In the 1960's I knew a physics professor at Berkeley who became politically active on the left (still is). He immediately became persona non grata in the department. The big social nexus of the department were periodic parties at the house of (as they use to say) Dr. and Mrs. Edward Teller. As soon as is politics became public they were dropped from the invitation list. Not that they suffered; they found their new friends a lot more interesting. I will say one good thing about Teller. He is coauthor on the original aritcle on Monte Carlo Markov Chains. This is a very useful mathematical technique used in simulation models and applied Bayesian statistics. I assume it was originally developed by Tellers and others (probably mainly other mathematicians working for Teller) to simulate nuclear reactions. Today it is part of them models used to predict global warming. So when the right wing says "where is the science," the Green's can point to this legacy. -----Original Message----- From: Andrew Hagen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, May 02, 2001 11:11 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:11136] article on being left And now for something completely different. . . . I came across a good article. A highlight: "Although in many ways I'm a fairly conventional person (I'm a professor, with no tattoos or piercings), my political activity on campus and in the community has alienated me from most of my colleagues. It's not that they are nasty to me -- the vast majority are civil in routine dealings, so long as I don't press political topics -- but I am not part of the department in any meaningful social way. With a couple of exceptions, even those who say they support and respect the political work I do almost never engage me in conversation about it. That's the price I have paid for being openly left and engaging in what many see as unnecessarily confrontational politics." <http://commondreams.org/views01/0430-03.htm> Andrew Hagen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
