Minotaurs!

Priceless video from the Onion.


Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

I especially like how the "balanced" panel has three defenders of the minotaur and only one person objecting.

Hat tip to Brad DeLong.

today's anti-health care idiocy

From the Investor's Business Daily:

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

As Jay Bookman points out,

Of course, that same Stephen Hawking who wouldn’t have a chance in the United Kingdom was in fact born in the United Kingdom, has lived his entire life in the United Kingdom and lives there still today, at the ripe old age of 67. (He was in fact hospitalized earlier this month.) Hawking is, you might say, living, breathing proof that these people are first-class fools.

He's far too kind. They are simply soulless atavistic liars.

They really are sociopaths.

it shouldn't need to be said, but...

part of the argument against any kind of torture policy is the simple idiocy of the people who have implemented it.

Andrew Sullivan's guest blogger Chris Bodenner points us to a horrific story:

Mowj Camp reports that a deaf and mute man was tortured in Evin prison for several days before he was released. “A detainee, who was suspected of pretending to be deaf and mute, was severely tortured for several days to make him speak until finally he was released after a doctor confirmed that he was really deaf and mute.”

I think this incident perfectly exemplifies the stupidity of torture.

Katzentreppe!

Was pointed to this blog by somebody on Facebook.

I love this spiral one:

Lucy Liu films

One to see:

Watching the Detectives

One to miss:

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

Abandoned the latter 2/3 of the way through because the plot was just stupid. The former is a delight, featuring L^2 as a "borophobic" woman who just loves playing mind games.

Da Plan

I understand that many people think I've been pursuing the Underpants Gnomes approach to job searching. And, to be fair, there is something to that criticism. Certainly the first six months of it resembled that kind of illogic and unfocused lack of goal orientation.

Anyway, here's the new plan. It's got three parts.

1) Long term
the long term plan is to find some kind of job that uses my field of applied mathematics (data mining, machine learning, analytics, whatever you want to call it) in a field among social sciences, economics, or politics.

The problem with trying to hit the long term plan immediately is, well, this plan doesn't appear to be getting much traction. I probably need to develop certain skills and/or figure out exactly where to work in this capacity. That leads us to...

2) Medium term
Medium term, based on the occasional good times I've had teaching, I think it'd be a good idea to get a teaching position for 2009-2010. At minimum, I'll substitute teach in MoCo, but I should be able to get a better position than that.

If I could get a teaching job that started tomorrow, I would do it. But that may not be as easily done as thought. (Not being Q, I cannot bend reality to my desires.)

3) short term
Contract work or temp work to pay bills through the summer.

Found a 5-week "science writer" position I applied for Thursday. There are probably other jobs like this.

A man. A plan. A canal. Pamana!

another word for nothing left to lose

OK, so the NBA finals are on, and I really want the Lakers to lose and that means, given my inability to root for a winning team after the Celtics squeaked out of the first round, that the Magic are probably doomed.

Don't have much to say right now, but I thought I'd share some photos of the Freedom, who I saw with Landru last weekend.



Sonia Bompastor, our French visitor, takes a free kick.



Here Sonia chats with Cat Whitehall before another free kick.



And here she has a collision with somebody from FC Gold Pride. Looks painful. But our Sonia is tough. And yes, that's all-World Abby Wambach on the left.



Here they are during a quieter moment.



Sonia takes a corner kick.

And after the game...