Should I rejoice or weep?

After Years of Being Out, the Necktie Is In - NYTimes

Now I understand the airlines...

Just like the airlines, I try to pack as much into as little time as possible. They produce efficiency with their hub networks and their down to the minute scheduling. When it works, it's amazingly efficient. Of course the problem is, when one problem arises, it creates a series of cascading effects that propagates delays through the system.

Similarly, I try to pack so much into a day, that if one little thing goes wrong with the schedule...

Do you want half, or nothing?

It's the eternal risk/reward question: Do you go for the lesser prize which is the sure thing, or the ultimate prize which is a lot less certain? In this case, it seems a no brainer - the ultimate prize has no chance of happening:

Liberal Base Proves Trying to Democrats - NYTimes


An that brings up another topic - why is it so much easier for me to talk to people with whom I agree on nothing, than with people with whom I agree on much? I think it's because the people on "my" side, expect me to agree with them 100% of the time, which ain't going to happen, and the people on the "other" side know that we've got to talk about our disagreements civilly? I've given up talking to certain liberal friends of mine, because my nuanced disagreement on some issues infuriates them...

It's about time

I think about 8 years of an administration that lets the science go wherever it leads, be that in agreement with the politics or not, would be amazing. Maybe after that, subsequent administrations may find it more difficult to play fast and loose with the data. Pie in the sky? Maybe, but anything is better than the current situation.

The past eight years has just highlighted the fact that scientific freedom and objectivity is something that we scientists have taken or granted - something that I don't think we apppreciated nearly as much as we should have, until it was taken away.

If I can say one thing for the Bush administration, it's that they often did not even pretend to be evenhanded - and when things would blow up in their face, there was no way to deny what had been done. (Not that it stopped them.)

Protecting Science from the Government - NYTimes

Path not taken

Had I been born 20 years later, this is what I would have majored in:

Digital Forensics - NYTimes

New Highway typeface

Clearview Slideshow

A different view

Maybe this is how we should think about Iraq:

How a Revolution Saved an Empire