Via Steve Hsu, a lengthy rant by Bruce Charlton about the dullness of modern scientists: Question: why are so many leading modern scientists so dull and lacking in scientific ambition? Answer: because the science selection process ruthlessly weeds-out interesting and imaginative people. At each level in education, training and career progression there is a tendency… Continue reading The Myth of the Abrasive Genius
Category: Academia
Answers Matter More than Questions
The smart-people blogosphere is all abuzz about questions from the French college entrance exams, with comments from Matt Yglesias, Dana Goldstein, and Kevin Drum, among others. The general tone of the commentary is summed up by Goldstein’s question: Could you ever imagine the SAT or ACT asking students to write an essay on such complex,… Continue reading Answers Matter More than Questions
Charter School Study Oddities
Kevin Drum commented on a charter school study a couple of days ago, which made me go look through the report (available from this ultra-minimalist page— seriously, you can’t even be bothered to cut and paste some of your introductory boilerplate into an HTML file to give people an idea of what’s behind those PDF… Continue reading Charter School Study Oddities
New Grants Program for Solar Energy
Whether because I’m a blogger, or because I’m a previous recipient of their money (I suspect the latter), I recently got email from the Research Corporation announcing their new Scialog 2009: Solar Energy Conversion program: Scialog will focus on funding early career scientists and building research teams to undertake groundbreaking studies in solar energy conversion.… Continue reading New Grants Program for Solar Energy
Prizes for Science and Journalism
Two announcements landed in my Inbox yesterday and are worth passing along: 1) The Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism is now accepting nominations: # Articles must have been published for the first time between 1 July 2008 and 30 June 2009. # Entries must state clearly the website where each article appeared and the date… Continue reading Prizes for Science and Journalism
Academic Novels and a Comment Experiment
Female Science Professor is revisiting an old topic, namely, the academic novel: I was thinking about the general topic of academic novels because I was looking for some books to read and was looking through the lists in the links above. And then I wondered: Why do I want to read an academic novel during… Continue reading Academic Novels and a Comment Experiment
Paul Volcker: More Science, Less Finance
The main speaker at yesterday’s Commencement was Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve Chairman (the guy before Alan Greenspan) and current chair of President Obama’s economic advisory council. As you would expect from somebody of his background, the bulk of the speech was about the current economic crisis. The full speech is online, but the… Continue reading Paul Volcker: More Science, Less Finance
Dinner with Martin Perl
Martin Perl, a 1995 Nobel laureate in Physics for the discovery of the tau lepton, was awarded an honorary degree yesterday at commencement. Perl actually has a significant Union connection– he started his career as a chemical engineer, and was working for GE making vacuum tubes when they sent him to take classes in calculus… Continue reading Dinner with Martin Perl
Graduation Day
As the faculty started down the steps into the area where the families and friends of the Class of 2009 were seated, somebody in the crowd yelled “Thanks for passing most of our kids!” that may be my new favorite audience comment. Last night, it was looking as though we might need to go to… Continue reading Graduation Day
Selective Response: An Open Letter
Dear Email Recipients: Thank you very much for responding rapidly to the question I sent you. Now, please go back to my original message, and respond to the other four questions that were in that message. Thank you for your reading comprehension, Annoyed Re-Sender of Emails