schadenfreude
oracknows | December 13, 2016I’ve seen it noted that our new President-Elect seems to be selecting his cabinet officers and directors of federal bureaucracies based on how much they oppose the mission of the department they are supposed to head. For instance, to head the Department of Health and Human Services, he picked an orthopedic surgeon who belongs to an organization utterly opposed to any role of the federal government in health care and who himself looks poised to dismantle as much of the Affordable Care Act as he can. For the Department of Energy, he picked Rick Perry, a man so dumb that when he was asked during…
purepedantry | April 14, 2009I don't think I am alone in saying that I often feel a little envy and schadenfreude towards my peers. Science is a particularly competitive business with few remunerative rewards, so a lot of my self-worth is tied to comparisons with my peer's successes and failures. I won't deny being envious when someone gets a Science paper. And while seeing the abject failure of my peers isn't high on my list of priorities, I won't deny the small satisfaction that I get when someone who breezed through their PhD gets taken down a peg.
These aren't happy-joy-joy emotions. They don't make me swell with…