How immigration restrictions are starting to hurt academic research 1 Nov 2009 Jorge Cham of PhD Comics was nearly deported from the UK recently. His story is most interesting, and somewhat scary: From here. Part one here. Who doesn’t believe that we allowed terrorism to win? Education Politics
Politics Haneef cleared 27 Jul 2007 A short note – it looks like Haneef has been cleared of all charges and the political pressure on his arrest and detention has been criticised by civil rights lawyers. Good news, but I really hope further action is taken against the AFP and the politicians. Keep an eye open… Read More
Philosophy Christian capitalism and socialism 13 Aug 201113 Aug 2011 Greg Paul, whose work on dinosaurs I find most interesting, has a blog entry on the Washington Post site on another kind of dinosaur – Christian socialists. He notes that the current American Christian obsession with capitalism is quite contrary to the early church and possibly Jesus’ own social philosophy, but more… Read More
Evolution Culpability and the Catholic Church 12 Apr 2010 The facts are no longer open to interpretation: not only bishops and archbishops, but the then head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, AKA the Inquisition, knew and covered up rather than dealt with pedophiles in the priesthood, and enabled further abuse. Michael Ruse, long an accommodationist,… Read More
My wife is a scientist. We are, here in the US, finding it more and more difficult to compete with the Europeans for top-talent because of all this stupidity. The Euro’s stay home and the many of the Asians like Europe better now. Even some US students/post-docs that would have stayed are having second thoughts… It’s pretty sad.
The US, UK, and maybe some others, gave the terrorists a win beyond their wildest imaginings — to whatever extent W. Bush was right in saying that the terrorists hate our free and open societies, he gave them their greatest desire by making the society more closed. As it is, I’m fairly often the only US-born scientist around the table of scientific colleagues. If not the only, one of a minority. US science requires that people be able to come here to do science.
I have probably said this before but I will say it again. You don’t resist terrorism with war, you resist terrorism with justice. And when you commit injustice against your own residents, you encourage terrorism.
“allowed”? I guess things must be better in Australia. Here in America, we didn’t just “allow” terrorism to win, we made damn sure it steam rollered right over our rights to privacy, our constitutional protections from unreasonable search and seizure, our right to peaceably assemble, and other rights as well.
Well, llewelly, the terrorists hate us for our freedom, right? So all we need to do is lose our freedom and the terrorists won’t bother us, right? Right?