"Sanctuary" had a pretty decent zombie episode on Friday. It'll air again at 6PM Tuesday and 1AM Thursday (all times are EST). The title of the episode is "Pavor Nacturnus", which probably has nothing to do with resurfacing highways after the evening rush hour.[1]
On Saturday morning, as I was visiting a friend, she watched a recording of Friday's episode of "Ghost Whisperer". I was reading and not paying close attention, but there was a scene in which some non-tenured professor of some university barges into the president's office and asks him why he was denied tenure, yet again. I was about to say something about how ridiculous it was that a junior prof in some jerkwater department in a university large enough to have a medical school would just be able to breeze in to see and yell at the president when it hit me: The show is about someone who talks to frelling ghosts! How much realism can one expect?
[1]I mention this for one of my regular readers, who is a huge zombie fan. She knows who she is.
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3 comments:
Zombies. NICE! (I have a book for you, EB...it has zombie Christmas carols.)
I can honestly say that I have not achieved tenure yet, and theoretically, I could bust in to the uni president's office (or any of the deans' offices) and bitch. It would be likely to get me tossed off the list though...
I suspect that you'll like the episode, it was pretty well done.
Uhm, actually, at the jerkwater university I was at you could burst into the President's office too. It isn't as if he had armed guards outside or anything, just a secretary err "executive assistant" and she certainly would not have physically stopped you, though of course she would immediately call campus security. Of course, if you DID burst into his office you can be pretty sure you weren't going to receive tenure. Hard to receive tenure if you've been kicked off campus and told that you'll be arrested and charged with criminal trespass if you so much as sneeze towards university property again :-).
Things *are* quite a bit more open at jerkwater universities, and a professor denied tenure *might* make an appointment with the university president to *politely* discuss the situation (not burst in on him, god forbid!) even though the university president is not the one who made faculty tenure decisions (that would be the dean of the respective college, ultimately, albeit advised by a faculty committee on tenure). At the jerkwater university I attended, the President's office was on a long hallway at the top of the admin building along with all the other top university admins, and the exact same size as all of the other offices. He just had a bit nicer furnishings inside :). I understand that at someplace like Stanford, the President has his own kingdom with door buzzers and stuff to keep the riffraff out, but our President was just a regular guy, mostly, and if his secretary was out to lunch he might very well just open his door and let the riffraff just walk in as he ate his own sack lunch.
As for the television show, I don't have a television, so cannot comment on that one :).
- Badtux the TV-less Penguin
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