Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
The Stiftung tells interesting tales of how courtier self-interest conflicts with party interest.
Me, I’m dealing with a situation that I’m not yet prepared to blog about, not even with oblique debt ceiling analogies, except to note that while I thought it would be a nightmare it has turned out to be a chance to [...]

By Thoreau
The most reliable media outlet around is reporting that NASA has discovered an arrogant alien species that likes sarcasm and passive-aggressive language. Methinks I would enjoy interacting with them.  My cow-orkers, of course, would hate it, because B people hate being around A people (let alone A+ species), but I’d love it, because I’m [...]

By Thoreau
Have you ever heard of a situation in which a person at a research university already has a grant, then begins a collaboration with a person at another school, and uses their grant to buy out part of that person’s teaching load?  (Assume that the second school is a place with a heavy teaching [...]

By Thoreau
Hey, Economist:  You know that whooshing sound you just heard?  That’s the point sailing 50,000 feet above  your head.
RELISHING their country’s reputation as the graveyard of empires, Afghans are proud of having vanquished all the foreign armies that have ventured onto their soil. Yet the Soviet army, the most recent, was not [...]

By Thoreau
The person who can invent popcorn that tastes as good as movie theater popcorn smells will be a trillionaire. Ditto for the cardiologists who repair the ensuing damage.

By Thoreau
Remember last summer when some commenters would ask me if my office politics rants were elaborate analogies for the debt ceiling?  To my surprise, it was in fact an analogy for the debt ceiling.  All of those maneuvers have led us to a situation where we might actually jump off a cliff.  I kind [...]

By Thoreau
For some reason I’m going through nostalgia for the 90’s and grad school.  Goddamnit, where’s my time machine?  Anyway, whenever I think about the 90’s, I think about the day that the 90’s ended.  No, not Jan. 1, 2000.  The good times ended 9/11/2001.  Sure, there were ample signs before then that the best [...]

By Thoreau
Bruce Schneier outlines one of those great moments in TSA capers.

By Thoreau
A blogger who grew up in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is rather mystified by the way that many North Americans use “socialism” to mean “like Western Europe.”
As long as we’re going over strange usages, consider “republic” and “democracy.”  I won’t presume to put words in Clarissa’s mouth, but I somehow doubt that [...]

By Thoreau
I’m reading freshman essays.  That should tell you everything you need to know about my mood.
Despite that, I concur with the statement offered by academics at schools of every tier:  “A lot of our undergrads are much better than our grad students.”*  I am teaching an advanced course that has at least one grad [...]