The Era of Entitlement by Marci Hamilton
Thanks to Brett Marston once again for pointing to this excellent essay.

And the Ignobel goes to
This year's Ignobel awards are out. They're a parody of the Nobel prizes and I'm proud to say that one of my compatriots, Lal Bihari, won the peace prize for his campaign to prove that he is alive. Some of the other winners:

• Engineering: To John Paul Stapp, Edward A. Murphy, Jr (both posthumous) and George Nichols giving birth in 1949 to Murphy's Law, the basic engineering principle that "If anything can go wrong, it will".


• Chemistry: A Japanese researcher who investigated why a bronze statue in the city of Kanazawa did not attract pigeons.


• Biology: CW Moeliker from the Netherlands for documenting the first scientifically recorded case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard duck.