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True Lab Stories: The Oaf Effect

It's been a while since I did one of these (see "How to Tell a True Lab Story" for an explanation), but yesterday's laser tech story reminded me of one. The lab next to mine in grad school also used an argon ion laser to pump another laser, but they were much more cramped for table space than we were. Instead of putting the argon ion laser (which was about 6' long) on top of the table, they put it on a bench that slid under the optical table, then used mirrors to direct the beam up onto the table top. Since the ion laser is pretty much a black box, this worked great, and they could drag it…

The Two-Fork Toothpick Trick, Explained

Last week, GrrlScientist posted a cool video showing a trick with two forks and a toothpick: http://view.break.com/410281 - Watch more free videos It's a nifty demonstration of some physics principles, so I thought I would explain how it works, with a couple of pictures (several of her commenters have the right idea, btw). The key concept here is the idea of the "center of mass" of a system, which is basically the point at which you consider all the mass to be concentrated if you need to treat an extended object as a point particle. If you're going to throw it through the air, for example,…

No Country for Old Men

I got a new stereo installed in my car on Friday, so I can plug the iPod in directly rather than using one of those stupid FM transmitter gadgets, and the installation guy said it would take a few hours. So I did a little shopping, and then went to see the Coen Brothers' adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. The one-sentence review is basically "Just like Fargo, only set in Texas and not funny." As with any Coen Brothers movie, it's beautifully done on a technical level-- the camera work is great, the shots are set up very well. There's great acting as well, particularly…

Is Our Schools Failing?

Kevin Drum looks at the latest story about American students lagging the world in science test scores, and notes that this has been going on at least since he was in school. This leads him to wonder whether it's really as bad as all that: I still wonder about this. If American kids are getting mediocre educations, and if they've been getting these mediocre educations for several decades now, shouldn't this have long since shown up in the business world, the tech world, and the financial world? And yet, it hasn't. So what's the deal? Makes me wonder if maybe American kids don't actually suck…

Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold [Library of Babel]

I don't believe the actual book is out yet, but you can get an electronic Advance Reading copy of the Nth Miles Vorkosigan book, Cryoburn already. Kate picked up a copy, and while she hasn't gotten around to it yet, I read it this week while putting SteelyKid to bed. The book is another "Lord Auditor Vorkosigan" story, with Miles on a mission to Kibou-Dani, a half-terraformed planet with a positive fetish for cryopreservation. A quirk in local laws gives the "cryocorps" that preserve millions of frozen citizens the right to proxy vote for their clients, and control of their property, so they…

Holy Grails of Science

With the rumors of a Higgs Boson detected at Fermilab now getting the sort of official denial that in politics would mean the rumors were about to be confirmed in spectacular fashion, it's looking like we'll have to wait a little while longer before the next "Holy Grail" of physics gets discovered. Strictly speaking, the only thing I recall being officially dubbed a "Holy Grail" that's been discovered was Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC), first produced by eventual Nobelists Carl Wieman and Eric Cornell in 1995. Somebody, I think it was Keith Burnett of Oxford, was quoted in the media calling…

Scientist-Approved Beach Reading

Summer is here, which means vacations for lots of people, which means "beach reading"-- trying to read a book or two while kicking back somewhere. The ideal beach read is something that isn't so heavy as to bring you down or demand too much attention, but is also serious enough that it's not embarrassing to be seen in public reading it. Clearly, the best choice for beach reading this summer is How to Teach Physics to Your Dog-- it's got real, solid physics, but also a talking dog. What more could you want? What if you've already read How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, though? Are there other…

Links for 2010-06-16

The A-Team steers clear of Hill Street and avoids St Elsewhere and Cheers "The A-Team premiered in 1983, a year after Cheers and St Elsewhere, two years after Hill Street Blues, a year ahead of Miami Vice, the fall after M*A*S*H said goodbye, farewell, and amen. There had always been well-written, well-directed, and well-acted television shows. What made these shows different was that all at once TV audiences were presented with a group of shows that were more like movies in a particular and significant way. The characters and their situations changed. Not just from season to season either…

1010.org misses the mark, Denialosphere jumps many sharks

A few days ago, an environmental organization from England released what can charitably be called an appaling video in support of their campaign to reduce carbon emission 10% per year starting now, in 2010. The group is called 10:10 and the page originally containing the video, now containing an apology, is here. It was removed very quickly following very negative reactions from across the spectrum of environmental ideologies. The video is a very graphic depiction of various people chosing not to go along with the 1010 campaign being blown to bits, replete with blood and gore spattered on…

Expertise, Elitism and Credibility

A few random items on expertise, elitism and credibility. The first is from an interview with the late Stphen Schneider about the recent PNAS paper on the relative expertise of "convinced" and "unconvinced" climate science activists, an interesting read: About the 'elitist' part: Scientists are really stuck. It's exactly the same thing in medicine, it's the same thing with pilot's licenses and driver's licenses: We don't let just anyone go out there and make any claim that they're an expert, do anything they want, without checking their credibility. Is it elitist to license pilots and doctors…

A True Ghost Story Part 4: I see dead people. Hey, It's my job!

.... continued ... I wrote earlier about the graves that were dug daily to receive the dead. In truth, the details of this procedure are still being worked out by archaeologists at the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, but when we were there on this particular trip, part of the grave yard to which I refer had been just discovered, accidentally uncovered during a public works drainage project. I've never seen anything quite like it in all my years as an archaeologist. It should not have been terribly surprising that there were graves in this particular patch of land, just across a small road…

Summer Reading: Tourist Season

previously reviewed It utterly shocks me every time I make a reference to plastic alligators, Macy's bags with poisonous snakes in them, a guy named Skink or my favorite Bass Lure .... the Double Whammy .... and people look back at me with blank stares. Like, don't you get it? "To be or not to be" jokes or allusions to Sherlock Holmes are always understood. Or at least, people pretend to get them. But does no one read contemporary literature? It is impossible, actually, to explain Carl Hiaasen's novels to anyone without sounding like a fool. All such attempts, made by anybody, start out…

The Controversy of Richard Dawkins. Rather routine, don't you think?

I had been having thoughts regarding the larger context of Richard Dawkins' visit to the University of Minnesota (in which he gave this talk), and the socio-political context of this visit, but had not decided if I would write about them. Then I read, at Pharyngula (the other Minnesota scienceblogs.com blog - you probably have not heard of it, but it's pretty good) this post: Richard Dawkins: banned in Oklahoma? Indeed, a legislator of that wayward state is trying to ban the man from the U. As if. What I was thinking about requires some historical background regarding Dawkins' visit.…

"Who you two? I five ... "

And with this, a five year old catapulted back in time, say 10,000 years in West Asia or Southern Europe, encountering two people, would make perfectly intelligible sentence that wold be understood by all. Assuming all the people who were listening were at least reasonably savvy about language and a little patient. This is because a handful of words, including Who, You, Two, Five, Three and I exist across a range of languages as close cognates, and can be reconstructed as similar ancestral utterances in ancestral languages. It's like an elephant and a mammoth meeting up in the Twilight…

Some Technology Talk

First, I want to tell you that I think I might have accidentally broken facebook. It is going to be a while before this becomes apparent, but I think it might be true. Then, I've got some cool links for Linux Lovers. Here's the story with facebook. I get a form from the University's Central Administration every semester or so asking "WTF is going on with certain students, because they seem to have a lot of credits and we just want to make sure they have a plan to finish soon." However, my students never need to have a form sent from Central because they are always good. So I get this…

Did Triceratops fight with their faces?

Or, more accurately, did these dinosaurs either engage in intraspecific combat (such as territorial or mating contests among males) or fight predators such as Tyrannosaurs, like in the movies? Well, one thing we know for sure: If any folklore, belief, or 'fact' related to a fossil species sits around long enough, eventually someone will come along and study it. This usually involves reformulating the idea as one or more testable hypotheses, then attacking the hypotheses ... much like Tyrannosaurus might or might not have attacked Triceratops, to see if it can be killed, or alternatively,…

Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses

A paper coming out in the next issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases addresses the question of the link between vaccines and autism. This new review article examines three hypotheses linking vaccines to autism: (1) the combination measlesâmumpsârubella vaccine causes autism by damaging the intestinal lining, which allows the entrance of encephalopathic proteins; (2) thimerosal, an ethylmercuryâcontaining preservative in some vaccines, is toxic to the central nervous system; and (3) the simultaneous administration of multiple vaccines overwhelms or weakens the immune system. The…

The Seasons Greetings Edition of Oekologie, the Blog Carnival

Welcome to the December edition of Oekologie. The previous edition of Oekologie, Oekologie returns!, is at The Infinite Sphere. The present edition is a veritable potpourri of disjunct and disparate topics. We see habitat loss and bad dogs, fascinating evolutionary stories, sussing out sustainability, a touch of snark and more. I've tried to classify these diverse works into a small number of meaningful categories, but as I'm sure you'll see this is somewhat artificial. But before we even begin, I just want to point you to the most amazing video I've seen all month, in which a Penguin (a…

Win friends and fix up your data with regular expressions

In many instances, a well thought-out regular expression can convince most non-technical people in the room that you're a computer genius who's brain possesses more synapses, forming more bridges and firing more rapidly than anyone's ever should. Oh this is so true. The other day I was working on cleaning up some data with a colleague. We had two simple but common problems with our database, which had a few thousand records, and forty or so variables. 1) We needed to get a subset of data that included means for all numeric values based on a single factor (a factor = a categorical variable…

Is the grass is greener on the other Knol?

Sorry for the mixed metaphor, but I assure you, it gets worse. Google may be taking a shot at Wikipedia (and similar projects) with its newly unveiled Knol project. Knol was announced many moons ago but has been under cover and password protected with only a few special people allowed in to see what was going on and contribute. Now, it is "open to everyone" according to an announcement made this week. What the heck are we talking about? A 'Knol" is a unit of knowledge .... a write up, blog-post or wiki-article-like about a particular topic, from an authoritative source. The key principle…

Sunday Chess Problem

Last week's study went over well, so how about another study from Alexis Troitzky? It's white to play and win in this position: There is an astonishing amount of strategy wrapped up in this simple position! Let's start with some general considerations. White must try to promote his pawn as quickly as possible. Something like 1. Bd5, to slow down black's pawn, just won't work after 1. ... Bd3. Once white starts pushing his pawn, black will have to do likewise. Both sides will need one move to move their bishops out of the way of their pawns. At first blush, it seems like white will…

My Oven Has Died

It's been very hectic around here recently. In addition to the usual end of semester craziness, there's been one thing after another to fill my time. The book I've been editing forever had a major deadline last Monday, which pretty well killed that weekend. This past weekend was occupied by the MAA section meeting in Roanoke, VA, which I decided fairly last minute to attend. Of course, it hasn't been all stress and hard work. My birthday was yesterday (I'm 42!), and since yesterday was also the day of the semester-ending math department picnic, everyone sang me happy birthday. But…

Sunday Chess Problem

Today I have a charming little bagatelle for your consideration. It was composed by Alfreds Dombrovskis in 1958. In the diagram position, white is to play mate in two. Keep in mind that white is always moving up the board and black is always moving down. Vertical files are labeled a--h from left to right, while horizontal ranks are labeled 1--8 from bottom to top. So, in the diagram, the white king is on e5 and the black king is on d3. This is an example of a multiphase problem, meaning that grasping the composer's intent requires more than simply looking at the solution. We must also…

Sunday Chess Problem

Blogging has been a low priority lately, partly because there's been too much other stuff going on, and partly because I haven't had much enthusiasm for it. The end of the semester is always a bit of a grind. But the long-suffering fans of Sunday Chess Problem should not have to wait another week! So here's a little endgame study I came across, in a terrific book called Endgame Magic by John Beasley and Timothy Whitworth. It was composed by Herbstman and Kubbel in 1937. White is to play and draw. Recall that white is always assumed to be moving up the board, and black is always…

Sunday Chess Problem

Last week I introduced the idea of Allumwandlung, abbreviated AUW. This refers to a problem in which all four pawn promotions, to queen, rook, bishop and knight, appear in some way. The problem I showed last week was a crystal clear illustration of the theme, and deservedly won second place in the annual selfmate tourney in The Problemist magazine. As it happens, the third place winner in that tourney also showed AUW, but it makes for quite a contrast with last week's problem. Whereas that showed impressive elegance and clear logic, this one is just a demented, brilliant mess. It was…

Sunday Chess Problem

This week's problem was composed by Mircea Manolescu in 1956. In the position below, it is white to move and mate in two. Remember that white is always moving up the board, while black is always moving down. Vertical files are labeled as a--h from left to right, while the horizontal ranks are labeled 1--8 from bottom to top. So in the diagram we see that the white king is on a6 while the black king is on c4. When we write down moves, an “x” indicates a capture. This problem is our first example of a multi-phase problem. To understand what that means, have another look at last week's…

Should We Teach Experimental Mathematics?

In Tuesday's post I started discussing this essay (PDF format), by mathematician Doron Zeilberger. I wholeheartedly seconded the sentiments from the first part of the essay, in which he lamented the generally poor state of mathematical communication. But I'm a little skeptical of this part: The purpose of mathematical research should be the increase of mathematical knowledge, broadly defined. We should not be tied up with the antiquated notions of alleged “rigor”. A new philosophy of and attitude toward mathematics is developing, called “experimental math” (though it is derided by most of…

Lincoln

I finally got around to seeing Lincoln yesterday. Great movie! Daniel Day-Lewis is as good as you've heard. James Spader probably deserved a supporting actor nomination for playing the leader of a group of three people dispatched by Lincoln to encourage, cajole, and openly bribe wavering Democratic representatives. (The Republicans were the good guys in those days, at least on this issue.) This is not a biopic about Lincoln, but instead focuses exclusively on the months leading up to the passage of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution. It is natural, when watching such a film,…

Gene therapy for fighting HIV-1: Using bacterial genes to fight viruses

There are lots of ways a scientific paper can make me laugh. Sometimes I lol because the research is just so goddamn stupid. Sometimes I lol in derision. And rarely, I lol when someone does something conceptually simple, but incredibly clever, and it makes me happy. I read an abstract, laugh, read the rest of the paper, laugh, clap, and laugh. Clever people make me happy :) This is a really clever paper: Acquisition of HIV-1 Resistance in T Lymphocytes Using an ACA-Specific E. coli mRNA Interferase A while back, I talked about a cell line I use in the lab called 'TZM-bl'. These cells…

Star-crossed puppies

The worst part of visiting my parents is driving home. Yes, I will miss Moms cooking/baking. Yes, I will miss having real food (weird how the totally not organic food we get from local farmers is still good). Yes, Focus on the Family and AFA make a long drive longer (today they passive-aggressively ignored the Prop8 ruling, and instead focused on only talking about traditional marriage and gender roles. did you know that treating men and women as equals is why we have the homo gay in the first place? also, Obama is a secret Muslim, pronounced moo-slim.) The worst part is breaking up Arnie…

The inevitable union: XMRV and Vpu!

Two things I didnt intend on writing about on ERV more than a few times, but turned into repeat guests: XMRV and Vpu. Theyve finally come together. Susceptibility of xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) to retroviral restriction factors Know how I was talking about intrinsic immunity yesterday? Well, some scientists wondered how the heck XMRV was replicating in humans (especially human PBMCs), when other murine gammaretroviruses are restricted in humans because of our intrinsic immunity: Tetherin, APOBEC, Trim5. So they set out to investigate what effect (if any) these human…

Creationist almost discovers 17 year-old research

(this post is me laughing at Sternberg, intermittently talking about ERVs, ask Qs if Im not clear-- sorry, laughing so hard, must share this joke as well as I can between snorts) HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! RICHARD STERNBERG IS SO STUPID! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Arrogant, stupid little twat that doesnt even know what he doesnt know. *wipes away tears* *sniff* I was just listening to the 'debate' between Shermer/Prothero and Meyer/Sternberg. Prothero brought up ERVs, and how they are leftover garbage cluttering up your genome. Sternberg was all like, "NUH UH…

Junk RNA: Cause Junk DNA was getting lonely

The worlds most famous living biologist, Casey Luskin, is either an IDiot, or the biggest IDiot in the known universe. Being an expert in molecular biology, Casey has previously discussed Junk DNA, ie ERVs, at his blog 'Evolution News and Views'. Now hes written a blog post on this paper about Junk RNA: Chromatin signature reveals over a thousand highly conserved large non-coding RNAs in mammals. Larry covers all the bases nicely. Now I know, as a fact, Casey does not understand this paper. I know he didnt even read the paper. Larry cites a relevant portion at his blag, but the paper,…

Got a problem? Let evilution solve it for you.

Say youve got a problem. Maybe you cant figure out how to make a gene therapy vector that cant be detected by pre-existing antibodies that everybody already has. Maybe you are trying to figure out how to make an effective HIV-1 vaccine. You could figure out which portions of AAV or HIV-1 are really important, try to make point mutations here and there, trying to get the virus to do what you want it to do... Or you could just let evolution do all the hard work for you-- Letting random mutation and natural selection identify a variant that can perform the tricks youre after. A lab has already…

Racist Medicine

If youre a long time reader of SciBlogs, you probably remember when James Watson was on the advisory board of SEED. You also probably remember he was removed from that position after he made some idiotic racist (and sexist) remarks. In a wonderful bit of scientific lulz, Craig Venter recently compared his genome with that of James Watson and made some predictably astute observations about race, genes, and drugs. 'Individual Genomes Instead of Race for Personalized Medicine' (its open access right now!) Lets say you have a headache, so you decide to take some Tylenol. It dissolves in your…

The Illusion of Virginity

Here's a delightful article from today's New York Times: The operation in the private clinic off the Champs-Elysees involved one semicircular cut, 10 dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900. But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity. Like an increasing number of Muslim women in Europe, she had a hymenoplasty, a restoration of her hymen, the thin vaginal membrane that normally breaks during the first act of intercourse. “In my culture, not to be a…

The Republicans on Biblical Literalism

The subject of biblical literalism came up at last week's Republican / You Tube debate: Joseph: I am Joseph. I am from Dallas, Texas, and how you answer this question will tell us everything we need to know about you. Do you believe every word of this book? Specifically, this book that I am holding in my hand, do you believe this book? In case you were wondering, the book in question was the Bible. Here's what happened next: Cooper: I think we've got a question. Mayor Giuliani? Huckabee: Do I need to help you out, Mayor, on this one? (Laughter) (Applause) Giuliani: Wait a second, you're…

Lions for Lambs

Robert Redford's new movie Lions for Lambs is struggling at the box office. It's also been getting largely negative reviews. But since I saw Bill O'Reilly and other right-wing outlets bashing it for its supposed anti-American bias, I felt honor-bound to go see it. I guess there's no accounting for taste. I loved this movie. I thought it was completely riveting throughout, despite having almost nothing in the way of action. The plot, such as it is, involves three loosely connected stories. In one, Republican senator Tom Cruise is trying to persuade skeptical journalist Meryl Streep that…

The Right's Desperation, Part Two

But when it comes to brain-dead venom-spewing, Kristol is an amateur compared to Town Hall columnist Lisa De Pasquale. How bad have things gotten for the right? Well, let's have a look. A standard criticism of the phony machismo that is the stock-in-trade of right-wing politicans is that they are unwilling to see their own children fight in the wars they are so fond of starting. This is often presented as a slam-dunk argument exposing their utter hypocrisy. That's precisely what it is. The question “Would I be willing to serve, or see my children serve, in this war?” is one every…

The Howler on Lomborg

Speaking of cranks, all of the recent fuss over Al Gore's testimony to Congress on the subject of global warming has seen the revival of statistician Bjorn Lomborg. You might remember him as the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, the book that was going to set us all straight on the subject of environmentalism. According to Lomborg, everything is much better than we've been led to believe. I only made it through about half of Lomborg's book before conking out. I was not really in a position to assess a lot of his claims. There were some crank warning signs, like the conversion…

Niskayuna by Fermi

The other morning, I was lying in bed and for some reason, found myself wondering what the population of Niskayuna is. While this is easily Google-able, as I said, I was in bed, and didn't want to get up to get a device with Internet connectivity. So I tried to Fermi-problem my way to an answer using numbers I could come up with without opening my eyes. The starting point for the estimate was the fact that SteelyKid's kindergarten class has 20-odd kids in it, and there are three kindergarten classes in her school. The school is one of five elementary schools that Niskayuna operates (Birchwood…

Blackford Replies to Ruse

Today is the last day of classes around here, meaning that I am just too darn happy to work up the righteous indignation needed for a proper blog post. So your homework is to go read this excellent essay from Russell Blackford. It is mostly directed at the recent chest-thumping of Michael Ruse, but also addresses some other issues as well. I especially appreciated this part: For Ruse, the whole point seems to be that a bright line must be drawn between religion and science, but this is not merely simplistic, misleading and wrong - though it is all of those. It is impossible. Whatever we…

More Infuriating than the Creationists

Jerry Coyne has an important post up responding to this awful essay by Peter Doumit, posted at the BioLogos website. Doumit's essay has nuggets like this: Divine revelation comes in two forms: the Word of God (including both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition) and the Work of God (including the natural, physical world and the laws that govern it). Both are equally valid forms of truth, as they stem from the same Source. And since truth can never contradict truth, a truth revealed in one cannot ever be in conflict with a truth revealed in the other. Once this is fundamentally understood,…

Coyne Clarifies His Views

As a coda to the previous post, have a look at this post from Jerry Coyne. Since some of his blog posts have been at the center of the recent dust-ups about accommodationism, he elected to provide a clear statement of his views on this topic. He presents things in a list of six numbered points, five of which I agree with. Here's the one with which I disagree: I think the National Center for Science Education and other scientific organizations should make no statements about the compatibility of science and religion. When they insist on this compatibility, they are engaging in theology.…

Dennett Among the Faithful

Via Jerry Coyne comes this report, from Daniel Dennett, of a symposium on science and faith held at Cambridge. It sounds like his experience was very similar to mine at the recent NAPC conference. Dennett writes: I am attending and participating in the big Cambridge University Darwin Week bash, and I noticed that one of the two concurrent sessions the first day was on evolution and theology, and was 'supported by the Templeton Foundation' (though the list of Festival Donors and Sponsors does not include any mention of Templeton). I dragged myself away from a promising session on speciation…

Links for 2009-09-18

slacktivist: Our trespasses "But then there's this other phrase which, when we listen to ourselves saying it, is the scariest part of any given Sunday. "Forgive us our trespasses," we pray, "as we forgive those who trespass against us."** That's disturbingly conditional. It's almost contractual. The conditions laid out there are crystal clear and explicit, but we tend to recoil from them. We pray this one prayer more than any other, but every other prayer omits this quid pro quo. "Forgive us according to thy infinite mercy," we pray, or "according to your boundless grace," or "for Jesus'…

Links for 2009-09-03

Physics Buzz: The Surprising Physics of Pipe Organs "In 1877, English physicist Lord Rayleigh observed that when two almost identical organ pipes are played side by side, something strange happens. Rather than each blaring their own tone, the two pipes will barely make a whisper. But put a barrier between them, and they sing loud and clear. Markus Abel and his team of physicists at Potsdam University in Germany found themselves uniquely poised to investigate the long-standing mystery. " (tags: physics science music blogs physics-buzz) News: Unexpected Philosophers - Inside Higher Ed "That…

Academic Autonomy: How Much Freedom Do Post-Docs Have?

I'm not entirely sure why I keep responding to this, but Bruce Charlton left another comment about the supposed dullness of modern science that has me wondering about academic: The key point is that a few decades ago an average scientist would start working on the problem of his choice in his mid- to late-twenties - now it is more likely to be early forties or never. In the UK most people got a 'tenured' university lectureship straight after their PhD (or before) - created a lot of 'dead wood' but also gave people time and security to be ambitious. Longer time spent as a doctoral student plus…

Charter School Study Oddities

Kevin Drum commented on a charter school study a couple of days ago, which made me go look through the report (available from this ultra-minimalist page-- seriously, you can't even be bothered to cut and paste some of your introductory boilerplate into an HTML file to give people an idea of what's behind those PDF links?). The summary message is kind of bleak. From Drum's post, quoting the LA Times: The study of charter schools in 15 states and the District of Columbia found that, nationally, only 17% of charter schools do better academically than their traditional counterparts, and more than…

The dimness of D'Souza

It's Monday. You're tired after your weekend, you aren't too enthused about getting back to work, and it's just so dispiriting to have to get back into the grind. What do you need with your coffee? An unsurprising tale of a very stupid person, so that your boss and your coworkers will look like shining beacons of reason by comparision, and you'll realize your job isn't so bad after all. You need to hear about Dinesh D'Souza, because you'll realize that even in the state of sluggish stupor on a Monday morning, you are a thousand times wiser and more perceptive than that crank. You will…