Archives for August, 2011
Administrative Bloat? Numbers Need Context
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 31, 2011 A currently popular explanation for the increasing price of higher education is that all those tuition dollars are being soaked up by bloated bureaucracy– that is, that there are too many administrators for the number of faculty and students involved. While I like this better than the “tenured faculty are greedy and lazy” explanation you…
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 30, 2011 Back when I reviewed Mann’s pop-archaeology classic 1491, I mentioned that I’d held off reading it for a while for fear that it would be excessively polemical in a “Cortez the Killer” kind of way. Happily, it was not, so when I saw he had a sequel coming out, I didn’t hesitate to pick it…
Project Shiphunt
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 30, 2011 I get a lot of publicist-generated email these days, asking me to promote something or another on the blog. Most of these I ignore– far too many of them are for right-wing political candidates– but I got one a little while back promoting a program airing tonight, called Project Shiphunt, which included a link to…
Links for 2011-08-30
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 30, 2011 Sometimes I Take a Great Notion to Jump in the River and Drown | Alas, a Blog "Now, it’s true, the storm did not particularly batter New York City. And I think anyone with an ounce of compassion and decency would view that as an overwhelmingly good thing. A major hurricane battering the largest city…
Live News Makes Everyone Dumber
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 29, 2011 My father’s a huge fan of the Weather Channel, something I’ve never really gotten into. I did watch a bunch of its hurricane coverage on Sunday, though, trying to figure out how my travel was going to be affected. Thus, I got to see a really fabulous exchange as the studio anchor tossed to a…
Home, After the Storm
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 29, 2011 As previously noted, I was in Denver for a long weekend with friends from college. I spent a fair bit of time checking the projected storm track and airport closings, but they kept saying Albany was going to stay open until late Saturday, when there wasn’t time to do anything about it. Yesterday morning, every…
New Paper Dance: “Investigating Systematic Uncertainty and Experimental Design with Projectile Launchers”
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 26, 2011 The week before last, I finished writing up a pedagogical paper I’ve been meaning to write for some time, and sent it off to The Physics Teacher. A couple of days ago, it occurred to me that I could probably post that to the arxiv. So I did, just before I left town for an…
Thursday Unclear on the Concept Blogging 082511
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 25, 2011 SteelyKid has recently discovered the game hide-and-seek. Shhh! She’s hiding right now. Can you guess where she is? You can’t tell from the picture, of course, but just in case it wasn’t obvious where she’s hiding, she usually calls out when you get kind of close. Or even jumps out of her hiding place yelling…
Links for 2011-08-25
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 25, 2011 A Higgs Setback: Did Stephen Hawking Just Win the Most Outrageous Bet in Physics History? | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network Overblown anti-Higgs hype, just for balance. News: Breaking Bread – Inside Higher Ed "For the project, students were asked about their views on the state of race relations on campus. Not surprisingly (as…
Pseudonymity Is the Wrong Solution
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 24, 2011 I don’t think my point quite got across the other day, so let me try phrasing this another way. I think a lot of what’s being written about pseudonymity on blogs is missing the real point. The really important question here is not so much whether blog networks should allow pseudonymous blogs as whether employers…
