Awesome
Sucessfully defending one's thesis is an incredible rush. It feels unbelievable.
If you can follow it up with a happy hour, a bar crawl, and dinner with family at Buddakan, by all means, go for that too.
Sucessfully defending one's thesis is an incredible rush. It feels unbelievable.
I had a hard time getting through Goldberg's column. Goes something like....
So it took a lot of work to get my thesis written (even somewhat late). I haven't gotten a lot of sleep this week.
Via the Carpetbagger.
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, today:
QUESTION: Just a simple question: Are we winning [in Iraq]?
SNOW: We're making progress. I don't know. How do you define
winning?
So my written thesis is due immenently, and I think it still needs work. I don't know how my committee feels about not have the written the requisite 2 weeks in advance, and I'm not happy to have to ask them.
There's a tendency to think of scientists as egghead intellectual types, even among themselves. I'm going to differ though. It seems to me that intelligence isn't remotely a success trait in science. Sure you need enough to get by, but it rarely makes or breaks you. The best scientists have a combination of two things: intuition and perseverance. Intuition is all about knowing what research will be useful, solvable, and interesting. It's having a good feel for worthwhile managable projects. Perserverance is a matter of dedication and the ability to work through the unanticipated issues that invariably pop up. Combine those two traits with a smidge of innovation or creativity and you've got ispiration. Intelligence can't compete with inspiration, it's not even close.
Andrew Sullivan links to Fareed Zarkaria's article in Newsweek offering up that "If Fareed is giving in, you know it's beyond serious."
Check them out here.
Watch me rip off Andrew Sullivan's entire post:
If Hastert Stays ... the GOP could lose 50 seats, according to an internal poll. And if he quits? Maybe they didn't ask that question. One aspect of this is worth further noting. The base of the GOP has been fed homophobia and gay-baiting for years now. It was partly how Rove won Ohio and the presidency. Gay-hating is integral to their machine. Now, the very homophobia these people stoked and used is suddenly turning back on them. Part of me is distressed that the GOP could lose not because of spending recklessness, corruption, torture, big government, pork, and a hideously botched war ... but because of a sex scandal which doesn't even have (so far as we know) any actual sex. But part of me also sees the karmic payback here. They rode this tiger; now it's turning on them. And it's dinner time.
Knee-deep in thesis, so I'll keep this short. Writing a thesis tends to put one in a bit of a wierd mood. It's a strange state of mind, with sort of a manic, organized chaos of thoughts. Almost like juggling. I don't know if I'll agree with anything I write here later, but hey, writing it down's the best way to find out. (Besides, maybe if I expunge the wierdness here I can focus more rationally on the thesis.)
After invading Iraq because we thought Saddam had weapons not allowed by the Geneva conventions, Congress has now given the president the authority to define torture differently than described in the Geneva conventions.
It amazes me to have to write this, but a lot of conservative types out there don't understand why we shouldn't be torturing people. Here's my rundown, and since I tend to use torture and waterboarding interchangably, I'll explain now. It's my view that any form of "coersion" which causes people to prefer being dead is probably torturous.
Conservatives came to office to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. But lately we have increased government in order to stay in office.And, soon, if we don't remember why we were elected we will have lost our office along with our principles, and leave a mountain of debt that our children's grandchildren will suffer from long after we have departed this earth. Because, my friends, hypocrisy is the most obvious of sins, and the people will punish it.
John McCain finds the balls to criticize his party while speaking to Tories, but not to Americans.
Quick shout-out to Fire and Mello, the nobel prize winners (in medicine), for their discovery of RNAi.
OH MY GOD, A REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN SENT INDISCRETE E-MAILS TO AN UNDERAGE MALE PAGE!!!