Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
I was thinking about the phenomenon of desperate adjuncts living on food stamps in the US.  This is a direct consequence of having too many PhDs chasing too few jobs.  You might argue that this wouldn’t be a problem if faculty salaries were higher, and I certainly wouldn’t object to raising the pay for [...]

By Thoreau
Really, it is.

This is why we’re bidding on a condo.  The combo of mortgage, interest, HOA fees, insurance, and taxes will just about match the rent we’re playing on an apartment that isn’t even as nice.  And all of this is before we take the mortgage interest deduction.  Also, it’s biking distance from my [...]

By Thoreau
I echo just about everything that the Dean Dad says here.
For those about to accept graduate school offers, especially in non-STEM fields:  Don’t!

By Thoreau
The good Professor Yoo is immune from legal consequences for his role in torture. So be it.  And, given that he is tenured, I certainly wouldn’t want Berkeley to try to terminate his employment.
However, where does it say that the Chancellor of the University lacks the inherent power to be flexible in teaching assignments?  [...]

By Thoreau
Via Schneier, I came across this article chronicling FBI efforts to monitor and infiltrate domestic extremist groups.  The most fascinating part is near the end, when somebody is finally arrested:
He and other CMA members discussed plans to bomb the FBI office in Birmingham as well as a plot to raid the Browns Ferry nuclear [...]

By Thoreau
Not being a particle physicist, I can’t say definitively that this wouldn’t work, but I’m skeptical as all hell.  Two reasons:
1) Detecting neutrinos is hard.  The infamous search for superluminal neutrinos worked over a distance of a few hundred km, and they got a small number of events over a long time frame.  So [...]

By Thoreau
1) Is there a liquid in the outer core of the earth?  If so, do you know what sort of liquid it is?
2) True or false: The expansion of the universe, and the associated red shifts of distant galaxies, is due to the expansion of space itself.
These questions are motivated by things said by [...]

By Thoreau
As a child, I loved Charlie Brown.  Come to think of it, I still love the musical “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”  Consequently, my grandfather gave me a nickname based on Charlie Brown:  Charlie Brownguinea.  He still uses it.  Since my grandfather likes to be silly and sometimes makes up words, I just [...]

By Thoreau
I was unaware that the Coptic Christian Church has a ban on its followers traveling to Israel.  I’m opposed to travel bans as a solution to political problems, because I think that people visiting and mingling with each other is the best way to find solutions.  Still, since a sizable portion of the US [...]

By Thoreau
The Economist surveys commentary from the right and its detractors, and sums up with this insightful bit:
Good luck with that, Mr Norquist. Voters shy from hard choices. Lexington’s bet is that Americans will never give the Republicans a clean mandate to drown the sort of state they have now. Like voters [...]