Via Inside Higher Ed this YouTube video is pretty much a distillation of faculty reaction nationwide to higher education’s response to the world economic crisis: The IHE link gives a little more context to the video, and some of the reaction to it. The arguments here are not all well-founded– science and engineering will necessarily… Continue reading Distilled Faculty Outrage
Author: Chad Orzel
Links for 2010-07-27
slacktivist: To bigotry no sanction “During Washington’s presidency, of course, most Americans did not “possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.” The man who wrote “to bigotry no sanction” also imagined he had the right to own other humans and the authority to vote on Martha’s behalf. But yet we can see here… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-27
The Western Undergraduate Problem
A few years ago, we ended up trading some classroom space in the Physics part of the building to Psychology, which was renovated into lab space for two of their new(ish) hires. This turned out to be a huge boon not only for the department (the lab space we got in the swap is really… Continue reading The Western Undergraduate Problem
Electron Spin for Toddlers
The subject of the “spin” of the electron comes up again and again, so as pointed out in a comment, I really ought to do a post explaining what it is and how it works. As a bonus, this gives me the opportunity to do the dorkiest thing anyone has ever done with a cute-toddler… Continue reading Electron Spin for Toddlers
Links for 2010-07-26
YouTube – I Will Derive! Gloria Gaynor, meet Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton. Leibniz, Newton, Gloria Gaynor. (tags: video math music youtube silly education) Cocktail Party Physics: the nays have it “[W]hile browsing the science section on Amazon this weekend, looking for new or overlooked science books, I thought it might be fun to highlight… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-26
How to Teach Physics to Your Japanese Dog
The vanity search this morning turned up something I hadn’t seen before: That’s the Japanese edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I knew one was in the works, but hadn’t heard when it would be out. Of course, I can’t read any of it other than my own name (rightmost column of… Continue reading How to Teach Physics to Your Japanese Dog
Links for 2010-07-25
Why tenure won’t disappear, just shrink § Unqualified Offerings “1) Did you notice the part where I said I’d want a higher salary to compensate for having less security? Yeah. See, lots of people are willing to slave away in grad school and postdoc positions and adjunct positions in exchange for a shot at the… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-25
Why I Can’t Take Doctor Who Seriously
It was miserably swampy for most of the day today– when it wasn’t actually raining, it was so humid that you expects water to condense out of the air at any moment– so I spent a while sitting on the couch watching tv with SteelyKid. The best kid-friendly option seemed to be an episode of… Continue reading Why I Can’t Take Doctor Who Seriously
Not Everything Is About CO_2
Climate change is a major crisis, don’t get me wrong, and it’s something that needs to be discussed extensively in both scientific and policy circles. We’re pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at rather too high a rate, and getting something done about that is a key priority. It’s possible, though, to take the obsession… Continue reading Not Everything Is About CO_2
Links for 2010-07-24
Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 040504 (2010): Room-Temperature Implementation of the Deutsch-Jozsa Algorithm with a Single Electronic Spin in Diamond “The nitrogen-vacancy defect center (N-V center) is a promising candidate for quantum information processing due to the possibility of coherent manipulation of individual spins in the absence of the cryogenic requirement. We report a room-temperature implementation… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-24