What we have here is an op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education by the author of a book about Charles Whitman.

Indeed, it is our mission in higher education to investigate and determine, as best we can, if there are "dots" to be connected. But during our inquiry we should not delude ourselves or ignore the obvious.

The Whitman case taught me that sometimes our zeal to champion causes important to us or to explain the unexplainable and be "enlightened" blinds us to the obvious.

... sensational questions from irresponsible reporters ...

As long as we value living in a free society, we will be vulnerable to those who do harm -- because they want to and know how to do it.

How quickly people forget the message of Tom Friedman, just because the context is domestic instead of foreign.

A collection from the archives, for your consideration:

AQ Khan has signed a detailed confession ...

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ... your super-empowered man.

One day you wake up... and chaotic evil just doesn't seem like the right alignment for you any more.

Peking Duct Tape, and Web Logs as Weapons:

There has always been a World of Disorder, but what makes it more dangerous today is that in a networked universe, with widely diffused technologies, open borders and a highly integrated global financial and Internet system, very small groups of people can amass huge amounts of power to disrupt the World of Order. Individuals can become super-empowered.

In the long run, the "swarming" that really counts is the wide-scale mobilization of the global public.

To win, we must all become super-empowered individuals. Get happy, get angry, whatever; just get going.

The bloggers with agendas are, in fact, copycats, just with a different weapon.

Individuals can increasingly act on the world stage directly, unmediated by a state.

So you have today not only a superpower, not only Supermarkets, but also what I call "super-empowered individuals." Some of these super-empowered individuals are quite angry, some of them quite wonderful -- but all of them are now able to act much more directly and much more powerfully on the world stage.

A rant from Decius:

... we've got a problem, and probably an intractable one.

TIA is a solution to the "problem" of super-empowered individuals that leaves a bad taste in my mouth for much the same reason that I don't ... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

The Legacy of the Texas Tower Sniper

Failure is a Good Thing.

A number of advocates have supported the establishment of an oath for life scientists as a way to address concerns about potential future bioterrorists.

Should life scientists make an oath ... that they will "do no harm" once they utter the hallowed words?

...

The main obstacle to becoming a physician is acceptance into medical school. Once accepted, students can perform poorly and still make it through the system, emerging on the other side to practice medicine on unsuspecting patients.

Unlike medical students who can repeat failed exams and courses many times, life sciences graduate students ... can fail ...

Failure makes you safer.

A code of conduct for the life sciences?

It's the essay as Möbius strip; a literary illusion that ultimately makes less of an argument than it seems to, and yet tells us more about what's true, what's not, and why that doesn't always matter, than a more straightforward confrontation with the secrets and lies of pop music ever could.

...

Like many people of a certain age, I remember where I was and what I was doing the day Cobain died. I was in my third year of college, I was in a dorm; friends and I were drinking 40-ounce bottles of Colt 45 malt liquor, and when we heard the news, we laughed.

Cobain's swan song, performed on MTV's Unplugged a few months before his suicide, was a cover of Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night", about a woman who wanders into the woods after her husband is hit by a train. Cobain, so deep into the authenticity trap by then that he'd never escape, seemed to be making one last attempt not to "fake it", by reviving a song by his "favourite performer", and exiting the stage without an encore.

Leadbelly is a favourite of folk aficionados who to this day perceive him as a giant of "black music", even though the vast majority of his fans were white. When white producers brought Leadbelly to New York City in 1935 to play "traditional" music, Life magazine declared in a headline: "Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel".

Cobain, so deep into the authenticity trap by then that he'd never escape, seemed to be making one last attempt not to "fake it", by reviving a song by his "favourite performer", and exiting the stage without an encore.

About this book, Booklist says, "With plenty of interesting and contentious assertions to stimulate even casual readers, this is a heck of an argument starter."

Keeping it unreal

Despite warnings that reading is a dying hobby, we are confronted with an astonishing number of written imperatives each day. We are told to pull or push doors, keep clear of fire exits, use caution with automatic doors, and Eat at Joe's.

But it isn't only what is being said, but how these messages are being delivered. Typography is not simply a frou-frou debate over aesthetics orchestrated by a hidden coterie of graphic-design nerds. You need only imagine a STOP sign that utilizes the heavy-metal typefaces favoured by bands Dokken or Krokus to realize that clear, clean and direct typography can save lives, or at the very least prevent drivers from prolonged bouts of confused squinting.

Now seems like a good time to ban comic sans, because the evidence makes it clear that typography is to blame for the recent unpleasantness.

The gun control debate is really a proxy for a more fundamental argument about serif versus sans-serif fonts.

The official typeface of the 20th century

The rise of the handkerchief was not simply a function of shifting social mores. It was also a part of the "civilizing process" through which the haves became readily distinguishable from the have-nots.

Like much contemporary social criticism, Cooper's story lamented women's extraordinary expenditures for "fancy articles," the ribbons, trimmings, and "gew-gaws" so prized as emblems of nineteenth-century fashion sense. Such wasteful spending on luxuries, the tale suggested, was an indication that American women were losing that crucial frugality central to their identity as mothers and housewives. "What young man," a concerned father asks, "will dare to choose a wife from among young ladies who expend so much money on their pocket handkerchiefs?"

Oh, to long for the anxieties of times past.

Vulgar Things

What should a robust acquisition investment strategy look like — one designed to perform well against all anticipated threats? How should the Army acquisition community assess the appropriateness of its investment strategy over time?

Developing Strategies for an Uncertain Future

What the reactions demonstrate is that no matter what happens, people are very good at finding confirmation for what they already think.

See also The easy answer to the Virginia Tech massacre.

False Lessons from an Atrocity

About 1,000 sock monkeys are preparing to deploy to the Middle East with the mission of reminding servicemembers that the American public still supports them.

Thank you, sock monkeys!

Read the news article.

Sock Monkey Ministries, Inc.

Violence in Baghdad was modest on Tuesday, with several people wounded by mortar shells and gunshots. However, 25 bodies were found. In Ramadi, in Anbar Province, security forces found 17 bodies buried at a primary school.

More than 200,000 people have died in Darfur and 2.3 million have been uprooted from their homes, largely by repeated attacks from Arab militias supported and equipped by the Sudanese government.

If a band remakes the song after it has ended its contract, it can retain ownership of the new version and license it itself without having to share the rewards with the record label. Now two of the musicians behind the band Wang Chung have hatched a plan that might seem even more absurd than the lyric "everybody Wang Chung tonight." More than two decades after the song "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" became a smash hit, they are recording it again.

"We have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran," General Pace told reporters.

A few more billion won’t draw that much attention from Congress or taxpayers.

"We heard the much-ballyhooed spring offensive that the insurgents were going to make, and if there is an offensive -- I am confident, I say and believe -- we were first out of the block. What we did in effect was launch a spoiling attack."

"In some ways, the drag from housing is still ahead of us."

"We believe that downtown L.A. is for real and not just a flash-in-the-pan trend."

It starts in a mysterious room where a shaman figure known as the Alchemist undresses blond female twins, removes their false fingernails and jewelry and shaves their heads.

"It’s funny, it’s silly, the ridiculousness of having asked so much of celebrity."

"Moral exhortation doesn’t change people’s behavior. Prices do."

... antimissile missiles that might not work, to guard against ... [ Read More (0.6k in body) ]

At least nine deaths in five states ... no immediate estimates of its damage, which seemed likely to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars. And it was not over.
"Just the magnitude of the devastation is always shocking and hard to absorb," the governor said. "When you see the folks, you see the devastation in their eyes."

... walking alone across a post-apocalyptic America, cold, dark and strewn with corpses and ash ...

"But I have to ask this: Why does AA feel that female travelers need things explained to them that male travelers don’t? Are we that dumb? That inexperienced in the ways of air travel?"

The big problems, these and other experts say, are prevailing images of what computer science is and who can do it.
"The nerd factor is huge," Dr. Cuny said.
"They think of it as programming," Dr. Cuny said. "They don’t think of it as revolutionizing the way we are going to do medicine or create synthetic molecules or study our impact on the climate of the earth."

"Humans can’t do it," Dr. Matsuzawa said. "Chimpanzees are superior to humans in this task."

People used to worry that the world was full of secrets; now it’s possible to wonder whether there are any secrets left.

But some renters have very clear ideas about how they want to live. And they will not let a lease or even market-rate rents get in the way. To them, sinking $5,000, $30,000, even $100,000 into their rental is money well spent.

"We were thinking, ‘How can we demonstrate to people just how long it takes to make a really good cheddar?’"

"By letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength."

The rockets, called al-Quds-1, or Jerusalem-1, "have moved into the phase of military production with an advanced degree of range and accuracy," said Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State of Iraq.

"We are not in a crisis, that’s for sure." In a crisis, "people don’t know what to do. People’s hair is on fire. Confidence is challenged. We’re not there."

The inclination and ability of young doctors to speak up is hampered by the hierarchies in teaching hospitals.