A great piece by Cin-Ty Lee in his blog, Down to earth questions, makes the wise point that tenure denied is a problem from many levels other than the individual. It could be a hiring problem, a mentoring problem, an overburdening problem. In short, what the department does is a huge part of the tragedy of tenure failure. We should all do our best to avoid the million dollar loss of tenure failure.
One of the problems with switching universities is you are farther away from some very good friends. Cin-Ty is one of those friends we left behind. We taught bird field biology with him, but his is academically an exceptional geologist. He also paints expertly. Currently he seems to be accepting some highly responsible positions and sharing his ever frank opinions on his blog, Downtoearthquestions. At least in this way we can keep up, though as April approaches, birding in Texas becomes ever more enticing.
Sociobiology 
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