Unqualified Offerings

Peter Dreier’s article on conservative activist Kyle Olson’s attempted ambush interview of aging academic/activist Frances Fox Piven supports an argument I’ve made numerous times: the “conservative coalition” isn’t nearly as fractious as people make it out to be. Popularly, we imagine The Right as being an unstable mix of social-conservatives, neocons and economic conservatives. The [...]

By Thoreau
While talking to another Evil Fiziks Type who teaches at a school similar to mine, he remarked that in time America might have trouble getting Ph.D. students from China and other developing/emerging/insert-term-here countries.  However, he didn’t say that this would be doom for America–we will still have plenty of PhD physicists, even if not [...]

By Thoreau
As we wait to see if  Nouri Maliki will get a recount, and also see whether that recount will exceed Floridian standards (a low threshold), I decided to go back seven years and see how the top institution in American journalism performed at the start of the war.

Vital Info on Iraqi Chemical Weapons Provided [...]

The Rude Pundit adds two entries to the internet’s seemingly endless list of resentful counterfactuals, but there’s a sting in the tail of the first one:
What if investigation after investigation discovered that the Muslim church had engaged in a decades-long cover-up of massive criminal activity involving the molestation and raping of children?

What’s funny about this [...]

By Thoreau
I don’t know what to make of this article on diesel made by having bacteria digest cellulose.  It’s not the science that I’m uncertain about: for as long as I’ve been reading science magazines I’ve seen an article saying “Researchers at [Impressive Institute] have just made a key step toward [circle one: fusion, clean [...]

Another month, another trialware Mac blog editor. This time, Blogo. I like the interface better than the other tools I’ve tried, and their tech support people are incredibly responsive. Now, let’s see if it will post something!

By Thoreau
Let’s review all of the things I’ve been accused of being:  I’m a single-issue civil liberties extremist.  Apparently this makes me a Republican shill.  I’m haughty towards other libertarians when I refer to a certain species as “vulgar libertarians.”  I’m also a tax-obsessed libertarian who cares only about my own wallet.  According to one [...]

By Thoreau
Now that the marijuana legalization ballot measure is confirmed for the ballot, I need to figure out where to donate.  I’m going to have to figure out which organization is likely to be most effective and take the lead on running ads.  I’m prepared to donate $420 for this.  And if I am still [...]

By Thoreau
The marijuana legalization ballot measure is expected to make it onto the November ballot. Whatever else may happen, if this passes then 2010 will be a good political year, because it will be the year that the drug warriors suffer their worst setback ever.  If this passes, criminal organizations will lose money.  Police will [...]

By Thoreau
Over at another site, I was arguing with somebody over whether Glenn Greenwald is a hack.  Needless to say, here at UO we consider Greenwald our Patron Saint, so I was on the pro-Greenwald side.  In the course of that argument, I characterized Greenwald as a person who has realized that all of the [...]