Unqualified Offerings

Sarah Palin is supposed to have a lot of appeal to your more rightward-leaning libertarians. But while watching an endless, boring "Wooten-gate" video that the Poorman Institute pressed on its readership I learn that Palin’s official reason for firing her former state police commissioner is that he was soft on "alcohol bootlegging in rural areas." [...]

By Thoreau
I’m keenly aware that I’ve been blogging A LOT of academic stuff lately. I want to relate some ideas from my posts on spousal hiring to things that folks at Art of the Possible tend to discuss: I complain a lot about how the discussions of training, equity concerns, hiring practices, etc. [...]

By Thoreau
Two items leap out at me today:
1) The New Scientist has a great article suggesting that viruses (or virii, for those language traitors who prefer to use Latin rules) are not mere parasites, but are in fact engines of evolution, moving DNA around the planet and between species.
Geneticists have discovered that the genomes [...]

By Thoreau
Interestingly, the URKOBOLD predicted in May that Palin would be McCain’s VP pick. I swear, I’m not making this up.
If the press does not credit His Trolliness for this prediction, they will no doubt suffer a taint-withering of epic proportions. Their only hope is to seek refuge in my Evil Fiziks Lair, [...]

Mrs Offering tells me McCain has picked Michael Palin for veep? For reals? He’s not even a citizen.
UPDATE: Or not?
UPDATE: Or, actually, yes.

Not going commie on you, I just wanted to use the title. A couple things.
1. We’ve invited a high-powered caliber of temp labor for stints on The Art of the Possible. It’s like a Peace and Freedom League Fantasy Draft almost: Cernig and Libby Spencer from Newshoggers (Cernig’s first post and Libby’s first post) [...]

Knapp (Thomas):
Make no mistake about it: Barack Obama isn’t running against John McCain, he’s running against George W. Bush. Tonight, he finally and firmly stood McCain next to Bush and stuck an "I’m With Stupid" t-shirt on him.

Like Publius, I thought Obama’s speech was effective politically, and I thought the schmaltzy intro video was even better. Whoever was in charge of picking out the stills and video clips had the eye of a genius: he/she/they did a masterful job of picking figure arrangements and body language that rebutted the “aloof, elitist” caricature: [...]

Wow, what a bunch of negativity in a row! You can tell I started a course of prednisone yesterday. (Ear infection, nothing major. Thanks for asking.) Maybe I’d better send the family to a shelter for the next week. Or would it be better to pop a couple Ambien to take the edge off?

Meanwhile the Washington Post reports that the GOP is “considering” delaying its convention in Minneapolis because of the threat of Hurricane Gustav in . . . New Orleans. The MSNBC crew thought maybe the Repubs just didn’t want to follow Obama’s speech so quickly, but I think the trick is in paragraph two of the [...]