There has been another shooting on a college campus, with a gunman opening fire on a geology class at Northern Illinois, before killing himself. Early reports suggest that the safety measures put into place after the Virginia Tech tragedy all worked properly, and the response from police was as quick as could be hoped. The […]
Category: News
Stochastic Global Awareness
One of the strangest things about reading a lot of blogs is the way it’s broadened my view of the world. Which is “more or less at random.” I don’t follow a lot of mainstream news sources any more, because they mostly just piss me off, so I end up getting most of my news […]
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007
The weekend interrupted the parade of Nobel prizes, setting apart The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2007, more commonly called the Nobel in Economics (even though it’s a late addition). This goes to three guys in the US, including the obligatory Chicagoan: Leonid Hurwicz, Eric S. Maskin, and Roger […]
White House: “More Study Needed” on Gore Nobel
(WASHINGTON, DC) On the heels of reports from Oslo that the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded jointly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former US Vice President Al Gore, a White House spokesman issued a statement saying that “significant uncertainty” remained regarding the recipient of the prize. “The President feels that […]
Nobel Peace Prize: IPCC and Al Gore
The Nobel Peace Prize was announced this morning, and will be split between an international panel and everybody’s favorite PowerPoint presenter: The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore […]
Literature Nobel: Doris Lessing
In the “Social Networks Brighten My Morning” file, I am inordinately amused to be getting status updates from a Nobel laureate on Facebook. Speaking of Nobel laureates, the latest chunk of dynamite money was awarded this morning to novelist Doris Lessing: “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has […]
News, Sports, and Information
Two items from the sports pages this morning: 1) Not really a sports story, but I saw it first on ESPN: two Duke lacrosse players have been indicted. It really doesn’t deserve a whole “CSI: Durham” post, because it’s a sealed indictment, so there’s basically no real information. But if you’re following the story, there’s […]
But Who Would Win?
Via Inside Higher Ed, a story with the nearly unbeatable headline: Feds Pounce on Student Dresses As a Ninja. Why was a student running around the Georgia campus dressed as a ninja? Ransom told The Red & Black student newspaper that he had left a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was snared […]
CSI: Durham Follow-Up
Having previously mentioned the Duke lacrosse mess, I feel obliged to at least note the latest events: DNA tests failed to link any of the players to the crime, but the DA says the alleged victim has identified one of them. I don’t plan to make this a regularly recurring feature, because the whole thing […]
CSI: Durham
As anybody who has read my comments on basketball knows, I have an intense dislike of the Duke men’s basketball team, mostly due to their fans, who combine the arrogance typical of fans of a dominant program with a sort of snobbery regarding their own class and cleverness. This is particularly aggravating given the institutional […]