Al Gore:

"This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place," Gore said as many in the audience stood and applauded. The speech was sponsored by the liberal group MoveOn's political action committee.

-ABC news

Can someone please explain to me what this statement means? At all?

Okay, well it's not exactly corporate sponsorship (come on Stevie make with the dough already), but my iPod made a funny reflection in the light in my car the other day, branding my cupholder. The lighting must have been just right.

Howard Dean says that Republicans are "evil," "corrupt" and "brain-dead."

This partisan nonsense has got to stop. It's tiring to see the same old junk played out over and over again. This is not what the country needs. Demonizing the other side accomplishes nothing, and the chair of a party ought to know better. We don't need a Hillary Clinton; we don't need a Tom Delay. We need a Henry Clay.

Sure the fact that I have a new pope is old news, but I'm frustrated with the constant reminder of his being in the Hitler Youth. I'll bet a dollar that even he's frustrated with it. After all, he was the one drafted. And he was the one who later deserted. Clearly there was nothing he wanted less at that time than to be fighting a shooting war against the west. He's not exactly John Paul and gathering people to practice in the face of the oncoming regime, but he's not Polish either. He's a German. Let's pull our heads out of our asses in this country huh? I hate nazis as much as the next guy, but he's the pope, not a nazi.

Why must our media try to make us look like a bunch of morons all the time?

I just pondered this thought: Has the left been exploiting the right since the last election? Liberals have always been about acceptance, but is this really the case? When I think back to the last election, there was a lot of press about the "blue state" "red state" controversy. But it wasn't long after until the "purple state" map rolled around, as if to try to patch the holes. From what I remember this was largely the left, who espoused that the real country is a mix of red and blue, hence purple. The problem I have is that the left still continues to carry blue paintbrushes. In that case it's like holding a purple cloth over the right's eyes while painting everything else blue. If you're going to push purple, then be purple.

I mean that'd be pretty devious but it's what's bouncing around in my head.

Good lord. I'm sitting on the campus lawn beside the library and of the last 9 cars to drive by, three had fart cans. That's an astounding 33 percent on a sammple size far too small to matter. Though of the three that just went by right now, one did have a fart can, so maybe there's something to it.

I don't understand why it is people think that throwing a 2.5+ diameter exhaust system is going to benefit a 1.9L 140 hp car. Plus, it doesn't sound good because there's not enough air flowing through there. There's gotta be displacement folks. And besides, was the drive quality or speed really all that improved after you put it on? I mean, did you even notice any change?

Today was a Peter Gibbons day. I literally do have 8 bosses. Okay, maybe 4. But still, that's almost 8 right?

Yesterday I got news that the lady from Olympus was coming to set up one of our microscopes, and that our computer for another microscope arrived last week. So I was asked by the biology department to see if I could get that computer down there. So I asked, and no one had any problems with anything. I sat down and fired up the PC, and delivered it. Because it wasn't being networked, it was a really really easy setup, and it didn't even require any antivirus. Mike (one of my "superiors" even came along to help me set it up).

So today the lady came in to calibrate it and put the image capture card in. When I finally got down to the office, I was firebombed by three people, Mike included, about how I left a little mess in Derek's office. I left some boxes strewn about. I apologized for it, because I thought I left it tidy. It was my mistake.

What pissed me off was the following reeming out from Mike about how I shouldn't have delivered the bio PC because it sets a "precedent" that if someone calls one day they can get it the next. He said it was supposed to wait two weeks. That's just a bullshit charge. For starters, he helped me with the project. Secondly, it didn't need to wait two weeks. It was delivered on the deadline. The computer was DELAYED two weeks because Dell didn't have the right graphics card and didn't call anyone to inform us. And that computer is NEEDED, by the date it was set up. I have a research conference next Wednesday, and it is critical that I have access to this computer/microscope. And I'm not the only one.

Next I got chewed out for giving the DVI->VGA adapters to the Dean of Arts and Sciences. He was upset apparently because now when bio gets another monitor, we can't give them one. Again, this is dumbassedness because they've requested another monitor which will be DVI accessable. Plus, the Dean has them. Of course, Mike says I should have given them to Dr Pack, because it's "his" computer. At which point I said, it's more the Dean's computer than Pack's, because it's the Dean's lab. And then Mike says, "It's OUR computer." Uh... then why did you say it was Pack's?

And then I went down to the media and caught flak about leaving Derek's office a mess again. And when I came back, finally, MY ACTUAL BOSS, jokingly threw some more at me.

Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

Campus god WiFied, and now I'm sitting here in bio row with a live Internet connection. While the prospect of blasting my gonads with straight up 802.11B spec radiation makes me a little nervous, what can you do? I'm working on a biotechnology seminar I'm giving tonight

I've found through personal experience with a sociologist (who quite frankly hates my guts) that sociology and politics don't mix well. I mean, they don't in the sense that we should not use sociology to predict what will happen or devise political strategies. It might not be all that bad through all of sociology, and maybe this guy was just a bad egg, but his ideas are out of whack.

It seems to me that most of the theory he learned focused on the downtrodden and uneducated. Which is all well and good, but it rapidly turned into an excuse-fest. Making excuses for people doesn't help them, and it sure doesn't solve anything. He seemed to focus on pushing the bottom up, as if pushing hard enough on the bottom class will sufficiently jam them into the middle and eliminate the problem.

I don't believe it works this way. Empirically, I've noticed that if you take a class of 30 kids, you're bound to have two or three troublemakers in it. Now if you take the biggest troublemaker out of the classroom, all is quiet for about three days. But the kid who was previously the second-biggest troublemaker assumes the role of king troublemaker, and your problem begins anew. And if you remove that problem-child, then the same thing happens - another comes to take his place.

I'm not saying that the uneducated are so because they're troublemakers. I'm saying that removing a group doesn't work. So there has to be another way.

The other day I came up with something. Basically, you raise the standards academically, but mostly designed to move a C to what is B range now. While it may spread out the numbers a bit (widening the gap between the smart and the dumb), it will take most people along. This is because once people have their roles, they don't ditch them for practically anything. The smart kids will go up if the middle is pushed up, because they need to do better than the regular kids. The regular kids will achieve higher because they unwittingly refuse to be left too far behind. And the slowest kids will naturally drag, but they'll drag higher. Consider it shifting the entire bell curve from the center, instead of pushing at the bottom.

It all comes down to how tightly you think people fit into roles. Not that they necessarily belong there, but how they stay there.

Pretty much fill in any remaining empty space with research, and that's my life.