Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
Like IOZ said, if an official in your government is being paid by a foreign intelligence agency, he is by definition corrupt.  Johns need to stop acting so surprised that their whore has other clients.

By Thoreau
In blogging about PhD over-production, I’ve said that in a triage of graduate programs the middle group needs to think about preparing students for careers.  However, I want to point to an important tradition in the physics community, and argue that we not judge the practicality of scientific training solely on the significance of [...]

Maybe I’m straying into #slatepitches territory, but the more I think about Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic article on the Israeli threat to commit an act of war against Iran, the better I think it is. Robert Wright’s rejoinder can be read as making a similar argument to my own.
People complain because Goldberg serves in the article [...]

Arnie she said to me
As she turned down the radio
You haven’t slept a wink
Since we came to Havana
When you gonna get the strength
To go over to Florida
All you ever listen to
Is the Voice of America
- Elvis Costello, “American Without Tears, #2 (Twilight Version)“

Soon I will praise Jeffrey Goldberg’s recent Atlantic article, “Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb [...]

Declaring things “dead” is dead.
(Unless someone wants to make a case re “liberaltarianism.”)

By Thoreau
PhD over-production has interesting effects in the academic job market.  There are the commonly-lamented phenomena that I’ve discussed before (mostly, the masses of desperate adjuncts getting low wages).   As some of my colleagues at other undergraduate institutions have noted, it also means that today undergraduate institutions can find more people with strong research credentials, [...]

By Thoreau
To avoid burnout during my 2 weeks in the special Evil Fiziks Lair, the long marathons of derivations are supplemented by the Robotech Masters episodes of the original series.  Alas, it’s off to a weaker start than the Invid episodes were.  (Yes, I’m watching in reverse order.  It just worked out that way.)  All [...]

By Thoreau
The protests against the Burlington Coat Factory Recreation Center show a lot of what’s ugly and stupid in America.  This video, where the protesters start ranting against some random black guy walking down the street, is particularly ugly.  This is really ugly kulturkampf.
However, is it kulturkampf at its worst?  America’s been through uglier stages [...]

By Thoreau
I obviously can’t know for sure whether Julian Assange, the guy in charge of WikiLeaks, actually raped somebody or not.  But seeing an arrest warrant issued against him and then withdrawn in less than 24 hours is certainly strange.  A few possibilities:
1)  Maybe Assange really is guilty, but the prosecutors jumped the gun in [...]

Everything that rises must diverge as Jason Kuznicki pings off (our) Thoreau, with a tale of gods, God and some number of names for same that surely do not exceed nine billion. My favorite bit:
“But wait,” said Shiva. “Allah isn’t just any old god. It’s also said that He’s the God of Abraham. Surely that [...]