As (virtually) always, from NewsRadio:

Jimmy: The market can be a cruel mistress.
Beth: Well, so can I… but that’s not how I want to make my money any more.

From Stephen Karlson: “By definition faculty without tenure are on the job market all the time.”

Continuing the theme: one of my future colleagues at SLU had a postcard that said “Grading is Violence” up in her office, which gave me a bit of a chuckle.

And, since it’s been a while, here’s a NewsRadio quote from the first season episode “Big Day,” where Jimmy is awarding the annual bonuses to the staff:

Dave: So, big day, huh?
Jimmy: Exactly. Big day. You stoked?
Dave: Uh, yeah, yeah, I suppose so, sir. And you?
Jimmy: Me, I’m miserable, Dave. Yeah, figuring out the annual bonuses is pure hell.
Dave: Oh, why?
Jimmy: Well, you got to take a living, breathing human being and put a dollar value on its head. It’s, uh, the devil’s work, Dave. It’s bad hoodoo.
Dave: Yeah, it sounds like it.
Jimmy: Yeah, it used to be the hardest part of my job.
Dave: Oh, what changed it?
Jimmy: I made it the hardest part of your job.
Dave: When did that happen?
Jimmy: Just now.
Dave: Well, thank you sir.

I think grading is the hardest part of my job—and grading essays is the worst. The only things I have discovered thus far that work well are (a) making the scores out of as few points as possible (I’ve started using 15 as a baseline) and (b) coming up with an objective grading rubric with a few basic point values (i.e. 10, 12, 13, 15) described and standardized adjustments for things like grammar. I don’t think it works perfectly but it’s better than the random walk that my grades seemed to be based on before.

This one seems oddly appropriate:

Jimmy: It’s like I’m under siege, like that guy in that movie.
Dave: Under Siege?
Jimmy: No…
Dave: Under Siege 2?
Jimmy: No…
Dave: Under Siege 3?
Jimmy: That’s the one.
Lisa: I don’t think they made Under Siege 3.
Jimmy: Hey, a man can dream, can’t he?

Dave (to Bill): Would it be impolite at this point in the conversation to just run away from you?

This one’s from Jimmy James, after Matthew returns from vacation with a moustache (“President,” season 3 episode 1):

Jimmy: Every man has the right to sex himself up however he sees fit, but you… you look like you belong at an amateur porn convention.
Matthew (enthusiastic): Thank you!

Radley Balko, commenting on his field trip to Prentiss County, Mississippi:

There are lots of reasons to be upset by the Cory Maye case that have nothing to do with race. And I’ve tried to avoid injecting race into my own analysis of the case. But it’s impossible to visit the area and come away with any feeling other than that race pervades nearly every facet of life down there.

Via Steven Taylor and others:

You scored as SG-1 (Stargate). You are versatile and diverse in your thinking. You have an open mind to that which seems highly unlikely and accept it with a bit of humor. Now if only aliens would stop trying to take over your body. SG-1 (Stargate) 81% Serenity (Firefly) 81% Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 75% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 75% Moya (Farscape) 63% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 56% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 50% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 50% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 44% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 38% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 38% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 19% Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

And, an apropos NewsRadio quote of the day (vaguely related to memes):

Lisa: If everyone thought you should jump off a bridge, would you?
Dave: If everyone around here thought I should jump off a bridge, they’d probably just get together and push me.

From Dale Franks, at the end of a lengthy post concurring-in-part and dissenting-in-part with a post by Jon Henke:

[O]ur choice is between Republicans who are willing to easily betray our principles in order to fight the Global War on Terror, and Democrats who are unwilling to fight a Global War on Terror at all.

And, the counterpoint from Jon Henke:

Remember: the people who told us that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay were all Taliban, captured on the battlefield or otherwise terrorists are the same people who swear, really, that the domestic surveillance program is “solely for intercepting communications of suspected al Qaeda members or related terrorist groups.”

We can trust them, because they would never mislead us.

But, hey, we get to keep our tax cuts!

Daniel in comments at EDSBS:

Bush’s announcement tomorrow is a lose-lose proposition for USC. If Bush declares for the draft, they lose Bush, of course. Should he announce he is staying, it would demonstrate that someone could spend three years in school at USC and still be the dumbest guy in the country.

Of course, with LenDale White’s draft declaration today, if Bush stayed he would at least have a chance to move up to be indisputably his team’s best rusher…

Colby Cosh, on the uneasy relationship between social conservatives and the exercise of judicial review:

Can’t social conservatives tell the difference between judicial activism that expands the power of the state—like adding newly-invented “protected grounds” to discrimination law—and judicial activism that inhibits it?

Nah. What they care about is that the power of the state be used for their own preferred ends.

Like all good social science, it generalizes to both sides of the 49th parallel.

Alex Tabarrok:

Scholars seek the truth, activists already know the truth. Activists don’t like questioning, debate or independent research.

“I haven’t been avoiding you. I’ve been helping you avoid me.”—Odo (to Kira) in DS9’s “Tears of the Prophets”

Orson Swindle of Every Day Should Be Saturday, on being a pundit:

[P]unditry’s like going to a small liberal arts college-soon enough, everyone goes to bed with everyone.

Sadly, this statement is untrue if you read “going to” as “teaching at.” Then again, judging from some accounts, I may be an outlier in this regard.

Kamilla, somewhere between Istanbul and Kyrgystan, gives some advice to global aviation authorities:

We all would be more civilized and less stressed if there were more clocks in airports; I don’t understand why, since it’s THE place of changing time zones, they only announce the local time once, if that, as you’re landing.

The Minor Fall, The Major Lift on some erroneous chronology in the New York Times:

Coldplay’s powers of suck are so all-encompassing that they extend out backwards through time, influencing bands that actually predate them.

þ: Nick Troester, who also finds other aspects of the article to be amusing.

In a major breaking news story from the Commercial Appeal, former atheist Chuck Davis finds Jesus.

Davis says some of his old friends still don’t understand his conversion and some don’t accept it.

But Davis explained, “Jesus is like a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich. People can tell you what it is, but you don’t know what’s it’s like until you try it.”

Thanks to Alex Knapp at Heretical Ideas for selecting my sidebar quote as his Quote of the Day.