Jetlag Links

* Before you stop admitting Ph.D. students, please, read Marc Bousquet. The typically annoying discussion about this can be found at MetaFilter.

* Nonissue watch: The new Siena Poll finds that New Yorkers (everyone in the state) oppose the mosque by a 63-27 margin; they defend the constitutional right to build it by a 64-28 margin. Very sad to see Howard Dean of all people joining the wrong side of history on this:

I believe that the people who are trying to build the mosque are trying to do something that’s good, but there’s no point in starting off and trying to do something that’s good if it’s going to meet with an enormous resistance from a lot of folks.

I want my country back! But not, you know, if it’s going to be a whole big thing.

* At least someone has finally identified the real terrorists: people with COEXIST bumper stickers on their cars.

* Mission accomplished: The last combat troops left Iraq today. But don’t get too excited; 50,000 noncombat troops remain.

* Deconstructing the Twinkie. At left: FD&C Yellow #5.

* Save the words.

* In the future, all teenagers are deaf.

* Change we can believe in: the Obama administration is quietly making it easier to visit Cuba.

* And not exactly the direction we were hoping things would go: Call centre workers are becoming as cheap to hire in the US as they are in India, according to the head of the country’s largest business process outsourcing company.