Where there's smoke, there's fire

Every so often I meet with my supervisor to discuss my progress (or lack thereof) and then we brainstorm ways to get this dissertation done sooner than later. At the end of the summer we met. His suggestion was to take a week off to refresh the batteries and then get back at it. My desire was to rediscover my love of writing and continue working on the dissertation. The compromise was a temporary break from dissertating and a brief focus on tangential, but necessary academic activities like updating my CV and starting this blog. This was moderately successful; I don't blog as regularly as I might like and the dissertation meter doesn't always inch up in terms of raw and comprehensible page count, even while I'm plugging away every day.

Bubble Chamber: What control should the state have over its science?

My contribution to The Bubble Chamber this month is this week's debatable: