Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
Everybody is blogging this study on how the media reports on torture, but Jennifer’s post has the best title by far.

By Thoreau
I’m going to come across as evil and privileged and discriminatory here, but screw it:  I think universities should be allowed to experiment with eReaders, even if they aren’t currently optimal for the visually impaired.  This is not to say that I think universities should mandate or institutionalize something that excludes some of their [...]

By Thoreau
We academics are notoriously prone to favoring anecdote over data when deciding how to approach teaching and administration, even though we insist on data in our research and when assigning students to write term papers.  I know that I’m probably as guilty of this as anyone.  I find that almost any good idea can [...]

Hey, why not? And The Littlest Offering and I did make tortillas together last night – meaning, after she got bored I finished them up even though it was her idea. But she got farther this time. So, via Crooked Timber:

By Thoreau
The Onion is running a special patriotism issue.  The stories are only visible to Real Americans.  Are you a real American?  Click to find out.

By Thoreau
I finally got around to putting my $420 where my mouth is.  It was a painful bite, but it’s worth it.  They only have a few days left to reach a fundraising goal before the end of the fiscal year, and for whatever it’s worth the folks at TaxCannabis.org have the endorsement of Gary [...]

By Thoreau
The feds have arrested 10 people charged with spying for Russia. I do not know the validity of the evidence, so I cannot comment on that.  I can, however, note that these people were charged with crimes in a court of law.  Now, charging people with crimes in an open court of law is [...]

By Thoreau
Well, I’m sure that they had a good reason:
(CN) – Police Tasered an 86-year-old disabled grandma in her bed and stepped on her oxygen hose until she couldn’t breathe, after her grandson called 911 seeking medical assistance, the woman and her grandson claim in Oklahoma City Federal Court. Though the grandson [...]

By Thoreau
I will not venture an opinion on whether CSU Stanislaus broke any rules in paying Sarah Palin to speak.  I will note that the private foundations associated with the CSU campuses were set up precisely so that the campuses could raise funds from non-state sources (and spend those funds) with fewer rules than funds [...]

Tyler Cowen’s piece on the Weigel case is superb. Excerpt:
At a more general level this is a tax on journalists, who now have a greater fear of being fired for past actions. It’s also a tax on the moody, the volatile, the web-savvy, the non-mainstream, and a subsidy to in-control smooth talkers and careful writers.

This [...]