What tenure meant to me (I’m a retired full professor in the U.S.) was the security and freedom to take some risks and move into a new area. I think that’s a non-trivial aspect of tenure that the debate frequently doesn’t mention.

Won’t start a discussion here as the main topic was congratulations for Thomas :-), but I really meant that stability may be good for science as a whole too.

Maybe we’ll meet on other blogs on this topic.
best

I would say that I am not so much against tenures (having myself one in the French system).

You appreciate it even more when you have kids (especially if you are a women I guess or a more or less modern man). A lot of the arguments I found following your links perfectly make sense if scientists are single, young forever and ready to move in a new city every two years (or real-smart genious, which doesn’t happen that often). Otherwise, a mix of stability is not so bad.

I heard about a system at Soutwest Foundation BR where you have a kind of guarantee for a salary but if you manage to have your salary through grants you have obviously higher wages and I guess have more career perspectives. This makes a kind of net preventing you to be thrown out when you have kids (and aren’t able to stay until 10 pm two weeks long everyday to have this dam… paper sent :-) or even try to develop a new project without trying to publish at any cost anything before you ever began the project (just to maintain a decent level of publications :-).

But that’s not the subject here :-)

So … that’s great new for stat genetics :-) and computers. Have a nice and productive negociation …

Christian

Although, granted, the main reason that it looks much nicer than default LaTeX is that Computer Modern is such an awful font, while Microsoft spent the money to commission a custom math font. I mean, isn’t that why people use AMS fonts in LaTeX? Anything to get away from Computer Modern.

The problem isn’t Word anymore. The problem is that none of the major journals support Word 2007 equations. They all require you to save down to Word 2003 and use the old Equation Editor, which dates from, what, 1995, and borders on unusable.