Letters to the Editor
Jan VanDenBerg
Published Letters: 49
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Academics are anal snobs who are looking for ANY excuse to toss you into the pile of unemployed PhDs their system systematically creates
[Read the article: I'm a nude dancer trying to finish my Ph.D.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You are in the Humanities.
Have you looked into the percentage of PhDs in your field who are employed for more than 10 years post-PhD in academia? Have you researched the percentage of PhDs in your field who have made it to tenure-track positions?
Both these numbers are sure to be quite low, as low as 10%.
The system has to process far more grad students than it can employ as professors just to fund itself. There are always more students than professors in every department, right? So, where are the slots for all those students to take up after they graduate?
Not there, that's where.
What is the purpose of getting a PhD if you just use it to work as a post-doc research assistant (like being a grad student for a few more years) or to work as an adjunct or temporary professor who never makes tenure for, say, 5 to 10 years and then . . . they boot you out of academia entirely and you are starting all over again at the bottom of some new career at age 45?
If you are going to get a PhD, you really need to think about the academic job market -- how tough it is.
Any little problem will be enough to kill you, because there are 10 other equally-well-qualified candidates trying to beat you out.
I, in fact, quit a PhD program for just this reason. Now that I'm financially set, I'm thinking of going back to get a PhD more as an intellectual exercise than as a way of trying to make a living . . . because it's just not a very good way to make a living.
Too unpredictable, too political, too sexist, too faddish. Too risky.
Jan VanDenBerg
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Start a website to tag vets as "OK" or "guilt-tripping money grubbers"
[Read the article: What I wouldn't do for my cat]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I suppose now we have to ask vets, when chosing a vet, if he is going to tell you the cost and get an OK before doing a procedure.
Any vet who won't do that should be run out of business.
Unconscionable.
But wouldn't a website be easier?
Thousands of dogs and cats are put to sleep by humane societies every day because of money. So, to keep yours alive at a cost which would keep 50 cats alive, if you gave that same money to the humane society for catfood, is just plain stupid. (Yeah, I grew up in the country.)
Vets who guilt-trip clients or say that they will take those clients' pets away and "find homes for them" (lie) should not be vets. They should be doctors for humans. Or writers for Hallmark Greeting Cards. Or, they should be finding homes for all the cats down at Human Society Death Row. (No one else can.)
The way to run those bad vets out of business is to put up a website, get the names, etc of all the vets in the US into it using the Yellow Pages and a computer nerd, and invite people to tag each one as "an good vet and a practical guy" or "a guilt-tripping money-grubber." You could also get other comments on quality while you're at it.
Then, sell advertising to Purina.
I would, but I don't have time.
Jan VanDenBerg
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Typo alert -- that should say "Humane Society Death Row"
[Read the article: What I wouldn't do for my cat]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]People should be allowed to make these decisions themselves, period. Without guilt.
People have kids to take care of, too.
For too many, it is "braces for Jenny" or "catheters for Kitty."
People need to be given the time and info to make such a decision, not have it done for them by some money-grubbing vet.
Jan VanDenBerg
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Did I mention how many children could be saved from death with that $1300 if you sent it to Sudan?
[Read the article: What I wouldn't do for my cat]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]People should have the cost, all info and time to make a decision on how to spend their money -- save Kitty or save 500 children in Sudan?
Jan VanDenBerg
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I vote with those who say it's mean, fat, middle-and-lower-class white women who enjoy seeing women they envy suffer
[Read the article: Are we sexist in our schadenfreude?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Only 70% of tabloids are sold to women? Who are the men buying these things?
The readership is women and it's not, mostly, successful, hard-charging, toned-butt female executives, I'll just bet. Somehow, seems that way.
It's frustrated, stymied, stifled, I-settled, bored, unhappy, envious, stuck-with-my-kids, I-didn't-fight-the-system types who buy these tabloids.
And they ENJOY hearing about these young women who got everything they have due to flaunting their ass-ets flaming out.
Simple as that. NOT SEXISM.
It's women keeping women down.
One could show this by comparing the sales of tabloids in low-end grocers and Wal-mart v Wholefoods. I'll just bet tabloids move in the lower-income retailers.
I've seen so much the power of female-v-female envy. Everytime I turn around, it's the woman on the panel who is after me. Women are envious, jealous, competitive, prone to internecine destructiveness and self-destructive.
And I consider myself a feminist. But this has just been my experience. Recently.
When I was younger, it was mostly sexual harassment and men causing me trouble. (I was in finance.) Now, it is other womens' envy, as I get older and more successful using outside-the-woman's-box methods, in a man's business.
Just the way it has been.
I love my female friends and couldn't live without them, but out there, in the business and regulatory world -- it's the women who trying to tear you down.
Much as I wish it weren't true.
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I vote with those who hate Dr Laura
[Read the article: Dr. Laura to Silda: It's all your fault!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The woman is awful. The men who put her out there and make us listen to her should all be fired, boycotted, defunded and ignored.
The woman, herself, certainly needs ignored. A lot.
No one can control these men, who can't deal with reality and seek a cheaper, fantasy version of it for the lowest price they can find. Silda should have PROTECTED herself from this near-inevitability (if you are dealing with a man with this innate personality) by depending on him less and wasting less time on him.
He's been a losing bet.
Who is advertising on Dr Laura's programs and buying advertising with those who promote her?
Let's boycott them.
She and Caitlin Flanagan, Anne Coulter -- the lot. We are sick to death of these women who make money by catering to men's crazy theories and get attention by attacking other women.
Traitors, bought pieces of meat and intellectual whores. Anything for some attention. And a little money.
Where are they broken?
Jan VanDenBerg