Various

• Gizmodo points out some clever, astronomical advertising by McDonalds.
  
  

  
  The billboard made its debut on Friday, and it will stay in place until next month; by then the shadow angles will have changed so much it will cease to work properly. Great idea, unless it's a cloudy day, where the billboard will make absolutely no sense at all.
  

  
  
• Gordon Watts discusses some of my posts. Yes, I'd like to give advice, but that sounds like I've got the answers. It's more that I'd like to get my experiences out there...I've had to deal with things in my career without the benefit of experience. I suppose that's always the case, but even when I talked to my unofficial mentors, they were of no help, being fairly dismissive of my concerns. Completing a PhD, in the best of all worlds, trains one to do research with maybe some ancilliary teaching experience. But it almost never teaches one how to get grants, how to network, how to interview, how to prep application materials, how to deal with hostile and/or incompetent faculty peers, how to get things you need from a school administration, how to balance teaching versus research, how to manage students/postdocs, etc.