate?"
235: It's not like I spend a great deal of my time saying things like "Wow, Shane McGowan/Robert Evans/Keith Richards looks great and is a role model not just for me, but for the children."
But yeah, probably sexist.
236: Next time, if you want to seem less condescending, omit the word "actually".
if you want to seem less condescending
That is, of course, a mightly big "if".
237: we could all be more like Andy Dick.
227: I would have thought the googleproofing required would make it unreadable, but my college accidentally removed every "s" and "r" from the laboratory manual one year, and it apparently turned out fine.
The equations using those letters were apparently a little difficult to understand, though.
238: I did, actually. ACTUALLY.
239: It sounded like JP wants to preserve the friendship, and eir influence over the right-wing friend.
I could also try to help if JP wants to seem more condescending, but that may not be a good thing.
243: I can't follow youtube links from work, but I am confident it is exactly like whatever you just linked.
Also ask him if he has read Krugman's macroeconomics textbook, just to be a dick.
Looks like that's a link to a Steven Wright video. Probably quite similar.
Um, actually, I know Krugman very well, since he's been the main adversary in the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition campaign I've run in my dad's basement (not my mom's! suck it, inaccurate liberals!) since 2003.
"Have you read Krugman's macroeconomics textbook just to be a dick?"
"Just to read a book, are you Krugman's dick?"
If there's anything JP should have learned from blog comments, it's how to be condescending.
Top tips:
- Begin sentences with "Um,"
- Use the following sentence structure: "You are aware that ___________, right?"
- Use the sentence "Let me get this straight."
- Talk about how the answer is obvious if you've "read" a certain author, without giving a hint to which of that author's 900 books contains the relevant passage.
- Use the words "icky", "fee-fees", "lady parts", or "brown people".
Please, let's all try to resist the temptation to write a comment using all of Ned's tips.
If there's anything JP should have learned from blog comments, it's how to be condescending.
Because in few other forums will one encounter so many things so worthy of condescension.
I do start an awful lot of comments with non-verbal noises, come to think. Usually not "Um", at least -- probably "Huh" most often.
"I don't read him much anymore. My general issue with him is his concept that more govt spending is always good. I think any country, corporation, state family, etc can go bankrupt and that when as a society you reach the point where there is too much debt, you do go bankrupt. I think we're at that point."
How could 251 have omitted "Just sayin'"?
"Therefore, when you have too much debt, the solution is default or repayment, not more living above your means. He plays right into wall street's game - the more govt, state and local debt that there is, the more product wall street has to skim fees off."
I know Krugman very well, since he's been the main adversary in the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition campaign I've run
That's "K'thrugman", actually.
Wow, 257 is actually kind of fascinating. I always wondered how tea party types got there.
Isn't there usually something about the Village* and the Serious People?
* Oh, sweet irony.
It's just such a wildly wall-street-centric perspective on government social spending. Yes, wall street is an utter leach. But the rest of the country benefits enormously from social spending.
Maybe I should just respond with that.
I'm not the first person to notice this, but whenever you read conservatives trying to critique what they think the other side believes, you find them assuming that their opponents must be mirror images of themselves. The right believes that less government spending is always good, regardless of circumstances, so it assumes that the other side must always favor more government spending. The right says that deficits are always evil (unless they're caused by tax cuts), so they assume that the center-left must favor deficits in all conditions.
I personally get this a lot, of course. Not a day goes by without someone blithely asserting that I have never called for spending cuts on anything, and that I have never called for action against budget deficits. A few minutes searching this blog would disabuse them of these beliefs, but they don't need to check -- they know.
A few minutes searching this blog would disabuse them of these beliefs
People shouldn't say this, to be fair. Searching for what? The phrase "I think spending on * should be cut"?
Beat me to it, urple. Judge, perhaps send a quick note linking to that blog post. and also point out that the US has been more indebted in the past than it is now (after ww2) and didn't go bankrupt then; also lots of other countries are more indebted than the US and aren't bankrupt either - Britain and Israel, to pick two that might resonate. (Admittedly, both of those are probably only staying afloat because they are under the specific protection of the Lord God Almighty.)
I wrote back "Krugman has called for ending the bush tax cuts and not fighting our various wars. That alone would balance the budget. For social spending, wall street is definitely a total leech, but the rest of the country benefits hugely. Social spending isn't the cause of the deficit."
I feel like this conversation between JP and the author will definitely end well, with a lot learned and a combination of, in the main part, agreement and thoughtful disagreement where full agreement proves impossible.
In the past, he hasn't been particularly adversarial about this stuff. I think he's exposed to a very uniform set of opinions held by people on wall street, and he's on the left of that range.
I know I won't change his mind (because he thinks I'm uninformed, compared to anyone in-the-know on wall street) but at least he'll realize I'm offended.
I can't remember the last time I held his feet to the fire on something - usually I'm supportive of him - so this should at least make an impression.
You also might phrase it as "You may not see it from the social context you're used to, but trust me, you'll lose some readers over this. I think it's readable, maybe publishable, but if I didn't care about you personally I'd have picked it up and put it down again because I was offended and annoyed. If you're doing that on purpose, it could work out fine, but don't turn off a class of readers without knowing what's you're doing."
OT:
The uses and abuses of statistics, part 8,902:
A New Jersey mother born on February 29 beat 2 million-to-1 odds when she had her daughter - who was also born on leap day.
Well, no.
This guy at least acknowledges that you have to "brush aside" a hell of a lot to accept the odds as 2-million-to-one:
The Post reported "brushing aside huge variables such as seasonal birth rates, specific generational trends, and other man-made manipulations," James Ennis, a professor at Tufts University said the odds of a mother and child sharing Leap Day birthdays is 1 in 2.1 million.
Brushing aside any useful information that may be available...
The link in 213 to JP's novelist:
People of your sort are hirelings, dumb dogs unable to bark, who see the wolf coming and flee or, rather, join up with the wolf.
Also!
Your words are so foolishly and ignorantly composed that I cannot believe you understand them.
OK, last one, because it made me actually laugh out loud:
It is presumptuous for people who are as ignorant as you are not to take up the work of a herdsman.
What do you mean when you say this? Are you dreaming in the throes of a fever or are you laboring under a madness?
I initially misread that as "labouring under a mattress" which sounds even better somehow.
It must be said that Latomus, of whom I hadn't previously heard, seems to have been a particularly nasty piece of work.
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Commenters of a certain age will be sad to learn that the can no longer masturbate to Davy Jones
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Dear god. In this case, surely, this is a custom more honour'd in the breach than the observance.
This guy at least acknowledges that you have to "brush aside" a hell of a lot to accept the odds as 2-million-to-one:
I don't agree with 271. The odds of two people being both born on leap day are about 2-million-to-one. What makes it a human interest story is that it's mother and daughter. But I don't think the human interest story needs to get into how that alters the statistics.
280: Generally, this sort of custom would be honored in the breeches, wouldn't it?
The odds of two people being both born on leap day are about 2-million-to-one.
I don't understand this. Which 2 people?
I thought Davy Jones was perpetually teenaged and cherubic (and therefore immortal).
The growing consensus that the Monkees were actually an artistically good and significant band is interesting.
I don't understand this. Which 2 people?
I feel the same way, but I approach statistical questions with roughly the mental apparatus of a 12th century peasant.
257, at least the 2nd sentence is correct. See Kalecki. Or didn't anyone really read Graeber?
Speaking of the sane decent anti-Krugman economics, the ones who say print rather than borrow from the vampire squids, the MMT crowd from UMKC, Stephanie Kelton, Bill Black, Michael Hudson, and Marshall Auerbach drew 2100 people for a talk on MMT in Rimini, Italy Fucking amazing. Many you tube videos, search MMT Rimini
Or listen to DeLong, Romer, and Krugman and borrow trillions from the banks, selling your children into perpetual debt peonage.
286 excerpt. Hudson:
We walked down, and down, and further down the central aisle, past a packed audience reported as over 2,100. It was like entering the Oscars as People called out our first names. Some told us they had read all of our economics blogs. Stephanie said that now she understood how the Beatles felt. There was prolonged applause - all for an intellectual rather than a physical sporting event.
The mindless tribalism of the defenses of Krugman above is why this country will always suck and kill abroad. You are no different from your enemy.
Truly, those who read centrist liberal economics blogs are the real perpetrators of genocide.
Further to 283: If it means that if you choose any two people at random, the odds that both were born on leap day are 2-million-to-one, I get that. But this wasn't 2 people at random. We already know that one of them was born on leap day. Once she became pregnant with a due day in a leap year, it cuts the odds further. (Similarly, if you know 2 people were both born in leap years, the odds are no longer 2-million-to-one that they were both born on leap day.)
That's not the same as OMG!! 1-in-2-million odds!
Obviously, it's not terribly important in this case, but it's one more instance of -- and reinforcement for -- Americans' (can't say if it's true globally) misunderstanding of statistics, which does matter.
The odds that someone who was born on February 29 and conceived a child nine months prior to February 29 would have a baby on February 29 is... 100 to 1?
And so I go to check out Thoma, to see if he has mentioned the Rimini event (he hasn't, not a word) and right at the top
DeLong A Larger National Debt Would be a National Blessing
So who are Thoma's and Brad's masters? That debt (with inflation targets) has served us so well since Reagan, expanding our spending options astronomically. Banker's tools.
That seems low -- as I understand the question you asked, it's the same as "the odds a given woman will deliver on her predicted due date", which are probably easily googlable but I'd guess are more like 10 to 1.
I went to grade school with identical twins born on Leap Day, which meant generally one celebrated the last day of February and one the first day of March, which always seemed like a slightly weird but also compelling solution.
293 is so statistically unlikely, Thorn has to be making it up!
294: Well, it's a million to one chance. According to Terry Pratchett, that means it's a sure thing.
This seems like a meaningless question to address statistically. It strikes me as less a misunderstanding of statistics and more a misunderstanding of when statistics might be interesting.
Although, you've got to admit that if someone told you they knew a woman whose birthday was Leap Day who also had a kid born on Leap Day, a completely standard thing to say would be "Wow, what are the odds?" Not that either the question or answer is necessarily interesting, but it's a natural question.
As stupid as 294 is, I think this article is even stupider. And, this guy, presumably, wasn't even trying to be stupid!
"What's your name?"
"Namey Namington."
"The odds that you have exactly that name are a billion to one!"
"Oh, wow, is that your name too?"
"No, I don't see what the one has to do with the other. It's just that the probability of having any given name are quite low."
"..."
It gets even worse when you talk about quantities that are continuously distributed, so the probability of any given outcome is exactly zero. It does not follow that you should be surprised by the outcome.
297: sure. So is the problem that people would say that?
We already know that one of them was born on leap day.
Disclaimer: IANAStatistician. But since the mother being born on Leap Day is a given, then (assuming a perfectly random conception date) she has a 1 in 1461 chance of delivering on February 29th, right?
289: Well, another way to look at it is that there are approximately 10,650 babies born each day in the US according to answers.ask.com. Assuming that mothers' birth days are evenly distributed across the 1,461 days in a 4-year cycle, you would expect around 7 babies born yesterday in the US to have a mother who was also born on leap day. Double that if you want the number who had either biological parent born on a leap day. Cut in in half if you restrict yourself to mother/daughter pairings. So basically, they were able to identify one of the roughly 3.5/7/14 cases we would expect to have been out there yesterday. Which is a tad unusual, but not unexpected. This is completely consistent with 1 in 2.1 million odds for the general population (counting mother only), which implies there should be around 143 people in a population of ~300 million for which this is true.
The other important thing is how likely is the event due to something other than mere random chance. So learning that a mother and daughter have matching leap-day birthdays should slightly increase your estimated probability that the mother timed her pregnancy and/or arranged arranged for labor to be induced to effect the coincidence. Figuring how improbable such a match would be by chance can help you decide how far to update your estimate.
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I accept that perhaps Bob Kerrey is the Democrats' only real hope to keep Ben Nelson's Senate seat. But the prospect of having Bob Kerrey's prima donna act back in the Senate just as we finally rid ourselves of Joe Lieberman does not make me a happy apostropher.
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The uses and abuses of statistics, part 8,902:
The one that's been a running joke on my squad comes from something a local higher up in another agency said that there was a 50-50 chance some remains they'd found were in fact Susan Powell. The way he said it we're almost certain his thought process was along the lines of "this body either is Susan or isn't Susan, so, you know, 50-50 it's her".
306: Doing things the conventional way has never been my strong suit
Oh, Bob! You're such a maverick!
Novel writer writes:
"My issue w/ Krugman is not rich v poor, liberal v conservative. It's his inability to recognize that when the debt gets too pig and you can't service the interest, you hit a wall and can't borrow any more money. He always wants more stimulus programs and he always contends we're still having trouble in the economy because the last program wasn't big enough. We do need to cut military spending in half (at least) and increase taxes, but the social programs are also unsustainable because of the demographics. IMO it's better to choose what to cut and plan it out, than to run into the wall (when you can't deficit spend any more) and simply stop funding those programs."
309: Somebody has a terribly weak grasp on how sovereign currency works.
309: I would be seriously tempted to reply back with, "really? you really think that Krugman hasn't considered that? The man is a professional economist and, even if you disagree with him, don't those sound like considerations that he would be aware of?"
At the moment, as you may have noticed, the U.S. government is running a large budget deficit. Much of this deficit, however, is the result of the ongoing economic crisis, which has depressed revenues and required extraordinary expenditures to rescue the financial system. As the crisis abates, things will improve. The Congressional Budget Office, in its analysis of President Obama's budget proposals, predicts that economic recovery will reduce the annual budget deficit from about 10 percent of G.D.P. this year to about 4 percent of G.D.P. in 2014.
Unfortunately, that's not enough. Even if the government's annual borrowing were to stabilize at 4 percent of G.D.P., its total debt would continue to grow faster than its revenues. Furthermore, the budget office predicts that after bottoming out in 2014, the deficit will start rising again, largely because of rising health care costs.
So America has a long-run budget problem. Dealing with this problem will require, first and foremost, a real effort to bring health costs under control -- without that, nothing will work. It will also require finding additional revenues and/or spending cuts. As an economic matter, this shouldn't be hard -- in particular, a modest value-added tax, say at a 5 percent rate, would go a long way toward closing the gap, while leaving overall U.S. taxes among the lowest in the advanced world.
311: I often have similar reactions whenever I hear criticisms of scientific expertise (although I don't always remember to turn it on myself).
I like that urple seems to have Krugman's archives in his back pocket.
We had a budget surplus before the people who are bashing Krugman got to play with the economy.
Somebody has a terribly weak grasp on how sovereign currency works.
Me. What's this mean?
The man is a professional economist
...with a Nobel Prize, no less.
That's slightly unfair, because it includes the dot-com boom, but even if you correct for that sort of thing we were doing much better than we are now.
It's possible that "urple" is just a pseudonym, and that in real life I'm Paul Krugman.
It's possible that "urple" is just a pseudonym
Mind blown.
317: http://www.creditwritedowns.com/2011/07/what-is-a-sovereign-currency.html
Basically it means novel writer doesn't appear to understand that budget limitations are starkly different for a government that issues its own currency than they are for your and my household budgets.
307 is really depressing.
312. The US can gradually devalue the north american Peso by continuing to keep interest rates low and having the FRB buy more and more dubious assets. This is already happening. The conservative's response is to predict runaway inflation and bank runs. This has been the unchanged prediction since 2009.
Wait a second -- are you all arguing we should defer to the expertise of economists?
Is Mr. Emerson around?
The conservative's response is to predict runaway inflation and bank runs
...until a Republican is living in the White House, at which point it will all return to being irrelevant.
Wait a second -- are you all arguing we should defer to the expertise of economists?
No, I was deliberately conservative in my phrasing. I wasn't going for, "Paul Krugman knows more than you do" (even if I believe that) but, "If you believe that you have accurately characterized Krugman's arguments consider the possibility that you are mistaken."
But, really, urple's quotations are (or should be) all the response that is required.
I'm somehow not seeing on this chart any indication that we're approaching a wall in terms of other people's willingness to lend us money.
If the odds that any two random people are both born on leap day is about 2 million to one, and about 4.2 million babies are born in the U.S every year, every one of whom has a mother who was born on some day of the year, the odds that some baby born on leap day this year would have a mother born on leap day are pretty high. The odds that some baby would have a mother or father born on leap day are a bit higher.*
Alternatively, about 11,000 babies are born in the U.S. every day including leap day. About 1/1560 of their mothers were born on leap day. Most likely, about 5 to 9 of the babies born on leap day had mothers born on leap day. Not shocking at all.**
* almost wrote "twice as high." No!
**And that's not even taking into account the very popular " Memorial Day fucking" tradition.
323:C'mon people,, there are not just two sides to this thing.
MMT says PRINT. There is a huge difference between Krugman's "borrow and tax" and MMT's "Print and tax." A huge difference. And the FRB buying assets or giving money to the mega-banks is just putting more debt on our accounts. This is why Wall Street looooves quantitative easing, Bernanke style.
Now why DeLong, Thoma, and Krugman are servants of Wall Street, even though they claim and maybe even believe otherwise, is a complicated story, involving assumptions so deep that it will take a new generation of economists to change the policy menu.
A New Jersey mother born on February 29 beat 2 million-to-1 odds when she had her daughter - who was also born on leap day.
I interpret this to mean that it only happens once every 2 million leap years.
I interpret this to mean that it only happens once every 2 million leap years.
Which would suggest that this is probably the first time in the history of the genus Homo. Shurely shome mishtake...
t will take a new generation of economists
When that new generation of economists is born, I promise to follow them slavishly, drooling like the brainless sheep that I am. Until then, not much to do but shuffle zombielike in Krugman's wake.
332: well, that's why it's national news.
This is what I emailed to Novel Writer:
When Greece bottomed out, the Eurozone imposed austerity measures, which has caused Greece to bottom out again, and again, and again, each requiring another bailout. Greece can't get on its feet because too many people are unemployed. (Greece's problem is that it's tethered to the Euro, and Merkel and France refuse to let the Euro devalue, which would bring Greece's debt into reason. If Greece had a sovereign currency, their crisis would have been hugely reigned in.)
The US government is the largest employer in the country. Much of the stimulus went to paying for state-level jobs - teachers, public servants, etc - that would have otherwise been cut by the states. Cutting government spending means people lose their jobs.
It's well-understood that the Great Depression became a double-dip recession precisely because Hoover shut down all government spending. What got us out of the Great Depression was tons of government spending, mostly for the war effort and the New Deal.
Jimmy Carter was the first president to prioritize GDP over unemployment, as a yardstick for measuring the economy during the downturn. That was a profound shift away from Keynesian economics, which helped lay the foundation for Reagonomics.
Since 1982:
1. Deficits have ballooned
2. Income inequality has ballooned.
The way you address (1) is to address (2). If you have too many poor and unemployed people, you don't have a strong tax base. Keeping people employed and above the poverty level is the key to everything.
Onto the next point:
Here's a chart from the Washington Post. Clearly, not all stimulus dollars are worthwhile - some items more than pay for themselves, while others run up the deficit and are ineffective. (The design of the stimulus was stupid. It was over 1/3 tax cuts, for starters. Krugman has never said "And another! and another!" Before it was ever passed, Krugman said "It needs to be 3x as large, because we know exactly how many jobs we'll get for each dollar spent in each category." He has consistently stuck to that number.)
Next: Krugman does pay attention to debt, he just thinks that it's not appropriate to address it during a financial downturn. He wants to wait until unemployment is under 7%.
Finally, let me respond to what you've said:
"E.G. is increasing your consumption via credit card spending good? Was there too much Investment during the internet bubble? Was there too much Investment via borrowing in the housing bubble? Is the Government too big? (some people argue it is)."
Of course, people borrow against their future assets all the time. Everybody takes out loans to attend college. Everybody takes out mortgages to buy their house. Obviously there is wise debt and stupid debt. There is plenty of stupid spending going on, and insufficient income being brought in. But the deficit is literally equal to 10 years of Bush Tax Cuts + 2 unfunded wars. That accounts for the entire thing.
To summarize, you're accusing Krugman (and more generally, all Keynesian economists) of things which they don't do.
1. They don't think all GDP is good, and in fact, there's significant debate that it's a stupid measure.
(Historical fact: Jimmy Carter was the first president to prioritize GDP over unemployment, as a yardstick for measuring the economy during the downturn. That was a profound shift away from Keynesian economics, which helped lay the foundation for Reagonomics, etc.)
2. They don't ignore the cost of longterm deficits.The argument is that you deal with your debt in fat years, and deal with unemployment in lean years. The government should be counter-cyclical to the market. Spend when things are down, reign it in when things have improved.
Wow, that was longer than I realized. Sorry.
Also, I know from commenting here that a bunch of stuff I said isn't quite right. But I think it's right enough for the level of conversation.
Also, I was responding to an email he sent.
Also, I repeated the thing about Carter. Damn.
But the deficit is literally equal to 10 years of Bush Tax Cuts + 2 unfunded wars.
The deficit is an annual number. Are you claiming that the Tax Cuts + wars are 1/10th of the deficit?
328: It's approximately twice as high, and can be treated as such for discussion purposes. It's lower than twice by around 1/1461 of the original number, which is negligible in terms of the approximation.
328 & 339, cont: Unless you are talking about "odds against" being twice as high, in which case, no, it's approximately half (it's more likely, not less likely). If that's the point you were making, never mind.
Historical fact: Jimmy Carter was the first president to prioritize GDP over unemployment, as a yardstick for measuring the economy during the downturn
Is this true? I guess I'm not even sure what it means.
That's what a labor prof told me. That prior to 1978, or whenever, the measure of recovery during a downturn was unemployment. During Carter, they switched to using GDP to mark an economic recovery.
342: Ok. Does that have to do with how the National Bureau of Economics Research determines if we are in a recession or not?
The Business Cycle Dating Committee was created in 1978, and since then there has been a formal process of announcing the NBER determination of a peak or trough in economic activity. ... During the period 1961-1978, the U.S. Department of Commerce embraced the NBER turning points as the official record of U.S. business cycle activity, but the NBER made no formal announcements when it determined the dates of turning points. There was an informal notification process between the NBER researchers and the Commerce Department, followed by publication of turning point dates in Commerce Department publications.
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Per this post, 26% of the bylines in the Atlantic belong to women. Wonder what it is when you pull out C/aitlin Fla/nagan and McMegan?
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"I'm just overwhelmed by the feeling that no one on the faculty cares about me at all."
The conversation's moved on, but I had to reply to this: Abe, the faculty isn't taking care *of* you, in ways that are deeply unjust and possibly illegal, but this doesn't mean that they don't care *about* you. It's so common for graduate students to be abused or neglected, and the worst of it is that they often come to believe that they deserve the neglect and the abuse. You don't. And I'd bet that the faculty don't think that you do: they're just not really thinking about it at all.
The best guide to academic politics is not that tiresome Kissinger line about the stakes being low, but whoever it was who said the thing about not attributing to malice what could be attributed to incompetence. I think Not Prince Hamlet probably got it right in 186: they've come up with a solution to their professor problem, without bothering to thinking about the problems the solution will create for their female students or, more specifically, for you. I'm not saying this to defend them (I hope they get sued by someone, if not by you), but to encourage you to reach out for help since I think it's quite likely that at least some of the faculty will be just as appalled as we are, once you spell out the consequences of this policy. But I'm also saying this because I hate to think that you're internalizing what you take to be their judgment of you, when they're probably (appallingly!) failing to think about you in this context at all.
346: There are lots of ways to make statistics completely useless, if you fiddle with them selectively.
322, 327: The other thing is that Krugman has repeatedly said that his solution of spend-spend-spend and inflation be damned is contingent on us being in a liquidity trap/at the zero bound. He hasn't been shy about this, and he's been talking about the subject and why it does distorting things to the basic Econ 102 assumptions about how to get out of a recession (originally in the context of the Japanese lost decade) with a handy example and everything for, in Internet terms, forever. It's depressing but unsurprising that someone whose exposure to him is filtered through his job at a Wall Streeter doesn't acknowledge that Krugman's even making an argument.
I just read the link in 298. "Assuming that she really is being paid $4 million, the years in jail and the notoriety that has accompanied the case may well seem worth the price." Seriously, Peter Osnos? That's your fucking takeaway alongside some tut-tutting about Amanda Knox's sexy wicked ways?
348: It's more "what price gender equity?"
307: I'm not sure that's how probability works, Walter.
350: I wasn't kidding about the stupid, was I?
346: Don't forget Sandra Tsing Loh!
Wait, she writes for The Atlantic as well? I'll have to not read it even more than I'm not reading it now.
The growing consensus that the Monkees were actually an artistically good and significant band is interesting.
Is that the growing consensus? I remember at around age eight declaring them my favorite band, only to feel really embarrassed later on when I learned they weren't really considered a "serious" band. WHATEVER, man.
251: Begin sentences with "Um,"
I take issue: we can do better than that. Beginning sentences with "Look," is a red flag in virtually every circumstance.*
* Excepting as an intro to "Look, a squirrel!"
It's well-understood that the Great Depression became a double-dip recession precisely because Hoover shut down all government spending.
Depending on Novel Writer's approach to skepticism, this one mistake might completely discredit everything you're written.
225
This is also true (to a lesser extent) at the undergraduate level, isn't it?
Yes and abuses of power do occur. I believe I have previously mentioned a friend of my father's who flunked a course because the professor lost a bunch of final exams (including his). But many undergraduates have no desire to pursue academic careers which makes them less dependent on their professors.
356:Umm, Mike Nesmith had musical talent. Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were good songwriters.
Dolenz and Jones could act well enough for teenager's tv.
Like everybody else, I have forgotten the fourth Monkee.
356: Funnily, or not, as the child of Great Folk Scare-influenced parents, I'd always been pretty dismissive of the Monkees and their synthetic status. As I understand the pro-Monkees apologias, the general narrative is something along the lines of:
Half of the band were serious musicians to begin with, having paid their dues in the folk scene. The early days of the group were characterized by a lot of saccharine, synthetic, Tin Pan Alley-type hoopla, but after the first couple of years, against all odds, the four of them gelled into an authentic pop group with real artistic merit. They adroitly maneuvered their way into gaining some measure of control over their musical output and image, and wound up leaving a corpus of fairly decent pop tunes, plus the underappreciated masterpiece Head.
360: You've forgotten the MINNESOTAN Monkee?!? Peter 'Tork' Torkelson?!?
(In the sense that he went to Carleton, and has a Norwegian name. Thorkelson. Close enough.)
Look, the Monkees had some brains, taste, and class and lots of money, and hung out in an even smarter crowd (Rafaelson, Nicholson, the Dillards, Nilsson, Boyce & Hart, Goffin/King, Laurel Canyon crowd.) Nesmith had ambition and an edge.
Decent LA sunshine pop, I like them better than Peanut Butter Conspiracy, and they lasted longer then the Smiths. But they didn't even rise to level of Spanky & Our Gang, let alone Mamas & Papas. Hell, I think I prefer the Stone Poney's albums. Dolenz & Jones could never get serious, and could never go background to Tork (who was ok) and Nesmith. Do we compare these guys to the Byrds or CSNY?
That said, the albums are actually good, and they were the adequate vehicles for some stonecold classic immortal pop songs. Ain't nothing much better than Believer and Clarksville.
364: Yeah, I'd agree with most of that analysis. They certainly didn't pursue their own self-destructive impulses with anywhere near the verve and panache of the Mamas & the Papas. I think the Monkees are certainly always going to come up short when compared to any number of their contemporaries, but there's a pretty big gulf between that understanding and the way they are still often dismissed out of hand.
365: Amusing that Crass' "So What" gets pulled into the sidebar by the matching algorithm. That's somewhat mystical, when you think about it.
They certainly didn't pursue their own self-destructive impulses
Did they pursue their self-destructive impulses at all? I haven't kept track: surely they did not. They were so cheerful and lighthearted about everything!
224
I talked with my Novel Writer, and said "It's very readable! It's got a pretty right-wing slant, though."
If it's really very readable the rightwing slant is unimportant.
I basically agree with 364, particularly the part about their having some immortal songs. Worth pointing out that it's a mistake to draw too bright a line between them and the more purportedly authentic folk pop -- the Wrecking Crew played behind the Mamas and Papas' albums and for the Byrds for a while too (and also of course there were outside songwriters and studio musicians on like 90% of great pop songs from that era).
If it's really very readable the rightwing slant is unimportant, as the galeopterus said to the hyrax.
368:Dolenz got into drinking with Nilsson and maybe Randy Newman, would go off on binges for a week at a time, and blew his marriage by the early 70s.
Samantha Juste ...sigh
368 -- I'm pretty sure that in the late 70s Dolenz was part of the Keith Moon/Nilsson/Alice Cooper circle of hard partying drunks at the Rainbow on the Sunset Strip.
372, 373: Huh. I guess I may have vaguely heard something about that ... but, but ... they were the Monkees! How could any of them ...?!
I kid, obviously. I realize they were real people. Peter Tork was my favorite. Monkees fandom is/was a very childish -- childhood -- thing for me.
339:if the odds of a particular event happening are greater than 50%, the probability cannot be doubled.
I thought there was a somewhat clever parody of "I'm a believer" about UFOs, but I can't seem to find it online after about 3 minutes of searching, so I'm going to assume I imagined it.
From outer space,
No doubt in my mind.
308: Oh, Bob! You're such a maverick!
Reading quickly to catch up I did not initially realize this was directed to Bob Kerrey.
286, 287, 291, 329: Oh, bob! You're such a maverick!
352: 307: I'm not sure that's how probability works, Walter.
That's right dude. One hundred percent certain.
I was sure that was going be to some Big Lebowski clip.
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Very grumpy and anxious tonight. Dealing with the runaround at the pharmacy while both my feet were killing me tonight after work really soured my mood. That's reasonable, right? I don't want to seem like I'm malingering or making a big deal out of nothing, but the opiates and stuff are making it hard to evaluate my emotions accurately. Also, there's a lot of residual sick smell around here, 'cause I haven't had a chance to get everything washed after sweating on it during my more ill periods. That would be enough to bug anyone, don't you think?
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Given all you've been through lately, NP, I think you're quite justified in being grumpy.
Ain't nothing much better than Believer and Clarksville.
"I'm a" or "Daydream"?
That said, I still prefer Cassandra Wilson's version of Clarksville.
I was sure that was going be to some Big Lebowski clip.
Dude, I was so sure it was Lebowski I didn't bother to click on the link and went and just now watched the whole movie while a tad drunk. I was mystified as to how I missed that line.
Natilo, not only should you be grumpy, you should probably be wallowing in it rather than working. Any one of the things going on with your body of late would be grounds for grumpy misery, let alone the combo!
md 20/400 @ 162- email me if this is a Serious For-Reals Issue. (Sorry it took me so long to pay attention to you). I am all studied up on my institutional access rules because of having to throw a tantrum to get access to a workshop in California this summer. I'll sue anybody now!
I didn't actually sue anyone yet but I did have to learn a bunch of stuff and (I think) make one really unpleasant woman hate me forever.
384/387: Yeah, I'm not sure why I was second-guessing myself so much last night. It was good to finally get back in to work yesterday and start moving through my backlog of stuff, but at the same time I had to endure a lot of excess pain, and then having to spend almost an hour hanging around Target waiting for them to get their asses in gear really did not help my mood even a tiny bit. Totally reasonable to feel a bit put out in those circumstances, I would say.
Having your emotions off-kilter is very disturbing, and particularly if you're self-aware enough to know that you're not your normal self, but not certain of how far from normal you are.
388. Email sent to E. Messily! Thanks for considering it.