I missed this when it came out last week, but apparently, a gentleman named Ryan Bird was detained at the airport last week for writing “ Kip Hawley is an idiot on his plastic baggie filled with toiletries. Apparently, the security trolls highly educated and diligent TSA employees took the statement to be a threat or at least behavior that they didn’t approve of and detained Mr. Bird – while telling him that he didn’t have 1st Amendment Rights at the TSA checkpoint. ...

How White and Nerdy Are You?

Last week a friend pointed me to a comic that accurately described my life for four and a half years. Piled Higher and Deeper is a PhD comic strip. After reading just a few, I couldn’t help but think, “how did I miss this for all these years? It turns out that the comic started publishing just before I graduated and by the time it became (relatively) popular I was out of grad school. Anyway, a few of my favorite strips from the archives so far: ...

I survived giving my presentation today – in spite of the fact that I showed up to the wrong hotel, in the wrong part of the city. I blame my boss. I mentioned that the talk was at the Sheraton Imperial (although I hadn’t looked to see where that was yet) and he said, oh yeah, the one down on Campus Walk road. Get to the hotel on Campus Walk – oops, that’s the Millenium. Call my administrative assistant, she looks up the location and it’s 15 miles away. ...

Checking my schedule for tomorrow, I realized that I have to give a talk at a major “human studies conference about security risks in web-based surveys. Unfortunately, I haven’t actually prepared anything. I’ve got my slides from the last time I did the talk, but I really wanted to do something more interesting and interactive this time – preferably with audience volunteers wearing silly hats. I may still try to put something together in the morning. I have an idea – but no sense of the feasibility. ...

One of the disadvantages of having so many email accounts is the number of spam you get. Recently, I’ve been noticing an increase in stock spam making it through my spam filters. I’ve been wondering how effective the spam is and whether or not one could make money shorting these stocks. Apparently, I’m not the only one. The local paper carried a NYT article titled “ Many people fall for stock spam. In the article, the author describes the work of Frieder and Zittrain. Frieder and Zittrain found that pink sheet stocks that were heavily touted in spam were significantly more likely to be traded than non-touted stocks. Purchasing these stocks would lead a 5.25% loss within two days. For the most heavily touted stocks, the average loss was almost 8% in two days. ...

Just picked up our cat Whisper from the vet today. She’s been over at the Carrboro Animal Hospital in their RadCats facility for the past two weeks getting her thyroid treated. It seems that cats are prone to tumors on their thyroids. The tumors produce excess hormones which cause them problems. The treatment is a dose of radioactive iodine (I-131) injected under the skin. She then had to stay in isolation for three days and at the vet’s facility for another week and a half. Technically, we brought her home early and we still need to take precautions, but it’s good to have her home. ...

just heard from K – the flying squirrel didn’t make it through the night. She’s guessing that the impact of the truck caused internal bleeding. unfortunately, there wasn’t much she could do

I haven’t put up the baby squirrels’ seven week pictures yet – I’ll do that tomorrow. They’re getting huge (~150g each, up another 40g from last week) Just had a guy drop off a flying squirrel to K. Apparently, it swooped down on him at the intersection of 15-501 and Europa and he (not his fault) hit it with his truck. Fortunately, he wasn’t going that fast. Assuming the squirrel makes it through the night, I’ll post some pictures. Since s/he’s a full grown adult and still only about 4″ long – he’s adorable. Just registered a new site for K and a friend. They’re planning on posting box turtle rehabilitation information there as well as information about a box turtle re-establishment project for which they are seeking approval. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you www.boxturtleheadstart.org

You can bet that any article written by a conservative that starts with “Liberals don’t value a college education? will be full of crap. The only relevant question is “what kind of crap will it be full of? In the September 22nd issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Chronicle Review, Anthony P. Carnevale writes an opinion piece titled “ Discounting Education’s Value. The first couple of paragraphs give you a flavor of his arguments: ...