Wednesday, October 29, 2008

'Nuff Said?

28 comments:

wagga said...

Is that an "America First" poster?

Casey Serin said...

What, no post about me leaving the Internet "forever" for the 15th time in 2 years? ;-)

Akubi said...

Nice choice. I had that image in my collection - for future unknown use.
Bill Clinton sure has a red nose these days.

Akubi said...

Oh, BTW we've reached an intertubz milestone: Over 100 people vote for a bra size
CNBC sucks, but I'm harnessing Tanuclear energy via my SWEET new (somewhat NSFW) Blog: NUCLEAR TENTACLES

BelowTheCrowd said...

To conclude the Casey Saga I’m going to host one final talkcast. This is neither a Haterz or a Supporterz ‘cast. It is open to anybody. Going to keep things short, reasonably friendly and not let anybody drone on. Comments will be open and I’ll go as long as people want to.

Thursday, October 30, 6pm Pacific time (9pm Eastern)

http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/30589

-btc

Peripheral Visionary said...

Rob, the research assistant is a great opportunity for an undergraduate, an excellent idea to have your daughter pursue it, even if it takes some effort to track down the right professor. It's great experience, builds great connections with the professors and other motivated students, and is a solid resume item. The money is an afterthought, just a nice bonus ("enough to buy a coffee every now and then", as one professor I worked for put it.) Yes, it's a time commitment, and takes away from summer vacation time and/or party time (which is why so many students never bother), but it is time well spent.

Teaching assistanships, on the other hand, I would avoid like the plague. First, a good university won't have a lot of them, as the professors should be doing their own teaching and grading; second, they're very often dull jobs that are only good as preparation for those who will actually go on to teach. As far as I'm concerned, teaching assistanceships are the price a graduate student pays for the university covering their full tuition. Keep the focus on the research assistant positions.

w said...

Rob, I am curious as to why your daughter is interested in Botany?

Rob Dawg said...

PV,
You are preaching to the choir. I don't worry about this one. With this quarters' grades she'll be a sophomore. Focus to die for.

Botany isn't taking care of the arboretum and tasting the soil for fungus anymore. Think Pre-Med for plants. 80%+ of her core is overlap with Pre-Med, Molecular Bio, Bio-Tech. Every pharma and bio-tech on the planet is falling all over themselves to bid for botanists of the research variety. Every agribiz is who they are bidding against. The industrial revolution gave us infrastructure, the information revolution gave us the ability to manipulate the knowledge gained and the biological revolution will reap the rewards. Surely within a generation (I think far less) we will be harvesting corn and soy type plants that will go straight into plastics with minimal processing. Likewise hemp-type and enhanced flax and cotton fibers will be structural materials. Wood (natural) will be merely decorative as an industrial raw material in that same time period.

Ohhh... Botany, look at the pretty flowers.

w said...

Interesting. I thought maybe it was less impacted or something. That is definitely the side of agribusiness that will grow. Great companies like Bayer, Syngenta, Dow and Dupont have made so many effective new chemicals and copies of each others materials that the chemical side is going to be a real loser for a long time. Too much competition. This summer there is a new awesome chemical being released every week. It is hard to remember all of the products floating around now. But I always remember the cheap ones. Add in the 20 year life of patents on these chemicals and all of the nice Indians and Chinese willing to work in factories manufacturing generics with perhaps lower safety standards and the entire industry looks to me to be in a very bad way. High value added seed and variety development is the hope for these companies where they can still hit a home run if they develop the right plant first. Developing varieties able to grow in more difficult climates and water situations will be a hit too.

Property Flopper said...

Botany is good, the research part of it is better. ANY scientific background is good these days.

My wife did biology for her undergrad.. I'm doing well (six figure) as a computer nerd, but in a GOOD year, I make about a third of what she does.

Yeah for science. :)

OK - She also did grad school (immunology) and law school, but the science background is critical to her area of law (biotech patents).

Peripheral Visionary said...

Botany holds a lot of promise in my view. While there is a lot of promise in genetic engineering, I think the big leap forward in botany will be finding uses for existing plants, and specifically in matching plants with uses in materials and medicine. You can't patent a plant, but a sweatshop factory in India can't crank out cheap generic copies of it either.

Slightly off topic, but I am becoming convinced that law (as well as finance) is severely crowded. At this point, I would caution any student considering going into law. Way, way too many law students, not to mention that there was no shortage of lawyers to begin with. Salaries for the best lawyers will still be crazy high, but for the rank and file there will be severe competition that will drive salaries down (I'm hearing of law graduates being offered less than $40,000 out of law school--in many cases, not even enough to cover room, board, and student loans.) The only safe parts of the law world will be those that require very specialized skills and/or another degree--e.g. PF's wife in patent law. Patent law with a science degree, securities law with a finance degree, a few other areas will see less competition, but otherwise, law is in for a serious and overdue correction in compensation.

Akubi said...

Dystopic Horizons Realty

Northern Renter said...

Speaking of technological revolutions, I was surprised to read about some of the next generation DNA sequencing machines and massive array devices. I can comprehend the size of the sequence space that gets generated, but some of the data (I think mainly from arrays) is so large that it gets analyzed and then is erased. Nobody wants a bunch of terrabytes sitting around on their computer after each experiment. I'm old school... it's hard to comprehend single experiments generating that much friggin data.

NR

PS With respect to lawyers, always remember that where there's a will, there's a relative.

PPS Thanks to Dawg for the attractive Saudi woman, and to Akubi's fishnet site, which often reels me in.

Property Flopper said...

PV - You are absolutely dead on accurate regarding the legal field. Top ranked out of a top 10 school, you'll start at $150k+. Everyone else... not so much.

Patent law which,, by the way, requires a scientific or engineering background just to take the patent bar, pays VERY well and they can't find enough. But who wants to go through 10+ years of college?

Mergers and Acquisitions is also good, but you need an MBA in addition.

Everyone else? If you can find a job, you're lucky. It will suck (think document review all day long) and won't pay well.

In many cases, having a background that crosses fields (not just law) is a big key to success.

The best advice is still do what you love. You're going to spend SO much time doing it in your life, you have to enjoy it or you'll be miserable.

segfault said...

I've been out practicing for one year now, and I sort of agree about the law. In law school, you compete for grades with others who found 90%+ of their undergraduate classes to be easy.

I'm moving to a different firm soon. Win-win, I think. A better opportunity for me, they don't have to train someone from scratch, and they can dump their outside IT contractor (they have, I think, five computers, so it won't be a huge drain on my time to take care of them).

w said...

Wow, I never thought of the synergies of combining a law degree with another area of expertise! This could be life altering. Any ideas as to where I might enroll in a law school where I can combine a degree with my passion and years of experience with internet porn? I really agree that if I am gonna work it might as well be doing something I love.

Lost Cause said...

I think I have whiplash...people talking about two advanced degrees and Casey Serin.

Akubi said...

@W,
Yes, I would like to do the same with a focus on law, porn and cephalopods!

w said...

Nice!

Would you consider it a crime that I enjoy eating cephalopods? I hope that I am not committing a crime that I will be held accountable for when the overlords arrive.

Anonymous said...

America first? What a hoot! Let it burn in the fires of its own corruption. the american people, especially the old people, are complicit in the crimes of the PTB. Got popcorn? Got tp?

Akira said...

Hi W!
There do seem to be some pharmaceuticals on the cephalopod hate list.
Then there is the centipede factor...
Not to mention sweet porn potato options.
OH NO Mr. UNicorn!!!

Akira said...

Cephalopods are a self eating system.

Akira said...

Hi Edgar!

Akira said...

@Edgar,
I am fairly certain you're a latent Buddhist

Jake said...

CA Cities Cut Police Budgets

My favorite quote... "We did a bad job of long-term forecasting," said Craig Whittom, Vallejo's assistant city manager. "We made agreements that were beyond our means."

Pleather Murse said...

Amerikwa is the fat Elvis squattin' on the toilet ...

Peripheral Visionary said...

I've always said that the America-haters will eventually be right, but they won't be around long enough to enjoy it. America comes down with the flu, and the rest of the world comes down with the plague.

segfault said...

from MSNBC:

The government sent out more than $1 billion in fraudulent refunds last year and offered this explanation Thursday for the bad checks in the mail: The Internal Revenue Service has too few resources to pursue every tax fraud case.

IRS investigators never even looked at an estimated $742 million in fraudulent refunds, according to a report by the Treasury Department office that monitors the agency. When they did identify an additional $264 million in bad refunds, it was too late to stop them from being issued.


Doesn't look good for Casey getting busted for tax fraud.