That's a very unfair characterization of Roth's actions. He employed two graduate students, one from China and then one from Iran. He had the Chinese student send him a file while he, Roth, was in China, at a Chinese professor's e-mail address. The material in the file was deemed sensitive, as was the research. I think the professor ended up in prison primarily because he didn't understand that the FBI didn't appreciate him speaking with the professorial authority, like Moses from the mountain, that he was accustomed to use in his lab and within his field of study. but he did not hire spies, at least knowingly, not that anyone knows. And, I'll just drop this in: If I were a professor in the sciences I can imagine that I might want to employ non-American grad. students. I worked with and was friends with grad. students in the STEM fields, and there were a lot of "foreign" ones, and many of those foreign ones were much harder working than the American ones, many of whom seemed to think that grad. school was just more undergrad. school.

Acrobat Pro will straighten text as it OCRs, and it tends to be sufficiently accurate. It also will blow thru just about all of the ways a PDF can be locked. I think I've only had to turn to another piece of software once or twice since I've been using PDFs for research. I think most academic/research PDF peddlers just flip some "don't modify me" bit, which Acrobat Pro can undo.

OTOH, I just plug up an iPod Touch, and it syncs perfectly. Upon moving to Android for a phone, it took me a while to find an app that wasn't full of myspace-esque glimmering gimmicks like some 80s boombox; after that it was manually managing files in a folder, which is simple but tedious. That was until I found doubleTwist, which made the Android simple and one-click like the iPhone/iPod Touch. Either iTunes must be really horrible on Windows, or it's because people just have to have their media files all over the drive. And, I know that last one gets a lot of hate: evil Apple oppresses me because it wants my files in one place!!! Well, a) there's an option to not do that, and b) why aren't you also complaining about apps like calibre that do the same thing? And, yes, iTunes wants one library. The model for MacOS is based on individual users that log in, like most modern OSs. So, well, they expect you to do that with iTunes too. And, frankly, it's trivial to get around that with a beginner-level hack (if I can do it, anyone can), or you can buy some $10 piece of shareware to do it for you. No bigs. Sure, Apple stuff is locked down. But not as badly as some say.

I wish I had mod points today. Paglia writes in my field, more or less, and I read her first two or three books, which were/are bullshit, but which impacted me a lot back when I was young and dumb. Anyway, yes, based on the reviews of this current book, it's an extended troll aimed at the art world. So, oddly, enough she's more or less on the same page of the people here pulling the smarter-than-thou/well-actually schtick.

Paglia is not an art critic and wouldn't like to be called one. The, which is basically an extended troll aimed at the art world, attacks art critics in particular for creating an elitist, decadent art scene. (It's so easy to go Godwin on her claim that I'll leave it to someone else.)

I'm grateful for the clarification about your opinion of me, but I'm confused by the first sentence. How exactly is the situational nature of what might be said relevant to my post, which didn't address situations but only the original blanket statement that hate speech is protected?

Hate speech is protected, but exclusions are made for "fighting words" that intended to incite or inflict injury. So, yes, hate speech is protected but the speech intended to incite violence or cause emotional harm is not. And, yes, those are gray areas, which is what the judiciary is for.

As a teacher, I'd like to say that this method really, really worked for me at a major midwestern university. Then I moved to the South and tried the same method; it did not work. I'm not saying it's a regional difference, perhaps just admissions policies. But I'm at a second Southern university now, and I'm surprised students even wipe themselves, as they'll do little else if they don't receive a grade for it. Maybe this teacher works with similar students, ones for whom only high-stakes grading is sufficient motivation to lift a finger. (Can you tell I just had to sit thru a long faculty meeting? I'm pissy as all get-out.)

I'll make this issue more puzzling by pointing out how, in the US, many systems are cheating on students' test results because of the high stakes instituted by No Child Left Behind. I know that Atlanta and Montgomery, AL, schools have recently been busted because administrators were changing test results. And, in Montgomery, making extreme changes, say like a 7 on a skills test being changed to a 70. Likely the situation is worse in Southern states, where education funding problems are often worse. But I strongly suspect that the US is no longer gathering credible data in many districts nation-wide.

I concur. I often find myself resisting the urge to make cat-calls at attractive women. It's hard for me not to run over and grab their seductive boobies. It is not enough for me to just shut my eyes or stay home. So I think we should level the playing field by making all attractive women wear full-length burlap sacks. Of course that may be unfair to women, so maybe it would be better if all men were chemically castrated instead. That seems fair.

I'll match your anecdote with another. I worked in a natural history museum where we had a Christian nut who harassed one of our Jewish employees constantly, putting Jews for Jesus tracts in her box, giving her Christmas cards, telling her Jesus loves her, etc. It doesn't sound so bad, but it was unrelenting and drove the Jewish woman to tears quite often. Sadly no one had the guts to can the Christian lady. She eventually converted one of my co-workers, turning a perfectly good astronomer into someone who proclaimed that various laws of physics were impious deceptions thrust upon us by Satan. So, now, there's my anecdote, canceling yours out, unless of course I'm just making this up to persecute all the poor long-suffering Christians in the world.

And that Milton quote is just dripping with irony, given his politics. Milton was like many of us, he wanted freedom for himself but was happy to set that and freedom for others aside when it came to the Cromwell government.

Fisting without lube is painful.

The motivations for many of Stalin's purges were political, realpolitik more than ideology or dogma. There's even some evidence that his purge of Jewish communists was motivated by political rather than antisemitic reasons (at least not his own personal antisemitism, which I don't doubt existed). Rather, it's possible that he purged Jewish communist leaders as a prelude to his pact with Hitler. And, yes, Christianity in quite a few cases supported fascism, in Italy, German, Romania, it certainly did.

Oh that's a complete crock. My father-in-law ran a research lab for one of the world's largest electronics companies. He supervised people who won international awards for their work. They did a lot of research sitting in vineyards drinking wine, smoking, and chatting. Sure, they worked long hours too, especially at crunch times. But leisure is key to creativity. And they ate well and exercised, having cycling and skiing teams they belonged to (and still belong to as retirees). And they were all men in single-income families who were cared for intensely by their wives. They were pampered, fed, rested, exercised like thoroughbreds because that's what they were. (Not to mention Nobel winners.) In my field I have worked with internationally renowned literature scholars, people who crank out books like mad, win big grants, lecture around the globe. They work hard, but they also take care of themselves, taking breaks, eating right, exercising, etc. --- This talk of round-the-clock work, with no time for exercise, for family, it's not something I've heard from really successful people. Yes, there's crunch time, and yes, you have to work, but this "Work work and smile! Arbeit macht frei!" is the mantra of a drone or a future burnout.