John Dupuis
Reading Diary: The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible by Lance Fortnow
Posted by John Dupuis on May 21, 2013 Someone shoot me if I ever use the term NP-complete in a sentence. Or at least if I ever use the term in a conversation with “civilians.” Such is the dilemma of reading and reviewing a wonderful book like Lance Fortnow’s The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the Search for the Impossible. I’ll be tempted…
The Canadian War on Science: A long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment
Posted by John Dupuis on May 20, 2013 This is a brief chronology of the current Conservative Canadian government’s long campaign to undermine evidence-based scientific, environmental and technical decision-making. It is a government that is beholden to big business, particularly big oil, and that makes every attempt to shape public policy to that end. It is a government that fundamentally doesn’t believe in…
Friday Fun: Neil deGrasse Tyson on why Star Trek OWNS Star Wars
Posted by John Dupuis on May 17, 2013 I have to admit — I’ve always been more of Star Trek fan rather than Star Wars. The Star Trek universe has always seemed more open, more diverse, with a lot more opportunities for telling different stories not just about the rebels versus the empire. It seems that Neil deGrasse Tyson agrees. “I’m old-school with…
Around the Web: OMG still with the librarian angst, Forking the academy and more
Posted by John Dupuis on May 16, 2013 Yes, We Should Talk About the MLS On Big Name Librarians The Loon’s job Why am I getting my MLIS? Because I have to. So You Think You Want to Be a Librarian? The Adjunctification of Academic Librarianship Your candidate pools Fork the Academy (github as a model for scholarly communcation) Massive (But Not Open)…
Music Mondays: Five songs I really love
Posted by John Dupuis on May 13, 2013 It’s been a very long time since I did a Music Monday of any variety, never mind of the Five songs I really love variety. So it’s fun to check in again and share what I’ve been obsessing over on my iPod and on Youtube lately. And oddly, some of these are repeats from earlier…
Scientific discovery is not valuable unless it has commercial value
Posted by John Dupuis on May 7, 2013 Now there’s a quote for you! Provocative in it’s shortsightedness and fairly ignorant of how the interplay between scientific discovery and commercialization/technology transfer works. Commercial products are engineered and developed out of basic scientific discoveries. So who said that? Sadly, it was the John McDougall, President of the National Research Council of Canada talking about…
Around the Web: Cults of librarian personalities, Undergrads as first class citizens and more
Posted by John Dupuis on May 1, 2013 Cults of Librarian Personalities Let’s upgrade undergrads to first-class citizens Libraries and the informational future: some notes Librarians Respond to DPLA Launch Marketing Libraries Is like Marketing Mayonnaise The Sibyl of Cumae (OA/costs of schol comm) A matter of emphasis (librarians must read this post) Send Me the Check That You Would Have Sent to…
Science and the New Media Ecosystem, a talk by Bora Zivkovic at York University, May 6, 2013
Posted by John Dupuis on April 29, 2013 A note for my Toronto area friends, Blogfather Bora Zivkovic will be giving a talk at York University in Toronto on May 6, 2013 from 2:00 to 3:30 pm. Here’s the info: Science and the New Media Ecosystem Bora Zivkovic, Blog Editor at Scientific American Monday, May 6, 2013, 2:00 – 3:30 pm Paul Delaney…
Reading Diary: Keystone XL: Down the Line by Steven Mufson
Posted by John Dupuis on April 29, 2013 What kind of place has Canada become? The kind of place that closes world-class research facilities in the arctic and in lake country. (Thanks, Ontario!) The kind of place where the government actively muzzles it’s own scientists and librarians, the scientists for wanting to share their research and librarians who want to talk about the…
Books I’d like to read: Food, physics and horror
Posted by John Dupuis on April 28, 2013 hardly ever does The Globe and Mail books section every Saturday feature more than one, maybe two, books that I’m interested in. They’re pretty heavy on the Canlit side, with a heavy helping of the kind of public affairs books that don’t really do it for me. The mystery roundup feature is usually my best…
