There’s a great post at NeuroDojo on the Heffernan business this weekend, and what the take-away ought to be: Yeah, let’s criticize that she didn’t get past the first impression of science blogs. We should expect Heffernan to look before leaping – she writes for the Times, after all, which still has a certain reputation… Continue reading Virginia Heffernan Is Our Target Audience
Category: Politics
The Heffernan Conundrum
A lot of Twitter energy was soaked up Friday afternoon by a half stupid article by Virginia Heffernan at the New York Times. Sparked by Sodamageddon, she takes a look at ScienceBlogs for the first time, and doesn’t like what she sees: Hammering away at an ideology, substituting stridency for contemplation, pummeling its enemies in… Continue reading The Heffernan Conundrum
Distilled Faculty Outrage
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
Science v. Religion: Time to Try (Social) Science
There are lots of reasons why Josh Rosenau is one of the few writers blogging about science-and-religion issues that I still read. This morning’s post on what you ought to do to determine effective approaches is an outstanding example: Rather than looking at national polls, which are crude instruments and can miss shifts within small… Continue reading Science v. Religion: Time to Try (Social) Science
John Orzel for New York State Senate
If you’re in Broome County or environs, the biggest political event of the year is today: John Orzel is officially launching his campaign for the New York State Senate. This will apparently involve a number of events around the 52nd state senate district, ending with a rally and cookout in Scenic Whitney Point: “What does… Continue reading John Orzel for New York State Senate
Kids These Days: Is Our Learning Measure Valid?
Kevin Drum has done a couple of education-related posts recently, first noting a story claiming that college kids study less than they used to, and following that up with an anecdotal report on kids these days, from an email correspondent who teaches physics. Kevin’s emailer writes of his recent experiences with two different groups of… Continue reading Kids These Days: Is Our Learning Measure Valid?
Communication Skills for Scientists
As I am still getting lengthy comments at the Chris Mooney post accusing me of making unreasonable demands on scientists, I thought I should spell out as explicitly as possible what skills I think scientists ought to have. This probably won’t solve the problem, but it’ll give me something to point to the next time… Continue reading Communication Skills for Scientists
I Am Baffled Regarding Chris Mooney
The kerfuffle of the moment in the science blogosphere once again relates to Chris Mooney, who is pretty much a kerfuffle looking for a place to happen at this point. This time around it centers around a Washington Post op-ed that is basically the executive summary of a American Academy of Arts and Sciences paper… Continue reading I Am Baffled Regarding Chris Mooney
Insults Are Easy, Community Is Hard
Josh Rosenau makes an excellent and important point regarding prayer meetings and the Gulf oil spill: that the point is not so much that God will stop the oil gushing into the Gulf, but that religious groups are a key community organization point for getting people together to work on the problem. He puts this… Continue reading Insults Are Easy, Community Is Hard
(Belated) World Cup Contest
This was supposed to go up earlier, but it turns out that thinking you selected “Scheduled” in the MT back end is not, in fact, enough to schedule the post to appear. So this is showing up after games have already begun, but nothing of consequence has happened yet, so it’s no biggie. Anyway, the… Continue reading (Belated) World Cup Contest