Open thread, 5/12/2013

The usual. I haven't been able to blog much because of various other responsibilities, but I definitely do feel pent up posting energy. So when I come back I assume that I'll have a lot of stuff to say. Meanwhile I'm chortling a bit about this bizarre attack on my friend Steve Hsu. Here's the issue that I always have with this: Steve managed to get tenure as a theoretical physicist. When you're talking to someone who is an academic theoretical physicist it is generally optimal to not assume a priori that they're ignorant dullards. Unless that is you want to just engage in empty signalling rhetoric. Though despite not having concerted time to write, I am tweeting a lot since that requires only minimal lengths of attention. Mostly it's just repeating the functionality of my Pinboard, though I do comment and what not. Finally, I keep hearing that the ...