It’s Friday, and the new academic term starts on Monday (I’ll be teaching at 8am– shoot me now), so it seems like a good time to try to forget about our troubles with pop music: The Onion’s AV Club has a list of great story songs, topped by “A Boy Named Sue.” I was amazed… Continue reading Pop Music Friday
Superheroes of Academia
The Dean Dad takes up a critical and shamefully neglected question about the academy: Which superhero would make the best dean at a community college and why? It’s not really my genre, but there are some good suggestions, including Batman (“His whimsical dilettante cover would make him non-threatening to members of the establishment but his… Continue reading Superheroes of Academia
Cold Fusion Never Dies
Weird ideas never die, they just go underground, and return with new names. “Cold Fusion” is now “Low Energy Nuclear Reactions,” and was the subject of a day-long symposium at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society. It’s not clear how much credence to give this. It can’t be entirely kookery, because this was… Continue reading Cold Fusion Never Dies
Hugo Nominations 2007
The Hugo Award Nominees for 2007 have been officially announced. The one award I usually watch closely is Best Novel, and this year’s nominees are: Eifelheim, Michael Flynn (Tor) His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik (Del Rey) Glasshouse, Charles Stross (Ace) Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (Tor) Blindsight, Peter Watts (Tor) Kind of a mixed bag, really.… Continue reading Hugo Nominations 2007
Thursday Night Dog-Blogging
It’s hard to be the Queen. This is actually from Tuesday night, and shows Queen Emmy the Mopey pining away for Kate, who was in Rochester for a trial. I meant to post it then, but I started to feel kind of light-headed not long after taking this, and opted to go to bed instead…
Labs vs. “Real” Courses
One final Steve Gimbel note. Toward the end of his anti-lab post, he writes: If you want to see a science professor get angry, just tell them that they teach all those labs to get out of teaching real courses. You’ll see faces get flush, veins pop out of heads and necks, and receive a… Continue reading Labs vs. “Real” Courses
Labs and Naivete
In addition to the argument that labs are pedagogically bad, which I don’t buy, Steve Gimbel offers some more reasons to get rid of lab classes on sort of procedural grounds. There are a bunch of interrealted things here, but the argument boils down to two main points: Labs are very time-consuming, and students would… Continue reading Labs and Naivete
Labs and Learning
Steve Gimbel at Philosopher’s Playground is calling for the abolition of lab classes:p> As an undergrad I majored in both philosophy and physics and I have a confession my former physics profs will surely not like — everything I know about physics, I learned from my theory classes. You see, science classes come in two… Continue reading Labs and Learning
Class Issues in Perspective
Yes, the unofficial Admissions Policy Month continues here at Uncertain Principles. The problem really is that it’s Admissions Season in academia, so all the navel-gazing academic journals are loaded with articles about it, which means that having wandered into talking about it, I can’t get out without a major effort of will… Today’s worthwhile article… Continue reading Class Issues in Perspective
Stuck in a (Shining) Moment You Can’t Get Out Of
Via Dave Sez, a good Washington Post article about the post-Maryland career of Byron Mouton: Five years have passed since Mouton helped Maryland win the national title the last time it was held in Atlanta, but the significance of that weekend still casts a shadow over his daily life in the American Basketball Association. Since… Continue reading Stuck in a (Shining) Moment You Can’t Get Out Of