Dirty doings at Harvard

One of that venerable school’s most celebrated professors has been placed on suspension while charges of academic fraud are being investigated, and things seem to be taking a turn for the serious:

The researcher himself, Marc D. Hauser, isn’t talking. The usually quotable Mr. Hauser, a psychology professor and director of Harvard’s Cognitive Evolution Laboratory, is the author of Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (Ecco, 2006) and is at work on a forthcoming book titled “Evilicious: Why We Evolved a Taste for Being Bad.” He has been voted one of the university’s most popular professors.

Harvard has also been taciturn. The public-affairs office did issue a brief written statement last week saying that the university “has taken steps to ensure that the scientific record is corrected in relation to three articles co-authored by Dr. Hauser.” So far, Harvard officials haven’t provided details about the problems with those papers. Were they merely errors or something worse?

An internal document, however, sheds light on what was going on in Mr. Hauser’s lab…

Click through for the full story.  I’ll give you a hint, though; the misconduct involved monkeying about with research data… research involving monkeys.

The Expendables (2010)

Mickey Rourke is the best thing about this movie, and I’m getting used to being able to say that.  Otherwise, though, we’ve got next to nothing to admire: an appalling script, unimpressive and startlingly amoral action sequences, very poor performances from actors not even known for being master thespians in the first place, a stupid overriding concept, a ridiculous conclusion, and some of the worst military theory I’ve ever encountered in any venue.  When the only good things one can think to say about a movie are that there are no gratuitous sex scenes and at least it isn’t very long, it’s a pretty good indication that some sort of negative plateau has been achieved.

The Expendables is among the very worst movies ever made, at least in terms of wide releases; under no circumstances should you watch it.  2/10

This review will contain spoilers, not that anything could spoil a film that has nothing going for it in the first place.

Notes from an angry man

SDG has seen the future, and he isn’t pleased about it.  No, he’s not pleased at all:

For a perfect storm of nihilistic absurdity and banality, a convergence of politics, tabloid journalism and reality television seems hard to beat. [Noted Palin satellite Levi] Johnston, meanwhile, seems an ideal poster boy for a culture of meaninglessness. A young man whose sole achievement to date is knocking up a girl whose mother has become a poster girl for something else, Johnston saw a meal ticket in caddishness and has been tucking in with both fists. That his photograph was ever published on a magazine cover is damning enough, never mind that it sold any.

[. . .]

Perhaps the key point here is that the idea of Johnston running for office wasn’t something he pitched to the entertainment industry, or even his own idea at all. It was something the entertainment industry pitched to him…

It gets worse from there, if you can believe it.  Check it out.

Catching up

I don’t usually post on the weekends, but I feel bad about missing Thursday and Friday (I was busy, jeez), so I’ll just pretend that Saturday and Sunday are Thursday and Friday and post as if etc.

Incoming.