A purely hypothetical situation for today’s poll. Purely.
If anybody needs me, I’ll be in an undisclosed location not responding to email.
P.O. Box 98199
Washington, DC 20090-8199
800-647-5463
Lat/Lon: 38.90531943278526, -77.0376992225647
A purely hypothetical situation for today’s poll. Purely.
If anybody needs me, I’ll be in an undisclosed location not responding to email.
I recommend rejecting any and all proposals which employ the words “transformative”, “revolutionary”, “synergy” or the phrases “paradigm shift” or “cutting edge”.
Do we want what I probably would do, or what I think I should do?
Been there, done that. I worked several times on the tutorial advisory committee for an information security conference. The due date for the reviews was always the 4th of July. So, whichever day was our holiday at work was spent in an undisclosed location finishing the tutorial reviews.
I’ll bet your 6 grant proposals are a lot more work than my ~25 tutorial proposals.
I don’t have a t-shirt, though. I’ll have to mention that to the tutorial chair of the conference….
I’d go vacuum my cat. Sounds like more fun that reviewing grant proposals.
Thankfully I only have 5 proposals to read for Sunday, and I’ve skimmed them all. Unfortunately, that was long enough ago that I’ve forgotten most of my thoughts.
But I still have to write a final for tomorrow morning and attend a two-hour meeting this afternoon and meet with the students in lab. So I’ll be starting on the proposals tomorrow, and working through Saturday and Sunday.
So, answer 1 for now, and answer 4 starting tomorrow.
I have five to review — in 4 different fields. Maybe they think I’m an expert in each, but one of them is from my PhD field over 10 years ago, and two others are in fields that I only worked in briefly, so that’s hardly the truth.
So on the proposals that I know best, I’m being very thorough. On the others, well, I’m being pretty generic but sending a note to the PM why that is (yes, I should I declined these when I first received them 3 months ago, but I didn’t look at them until now, assuming that as in years past they’d give me ones in the field I’ve done for the past 7 years).
Time to go hide.
You've read the blog, now try the books:
How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog is published by Basic Books. "“Unlike quantum physics, which remains bizarre even to experts, much of relativity makes sense. Thus, Einstein’s special relativity merely states that the laws of physics and the speed of light are identical for all observers in smooth motion. This sounds trivial but leads to weird if delightfully comprehensible phenomena, provided someone like Orzel delivers a clear explanation of why.” --Kirkus Reviews "Bravo to both man and dog." The New York Times.
How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is published by Scribner. "It's hard to imagine a better way for the mathematically and scientifically challenged, in particular, to grasp basic quantum physics." -- Booklist "Chad Orzel's How to Teach Physics to Your Dog is an absolutely delightful book on many axes: first, its subject matter, quantum physics, is arguably the most mind-bending scientific subject we have; second, the device of the book -- a quantum physicist, Orzel, explains quantum physics to Emmy, his cheeky German shepherd -- is a hoot, and has the singular advantage of making the mind-bending a little less traumatic when the going gets tough (quantum physics has a certain irreducible complexity that precludes an easy understanding of its implications); finally, third, it is extremely well-written, combining a scientist's rigor and accuracy with a natural raconteur's storytelling skill." -- BoingBoing