Category: No Politics Friday

There is a phrase used among chefs which, like so much of culinary culture, has its origins in France during the Escoffier era: le system 'd'. The phrase loses some of its meaning in English, as the "D" refers to a word, débrouillard, with no direct translation. It can be either an adjective or a noun, roughly meaning adept at handling unexpected situations in stride, often by improvising a solution. The closest English equivalent would involve invoking MacGyver. That man is débrouillard.

Turning to System D means jury-rigging a solution. To a chef this means reacting quickly when bad things happen at the worst (busiest) time without breaking the flow of the kitchen.
online pharmacy desyrel best drugstore for you

Out of spinach? Use arugula. Deep fryer crapped out? Throw a pot on a burner and get to work.
online pharmacy trazodone best drugstore for you

Twice as many guests at the banquet as anticipated? Fluff out the portions with filler, just don't make it too obvious.
buy fluoxetine generic buywithoutprescriptiononlinerx.net over the counter

Chefs take pride in this sort of thing, seamlessly circumventing roadblocks with customers none the wiser.

Maybe it's a male thing, but I believe most of us take pride in putting System D into action – opening a locked car door with a coat hanger, plugging a leak with gum, fixing something with duct tape, and so on. I had a System D moment with my dissertation this evening – a very complex problem with a laughably low-brow solution. I dare not put it in writing, lest it come back to haunt me in the future, but I can say with great pride that I am quite débrouillard when it comes to spatial analysis of political behavior. No one else cares, of course, but the whole point of System D is the pride in knowing that you are more clever than the obstacles in your path.

And to impress MacGyver. Assuming he reads this, regale him (and me) with your finest System D stories in the comments.

I have a theory. Usain Bolt, who became a global celebrity by shattering the 100m sprint record without even really trying, sandbagged his Olympic sprint. He spent the last 20m celebrating rather than running hard, most likely so that his time would be just "slow" enough that he could easily break it in subsequent races. Subsequent races with huge paychecks offered by promoters who think that "Come out and see Usain Bolt break the world record – again!" is the most attention-grabbing marketing line in the sport.
online pharmacy antabuse best drugstore for you

buy lasix online buy lasix no prescription

From his perspective it makes sense. Why go balls-out if going at 90% is enough to win gold and break a record?
buy levaquin online buy levaquin no prescription

Save going 100% for the big payday.

As you read this (although not as I write it – I had to pre-blog this date) I am getting inspected. I am being placed under a microscope, drilled for core samples, and made to turn my head and cough. In short, I am at APSA* and this year I am officially On the Job Market^tm for assistant professorships. As you read this on Friday I am in the midst of 10 interviews in 8 hours, followed by a panel presentation and four more interviews on Saturday. I am repeating the same things and answering the same questions to an audience of people who are asking the same questions and hearing (largely) identical answers from everyone. Although I really, really wanted to wear a seersucker suit (I asked, "How would Mark Twain approach this interview?

") I allowed myself to be talked into Business Bland.

The academic job market is odd. It happens once annually, beginning today and ending around Halloween. Everyone who has an opening advertises it while everyone who needs a job contributes to the 4-to-6 week deluge of applications.
buy neurontin online buy neurontin no prescription

The annual APSA conference kicks things off in Political Science, and the conference interviewing process is insane. We are herded into a giant waiting room (roughly analogous to the "waiting room" outside slaughterhouses) to be summoned one-by-one to meet with our betters.

We have about 30 minutes to make an impression, which is advantageous for me because unlike 98% of the people in this field I have a personality. It is a shitty one, but I have it.

As far as where we end up…well, it's a bit like being drafted into the military minus all the beatings and sodomy. We have literally no control over the process and we know only that the odds at any single job are low. So we apply in bulk. I will be applying for nearly 75 jobs. History has shown that the likely ratios will be something like 75 apps = getting shortlisted at 10 schools = getting an official on-campus interview and presentation at 4 schools = getting one job offer.
buy augmentin online buy augmentin no prescription

It is sort of like one of those Jack LaLanne infomercials in which 20 pieces of fruit are dumped into the machine to produce a Dixie cup full of juice. It is a very bad idea to get one's heart set on a particular job, since he or she has no earthly way of knowing which of the 75 jobs will respond favorably.

In short, I am sitting in a room full of socially inept 5th-year graduate students either waiting to hear my name called or in the midst of answering "So what is your dissertation about?" and "Can you teach quantitative methods?" for the tenth time. I am also the only one in this writhing mass of desperate, underpaid humanity who is listening to Locust Abortion Technician at molar-rattling volume as I wait patiently for the academic captive bolt stunner. It is a meat market. A highbrow meat market, but a meat market nonetheless.

*(As an aside, I am also in the most ludicrously opulent hotel room – nay, any room – I have ever seen in my life. God bless you, Hotwire.)

No Politics Friday usually meets two criteria, namely A) not politics and B) fun. Since only the first part is mandatory, today will be absent of politics but short on laughs.
https://beautybeforeage.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/jpeg/orlistat.html

Take 20 minutes and read this Pulitzer-in-waiting piece "The Girl in the Window" from the Tampa-St. Pete Times. On the surface the story is basic human interest journalism, but I think this tragedy highlights an important reality in this nation full of idiots.

You may recall that Hillary Clinton wrote a book which was the subject of some derision back in the 1996 – It Takes a Village. Irrespective of Hill-Dawg's merits as an author or sociologist, the basic premise is sound: individuals and groups outside of families have a significant role (positive and negative) in raising children.

My point, to make a long comment short, is that anyone with functioning gonads can have a kid and we all know that there are millions of "parents" in this country with no qualifications beyond that.
https://beautybeforeage.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/jpeg/ivermectin.html

The story illustrates that in spades.

It's up to the rest of us – neighbors, co-workers, teachers, cops, and so on – to pick up the slack. The phrase "It's none of my business" should be retired when the welfare of other human beings is involved. Without the intervention of strangers, the girl would still be locked in her room. Yes, it's pathetic that you should have to be responsible for some complete stranger's kids, but you are. Not legally, of course, but ethically.

I doubt I am telling you anything new here. This story, unfortunate as it is, simply underscores the way that our culture of proud stupidity shifts responsibility from the incompetent to society as a whole.

I am becoming alarmingly addicted to informercials in the same way I am addicted to Battlefield:Earth, World's Wildest Police Videos, and watching people slip on icy stairs. Infomercials are as bad as you remember, as my good friend Klee Irwin will show you. In addition to answering the hypothetical question "What would the offspring look like if John Waters boned Count Chocula?" Klee is well-known for being incredibly enthusiastic about your poop. He is personally committed to helping you pinch off a nice, solid log. To wit:

Infomercials say a lot about us as a nation. Because every one of these idiots – every last scam artist, charlatan, and flat-out criminal – is a millionaire. Remember, as you watch Klee Irwin or Kevin Trudeau making asses of themselves for your entertainment, that people regularly watch this crap and fall for it. Not one or two people – tens of thousands of them. They pick up the phone and pay good money – in some cases hundreds of dollars – for repackaged Flintstones vitamins or books that describe how to cure cancer with fruit.

Yeah, that's a little depressing.

I am not a scientician, nor do I have even the slightest illusions of thoroughly understanding physics. That said, if you are reasonably literate on such matters and you want to have your mind positively fucking blown out of both ears and your nose at the same time, watch Prof. Brian Greene give a lecture describing Superstring Theory in (relative) layman's terms.

I was pretty good at the hard sciences as a younger person, including physics, but I hit a road block when exposed to theories beyond relativity.

Perhaps my mind is too linear (or not linear enough).
buy fildena online buy fildena no prescription

I simply can't comprehend things getting shorter and more massive when they move, particles traveling back in time, multiple dimensions, and parallel universes. I am unequipped mentally to handle academic endeavors based on fundamental but unexplained, and possibly inexplicable, phenomena.

There is something comforting about a field in which, whenever we get stumped, "Because people are stupid" serves as an effective all-purpose explanation.

buy levaquin online buy levaquin no prescription

I love several things. Among them are Cold War-era cultural artifacts and Engrish. Stilted, hilarious Engrish. I wondered if I would ever find anything that combines the two.

God heard my prayers and delivered some serious Soviet camp. Check out this amazing 1970 brochure from Aeroflot Soviet Airlines. It features not only that soaring propaganda rhetoric that only true commies could master but also some awkwardly translated Russian-turned-Engrish. The kind of Engrish we thought only our friends in Asia could deliver in VCR manuals:

This is the building of Moscow in-town air terminal. Let's make an excursion to it. First we'll inform you of the dimensions of it. The building is about 300 meters long and 40m wide. It is full of light, spacious and cozy.

Wait, I also promised some overblown rhetoric:

The entire Soviet people display unprecedented labour enthusiasm when they celebrate Lenin's birth centenary. And the many-thousand-strong collective of Soviet civil airmen is marking this glorious jubilee with new labour achievements.

Need a flight to Africa to visit the nutty 1970s dictator of your choice? Well don't worry, because "The network of Aeroflot routes to Africa is very ramified."