Via a whole bunch of people on social media, there’s a new study of gender roles in academia, which the Washington Post headlines “Study: Male scientists want to be involved dads, but few are”. This is not inaccurate. Some quotes that jumped out at me: “Academic science doesn’t just have a gender problem, but a… Continue reading Fatherhood and Academia
Category: Academia
Travel Cons
Matt “Dean Dad” Reed has a post about the issue of academic conference travel, which is expensive and often the first thing cut out of college budgets. Which leaves faculty either disconnected from their field, or paying out-of-pocket to attend meetings that they need to demonstrate their scholarly productivity. This, in turn, tends to skew… Continue reading Travel Cons
On Productivity
One of the weirder experiences I had at the Nordita Workshop for Science Writers a couple of weeks ago was having people ask me “How are you so productive?” (or the equivalent). That caught me off guard, because I don’t feel like I’m especially productive– in fact, I tend to feel like I’m falling behind… Continue reading On Productivity
New Year, New Class: Gen Ed Relativity
The new academic year starts this week– first day of classes is Wednesday– and I’m dealing with the usual chaos associated with the influx of a new class of students. Who now look to me only a tiny bit older than SteelyKid and the Pip in the above picture (and if you think that sharing… Continue reading New Year, New Class: Gen Ed Relativity
Two Tenure-Track Faculty Positions at Union
I’ve posted this before, but a reminder can’t hurt: We’re hiring two tenure-track faculty this fall. The targeted research fields: We invite applications for two tenure-track Assistant Professor positions starting in September 2015, one in any area of theoretical physics or astrophysics, the other with a strong preference for biophysics or soft condensed matter (either… Continue reading Two Tenure-Track Faculty Positions at Union
Medium, Message, and Secondary Audiences in Public Speaking
Having just returned from a long trip where I gave three talks, one of the first things I saw when I started following social media closely again was this post on how to do better presentations. The advice is the usual stuff– more images, less text, don’t read your slides, and for God’s sake, rehearse… Continue reading Medium, Message, and Secondary Audiences in Public Speaking
Women of the Arxiv
Over at FiveThirtyEight, they have a number-crunching analysis of the number of papers (co)authored by women in the arxiv preprint server, including a breakdown of first-author and last-author papers by women, which are perhaps better indicators of prestige. The key time series graph is here: This shows a steady increase (save for a brief drop… Continue reading Women of the Arxiv
Uncertain Dots 20
In which Rhett and I talk about awful academic computing systems, Worldcon, our Wikipedia pages, and AAPT meeting envy. Some links: — Rhett’s Wikipedia entry — My Wikipedia entry — The 2014 AAPT Summer Meeting — LonCon 3, this year’s Worldcon — My puzzling Worldcon schedule We have some ideas for what to do next… Continue reading Uncertain Dots 20
The Fermi Alternative
Given the recent Feynman explosion (timeline of events), some people may be casting about looking for an alternative source of colorful-character anecdotes in physics. Fortunately, the search doesn’t need to go all that far– if you flip back a couple of pages in the imaginary alphabetical listing of physicists, you’ll find a guy who fits… Continue reading The Fermi Alternative
Ten Inessential Papers in Quantum Physics
I should really know better than to click any tweeted link with a huff.to shortened URL, but for some reason, I actually followed one to an article with the limited-reach clickbait title Curious About Quantum Physics? Read These 10 Articles!. Which is only part one, because Huffington Post, so it’s actually five articles. Three of… Continue reading Ten Inessential Papers in Quantum Physics