Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
The topic of America’s car culture has come up a lot at The Art of the Possible. I share some of their concerns, so I hope I don’t come across as trivializing it when I link to this oldie but goodie article on attempts to move past car culture in some small way: [...]

Or made to run things. Daniel Davies argues that there is indeed "a general skill called management." To his two defining characteristics I’d probably add an openness to learning. Decisiveness in a manager is a virtue, yes. Nobody wants to work for the guy who tells you to hurry up and do A today, then [...]

I don’t just blog about Jeremiah Wright at the Art of the Possible, I blog about the day’s favorite Jeremiah Wright conspiracy theory. I think we can all agree this makes me part of the problem. (What problem? See Chapter Three of Heads in the Sand, coming to the review section of a national magazine [...]

By Thoreau
One of my favorite blogs, Biocurious (sorry, not that kind of blog) explains why blood clotting is one of the most fascinating things in science.
I like their post because I got into biophysics after reading a famous paper on blood vessel networks. There’s just something about the cardiovascular system that makes for fascinating [...]

By Thoreau
Poor Barack Obama.  He’s between a rock and at least 2 hard places when it comes to religion.  For a while we were treated to right wing whispers about how his religious Achilles Heel would be found in an Indonesian mosque.  Then his Christian minister was a liability.  Then he found himself in trouble [...]

By Thoreau
It’s the whiny version of “bleg.”  Has somebody else already come up with it?  I don’t know, and I don’t care.
1)  I’m sick.
2)  Grant proposal is going slow but I really want the draft done today.
3)  It took me an hour to troubleshoot a stupid problem that everybody was having in my early morning [...]

Downblog last night, abb1 commented
Anyhow, I’m sure they have enough fuel for the military, so if there’s not enough for you when the war starts – hey, just another reason to hate evil Ahmadinejad.

I don’t think the US government is stockpiling yet more oil in the SPR to make sure the Pentagon doesn’t run out [...]

Hilzoy on the State, the states and husbands becoming wives.

The US government continues to add oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, even at these prices, just in case. Just in case what? Bob Murphy considers:
At first I thought it was just to funnel more tax dollars into the hands of the oil companies.
But then it occurred to me that if you were going to [...]

By Thoreau
George Bush has just provided evidence of impeachable offenses:
As is tradition, the President stood to do a short stand-up act, which included the retelling of an old joke about Vice President Dick Cheney watching Bush through a peephole in the Oval Office door while masturbating.
Admitting to torture or violations of FISA is obviously not [...]