Hey, Iran. We understand you have a lot of left-over Enlightenment liberals-- people who like to read books, take the occasional drink, question the occasional authority. Well, we have a lot of fundamentalists who are all about stoning adulterers and other contact sports. How about a little population exchange? Win-win, as they say.

So the new insurgent for the Republican nomination is someone who promises to use the military to destroy the independence of the judiciary, and to “kill” those who are named (presumably by presidential decision and without due process, since the judiciary is to be set aside except where it concurs with the executive branch) as “America's enemies.” This is, as the Eurosocialist across the breakfast table reminds me, the recipe for a coup d'état. Is this what people want? In any case, stop calling these people social conservatives. They are theocratic radicals bent on the overthrow of the constitution and the government.

Find a passage in the Constitution that is not meant to prevent someone like Newt Gingrich from seizing power. (Cf. his recent pronouncements on setting aside the judiciary.)

“Some disciplines bring in more money to the university than their base costs. Cutting a discipline that is generating revenue is not sensible in a time of declining resources. Humanities and social sciences are net revenue generators in universities... These disciplines also generate a larger number of credit hours as a result of general education requirements... Nursing, engineering, and the sciences are usually net revenue losers: even when students pay a differential fee, the fee amount is insufficient to make up for the expense... Research and doctoral education [not broken down by discipline here, HS] are also money losers.” Elizabeth D. Capaldi, “Budget Cuts and Educational Quality,” Academe 97:6 (November-December 2011), 11-13. The author is provost at Arizona State, so she's not just making it up. Humanists and social scientists, don't get dragged into a zero-sum game that will pit you against the natural scientists. All of us are doing work that is vital for the continuation of civilization. The fiscal facts in Capaldi's comment should rather prompt us all, hums, soc's and nat-sci's, to call BS on lying administrators.

Let's call it “peace spray.”

Thank you.

Seems logical-- or mathematical-- follow here the signal of the Clever Apes, overheard this morning while coffee-making and childcare distracted much of my brain:
http://www.wbez.org/blog/clever-apes/2011-11-22/clever-apes-22-paper-covers-rock-94295

So where will we find the future leaders of our country-- from among the UC-Davis students who showed extraordinary forbearance in the face of violence, or from among the Yale students who posted extraordinary whining when reminded of their own callousness?

What an alternative.

Evasive use of the passive voice is chilling to us all.

Commenters, exasperated like me by the UC-Davis and Berkeley police assaults, have been saying on the NYT and other sites, “What country is this anyway? North Korea? East Germany?” Point of information, people. In East Germany in the fall of 1989, the police were reluctant to hit the protesters, which is what allowed the collapse of an undesirable regime to go forward. They were, it seems, horrified by the June 1989 crackdown in China. So if East Germany is going to be the flavor, I say find us some nice Vopos.