The weather is really bad -- endless rain, gusting winds, and splish-splashy puddles all over a campus that can't or won't improve its drainage!  What's the use of a big fat endowment if you can't keep a campus that won't turn into a mudhole every t

It's a nasty, horrible, depressing day out here in Nerdworld -- gray, humid, drippy, and generally blah.Add that to summer school, add that to grad school, add that to never-enough-sleep, and you get a whole lot of Grumpy Grad Student.I think we all

It's rather bemusing academic news.  The course starts this fall semester.Still, I really like the sarcastic comment on this from the incomparably sarcastic Fark.Com -- "UConn introduces Homeland Security degree. Students seen sneaking gas mask

This one's out of North Carolina, and it's horrific:Two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals were arrested on animal cruelty charges in Ahoskie, N.C., after investigators saw dead dogs being thrown into a grocery store garbage con

Well, it's the weekend!  A sunny, warm, beautiful weekend.  Time to rush outside!I leave you with a nice little photo of that glorious summertime treat, watermelon!(Xie -xie to the Sibling, who sent me the pic, taken from a recent fruit-carving co

It sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel.The latest news out of MIT is that its physicists have managed to create a new form of matter.  Pretty wild!  Check this out:CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT scientists have brought a supercool end to a heated

Ah, summertime is for baseball!And it's been a  great summer for Taiwanese baseball fans, as they've been eagerly watching Wang Chien-ming -- the Taiwanese player now pitching in the US for the New York Yankees.(Sorry, Red Sox fans.)Wang's now a sp

For me it's never quite officially summer until I see fireflies -- and I finally did yesterday!  At dusk there were suddenly hundreds of glittering little lights all over the lawn outside.  Magical!Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime...!

Is ther a wee bit of political Darwinism going on across the pond?Tony Blair tells it like it is.Fabulous.  Here is his speech.  Check this out for instance:I have sat through Council Conclusions after Council Conclusions describing how we are &quo

One might almost feel sorry for Jacques, who isn't doing too well in the popularity stakes right now.The Italians have been ripping into him with characteristically energetic Italian gusto.But the real kicker -- and a sign of the times in Europe -- i

A bit of background on the situation here.More from the Great Firewall of China as a well-known Chinese blogger and tech entrepreneur slams Microsoft.  Here's the opening salvo:SHANGHAI, China -- Twenty-eight floors above the traffic-choked streets

British spud farmers versus the Oxford English Dictionary!This is sort of thing that provides some much-needed semi-nerdy fun for summer school sufferers:Farmers want "couch potato" removed from the dictionary because they believe the expre

I'm not sure what's funnier -- the ban on the wearing of cabbage leaves or the fact that people were wearing cabbage leaves in the first place.Here's the tale, out of Seoul:South Korean baseball authorities have banned players from using frozen cabba

Done by the ever-fabulous Arthur Chrenkoff.Go take a look at who actually makes up the coalition of the willing.Thanks, everyone!

Hilarious!  Then again, I've no doubt at all that the Sibling and I together can run up a similar tab's worth of shu mai, ha gow, bao stuffed with roast pork, and other dim sum goodies.Check out this wild tale:BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese officials r

No, I'm not making this up!KETCHIKAN, Alaska - A bald eagle crashed through a window of a home and landed in the living room, scattering broken glass, feathers and a salmon carcass across the floor. . . . "It just grenaded that window," Has

Well, the British-French financial smackdown has turned into an all-out war, and the EU summit has broken up in chaos.Check out what various international newspapers have to say.  Check out the German Der Tagesspieger, for example:Tony Blair is righ

Gentle reader, I found the link for a pink Hello Kitty laptop via the oh-so-appropriately named blog, Beautiful Atrocities.I . . . I don't know quite what to say.  Check it out for yourself and tell me what YOU think!That stupefyingly cute Japanese

It should be the end of the story.  As I noted with some relief a few days ago, the Taiwanese Supreme Court has upheld the results of last year's disputed presidential election -- President Chen Shui-bian is still president.  (Well, DUH!)I was hopi

It's better than The Da Vinci Code -- this might actually have a basis in reality.Could we actually find a lost da Vinci masterpiece?  It'd be fabulous to find his Battle of Anghiari...!

Hello, gentle readers, I bring you a historical note for you.  (Gentle readers not interested in more history-blogging from this nerd can look away!)190 years ago today, Napoleon was finally and decisively defeated at the Battle of Waterloo.  That

Blair and Chirac have locked horns on the contentious EU budget, and the Brussels talks have collapsed.Note too that Great Britain is not alone.  The Scotsman reports that 4 other nations have also declared that the budget is unacceptable: Spain, th

Well, it took long enough, didn't it?!But better late than never, and maybe it'll shut up the extremists of the pan-blue (though I doubt it).  The blues, you'll remember, wanted the Taiwanese Supreme Court to declare last year's presidential electio

I turned in grades not that long ago, so the semester's grading hassles should be over, right?Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.Unhappy students have begun to pelt me with emails again, protesting their grades, wanting me to give them better ones.So,

Chirac pushes.  Blair pushes back.British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw calls the Eurocrats (and I quote) "deluded."Blair accuses Chirac of living in the past and refusing to listen to French voters.It's time the EU got a dose of reality.