Links for 2009-10-16

"Please don't clutch your pearls and get the vapors that such an impolite thing is stated so honestly. That Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council lies a lot in order to scare people into sending him money is not surprising, or new, or unusual or controversial. Tony Perkins lies for money. Giraffes have long necks. Water is wet. "

"Someone Is Wrong/
...On The Internet,/
And I won't get to sleep for a while,/
Cos I'll stay up and fight if it takes me all night/
When I know I am right and my coffee is strong/
Because Someone Is Wrong!"

"In 2001, I wrote a paper for a conference celebrating British science fiction in 2001. It was called "Who Survives the Cosy Catastrophe?" and it was later published in Foundation. In this paper I argued that the cosy catastrophe was overwhelmingly written by middle-class British people who had lived through the upheavals and new settlement during and after World War II, and who found the radical idea that the working classes were people hard to deal with, and wished they would all just go away."

"Over the lifetime of an average light bulb, what is the total mass of all the electrons that have flowed through?"

"Like most large organizations, colleges are organized into silos. Each silo has its own function and its own imperatives. Although that sounds obviously perverse, it actually makes sense; each area has its own specialization, and the idea is that the gains from a division of labor will accrue to everyone involved. The physics department doesn't package financial aid, and the facilities department doesn't grade papers. That's not because those functions are unimportant; it's because they're complicated. Specializing allows for considerable expertise in each area, without expecting anyone to be superhuman. (Of course, with recent budget cuts forcing job consolidations, that's becoming less true in some areas. But the basic idea hasn't changed.)

But the students don't experience silos. They get everything as a big, messy whole. "

"To better promote success, it appears that not only do particular student support services need to be in place -- including in-depth orientations, proactive advising, early warning systems, and well-organized tutoring and other academic supports -- but those services must be well coordinated among themselves and with academic programs"