scrofulous

Regular readers here will have noticed that I have far too many ideas to contain on only one blog. Fortunately I've been asked to help ...

I vote mostly straight Democrat, but wouldn't call myself a Democrat since my views are pretty far from those of the typical Democratic ...

Reading a comment from a reader of Krugman's blog about the recent death of Paul Samuelson made me rethink my attachment to utilitarian...

Based on a conversation with Charlie Bennett. There are two reasonable assumptions that imply a surprising conclusion: vegetarianism incre...

Many laws are justified by the need to protect ourselves from our own supposedly bad or coerced decisions. We have laws against drug use, p...

I had meant to write a post reviewing the excellent Re-Imagining Rwanda by Johan Pottier, which I found a shocking corrective to my prejudi...

How to turn a sphere inside-out (but not a circle). From the geometry center .

I'll admit it. I am terrified at the prospect of being trapped for more than a few minutes alone (like on a train or plane) without som...

A recent post at I Blame the Patriarchy was hilarious enough to remind me of why I started reading the blog in the first place: I mean to s...

Who knew that even by neglecting my blog, I could be joining a 200-million strong online movement ? The firm has said that 200 million peop...

Watch this show tonight on BBC2 at 8pm. In the U.S., you'll have to wait another month or so. It's called Battle of the Geeks , a...

Along the lines of Scott's 10 annoying problems in quantum information (now happily only 8), I have a handful related to universal gate...

[This post starts slow, but the interesting point is at the end.] 401K's are a great deal (employer matching funds, tax-free interest)...

Sarcasm may have obscured the point of the last post. Profiling makes even less sense against organized terrorists than against criminals. ...

People get all worked up about this idea, but think about the benefits: People spend on average less time in line. Terrorists get caught mor...

I finally met one. On a recent flight from San Diego to Newark I sat next to a Marine around my age who had done one tour in Iraq towards t...

A recent mozilla bug-tracker post opens with the line: This privacy flaw has caused my fiancé and I to break-up after having dated for 5 yea...

cous-cous be steamed 2-3 times instead of just dumping boiling water on it and fluffing it with a fork ? I mean, really, people. When I fe...

What does it mean to cross into another country, stay illegally either avoiding border guards in the first place or overstaying a tourist vi...

general principles : Almost everything is in big pots on high heat. Use lots of mustard and garlic, and add the mustard early so it infuses...

"She's got an indiscreet voice," I remarked. "It's full of---" I hesitated. "Her voice is full of money...

Review of Economics and the Public Purpose by John Kenneth Galbraith I realize that the title seems to suggest that reading the U.S. tax c...

For my evening French class I wrote a short piece about the riots in France. Since it's as interesting as anything else I post here, an...

Publications are all well and good, but you only really know that you've arrived in physics when you (and collaborators) propose some ...

Proof that if you make your slogan jarringly annoying enough, people will remember it decades later. But seriously, reading is a good idea,...