jdupuis | November 22, 2010A few lists with only a few relevant items each.
Cleveland Plain Dealer
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
The Telegraph (History)
Engines of War: How Wars Were Won and Lost on the Railways by Christian Wolmar
Chasing the Sun: the Epic Story of the Star that Gives Us Life by Richard Cohen
Library Journal (Notable books) & Top 10
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Valliant
Packing for Mars: The Curious Science…
jdupuis | November 22, 2010
The Story of Electronics: Food for Thought for Gadget Geeks (Story of Electronics video here)
Reclaim our Scientific Scholarship (Beyond the PDF)
The future of libraries is what we create in the present
In praise of scholarships for foreign students
Science communication: Scientist as star
Cheating and the Generational Divide
Is Higher Ed Ready to Change?
Beyond the Digital Divide
By Indirections Find Directions Out
What We Don't Know We Don't Know
The way we communicate, Facebook, libraries, and life
What does open bibliographic metadata mean for academic libraries?
Developing a scientific…
jdupuis | November 21, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, is from May 28, 2008.
I have also read Shirky's Cognitive Surplus and mostly like it quite a lot. A review is still brewing for that one and I…
jdupuis | November 20, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
This one, of The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What's Real and Why It Matters, is from June 8, 2007.
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The whole raison d'etre of this book is to counter creationists' arguments against…
jdupuis | November 19, 2010Yeah, this one's true. *shudder*
From the science fiction news site blastr, Scientists discover unknown lizard species ... at lunch buffet.
We can only imagine how thrilling it must be for a scientist to discover a previously unknown species. But for a scientist to discover a previously unknown species being served at lunch buffet ... well, THAT we don't even want to try to imagine!
But that's what happened to herpetologist Lee Grismer. When Grismer heard from a colleague at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology about an undocumented species of all-female lizard in the Mekong River…
jdupuis | November 19, 2010Another list for your reading and collection development pleasure. This one concentrates on more business-y books so I've only chosen the ones that relate more to social media/technology. It's 10 Business Books In 2010 from Cloud Computing.
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead by Charlene Li
The New Polymath: Profiles in Compound-Technology Innovations by Vinnie Mirchandani
The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick…
jdupuis | November 18, 2010Another list for your reading and collection development pleasure, drawn from Amazon UK Business, Amazon UK History and Amazon UK Science & Nature.
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves by Matt Ridley
Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey by Rachel Hewitt
The Secret Life of Bletchley Park: The History of the Wartime Codebreaking Centre by the Men and Women Who Were There by Sinclair McKay
Wonders of the Solar System by Brian Cox
The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
The Natural History Book by DK
The Butterfly Isles: A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals by…
jdupuis | November 18, 2010Via my York University Computer Science & Engineering colleague Andrew Eckford, two contrasting blog posts by two different Harvard computer science profs. One has decided to leave academia for greener pastures at Google and the other has decided to stay.
First, Matt Welsh on leaving.
There is one simple reason that I'm leaving academia: I simply love work I'm doing at Google. I get to hack all day, working on problems that are orders of magnitude larger and more interesting than I can work on at any university. That is really hard to beat, and is worth more to me than having "Prof." in…
jdupuis | November 16, 2010
The Future and/of the Research Library
The real reason (climate) scientists don't want to release their code
Scientific Data Consulting Group
Preserving science: what to do with raw research material?
What are libraries for and are they worth it?
An Open Letter to Wired Magazine (Criticism of recent "Boobs" cover.)
Puzzled by Patron-Driven Acquisitions
Do Students Really Prefer Print Books to E-Books?
Digital ILL breaks my brain
Souls for Sale (marketing in higher ed)
Do Students Really Prefer Print Books to E-Books?
Analytics for Class Lectures
Faculty Focusing on Research, Study Finds (…
jdupuis | November 14, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
Since I did a science/religion review earlier this week, I thought I'd continue the theme this weekend with a couple of older reviews of books by Matthew Chapman.
This one, of 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design,…
jdupuis | November 13, 2010I have a whole pile of science-y book reviews on two of my older blogs, here and here. Both of those blogs have now been largely superseded by or merged into this one. So I'm going to be slowly moving the relevant reviews over here. I'll mostly be doing the posts one or two per weekend and I'll occasionally be merging two or more shorter reviews into one post here.
Since I did a science/religion review earlier this week, I thought I'd continue the theme this weekend with a couple of older reviews of books by Matthew Chapman.
This one, of Trials of the Monkey: An Accidental Memoir, is from…
jdupuis | November 12, 2010Ah, The Cronk. The higher ed gift that just keeps on giving.
Here it is: Student Found Assessed to Death in Campus Bathroom Stall.
The University of West Kansas has prided itself on its excessive commitment to outcomes assessment. Chang's parents have accused the college of going too far with its efforts to measure everything. "This was at least the thirteenth survey my daughter was asked to fill out in the past two weeks," said Chang's mother.
"Oh, you can never do enough assessment," said director of leadership initiatives and assessment, Peggy Kolby. "We're already writing a survey to…
jdupuis | November 12, 2010
Selling ourselves (short) (attracting students to CS)
Online Behavior Tracking and Privacy: 7 Worst Case Scenarios
Feedback loops in eBook success
Is Twitter Killing You?
The Rise of the 'Edupunk'
When Social Media Is Irrelevant
The Digital Natives / Digital Immigrants Distinction Is Dead, Or At Least Dying
All I needed to know about, well, everything, I learned in CS?
Decoding the Value of Computer Science
A Gresham's Law for Software
Do conference build community? (Computer Science)
arXiv Business Model White Paper
Undergraduates in the Library, Trying Not to Drown
Quote for Today: "…
jdupuis | November 11, 2010Another list for your reading and collection development perusal, this time from Publisher's Weekly:
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
About a Mountain by John D'Agata
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed by Judy Pasternak
Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margins of Error by Kathryn Schulz
The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu
Origins: How the Nine Months Before…
jdupuis | November 10, 2010It has begun. The annual year's best science books posting orgy!
Every year for the past 4 or 5 years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best books" lists that appear in various media outlets and highlighting the science books that are mentioned. From the beginning it's been a pretty popular service so I'm happy to continue it.
For my purposes, I define science books pretty broadly to include science, engineering, computing, history & philosophy of science & technology, environment, social aspects of science and even business books about technology trends or…
jdupuis | November 8, 2010Warning: I generally don't post about religion/atheism/new atheism or any of those similar topics. I also don't generally post about my own views on such subjects. This post clearly will be breaking those habits. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Now on to the review proper...
First of all, let's get the elephant in the room out of the way. Yes, I'm an atheist. I don't believe in any god, old- or new-fashioned. I have no spiritual feelings at all really, including any vague "search for a higher meaning or sense of transcendence." I tend to find those sorts of feelings a little odd and…
jdupuis | November 5, 2010York University Computer Science & Engineering professor Anestis Toptsis was kind enough recently to invite me to speak to his CSE 3000 Professional Practice in Computing class.
He gave me two lecture sessions this term, one to talk about library-ish stuff. In other words, what third year students need to know about finding conference and journal articles (and other stuff too) for their assignments and projects. You can find my notes here, in the lecture 1 section.
In the second session, which I gave yesterday, he basically let me talk about anything that interested me. So, of course,…
jdupuis | November 5, 2010The Cronk News is an endless supply of silly, higher ed-mocking fun. I just can't get enough: Hoarders Ruins Doctoral Student's Life.
"She's been working so hard on her dissertation," said Dowling. "Her office wasn't fit for human consumption. I don't know how she could focus or get any work done in that room. I knew that Dr. Z would be able to help."
The crew of the show, including Dr. Robin Zasio, arrived at the house prepared to remove the hoard and provide cognitive therapy to Peeples.
"She had some sort of off-campus staff retreat for her graduate assistantship," said Dowling. "We went…
jdupuis | November 4, 2010More for your reading and collection development pleasure.
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu (ISBN-13: 978-0307269935)
As Wu's sweeping history shows, each of the new media of the twentieth century--radio, telephone, television, and film--was born free and open. Each invited unrestricted use and enterprising experiment until some would-be mogul battled his way to total domination. Here are stories of an uncommon will to power, the power over information: Adolph Zukor, who took a technology once used as commonly as YouTube is today and made it the exclusive…
jdupuis | November 3, 2010
Self-motivated vs. mandated archiving
Why the Simple "Me" Beats the Royal "We"
Why Are We Assessing?
Digital Solution for Sacramento
5 Things Netflix Streaming Can Teach Higher Ed
How to Write a Research Poster
A trip through the peer review sausage grinder
What Happened to Downtime? The Extinction of Deep Thinking & Sacred Space
Headline: Traditional librarians and information scientists start to talk to one another!
Publisher sells DRM-free ebooks to libraries
Publishers should be stirred, but not shaken by Bond move
Facebook & helicopter parenting
How Unique Are Our Users?…