Lots of people are down on physics or physicists these days:
- Cosma Shalizi is down on power-law fits, or, more precisely, annoyed at people who misuse power-law distributions. He's written a paper about how to use them correctly, and provides a handy list of take-home points on his blog.
- Travis Hime is down on the academic job market, and cities that aren't San Francisco. I think he's a little too harsh on academia, but then it's well established that I'm an optimist with a rosy outlook on these matters. I can't help with the Bay Area thing.
- Dave Bacon has gotten so down about quantum computing that he's gotten himself a headache. The post actually works as a pretty good pessimistic assessment of the current state of experimental research into quantum computing-- we've got a long way to go before people start bitching about the completely useless help files that come with Quantum Excel. It's also worth a look to see the comments in which various science luminaries try to cheer Dave up.
- Tara Smith is down on science journalism, and Jennifer Ouellette offers a defense of science writers, in which she's down on scientists who refuse to talk to the media, and then complain about press coverage.
- Sean Carroll is down on elementary school science education, and really, who can blame him?
There's just no end of negative waves on the Internet these days... Cheer up, will you? My students graduated (the picture on the index page shows my thesis student), and summer is here at last. Granted, that means a new crop of summer research students, but still, yay, summer.
Want something else? Here, have a look at the LOLAstronomy page.
Comments
Hey, I'm not down on it! Just trying to provide some discussion fodder to avoid some of the bad perceptions on both sides of the fence...
Posted by: Tara C. Smith | June 19, 2007 12:59 AM
I just posted a note on my blog yesterday about some work being done by Alan Kay, one of our most eminent computer scientists and a person deeply concerned with teaching math and science better, especially to young children. He expresses a lot of the same concerns you and your commenters express. His team is also doing some neat work in an attempt to redress the problem. You might want to check it out. His interest is very much with helping children vbecome scientists, starting with understanding the physical world through computational modeling and relatively advanced math.
Posted by: Eugene Wallingford | June 20, 2007 2:01 PM
Congrats to you and your students. Isn't seeing them succeed almost as much fun as getting your first paper published?
I agree with you on the job market issue. Travis has not (or would not) clear my comment on his blog, but the AIP stats say there is about a 1 in 4 chance of getting a t-t job. I suspect those odds increase if you have a CalTech BS and a Berkeley PhD and a paper in Science. [The odds are not so good at a top-10 school, of course, let alone at a particular one where you would be competing with your major professor.] The important thing is to have a goal, whether it is a bank job in downtown SF, a staff scientist, or a professor, and direct your energies toward that goal based on a realistic understanding of the skill set and reputation you need to pull each of those off.
Posted by: CCPhysicist | June 21, 2007 11:40 PM