Hitch was good at commentary on what had already happened. But no one is good at predicting the future...we are just good at congratulating ourselves after we have guessed right. I do think he could have done much better at admitting that he had been wrong.

I agree with the topic of the thread, "more than just a secular humanist", but in this particular case I think his pro-war sentiment was rooted in his feelings about religion, and for Hitchens war in the Middle East was a way to take up arms, in a literal way, against religion. (Yes, I get that Iraq was a secular regime, but the big-picture neocon agenda was long term regional war.) Again, I am not an apologist and do not excuse him. I think he was terribly wrong, and it is a huge blemish on his legacy. But I do believe that he was expressing his beliefs in good faith, not selling them out.

I, too, was dismayed by Hitchen's support for the war, and of course the results of the war were terrible. But I take issue with "careerist," which I take to mean that he put forward an opinion that he did not believe in for the sake of money. He was wrong, but you don't need to ascribe an evil motive.

There are probably three sides...Oracle, the nitwits who bought the system, and the administrators who are pissed at both of them.

It seems strange that Microsoft is now aspiring to be as evil as Apple. We have come a long way in the last ten years.

Bioinformatics seems to have an especially even spread of people over the continuum from comp sci to biology, so (from what I have seen) readers of C.V.s tend to focus on work and publications to figure out where you fall.

It's always possible that it is not your boring job that is making you depressed, it is depression that is making your job seem boring. Brain chemistry can be a real drag.

Those people and things pay for themselves. At many schools, the endowment is as big a part of the financial picture as tuition, and the alumni who are writing checks care about things like diversity, gardens and lawns.

1. Do not talk about Breakfast Club.

America's New CIO is a Buzzword-Slinging Douche

...through the machine that is tethered to the phone, right? You can do that now with your HTC Hero + PDANet. But Heroes are woefully underpowered, so you might as well upgrade anyway.

Having her sequence information doesn't really help to identify any mutation that might affect aging. You need a lot of subjects with the same phenotype (and you don't really know what the phenotype is) before you can start to identify the gene(s) you are looking for.

What exactly would have happened if Stallman had gotten into reach of Jobs? I think he might have given him a handjob, but that is just my opinion based on my own telepathic conversations with Stallman regarding current events.

I didn't say that Stallman is wrong on substance. Do his style and timing matter? For a spokesman for a movement, yes.

Given the quantity of water you are carrying for RMS, you might want to be careful with the word "fanboi".

...out of the way.

...is not that Stallman is wrong, or that he had an opinion about it, or that he expressed his opinion about it. It is that he offered his opinion, without being asked, while the corpse was still warm. It is just not nice to tell grieving people that they are stupid, even if maybe they are, a little, about one thing. Of course, he has the freedom to express his hurtful opinion. But what should be protected is only his right to say it. He is not protected from being called a dick.

Targeting people who google for IQ Test seems like a great recipe for cherry-picking self-important douchebags. It's no wonder that they use niche browsers.