links for 2009-01-23

"The new Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, addressed the national labs in an all-hands video transmission today. I was not there, but my colleague and friend Rob Roser at Fermilab was there, and sent me a very nice bulleted summary. "

"âThe American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2008,â a longitudinal study now in its 43rd year, is based on a fall 2008 survey of 240,580 first-time, full-time students at 340 four-year colleges. "

"How do you optimize your publication bang for the buck from your PhD work? Do you go for multiple smaller, lower impact* pubs or do you go for one or two really impressive papers? Quantity or quality?"

"In this post Iâll describe a general-purpose test that shows that Amazon.com makes it (just!) into the long tail regime, but in Wikipedia contributions from the short head dominate. Furthermore, this difference isnât just an accident, but is a result of design decisions governing how people find information and make contributions."

"How will the next four to eight years affect American science fiction? Are we going to see a wave of resentful right wing SF that will make the Carter years look like a warm hug? Are we going to see a wave of resentful left wing SF that will make the Reagan years look like a warm hug? Stacks of triumphalist left-wing SF that will make the novels of Krapman appear calm and measured?"