Alkahest

It’s things like this that embarrass me when I tell someone I’m from Louisiana.  The Louisiana House has voted overwhelmingly to pass the Louisiana Science Education Act which allows science teachers to use supplemental materials when teaching controversial subjects.  For those who haven’t been there, in Louisiana, controversial subjects include: evolution, global warming, Keplerian astronomy [...]

Oh, and an ironic follow-up to the republican filibuster of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act: apparently, the senate unanimously voted for a bill barring genetic discrimination in hiring and insurance. I wonder if anyone’s told them that your gender is based on your genes. Not that I would accuse senate republicans of [...]

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate took up the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act which the House had already passed.  The act was pretty reasonable.  It essentially clarified the 1964 civil rights act to say that if you are being discriminated in terms of salary equity, you have 180 days from the date of each paycheck to [...]

The CTO Project makes an interesting observation that faculty are a bit like some corporations. They feel obligated to use Web 2.0 technologies in order to engage student interest and actually make some token effort to be up to date. But that they only want these technologies if they can exert complete control.
Trust [...]

A few years ago, I was accused of using the word “interesting” in subtle ways.  Sometimes it means a truly novel idea that I would like to learn more about, other times, it’s a novel idea of which I’m more than a little skeptical.  In both cases, I stand by the description, to me, both [...]

It’s apparently “beat up the economists” week and no one thought to tell me in advance.  Over at Crooked Timber, Daniel Davies posts about Greg Mankiw’s recent NY Times editorial and suggests that the reason economists are so patronizing is bitterness over being stuck in a low paying academic job whose sole purpose is to [...]

As mentioned last month, the North Carolina Utilities Commission has banned the expansion of Progress Energy’s Balanced Billing Plan and Duke Power’s Fixed Payment Plan. These are the plans that charge you roughly 11% in order to have a guaranteed power bill. Unfortunately, it’s not a full ban, it’s just a prohibition against [...]

Last week I was having lunch with a colleague (of sorts) and we were on the topic of the economy, outsourcing of jobs, etc. I mentioned that we were living in, what I’ve taken to calling, a crappy low-rent future*. He pointed out, and I agree, that this is largely because corporations have [...]

Gee, nobody could have predicted this I suppose:
The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday.
Admittedly, Mueller goes on to say that the reports were prior to new policies being put into place, but somehow that doesn’t make me [...]

Few people have been on top of the extension of FISA like Glenn Greenwald. As a quick overview for folks that haven’t been paying attention to the issue:

Late last year a real potential problem with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (as written in the 70s and amended after Sept 11) was recognized. [...]