Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
Physicists study whether or not dice tossing is really random.  However, they neglected to include “Did the luckless ranger touch them before tossing?” as one of the variables in the simulation.  There’s a guy in my D&D group who will confirm that this is the most crucial variable of all.

By Mona
Casual prejudice and even contempt for atheists has long been an affront to me. And I’m especially disappointed to find it among some progressives, as I just wrote about at AoTP.

By Thoreau
Over at Scienceblogs, they’re discussing the case of a chemistry grad student who turned out to be REALLY good at organic synthesis.
To me, the real issue here is not drugs and background checks.  The last thing I want to do is tell a person with a criminal conviction that he cannot go to school [...]

Doesn’t "Little Jackie Paper" sound like a mafia nickname?

Julian has an acute and entertaining take on the "Free Sarah Palin" boomlet:
Sure, we can look back and find instances where she’s handled herself more competently, but her gaffes have not been, as some of her apologists seem to want to imply, a matter of getting flustered by her failure to recall the name of [...]

By Thoreau
Waves are waves, whether they are waves of water, waves of light, waves of electrons, waves of sound, or waves of whatever else.  For the last few years there has been a lot of work on using exotic new materials to bend light around an object and make an invisibility cloak.  The concept has [...]

By Thoreau
New research shows that Neanderthals ate a lot of seafood.  So much for the theory that Omega-3 fatty acids will keep you from going extinct.
No word on whether they got drunk while hanging out at the beach.

Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates on the racial implications – or not – of John McCain’s studied avoidance of gazing into the presumably Gorgonian visage of Barack Obama Friday night, this occurred to me: McCain and his handlers may or may not have been conveying a specifically racist contempt for Obama. Beats me. But, a racist audience [...]

By Thoreau
It has been suggested to me that there are some good pro-bailout arguments, and that I’m being too knee-jerk.  I will evaluate those arguments when I get the chance and (for now at least) turn down the rhetoric one notch.  In the mean time, two thoughts:
1) If the concern is that our economy needs [...]

By Thoreau
1) The latest grant is due tomorrow. I wrote a draft Wednesday night/Thursday morning at 1am, circulated it for signatures on the cover page, and put it aside to work on teaching. Now I’m looking at it again and DAMN WHAT I WROTE AT 1AM ACTUALLY MAKES SENSE!!!!!
Either that or I’m [...]