Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
A few weeks ago I noted that Jack Bauer is now fighting a Blackwater-style villain, in response to which it was observed that in fascist mythologies the hero often battles decadent capitalists:
A favorite trope of fascist mythology is that the Great Hero kills and tortures not just the dark-skinned street thugs, but also the [...]

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I’ve read a lot of Republican wailing and gnashing of teeth about the horror of auto-industry unionization, and the need to cram down, as it were, new terms on [...]

By Thoreau
As Mona pointed out downblog, Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) has come out against the costly and destructive failure of social engineering and insane foreign policy that is the Drug War.  There have always been voices against the Drug War on the left and right, mostly from a handful of marginalized activists and economists.  Consistent [...]

By Mona
Greenwald has an outstanding post up on Sen. Jim Webb’s politically risky, principled decision to take on the drug war and the prison-industrial complex that is so invested in it:

What’s most notable about Webb’s decision to champion this cause is how honest his advocacy is.  He isn’t just attempting to chip away [...]

By Thoreau
I know you’re getting bored with all this, but (1) it’s something working its way through my mind and (2) in the end, what I’m critiquing is over-supply in a heavily subsidized industry, so there’s still a political/economic angle.
One topic that is much-discussed in the science blogosphere is “work-life balance.” Basically, it’s hard [...]

By Thoreau
A commenter on my post below suggested that one difference between different sciences is that NSF has an educational mandate while NIH only counts a training program as successful if the undergrads become grad students and the postdocs become faculty at major research institutions. That isn’t entirely true. NSF wants to see [...]

By Thoreau
I’ve ranted a lot about how science bloggers focus far too much on training people for faculty positions in research universities. Well, I think part of the problem is that a lot of this discussion is dominated by biomedical people, and biomedical graduate programs are completely different from physics in 2 key variables:
1) [...]

By Mona
The guy who handles my computer — not the sharpest knife in the drawer — supposedly showed me how to use my scanner. He could see I was trying to scan text, but had me send it to HPImageZone (I have an HP 5600 printer/fax/scanner) — but I’m not wanting to send [...]

By Thoreau
Physics blogger Matt Springer calculates the duration of a year on planet Krypton.
Spoiler:  It’s 69.1 earth years.

By Thoreau
The March issue (not yet online) of Biophotonics has an article on using DNA from salmon sperm to replace some of the more toxic materials in light emitting diodes.  A 2007 press release from the university where this work is being done has some of the same info as the Biophotonics article.  Apparently they [...]