On TheBlackCat’s remarks about research support – there are some (a few?) areas of astronomy where one can remain in the research game without external funding. You can usually swallow the expense of a meeting or observing run per year. However, publishing the results is a lot harder with the expense of page charges, and you will definitely not be supporting graduate students (not to mention contributing to the departmental slice of overhead money, much of which does in fact support research infrastructure such as computers, library acquisitions, and electronic journal access). On top of these factors, universities claim to be very impressed with the recognition of research prowess provided by obtaining funding via nationally peer-reviewed proposals (no matter how many times the people at the NSF say they’re tired of being de facto parts of every tenure review in th ecountry in science, it still goes on). That said, the typical funding levels vary a lot across the discipline – if you build gizmos and have to employ technicians and equip a lab as well as support students, that costs a lot more than doing theory where the major expenses are student support and travel.

Nice straw man. The argument being made (by Phil and friends) is that GG’s academic work was insufficient to earn himself tenure. Faculty are well within their rights to deny tenure to colleagues who fail to meet the department’s standards. Tenure tends to be difficult to obtain — you don’t get it for being a nice guy, or even for good work done a few years back. GG is just another piece of roadkill on the road to academia; there are lots of us out there.

Oh well, I hope he ll ——-get tenure next time around? NOT!!!

Oh yeah, Dover is still perfectly intact, and the drought rolls on, essentially unabated (we’ve had a couple of insignificant drizzles).

LAST TIME I CHECKED, PAT ROBERTSON DIDN’T CUT MY PAYCHECKS.

–God