http://highclearing.com Looking Sideways at Your World Since October 2001 Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:34:16 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/02/07/14294 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 ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/02/06/14291 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 ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/02/05/14289 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, ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/02/05/14285 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. http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/02/04/14283 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 ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/02/03/14280 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 ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/02/01/14278 By Thoreau Bruce Schneier outlines one of those great moments in TSA capers. http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/31/14276 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, ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/31/14272 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 ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/31/14267 By Thoreau The President of Yemen has officially left.  His deputy is of course in charge, and in the interests of looking forward rather than backward he is immune from prosecution.  Still, he's out of power.  Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy.  Good to know that the Arab Spring ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/29/14263 By Thoreau One theme of Weis and Hickman fantasy novels, one that carries into much of D&D, is that there must be a balance between good and evil.  Inevitably, those who seek to eradicate evil become overly proud and power-hungry and try to purify the world by force.  This is of ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/29/14260 By Thoreau I have believed, perhaps naively, that frequent televised debates are a good thing for political campaigns.  All of this air time given to the candidates should at least partially (no, not wholly) mitigate the advantages of those with more campaign funds.  And since I believe that it is a ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/28/14256 By Thoreau The Navy, in collaboration with Northrop Grumman, is testing a drone that will fly and make decisions without a pilot. There's nothing that could possibly go wrong with this scenario. So far they insist that the drone will not make lethal decisions on its own, but you know it's only ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/26/14253 By Thoreau Today in biophysics we talked about minimum principles.  Mostly it involved entropy and free energy.  In the last part, though, I switched gears and presented some of the ideas from this paper on minimum principles in neurobiology.  The short version is that if an engineer were to sit down ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/25/14250 By Thoreau Sometimes the award tells you something about the winner.  Other times, the winner tells you something about the award. I'm thinking about more than one situation. http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/24/14248 By Thoreau I usually use Mathematica as my calculator, especially when explaining homework in office hours.  I can refer back to variables and quickly make graphs or manipulate symbols.  So while going over homework with students in my biophysics class, I pull up Mathematica and one of them says "Is that ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/24/14244 By Thoreau If I could do this, I would become the boss just so that I could give my enemies the grossly disproportionate resources that they feel entitled to.  When pressed by my bosses, I would offer their various politically convenient excuses, shrug and say "Whaddaygonnadoaboutit?" and then get myself the ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/23/14242 By Thoreau It is news to nobody that professional physicists have tremendous self-confidence.  The implications of this were driven home to me today in noticing the timidity of some students.  For starters, I said at the beginning of class "The graded homework is at the front of the room for you ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/20/14239 By Thoreau A 24 hour Wikipedia blackout was enough to defeat the RIAA and MPAA.  Now we see where power lies.  Imagine what would happen if Wikipedia, Facebook, and Youtube were to join forces and blackout together?  Now THAT is a terrifying trio to contemplate! Meanwhile, Anonymous has flexed its muscles, albeit ... http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2012/01/20/14237