Links for 2011-03-22

"So who exactly is Josef Oehmen and why did he write about the nuclear accidents in Japan? Oehmen agreed to tell New Scientist his side of the story - and it suggests that a minimum of research by the mainstream journalists who quoted his essay could have established much earlier that it was not the definitive account they thought it was."

"One sanity-saver for us -- and every couple is different -- has been a tripartite division of checking accounts: hers, mine, and ours. My paycheck is directly deposited into three accounts, each with its own sphere of responsibility. "Our" account pays for house payments, car payments, utilities, groceries, insurance, kids' clothes, and just about anything else that's clearly intended to benefit the entire family. "Her" account is under her undisputed control, and goes for her clothing and whatever else she sees fit. "My" account is under my undisputed control, and works the same way. The idea is to prevent either of us from having to ask the other for permission for stuff that adults shouldn't have to ask permission for. An economist might argue, with technical accuracy, that these boundaries are artificial and contrived, but who wants to be married to an economist?"

"You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation."

"Some of my conflicting feelings about my time as a junior faculty member can be characterized by a general feeling of being adrift in a sea of advice. Everywhere I turned I felt like I was bombarded by new (and incompatible) advice about how to get tenure. At times the advice seemed reasonable, at other times outlandish, but rarely did it feel comfortable.  The onslaught of advice left me feeling wholly inadequate -- I could never live up to all the advice given.

Take for example one of the most common pieces of advice given to junior faculty, "Find yourself a mentor." This advice is akin to telling a single person who wishes s/he was married, "Find yourself a spouse." One can't simply grab the nearest person and make him or her a mentor. Yet every article I read about the importance of finding a mentor outside your department made me feel like a failure for not having one. "

In case you find yourself needing to referee an intellectual dispute before somebody throws an ashtray.

"and the green knight is like shut up
look

i am trying to find a knight for an idiotic adventure

have I come to the right place?

and Arthur is like YOU CERTAINLY HAVE

and the knight is like great

ok here's what you do

pick one of your knights, and he gets to hit me once

with my axe

and if I survive I get to hit him back one year from now

so basically like that game where I kick you in the nuts

and then you kick me in the nuts

and so on

except you get to go first

and we are playing with AXES

and Arthur is like THAT DOES NOT SOUND SUSPICIOUS AT ALL"