Links for 2009-12-14

"According to the report, the US has now slipped to tenth place in international college completion rates. I don't think it's coincidental that we are one of the few developed countries in which subsidized day care is not a given."

"Two important men are having a careful conversation on military training. What do you call the guy who, having no particular competence or interest in the matter at hand, jumps in the conversation, systematically contradicts everyone with contrived arguments, ridicules the two competent discussants, orients the conversation on a completely different topic, then leaves the audience baffled and walks away, laughing? That Troll is Socrates in Plato's Laches. True, Plato's Socrates seldom hops in uninvited, and most of his interlocutors do not consider him noxious. Indeed one wonders why the whole city grew so irritated that they voted to condemn him to death. But Plato, like all philosophers and sophists, had a stake in defending his colleagues. In other views of Socrates (like Aristophanes' caricature), he is unmistakably trollish."

"I couldn't figure out why the editors would have chosen me, out of all the structural geologists in the world, to ask to be a reviewer. I mean, I had written a blog post about a related paper, but...

Did a journal ask me to be a peer reviewer because I had written a blog post about a related piece of research? "

"After a huge amount of work behind the scene, we're proud to open wide the doors of the Zooniverse. The Zooniverse's aim is to provide a home for a whole suite of projects which will enable anyone with a web browser to contribute to science. Whether you're inspired to classify galaxies, hunt supernovae, or take part in one of the projects which will launch over the coming weeks and months, we hope that Zooniverse will help you find a project that's right for you."