In response to the post on murders in universities, Rahul offers a couple of links about Valery Fabrikant who gunned down several colleagues at Concordia in 1992:
The story of Valery Fabrikant at Concordia (mentioned in the NYT article) is equally fascinating. They link to Fabrikant's highly paranoid account. Here is an impartial version, which, while confirming that he was a dangerous crackpot, also paints the university in a very poor light (many of Fabrikant's allegations against his colleagues were true).
Sticking with the theme of academic murders, here's a post by Janet Stemwedel (from last year) examining the ethical lapses that may underlie these extreme actions by some of the victims.
Via Guru: Julianne Dalcanton has a post up at Cosmic Variance recommending an interesting exercise: identify your archnemesis ("The archetypal archnemesis is someone who, in spite of violating various norms of scientific conduct (ranging from blatant cheating to rudeness), is successful in your subfield, and whose behavior compromises your own ability to get work done."), and use that person "as a model of how not to act towards others".
When it comes to getting faculty positions in top institutions (at least in the US, at least in physics!), it helps if you are from another top institution.
A bunch of people presented their ideas for nurturing the next generation of American scientists. The US House of Representatives listened.
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