GopherGrad

It has merits. The biggest one is taste. Chomp into an heirloom tomato grown in your backyard, then try one of the chemically ripened ones at a mega-mart. It's not true of every food, but lots of meats and produce don't travel well, or at least lose something in the preparation, that's not a concern at a (real) farmer's market. I live in Minnesota, and it's very expensive to get, say, fresh halibut or scallops. In general, then, I pick up fresh trout and walleye because it's either cheaper or tastier than the coastal seafood on offer. That said, you have to occasionally splurge for the halibut. "Getting to know your farmer" is a mixed bag, too. Might not be so important with raspberries, but there is an advantage with other products. I buy whole lambs from a farm half an hour away and butcher them myself. (Not the killing part, just the stripping them into proper cuts.) Trusting the farmer allows me to preserve and store the meat differently. I use pretty much everything, including bones for stocks and glaces. That saves money and makes some extra-amazing food. Trust is extra important when eating from small farms. My GF works in sourcing organics for a major food corp. and complains that small farms often lack quality control and safety standards to the point that large manufacturers won't work with them. To really leverage the advantage of seeing the farm, you need to know something about quality audits. I'm lucky enough to have someone with that experience in my life, but otherwise it's hard to know what a farmer could hide from me. In terms of energy, I'm skeptical, too. Industrial ecology is a tough subject, but your link's discussion of comparative advantage is persuasive. There is also something to be said for mass production and the efficiency of industrial fertilizers and pesticides. Locavore eating isn't exactly like organic, but a lot of the same arguments apply. In general, the cost of an item reflects the total energy inputs required to make it (including, in some cases, raising a person with expertise, etc.), so sky-high costs for organic (and sometimes local) foods imply that inputs are higher, too. A recent British study showed that organic farming has lower environmental impacts per acre, but not per yield (organics yield less per acre than conventional crops). There is an argument that the true cost of transport of foods from afar is hidden because we just slurp up hydro-carbons and burn them. In a world without oil, the argument goes, no one in New York could afford to eat California tomatoes. Organic and local farming simply do what everyone will need to do eventually; find non-carbon ways to drive agriculture. I don't know if I'm sold on that argument. I really think it's impossible to know how the energy breakdown works, and so I don't put much stock in locavore ecology arguments: except one. My lawn just sits there with nutrients in it. It rains here all the time. If I can grow some of my intake there, I reduce demand for industrial crops and thus reduce pressure on those ecosystems. I think spreading production out would help certain localized ecological disasters (like the salinity of the Murry/Darling in Australia or the water crises in the American West). Your link might argue that comparative advantage will straighten that out eventually; when the Murray's soil is to salty for wheat, we won't grow it there. But slash-and-burn industrial ag tactics don't feel right to me. If compost from the veggies I consume already can largely refresh the soil to grow new ones, I'm shifting the balance. The system may not be forever sustainable, but it's a lot longer run. In sum, I look at preachy locavores like I look at preachy Prius drivers. They both ignore the system and thus write off important side-effects of their behavior. What's more, relatively few people actually look into the reality of food supply chains and energy use. Most of those that do (myself included) are hardly bright or well-educated enough to understand what it all means. Pretending it works because it feels nice doesn't mean it works. Edit: I didn't read RWGB's response when I wrote mine, so I missed this. It's completely true. A USDA study suggested that mid-sized firms are often the most ecologically sound; they have well-considered supply chains and transport networks, but still focus on delivering "green" goods. Otherwise it looks like I fall firmly between stressball and RW.

Speaking of caring too much about food, how about wasting all those pixels on a grad school site writing about obscure Danish nosh? ETA: yin, the bay area has amazing food, from the fancy-pants French Laundry right on down to the fishmongers at the wharf. A foodie could hardly be happier.

Neither was Copenhagen. Finnish cuisine, having declined far further than Danish, arguably started experiencing Redzepi's revival before Noma. In the 80s, they tried to "modernize" Finnish cooking by making reindeer cassoulet and gastrique from lingonberries. Despite some exciting elemental discoveries, this movement failed to produce good food. People started to think the Finns couldn't cook, but some Finnish chefs began to wonder if foreign treatment of local ingredients was really the problem. It was, and Finnish cuisine started to experience a revival. The ancient Finnish need to preserve meats, for example, helped drive a global revival in on-site charcuterie. Redzepi took everything a dozen steps further, first by making his sourcing almost as artistic as his plating (the Noma cookbook includes a diary of a meat sourcing trip he took through Greenland, the Faroe and Iceland). More importantly, his dishes tend to represent ecosystems: Milkskin and Field Greens presents a microgreen arrangement harvested from the same pasture where the cow that made the milk grazed. In the same way as your Danish forbears, you have eat a meal that doesn't leave the farm (although unlike your Danish forbears, it tastes amazing). So in this way, Noma's popularity arises because it positions itself at the nexus of several major food trends: sustainable agriculture, humane meats, superior organic taste and nutrition, localism, historical eating, accessible recipes and a rejection of molecular gastronomy in favor of whole, recognizable ingredients. Before I go any further, I should say that I think Redzepi is an artist of the highest order; a food visionary whose theory of eating towers over most others in a similar fashion as (if the reviews are any indication) the taste of his food. But what about this uber-locavore producing a cookbook for global consumption? For starters, the recipes are not approachable. They require ingredients not available outside the Nordic region and equipment absent from all but the best kitchens. The instructions presume massive knowledge of food (one favorite: -Make a duck Veloute, add mirepoix). A gremolata of wild cherries? Do I have a freeze drier and some xantham gum kicking around? Most of the critics agree that the book is meant to be inspirational, so it doesn't matter if the ingredients are unavailable (nor, apparently, if the gaze toward the history of local food is more of a wink). But inspiring to what? Most people would have to train for years to understand what they can forage for locally (if they even live somewhere they can forage) and can never hope to emulate Redzepi's technique. It calls into question the reasoning using Noma as a call to arms for back to basics, locavore movements. It calls into question Noma's fidelity to some of the other feel-good trends it aggregates. Does the food really taste better because the chefs picked the bullrushes from the park preserve that morning? What if the field greens came from a different pasture than the cow? Putting aside the question of whether a seven course lunch is "sustainable" even if it uses wild puffin, what does the implicit rejection of GMO foods really have to do with an agricultural revolution that needs to service the masses in the developing world? Redzepi's vision brilliantly combines a lot of the things foodies care about today into an attractive and no doubt delicious package, but his brilliance (as is so often the case) begins to erode at the philosophy of the underpinning movements' collectively. Noma's approach actually establishes that you can't do Danish farm food and get a Michelin star; Danish farm food was probably terrible by comparison. He kitchen relies on modern gadgets and exotic ingredients, it's just that he's managed to painstakingly find ways to make close exotic ingredients work. What every local food scene really needs, it seems, is a Rene Redzepi, but there are sadly too few to go around. So what parts of his approach are cultural or marketing chicanery, and which are really great food? Perversely, that's part of the reason I'm cooking what I can from the book.

Ah, I think we were talking about different stuff. I only researched MAs because my impression is that an MPP is a fairly professional degree.

I suppose that depends upon priorities, but I'm all about balance that way. You can buy half a cow for what it costs for dinner at Alinea, but what better way to reward yourself for butchering your beef needs for the next year than with dinner at Alinea? If you have a house that can fit a couple chest freezers, you can get to the point where you're making maybe a trip a month to the grocery store in the summer. That savings can propel some good restaurant eats. I'm thinking about bringing my GF for her birthday. There are a couple joints in Helsinki (of all places) I'd like to hit, so maybe we'd do a week-long Nordic eating tour. I ate at El Bulli a few years back, actually the same year Redzepi spent there. As much as his cuisine poses as a reaction to the molecular gastronomy Ferran Adria pioneered, there's a lot of deconstruction going on in Noma's book that might cause a more cynical soul to ask if it represents the locavore trend coming full circle.

Is it a focaccia base? It's strange, I'm finding that a lot of bread recipes that sound more complicated are actually easier (challah, focaccia) and Italian rustic loaves are devilishly difficult. What's your current obsession? I've been interested in the locavore movement; I spent part of the summer learning to forage for mushrooms. I recently bought the Noma cookbook, which is mind boggling. It's got me roaming the neighborhood and raiding topiary for ingredients. Right not I've got a gallon pot of homemade turkey stock in the over, soaking a birch log to make a 'forest court boullion'.

Sorry about that, cam. Maybe they rejected you because you are too likely to get snapped up somewhere better? Thanks for the bread advice. Baking is new to me and I'm lost if I can't cook by smell. I'll let this loaf sit somewhere warm for a bit longer and hope that partially rescues it.

In the meantime, you guys can help me with a problem. When I bake Italian bread, the crust always comes out right, but the interior is whiter and denser than a normal loaf. I really want that chewy texture and uneven look. Why is my bread lacking in tooth? Am I degassing too much when I form the batards? Is the dough not getting warm enough during the kneading stage? It's driving me batshit.

What?! And here I thought I'd tripled my productivity. Firefly, Make it the second time in a year. Razor shaves after a long time without often induce mad razor burn. Best to do at least one run through to re-acclimate the skin. Edit: Also, Google the shelby-pratt knot for that tie. It's the hottest in neckwear right now.

Comparative, nothing. I'm sure we'll hear from Berkeley soon. Rose, you should get one of those dipping bird toys to click refresh for you. No need to uncross fingers or get boogers on the mousepad.

Actually, UCSD is another of my "scream like a little girl" schools, so if we're both lucky enough there, we can have the symposium over said Mexican food.

I say this as someone who would scream like a little girl if I got into Berkeley: there's a real danger that state funding will become and issue in some way or another.

Your own OP complains that the vast majority of polisci professors have Ph.D.s. There is nothing irrational about pursuing the skills the industry values in order to land the job. Also, no JD has the requisite skills simply as a result of being a JD. If they have the requisite skills, they got some of them elsewhere.

Fuck fuck fuck. The Berkeley rejection is gonna hurt.

Funny thing about the "threatened" theory: a couple of the people strenuously objecting are JDs who would love nothing more than to be able to teach and research without going back to school. But basically everyone here with a JD is here because they plan to seek a Ph.D.! I went to law school with academic ambitions, pursued them and learned a lot. But when I started to frame my ideas more clearly, it became obvious that pursuit of those ideas (and teaching them to others) required that I supplement my skills and knowledge with further education.

The "practical" discussion harkens back to my word choice in a disagreement about how wide-ranging legal courses are in their treatment of political science or social topics. As another example, plenty of criminal defense attorneys will argue that learning the elements of common law crimes is hardly practical preparation for the day to day work of a criminal attorney. And that's true. But the fact that criminal law classes are not "practical" in the sense that criminal lawyers spend a ton of time in straightforward 5/8 hearings and negotiating plea bargains doesn't prove that criminal law teaches anything that would be relevant to political science. Criminal law courses are spent reading judicial opinions about whether particular facts match up to the elements of various crimes. Very little in that content bears on crime policy (for example). The same is true with most required law courses (evidence, torts, contracts, civil procedure, etc.); it's really about learning the elements of various claims or meanings and purpose of court rules. Over time, you start to learn the syntax of legal discourse and structure of arguments that you can apply to any legal problem. The backbone of legal education isn't substantive knowledge at all, it's learning a set of problem solving and analysis skills. Those skills are practical to an attorney. They are also a powerful set of tools when used in many other disciplines, but they are not in and of themselves sufficient to teach in all those areas.

I think a US degree will help you network and add credibility to your CV when it comes to applying for work in the US. The drawback is that there is a glut of professional MA/MPPs and finding work can be tough. I would direct you to a site called collegeconfidential.com, which features a much larger community of professional-style MA candidates and students. You'll get more rounded advice there and get a feel for the post-graduation woes of some of your potential colleagues. If you choose to pursue the MPP, take this piece of advice very seriously, though: network, network, network. Your grades will be important but you'll have so much competition your head will spin. Who you know will be very important and getting a jump on participating in your professional community is essential to getting that first job.

Cicero, That's really helpful, thanks. Cam and oasis, I do think that's great advice and I will look more into think-tank and government service in the coming weeks. But part of the reason I'm pursuing a Ph.D. is that I applied for quite a few jobs like that and came up blank. I have several theories as to why that might be and they largely parallel the reasons I'm concerned about my Ph.D. applications: my grades are not impressive and I am not well networked. Your suggestions would alleviate those issues, but, as with Ph.D. applications, getting in is hindered by them.

??? Do you have a link for that? It appears that one may apply for a program in Argentina up until June 1. Am I missing a program? Here's what I relied on: http://government.georgetown.edu/programs/graduate/maprograms/ Democracy and Governance: Jan 15 http://www1.georgetown.edu/departments/democracyandgovernance/admissions/ American Studies: Jan 15 http://www1.georgetown.edu/departments/government/maag/admissions/ Conflict Resolution: Jan 15 http://www1.georgetown.edu/departments/government/conflictresolution/admissions/ Law and Global Security: Jan 15 http://lsgs.georgetown.edu/programs/maprogram/ Development Management (in Argentina): June 1 (Fall 2011) / April 1 (Summer 2011) http://government.georgetown.edu/programs/graduate/maprograms/devm/admissionandtuition/

Dunno for sure. I can only speak to comparative, and then only a little. In that case, though, you do see students discussing field research in their bios at some schools (Berkeley is one example) and I have heard that some profs have reputations for writing grad students into funding requests (Reno at N'western is one example). The reality of that funding is hard to know from the outside, but I'd think that faculty and schools that profess a greater level of support for research in that fashion would be better than those that don't (all else being equal). Another couple of questions I'd think about asking are: -how well connected is the school/you and your students to private or government institutions that hire students for projects during school -do you offer grant writing support for students interested in petitioning organizations individually

The following programs are closed: NYU Chicago (MAPSS and CIR) Georgetown (all related MAs) Yale Macmillian (all related MAs)

Great thread idea. Assuming you are speaking with your adviser, I would ask: how often do your grant requests include funding for grad students to accompany you in the field?

That's too bad. I used his syllabi to help flesh out my reading list before starting applications. As an applicant, the transient nature of faculty is a little frustrating sometimes, especially when the people you want to work with are younger. I'm hoping that older faculty don't move as much, although if someone next tells me that William Reno is moving to Yale I'm going to move to Ohio and try to become a plumber.

Consarnit! Thanks for the hint. Where is he headed? If I don't get in, his move will be my excuse. "Yes," I will imagine the adcomm saying, "this GopherGrad fellow is quite talented, but without Simpser where will put him!?"

Interesting about the D-K effect; a lot of grad students suffer the opposite sense that they squeaked in without the right qualifications (sometimes called "imposter syndrome", unscientifically). I'm waiting on Chicago. I was interested in Pape and Simpser, primarily. This one doesn't hold a lot of promise for me; fit is about the middle of the pack for my applications and competition really high. I'd say it's a lot like Duke that way.