links for 2009-07-22

  • "Taking offense and getting angry aren’t exactly the same thing. Anger has to do with the intolerable difference between what is and what ought to be, which is to say, with injustice. Offendedness has to do with my own discomfort with the difference between how I feel and how I’d prefer to feel. Offendedness makes it all about me."
  • "If only there were some sort of short-term stimulus money, something we could apply for to cover the costs of ‘teaching out’ programs we’ve decided to discontinue. A structural counterweight to the drive towards mission dilution. A way to keep some folks on the payroll a while longer, while still narrowing our focus to the things we do especially well."
  • "The Sun perked up in June and July, with a sizeable clump of 20 sunspots earlier this month.

    Now it is blank again, consistent with expectations that this solar cycle will be smaller and calmer, and the maximum of activity, expected to arrive in May 2013 will not be all that maximum."