Unqualified Offerings

Via spackerman,a tale of a husband, a wife, a sack of potatoes (fig.), a pork butt and a dog that demands reading.

By Thoreau
There are rumblings that the stimulus package will include significant funding boosts for the National Institutes of Health. There are many arguments against using basic scientific research as part of a stimulus effort, and I agree with all of them:
1) To whatever extent a stimulus package can actually get an economy going [...]

Items:
* People were so nice about the passing of this site’s mascot over the weekend, I just want to say thank you very much. It meant a lot to me and Mrs. Offering.
* Speaking of which, I’d like to associate myself with a couple of comments from that thread.
kid bitzer:
weird; an hour later [...]

Decline and Fall defends the Army’s field manual on interrogations, especially Appendix M, from some recent criticisms. No, he says, Appendix M does not constitute a takeback of the main body of the text. And, there’s a huge problem with the Geneva Conventions that needs to be corrected.

By Thoreau
The dumbest man on earth wants to debate Matt Damon.
Matt Damon!
I know nothing about Matt Damon.  I have no idea whether he’s a well-informed and articulate commenter on current affairs, or a dumb celebrity.  What I do know is that, by definition, he is smarter than Bill Kristol.  There’s no way that Matt Damon [...]

By Thoreau
True/false question from the homework:  An object will not accelerate unless there is a net force acting on it.
Student who made a special appointment to see me outside office hours:  “So, I just want to understand this.  It sounds to me like, if there’s no net force, then this question is saying that the [...]

By Thoreau
I sense much potential in this student who does project with me.  Much motivation there is in him.  But also much pride.  Pride leads to haste, haste leads to sloppiness, sloppiness leads to crashing programs.  Research training?  I know not.  There is the prophecy of the one who will bring funding to the school.  [...]

By Mona
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Attorney Frank Pignatelli  is the scum of the Earth. After getting busted [addendum: in Ohio] for conspiring with some of his clients facing drug charges and assisting them in trafficking, my emphasis:

He turned informant, and made 30 cases for the Government, including some against his clients. The latest defendant, a former [...]

By Thoreau
Over at another forum, various libertarians are arguing over whether it is anti-market to be upset that a CEO of an investment bank was spending $1.2 million redecorating his office while people were being fired.
It is certainly true that $1.2 million wasn’t making or breaking a company that went into tens of billions of [...]

By Thoreau
I have not paid much attention to the war in Afghanistan, but, then again, who in America really has?  Afghanistan is the war that, at least in the beginning, made sense:  We really were attacked by people based in Afghanistan, their government really was supporting those guys, so we really did have to go [...]