"Brilliant … but what made Dr. K’s technique most insidiously evil and genius was, during the most technically difficult lecture of the entire quarter, there was no lie. At the end of the lecture in which he was not called on any lie, he offered the same challenge to work through the notes; on the following Monday, he fielded our theories for what the falsehood might be (and shooting them down “no, in fact that is true – look at “) for almost ten minutes before he finally revealed: “Do you remember the first lecture – how I said that ‘every lecture has a lie?’”"

"Keeping tabs on the thematic redundancy with which the United States government has marketed its calls for regime change over the years would appear to be a responsible activity for American citizens, given the fact that our nation has its imperial tentacles wrapped all over the planet. But I have never seen a "Remember Panama" sign at a protest, and, as I have confessed, until a few weeks ago, I would not have known what such a sign meant. Whenever Panama is discussed in the media, it is in order to advise Americans to go there and spoil their unspoiled beaches (hence, my initial interest in the country)."

""g" is a new library that provides a global "g" method that you can use to inspect objects much in the same way as Kernel#p. The difference is that the output goes to Growl, a popular OS X global notifications tool. It's technically an easy gem install and go, but if you have problems with it not finding Growl, this blog post about getting ruby-growl working should salve your distress."

"Science doesn’t work despite scientists being asses. Science works, to at least some extent, because scientists are asses. Bickering and backstabbing are essential elements of the process. Haven’t any of these guys ever heard of “peer review”?
There’s this myth in wide circulation: rational, emotionless Vulcans in white coats, plumbing the secrets of the universe, their Scientific Methods unsullied by bias or emotionalism. Most people know it’s a myth, of course; they subscribe to a more nuanced view in which scientists are as petty and vain and human as anyone (and as egotistical as any therapist or financier), people who use scientific methodology to tamp down their human imperfections and manage some approximation of objectivity."