Janet follows a post by ScienceWoman on prioritizing research time with a List of advice for tenure-track faculty. It’s excellent advice if you’re a junior academic seeking tenure. I have only one suggestion to add: Seek advice, but don’t take too much of it. If you’re on the tenure track, you will have friends and… Continue reading Advice for the Tenure Track
Month: April 2008
Stuck in an Elevator
Scott Eric Kaufman, inspired by this piece in The New Yorker, relates his own tale of being stuck in an elevator: At this point I was about five minutes into my own hanging. The damn thing wouldn’t settle and so I panicked. I started pacing frantically and I checked my watch and I knew I… Continue reading Stuck in an Elevator
links for 2008-04-20
Jacks of Science â Super Slow Motion is the New Slow Motion “[A]s frames per second increase (speed of video decreases), coolness approaches infinity, a value infinitely cooler than the speed of normal life. Moving past this discontinuity, boringness surpasses coolness and we observe exponential decay as speed of (tags: video youtube silly science gadgets… Continue reading links for 2008-04-20
There’s No Escape
There’s just no getting away from science-and-religion. Yesterday’s (snail) mail brought a flier from the Williams College Society of Alumni, giving the schedule of events for my upcoming 15th (!!) college reunion. The very first item on Thursday’s list of faculty lectures: 1 p.m. “Celebrating Evolution from a Religious Perspective” featuring Stuart Crampton ’58, Barclay… Continue reading There’s No Escape
Science-and-Religion Links Dump
The whole framing/ “screechy monkeys” fracas led to a number of people asking for more frequent postings emphasizing a more moderate view of the great science and religion flamewars. As I said at the time, I’m a little hesitant about this, because there just isn’t that much there that crosses the posting threshold for me–… Continue reading Science-and-Religion Links Dump
links for 2008-04-19
Preliminary thermal modeling accounts for some (but not all) of the Pioneer Anomaly – The Planetary Society Blog | The Planetary Society Some of the mysterious extra acceleration may just be uneven heating. (tags: science space physics astronomy thermo theory computing) Car Talk “Coming April 22, PBS’s NOVA presents a very special program. The topic?… Continue reading links for 2008-04-19
Beer Run
I drank the last of the Dogfish Head Raison d’Etre last night (I don’t go through beer very quickly these days), which means the fridge is nearly empty, and it’s time for a beer run. Which, of course, is a great excuse for a filler-iffic audience participation question: What sort of beer should I buy?… Continue reading Beer Run
Stability and Pedagogy
(Because nothing brings in readers like a physics pedagogy post…) Out in Minnesota, Arjendu is expressing high-level confusion about the business of lecturing: As I’ve said a few times before in this blog, I prefer to let students read the text to get a preliminary take on physics content on their own, generate questions and… Continue reading Stability and Pedagogy
Friday Dog Blogging
“Why in the world are you posting that?” “What do you mean?” “It’s a yappy little dog. We don’t like yappy little dogs.” “True enough, but it’s a picture of a yappy little dog in the infrared, and that’s pretty cool.” “I don’t think it’s all that cool. You should take pictures of me in… Continue reading Friday Dog Blogging
links for 2008-04-18
The Scientific Activist: Why Are Veins Blue? It’s all about optics. (tags: social-science medicine biology optics physics blogs) 100 Greatest Novelty Songs Feel the pain. (tags: music silly stupid culture)