Category Archives: Academia and Other Nonsense

Another Reason to Apply a Liquid Bandage Daily

Posted on July 4, 2013 by Alaska

Apparently 90% of fingerprints (especially on metal) aren’t identifiable. They’ve fixed that problem. In other news (to me), despite all the buzz in the ’90s and ’00s about how Daubert challenges were going to invalidate fingerprint evidence in the courtroom … Continue reading →

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Is the Sky Always Falling?

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Alaska

The late Haynes Johnson’s literary career scribing “notebook dumps” provides a cautionary note for those, like me, who tend to focus on doom-and-gloom observations. I remember watching the guy on various political news programs when I was a kid, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense, Armageddon | 1 Comment

Modern Writing Sucks

Posted on June 29, 2013 by Alaska

Here’s a heat-induced cranky rant for you. Having been weaned on nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century novelists, I am used to the paragraph form. Kids today, not so much. Viz. this Business Insider article that reads for all the world like a Millennial’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense, Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 2 Comments

Teach your children well

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Phil Kadath

Or someone else will The Los Angeles Unified School District will use a state grant to train teens to promote ObamaCare to family members. Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, announced grants of $37 million on May 14 to … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense, The Government is Not Your Friend | 1 Comment

Online Shadow Economy

Posted on June 25, 2013 by Alaska

I found this white paper’s discussion of the demand for escrow services and guarantors among thieves fascinating.

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Conquest’s Laws of Politics In Action

Posted on June 22, 2013 by Alaska

My reasons for not being active in most interest groups, fan groups, or groups generally are legion, but one of them is one of Robert Conquest’s Laws of Politics: Any organization not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing. Conquest, … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | 7 Comments

The Mountain of Bad News Grows

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Phil Kadath

It is not enough that the majority of the government employee’s pension funds are showing too little funds to cover their current or quickly upcoming expenses, but now we have this: University endowments and teachers’ pension funds are among big … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense, Freaks, Mutants, and Morons | 2 Comments

RNS Quote of the Day: Castaneda

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Alaska

From Ben Domenech’s Transom today, to which you should be subscribing: …in [Mexican history] there was the government and the individual, with no civil society in between. This creates and fuels a patronage society, with the attendant social ills of … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | 3 Comments

Institutionalized Racism Exists

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Phil Kadath

In the Seattle School District The superintendent of Seattle Public Schools announced Friday that a recently suspended unit in a humanities class at The Center School that explored issues of race and privilege will be allowed to resume, with restrictions. … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense | 2 Comments

Living in a SF Novel

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Alaska

Some days it feels like we’re living through one of those hard SF thrillers that just piles on the big ideas, each of which would deserve a novel of its own. Each link below is to something that’s actually happening … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia and Other Nonsense, Armageddon | 1 Comment