For someone at risk of descending into irrelevancy, any PR is good PR. There's a reason actresses of a certain age and caliber (or the lack thereof) start doing stupid sh*t.

Simple: It's a PR stunt.

I find that Apple's "locked in" ecosystem does not extend to OSX. Personally, I find the OSX command line much more open and extensible with perl, python, shell and friends. YMMV.

Is it open in the sense of Open Source? Of course not. But that's not what I'm going for, and Apple gives me a good compromise. So I'm happy with OSX.

Indeed, but then your priorities change in life and the right tool changes along with it.

Started out with Windows because I did not know any better, and switched to Linux in high-school. Now, several degrees and more than a decade later, I switched to OSX for the sake of convenience.

Windows is too closed; and Linux isn't supported by enough third party software vendors to do my job effectively. When your time is money, you make a compromise -- and that is OSX.

Apple makes good hardware, great software, and I can have both command shell and run Excel *and* Keynote (and boot into Windows if I need to run anything else). Plus, good, stable UX and a great repertoire of software. Besides, anything open source and good that's available on Linux is usually available on OSX (or could at least be compiled if you're so inclined).

So, at the end of the day, right tool for the job, and at this time, that's Apple and OSX.

I found this comment on the RTFA to be of particular interest. It offers a lot more insight into what may have driven Harvard to shut down the center.

This article only touches the surface on what happened. It wasn't about Harvard wanting to destroy a "vibrant" center (and I'm very curious as to who the "most well-funded faculty members" who left are and when did they leave?). It may not have even been the most recent horrible press that the primate center gave Harvard, because as in sports, bad behavior and bad press would have been forgiven by Harvard if the science at the primate center was stellar. But the primate center decidedly wasn't stellar.

It has been almost 20 years since anyone currently working at the primate center and directly working with monkeys had a first author publication (other than a review article) in a top tier science journal. For a Harvard department, that was a pitiful track record. Even in the rather limited world of primate research, Harvard's primate center was second tier. That was why when IAVI (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) wanted to figure out how attenuated SIV worked (the attenuated SIV was long considered the domain of Harvard's primate center) it ended up giving the vast majority of its money to other primate centers. Moreover, even at HMS, the best primate research was coming from researchers NOT associated with Harvard's own primate center, those researchers were outsourcing their needs to other primate centers.

This made Harvard's own primate center expendable and a potential net liability for Harvard especially given all its recent negative press. To make matters worse, the primate center's prior director, a man largely responsible for the center's recent decline, sluggish scientific output, and at least some of the mismanagement at the primate center, was tone deaf to the negative publicity, acting like he had nothing to apologize for, and must have further antagonized the center's position at Harvard. Even after he was forced to resign, Harvard never attracted a first rate primate researcher to take over and energize the place. In the end, Harvard must have decided it was better to just outsource its primate needs and reduce its negative publicity.

The more interesting question is whether this will turn out to be an isolated event or really a nod to the increasing power of animal rights activists.

Props for the Wayne Gretzky reference, eh.

Ahh, the Calvinistic work ethic.

I think you are conflating belief in no god with no belief in god.

Atheists have no belief in god given the unlikeliness of god's existence. However, I do not believe the English language has a term for someone who believes in "no god".

As an atheist, I have no belief in god, or any religions. That is not the same as believing with certainty that there is no god.

I do not believe in flying green monsters or fairies, either. That does not mean I am in denial about their existence. It merely means that debating their existence merits little effort, and for all intents and purposes, it is unlikely that they exist.

Similarly, god in the traditional, religious sense of the word is also quite likely a human fantasy, and merits little debate. That's not to say there isn't a miniscule probability of god's existence -- sure, anything is possible. But it's just pretty unlikely, and for all intents and purposes, I will treat it as a non-entity unless proven otherwise.

Atheism, by definition is non-belief, and agnostics, unless they believe, are also atheists. The distinction is important.

The burden of proof is upon those who make extraordinary claims.

I am happy to pay for these publications because they are well written, well edited, and have content that is not easily available elsewhere.

Sure, except that they're all available online or in a digital format (e.g. eBook).

You seem to be equating elsewhere with not online. I made no such distinction. I merely meant that I am happy to pay for the content, immaterial of where it is published (online or in print).

Similar quality publications are not available for, say, free, or easily accessible on someone's blog. Elsewhere includes the realm of both online and print media.

So, it is rather impossible to find the same quality and type of content elsewhere (online or otherwise) consistently, which was my point.

Although I do prefer the print editions because I am less distracted, and more likely to finish my magazines cover-to-cover.

Indeed. I couldn't agree more. There are some magazines that I continue to read regularly.

The Economist, National Geographic, Harper's, Paris Review, NY Review of Books, Granta, and Foreign Affairs to name a few.

The content in some of these magazines are unique and not available online. More importantly, it keeps these publishers and writers in business, which to me is a great incentive.

I am happy to pay for these publications because they are well written, well edited, and have content that is not easily available elsewhere. They are not just sensationalism and raw data that's poorly written by a 20 year old (e.g. cnn.com) -- they are well written pieces with commentary, insights, and opinions that I value.

I think you're conflating absolute disbelief from simply not giving an idea any credence.

Well said.

Once you start hitting real science and math, typically in junior high/middle school, people start to fall by the wayside.

I would chalk it up to educational methodology and the one-size-fits-all pedagogy that we seem to practice when it comes to education. People have unique skills, and people learn differently.

There are some things that come easily to me, without expending any significant effort (math, language, music) but there are things that I have to struggle with (e.g. visual arts).

Those things I am good at, I learn pretty much on my own. Take math, for instance. I can very easily pick up even sophisticated topics (e.g. topological manifolds) by picking up a book and immersing myself for a few weekends. Ditto for music -- I can usually translate my musical knowledge to any musical instrument once I've established the scale and technique. I may not be very good at it (not without practice, anyway), but I will make music.

But those things that aren't my strong suit? I need a lot of practice and the freedom (not to mention time) to make the connections on my own.

Foreign languages is another one of those -- I grew up in a tri-lingual household, and I can usually pick up languages pretty easily. But I find it easier to pick it up by immersion than by reading a book or going through a course. Letting me spend two weeks immersed in a language will be significantly more productive than subjecting me to a traditional class on languages for two months.

So, in my opinion, most people perform poorly because the educational system is designed for scale and issuing rubber-stamps -- not real education. If our goal is to genuinely educate the masses, we would have an educational system that's catered to people's strengths and learning capabilities.

You should watch Stefan Sagmeister's "The Power of Time Off" -- great TED talk on the value of taking a break.

As an immigrant who was once on an H1B, I completely agree with you. Here's the deal: I went to grad school in the U.S., and took up a job in R&D after graduating. My goal, after graduating, was to be part of this country, contribute to its economy and its culture.

It is hard to say this without sounding elitist, but on some level, painting those who have pursued advanced degrees in this country and for those who are nothing more than warm bodies from IT body shops as being unfair.

Since then, I have started three companies, one of which was reasonably successful. I married an American girl, bought a house and settled down, and I would like to believe that I have genuinely contributed positively to this economy.

However, here is the irony of it all: it is far easier for a guy from Infosys or Tata to get an H1B than it would be if I graduated from Stanford with a Ph.D. and wanted to start my own company. The system is so flawed that if I do not have the sponsorship of a big corporation, it is harder for me to get an H1B than a poor Cobol code monkey from India, despite having graduated with an advanced degree from here.

In contrast, most of those people get low paying jobs pumping out mediocre code, and often end up going back to India with substantial savings. While I can certainly understand their position, they live in their own cultural bubbles and are often not interested in full integrating culturally because they know they aren't settling down here.

And is IT the only area that really needs people? What about other areas, where people with advanced degrees from the universities of this country can get jobs? Biotech, chem engineering, manufacturing, aeronautical -- you name it. Either limit the program so that it is easier for people to immigrate and integrate, or make the program truly be for talented people who should be part of this country's economy. /rant