links for 2009-01-13

""I’ve never had so much trouble giving away a million dollars," Chancellor Mike McKinney said, laughing.
That’s because he’s never spent it like this. McKinney plans to give up to $10,000 bonuses to instructors based on anonymous student evaluations"

"With faculty (and administrative) searches being cancelled left and right, I’m thinking that this dropoff might be the final nail in the coffin of the idea of ‘meritocracy.’ Simply put, the searches being cancelled now are no reflection of the quality of candidates, any more than the boom market of the sixties was a reflection of the quality of candidates then. The market is dramatically tougher now than it was just two or three years ago; to suggest that the candidate pool worsened in that time by several orders of magnitude is simply silly. The disconnect between ‘candidate quality’ and ‘market quality’ is so dramatic, at this point, that the ‘merit’ narrative is simply unsustainable. And that may actually be a good thing."

"Last week the American Astronomical Society had their big annual meeting, full of groundbreaking discoveries. […] Now that the conference has finished up, I can go through and give you my five favorite discoveries. "

"The ancient civilization that thrived in the mountain valleys of Yemen was famed for cultivating bountiful crops with a system of cisterns and aqueducts, but today the country is threatened with a major food crisis that experts fear could destabilize the poor neighbor of the Middle East’s oil and banking giants."

"Shortly after Newton proposed his new mechanics, the "shut up and calculate" approach of Newton, Halley and others produced the first astonishing results. However, it did not take long until the foundational debate about the interpretation of the new physics began. In particular, the true meaning of the position coordinates x(t) was heavily discussed."

"[T]he press release states that "Images taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit show small rocks regularly spaced about 5 to 7 centimeters apart on the intercrater plains between Lahontan Crater and the Columbia Hills," which is where this image came from. How can you get the rocks to space themselves out evenly? "

More than you ever wanted to know about recessed drive screws.

Crimes that may not necessarily have paid, but that were amusingly clever. Vote for your favorite.