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young camel approaches alone in the street he bends over my head and munches on my hair i let him of course the camel either liked my hair or perhaps he liked me this encounter made a deep impression on share this email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr like loading posted in short stories tagged algeria travel leave a comment comfort posted on october 20 2024 by jacques delacroix i had a post doc fellowship at stanford post doctoral fellowship is code for welfare for people with doctorates it carried few obligations i had to attend one lecture a week which i would have even if i had not been obligated to do so there was also a vague expectation that i would help doctoral students anyway i could i helped several mostly in a light sort of way there was one doctoral student however a woman who often sought my help she was older than most and she pulled at my heartstrings a little bit because she was a recovered alcoholic she looked the part too there was something painfully ungainly about her she was a very hard worker but quite ignorant she struggled in the doctoral program but you knew she would make it she was smart that s often enough at least in some disciplines we will call her a now i am forced to say something untidy about myself in those days i was handsome well very handsome in my early thirties and athletic i was also deeply married i am glad to say i am still deeply married to the same woman my wife is a beautiful woman from india she is sort of retiring she never showed up at my place of work in two years a and i became close with the quaint closeness of co authors they often do together the most important thing in their lives but the resulting closeness rarely bleed unto the rest of their existence anyway my post doc lasted two years so i pretty much saw a s dissertation from beginning to end i had many opportunities to help her she profited well from my advice she was also quick to exploit any other resources that presented themselves in spite of her initial ignorance she produced a good dissertation not great but commendable myself i came up with two memorable co authored articles during that period i know this sounds slim but my academic mentor the man who had gotten me the post docs to begin with told me tersely that two more than most post docs i remember clearly the last time i saw a before the episode i shall tell presently we were at an academic meeting at waikiki hawaii most academic meetings take place in interesting spots it s a fringe benefit i did not no know many people there in the evening after attending presentations i bought a a drink or two like a senior will normally do with a junior i know for a fact it was no more than two drinks i was leaving the next day early afternoon of course i wanted to take a swim before going unthinkingly idly i invited a to accompany me we met on the beach in late morning a was in a bikini suddenly like in a flash i saw her in my mind s eye the way she must have though i was seeing her read this sentence again a body looking much older than her actual age ravaged by alcohol and god know what other excesses quickly i realized my mistake and encouraged her to join me beneath the waves but i think the harm was done fast forward instead of continuing in academia i then tried my luck at business in the middle of a recession i am not sure i knew what a recession was then i lost my footing at the same time as i was adopting two children i discovered an urgent need to re integrate academia with its regular paychecks i did serious research and serious thinking at that moment there was a job opening in a big midwestern university that was just good enough but not too good for me during my business stint i had accumulated missed opportunities i could not aim anymore for better schools such as stanford or university of california at berkeley anyway that midwestern university was sort of in the first ranks of number 2 schools nothing to crow about but also nothing to be ashamed of i had a few very good publications i just had too few so there was even a chance that the relevant people in that school would consider me a minor star a happened to be at that school in her second or third year there anyway she did not have tenure i did not think much of her presence except to see it vaguely as a small advantage long story short i obtained an invitation to interview for the position at that university now formal recruitment in a good american university follows a precise ritual i will tell you about it but first some facts about universities hierarchies it s the individual department that does the recruiting several departments form a school like this english department biology department sociology department etc are grouped into a school of humanities and sciences which is headed by a dean in normal times the dean has to countersign the recruitment of a new faculty member by a department but he nearly never says no this may change a little in the near future having noticed that 24 out of 25 members of the sociology department are on the left the dean may decide that the 26 th ought to be a conservative cross my fingers now the recruitment ritual it s pretty inflexible pretty much the same everywhere a short time after the candidate arrives usually by plane he gives a presentation lasting 50 minutes to an hour plus on a subject of his choice the subject is frequently drawn from an article the candidate is working on a fairly ripe one but one yet unpublished all the members of the department who are available are supposed to show up for the presentation some come in for a symbolic five minutes to show the flag so to speak many come for the duration because it s the best chance they have to evaluate the candidate there are questions and answers then the candidate begins a long series of one on one interviews with all the members of the department this ritual sometimes spreads over a day and a half in the evening a subset of department members take the candidate to dinner there is usually no lack of volunteers because it s traditionally a very good dinner would the dean want me to have lobster there in almost every case they try to get the candidate a little drunk just to see another side of him the next day the one on one interviews resume they end with a serious conversation with the chairman where the candidate tries to speak about the salary he pretends too finally there is a courtesy visit to the dean where the candidate pours out the charm because he believes that that visit will influence his salary offer if any so at that midwestern university i went through the whole ritual it was fairly tiring because it was a very large department of about twenty members i spoke to all member including a with whom i had a friendly chat full of reminiscences i had a feeling i had made a good impression on the faculty in general that is several were enthusiastic about me the others were indifferent believe it or not there are cases were a segment of the faculty is actively hostile it happened to me during another application for a job i got a magnificent offer all the same another story obviously if several candidates are applying for the same job the departmental chairman tries to give the candidate and idea of how much time it will take for the department to come to a decision i can take a week to two or even three weeks in this case i was the last candidate interviewed so i expected a decision in one week or two at the very most two weeks elapsed and then three and i did not get a yes or a no not wanting to appear unseemly eager i waited another week and then i called the chairman immediately sounded embarrassed it turned out he was deeply embarrassed he said to me that there was a strong consensus to offer me the job and no opposition however when it came to a he said she told him the following if jacques comes here it will make me very uncomfortable that was all she said there was no further explanation and no probing you understand said the chairman she is the only woman in the department i cannot ignore her there was no job offer it was just a job anyway i had to somehow reconstruct my career along different lines comfort share this email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr like loading posted in uncategorized tagged academic education higher education jobs news stanford university recruitment waikiki leave a comment annual check up on global warming climate change posted on august 22 2024 by jacques delacroix i suspect many people accept passively the climate change narrative because they are rebutted by the technical aspects of the story and by its complexity it does not have to be that way one can reject it with a disorderly approach based on bits and pieces see below world temperatures are easily within the historical range in spite of more than ten years of warning the ocean has not risen or not enough to make a difference i recall one guy in the south pacific who said higher tides had robbed him of his manioc patch but people like him who use neither a map nor a calendar have notoriously bad memories i don t believe him i will need much more evidence the dutch are not taking any special precaution though about 1 3 of their land is below sea level there are no more episodes of extreme weather than there used to be this seems to fly in the face of evidence but consider the following subtle maneuver take hurricanes among the infinity of possible combinations you can always show a period for which the events are more numerous like this the years 2022 2023 2024 had twice more hurricanes than all the years between 1973 and now ask yourself why 1973 to simplify legitimately a complicated issue models are supposed to predict hundreds of scientists are busy modeling the climate with all this activity the general media never never publishes the results of such modeling it would be easy enough ask modelers technicalities aside what s your main finding the absence from the media of such findings make me suspicious why wouldn t it nevertheless climate change is everywhere the other day on npr i was told that climate change plays an important role in the mental health of small children mental health small kids there are too many unanswered questions like this one if our activities lead to the emission of green house gases which in turn produce more co2 it s probably a good thing the more co2 the more plants thrive the more plants we have the more co2 is re absorbed right or this one if there were higher temperatures it would mean that the northern limit of maturation of the main cereals and potatoes would recede the larger the area where we can grow these thing the happier i am and by the way if this proceeds given very slowly growing food demand we would be able to abandon some cultivation in temperate regions this has already happened in much of europe which is going back to wilderness wolves have returned to france after an absence of more than one hundred years i like it climate change advocates should celebrate why don t they there are more polar bears than ever share this email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr like loading posted in socio political essays uncategorized tagged climate change climate chnage and mental health co2 contradictions global warming ocean level polar bears skepticism world temperatures leave a comment inflation explained posted on august 22 2024 by jacques delacroix i suspect that there is a massive misunderstanding about the word inflation let me see if i can explain suppose that in the year 2021 there is 20 inflation forget the details go for the main message suppose further that in 2020 a dozen eggs costs 10 at the end of 2021 you will pay for a dozen eggs 12 10 20 inflation suppose further that there is zero inflation in 2022 and in 2023 you will pay for a dozen eggs a 10 b 12 the answer is 12 prices brought up by inflation almost never go down that would be deflation which normally does not happen ever in developed economies not let s change the numbers and suppose more realistically that inflation is 5 in 2022 and in 2023 both a dozen eggs will cost you in early 2023 12 6 and in early 2024 13 3 inflation subsequently declines to zero you will still pay for a dozen eggs 13 3 that s forever my point is that in the normal course of events the price of a dozen eggs will never go back to the original 10 now all democratic office seekers are now arguing that inflation has gone down considerably at 3 in 2024 it s pretty close to the fed s goal of 2 another story we need not tell here that s true by and large so who is right share this email a link to a friend opens in new window email print opens in new window print tweet share on reddit opens in new window reddit share on tumblr like loading posted in socio political essays tagged higher prices inflation inflation higher prices price of eggs 1 comment wars posted on july 1 2024 by jacques delacroix wars are always won in one of two ways either one of the combatants is utterly and completely defeated like germany and then japan in world war ii or one of the parties is not fighting on its own soil and it just gets tired or discouraged and leaves the battlefield the second was the case for the us in vietnam and again in afghanistan in both cases i mean that total victory was achieved after their respective defeats germany and japan re started themselves as completely different countries with no trace of authoritarianism or militarism notably eighty years later they still consider their main victor the us as their best friend although they may not have dominated the struggle on a purely military basis i don t know both the north vietnamese and the afghan taliban won a complete victory i mean by this that there is zero chance the us was or would be tempted to dislodge them i also mean that they have no serious competitor at home think it through it s hard to find an instance of a war followed by a long lasting peace that does not fulfill one of these two criteria total defeat or discouragement by a foreign enemy applying these ideas to the current conflicts i only see a resolution of the ukraine war if russia is beaten flat and does not carry anything home for its trouble no dombas no ukrainian city or village i am of two minds about the crimea because it was only part of the ukraine since 1954 having been given to it by khrushchev as a gift if these conditions are not fulfilled the war will start again and again what of israel s war in gaza first gaza is so close to israel it s hard to see the israeli troops as fighting on foreign territory after all israeli soldiers can easily get weeken...