drorzel | July 29, 2006The Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position starting in September 2007. The position is open with respect to research specialization and candidates with an active research program in any area of physics or astronomy are invited to apply. A Ph.D. in physics or a closely related field is required, and post-doctoral experience is desirable. The successful candidate will have a strong commitment to undergraduate education in a liberal arts setting and the ability to actively engage undergraduates in research.…
drorzel | July 28, 2006The prolific Bora at A Blog Around the Clock is looking for the rock stars of science, as part of a long chain of people picking up this quote from Morgan Spurlock:
We've started to make science and empirical evidence not nearly as important as punditry--people wusing p.r.-speak to push a corporate or political agenda. I think we need to turn scientists back into the rock stars they are.
In physics, we're ahead of the game, already having two actual rock stars working in the field. And how do you count the Hong Kong Cavaliers?
Then again, maybe they're looking for a serious answer... (Below…
drorzel | July 28, 2006For those following the discussion about having a career and a life, referenced in this post, there have been some interesting additions in recent days. Janet Stemwedel added a post clarifying some terms, and Rob Knop offers his own thoughts, and points out that academics aren't the only ones struggling to have a life and a career:
There has been some cultural awareness about the destructiveness of the career/life dichotomy in the business world for some time. I don't know if things have gotten any better, but it has long been a Holywood cliche that the executive has lost his soul because he…
drorzel | July 28, 2006I've linked to Inside Higher Ed almost every day this week, so why stop now? Today's Views section features Terry Caesar being outraged over RateMyProfessors.com (which he refers to in BLOCK CAPS throughout). Among the many sins of the site, he includes this paragraph:
In fact, students at RATE don't even have to be students! I know of one professor who was so angered at a comment made by one of her students that she took out a fake account, wrote a more favorable comment about herself, and then added more praise to the comments about two of her colleagues. How many other professors do this?…
drorzel | July 28, 2006I don't usually post YouTube links and that sort of thing, because I figure everybody else in the world has watched them before I get there, but this clip of the Colbert Report is too good not to link. He gets right in the metaphorical face of a couple of morning shows that have done pieces about how he makes politiicans look silly, and absolutely blows them out of the water.
What's sad is that he could probably do something similar with Meet the Press, with about the same results. The clip of the one representative struggling to name all Ten Commandments is absolutely priceless, and the fact…
drorzel | July 27, 2006Via Dave Sez, Ed at the Sports Frog wants a divorce from ESPN:
I have carefully thought this through and I believe a divorce is our only resolution. I have been loyal and faithful to you and you have shit on me, cheated, lied, took 5 months to send me a check and you won't let me see some of my friends anymore.
You took away David Aldridge and foisted Screaming A on me. From a thoughtful, insightful, coherent reporter to a screaming clown who is nothing less than a thug wannabe.
[...] SportsCenter went from a highlight show to an hour of self-promotion of the preening anchors. Trey Wingo now…
drorzel | July 27, 2006Jonah Lehrer at the Frontal Cortex asks an interesting question: Why is science so much work?
But I'm curious why science takes so long. I know this is an incredibly naive question, but why do post-docs have to work so hard? What is it about the scientific process that forces the average researcher to come in on Saturday (and sometimes Sunday)?
My own limited experience tells me that one of the main reasons science remains so labor-intensive is failure. Perhaps I was simply inept, but an astonishing amount of my time in the lab was spent repeating failed experiments, or repeating successful…
drorzel | July 27, 2006Inside Higher Ed had a piece yesterday about leaks in the science pipeline-- that is, reasons why so few students end up majoring in science, math, or engineering these days. The hook for the article is some Congressional hearings on the subject, but the author lists some possible explanations related to the structure of academia (bold headings are from the article, the summaries are mine):
Greener Grade Pastures: Students in science and engineering get lower grades than humanities students, and some students choose majors based on projected GPA.
Weeding Out: The culture of science presumes…
drorzel | July 27, 2006Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber is enthusiastic about something that appears to be that rarest of rarities, a new idea in the education funding debate: instead of giving the best students money to move to different schools, let schools bid for the best students.
Betts suggests this: first fund the schools equally on a per-student basis. Then distribute trade-able rights to admit highly advantaged students; and allow schools to auction those rights. Schools would then be forced to figure out how much they valued the money they were spending relative to the highly advantaged children they…
drorzel | July 26, 2006I drove down to NYC yesterday to have dinner with some of my ScienceBlogs colleagues, and put faces to names. Seven or eight years ago, I probably would've driven back that night, but I'm old and settled, so I shelled out for a hotel room the size of our spare bedroom (maybe 9' square), and drove back this morning.
Not to get all Stan Murch on you, but what I did was I got on the West Side Highway, and took that up to the Henry Hudson Parkway, to the Saw Mill Parkway, and then the Taconic State Parkway, which got me all the way back to Albany. It's an old reflex-- the Taconic was the standard…
drorzel | July 26, 2006So, here's a different sort of scenario for an audience-participation post:
Imagine that you are in a weirdly well-stocked karaoke bar, and you have to sing a song. There's no way out of it-- if you don't you'll lose your job, rabid squid will eat your family, deranged America-hating terrorists will kill a puppy, whatever. The bar has absolutely any song you might want, no matter how obscure, and you only have to do one.
What song would you sing?
This post really begins with a conversation at Readercon, where it was noted that the World SF Convention will be held in Yokohama in 2007. Kate and…
drorzel | July 26, 2006Greetings from Chateau Steelypips, home of the world's saddest dog:
Why is she pining away? Because I've gone down to New York for a ScienceBlogs get-together, and left her alone. ..
(Bonus pathetic picture below the fold.)
OK, she's not really pining because I'm away. Not in that picture, anyway. The picture was taken Monday morning, and is pretty typical of her behavior when I go into the shower (the door above and behind her is the bathroom). She knows that means I'll be leaving for work soon, and mopes about pathetically in hopes of convincing me to stay.
Here's another, slightly more…
drorzel | July 25, 2006Well, the extremely dorky poll on favorite fundamental constants seems to have petered out at 48 comments, two short of the threshold at which it would've become non-dorky. Still, that was a good effort.
Since that worked pretty well, here's another dorky poll question: What's your favorite fundamental particle? And, for the sake of concreteness, let's stick to particles that have actually been shown to exist-- the six quarks (up, down, strange, charm, bottom, top), six leptons (electron, muon, tau, electron neutrino, muon neutrino, tau neutrino), massive force carrying bosons (W and Z), and…
drorzel | July 25, 2006I'm beginning to put my tenure review materials together, which means lots of angst about academia generally. Happily, there's the Internet, which can always make matters worse by providing more links:
For example, a couple of my ScienceBlogs colleagues are blogging about family issues and academic careers: Janet Stemwedel has the first three posts (one two, three) of what promises to be an exhaustive look at the subject of family and career, and Tara Smith adds her own story. And lest you think this is just a concern for the womenfolk, I'll note that this has been the subject of many…
drorzel | July 25, 2006Via Inside Higher Ed, the National Research Council (a part of the National Academy of Sciences) has released a new report calling for a renewed federal committment to AMO science. AMO here meaning "Atomic, Molecular, and Optical," namely the sort of physics I do.
The federal government should reinforce its commitment to research in atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) science -- the study of atoms, molecules, and light, and related technologies such as lasers and fiber-optic communications -- says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. The report, which…
drorzel | July 25, 2006The New York Times offers a review of several books on science and religion today, including a new screed by Dawkins, Daniel Dennett's book from a little while back, and several books attempting to find common ground between science and religion, by Francis Collins, Owen Gingerish, Joan Roughgarden, and E. O. Wilson. This is probably in the top ten least useful book reviews you'll read this year.
The problem isn't with the subject matter, though I'm sure some at ScienceBlogs will object to the very concept of all save the Dawkins and Dennett. The problem is that they're trying to talk about…
drorzel | July 24, 2006Twelve of the Top 25 Most Played songs were correctly identified over the weekend. Given the obscurity of some of these, that's pretty impressive. I think there's only one that should've been obvious that didn't get guessed.
Full answers are below the fold.
(Edited to add: If you enjoy this sort of thing, here's another list of lyrics to identify.)
"Holiday In NY," The Ike Reilly Assassination. I have no idea how this is the most-played song in my library.
"Roots Radicals," Rancid. When in doubt, rip off the Clash.
"Valentine," Bobby Bare Jr.. A twisted little pop gem, via KEXP.
"So It Goes…
drorzel | July 24, 2006As promised in the previous post, some thoughts on superstition in science. This was originally posted in October 2004, and astute readers may note that my opening comments about sports went horribly awry not long after. I take this as proof of my point: talking about these things only screws them up.
Long-time readers of this site may have noticed a lack of sport-related posts in recent weeks, despite the fact that my teams are doing pretty well at the moment. This is not really a coincidence-- I'm as surprised as anyone to see the Giants winning games (though you will note that they lost to…
drorzel | July 24, 2006One of the drawbacks of having the sort of day job that I do is that it's hard to blog about interesting things in a timely manner. For example, Janet's post on improving communication between scientists and non-scientists is a week old, now. That's positively neolithic in blog terms.
It's well worth a look, though, as she offers an interesting suggestion of how to improve non-scientists' understanding of science:
My best suggestion for how to get this kind of basic grasp of science (at least for those who no longer have easy access to science classes and science teachers) is to try thinking…
drorzel | July 24, 2006Via a comment by Anton Sherwood: Have you ever seen an episode of Star Trek with a particularly bad bit of technobabble, and said to yourself "You know, I'd be willing to fact-check their scripts for a few hundred bucks..."
Well, Dave Krieger did just that, and it wasn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm going to be charitable, and assume he wasn't there for the episode where a planet's temperature is reported as "-290 Celsius" (or seventeen degrees below absolute zero...).
It beats what I used to do for extra money in grad school, though. I used to proctor the MCAT's, among other standardized…