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Links for 2010-05-06

Particle Detector Shows Promise, if Nothing Else - NYTimes.com "A new widely anticipated experiment underneath a mountain in Italy designed to detect a sea of dark particles that allegedly constitute a quarter of creation did not see anything during a test run last fall, scientists reported Saturday. But, they said, the clarity with which they saw nothing spurred hopes that such experiments are approaching the rigor and sensitivity necessary to detect the elusive gravitational glue of the cosmos. The results also cast further doubt on some controversial claims that dark matter has already…

The One Thing to Believe If You're Only Going to Believe One Thing

Over in Twitter-land, S. C. Kavassalis notes a Googler who's not afraid to ask the big questions: Weird Google search of the week: 'the "one" scientific idea that we need to believe'. Uh um, I'm sure my blog couldn't possibly answer that. It's a good question, though, ad there are a couple of different ways to take it. You could read it as "What one scientific idea is supported by the most experimental proof?" or you could read it as "What one idea is most central to science generally?" "The Standard Model" was quickly suggested on Twitter, which could fit either. I think it might be…

Links for 2010-04-28

Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War - PowerPoint - NYTimes.com ""PowerPoint makes us stupid," Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat. "It's dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control," General…

Science Fiction Disappoints Me

Spending less time reading blogs means that I have more time to spend reading fiction. Unfortunately, the fiction I've been reading has been letting me down. In particular, I'm very disappointed in the last two books I've (mostly) read. For one of the books, N. K. Jemisin's The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (sample chapter),mit's not entirely the author's fault. Had I not gone on a big urban fantasy binge a little while back (as mentioned earlier), I probably would've liked this better. Having become fed up with the "My Awesome Werewolf Boyfriend" stuff in Patricia Briggs's Mercy Thompson books,…

Trolling faith-heads: your efforts here are futile

Oh, joy. We've got a new crop of persistent Religiots pissing and moaning in the comments. They're whining that I'm mean, that all the regular commenters are mean, that the fact that some good scientists are also Christian somehow validates Christian belief, that I can't criticize scientists who are working at more prestigious universities, and that my tactics are bad. I don't know why they're here; it's not as if we're going to be converted by their inanities, or that they're going to persuade us to accept any of their claims. Let's break it down into simple sentences and ideas. Yeah, we're…

Arctic sea ice headed for a new record?

No too long ago the usual suspects were all a-twitter about arctic sea ice, which was tracking very close to the long term average. This was in late March, and though you would think a weather man would understand what weather is, this temporary upwards tic prompted the remarkable vapidity of this lead: "We've all seen that Arctic Sea ice area and extent has expanded and is back to normal". Well, that was then, and this is now: Now, not only have we left the long term average behind, the current seasonal extent has dipped below one standard deviation less than normal and is even well…

Ducking like a quack

ONCE TWO SCIENTISTS--it hardly matters what sort--were walking before dinner beside a pleasant pond with their friend, a reporter for the Dispatch, when they happened to notice a bird standing beside the water. "I am a skeptic," said the first scientist. "I demand convincing evidence before I make an assertion. But I believe I can identify that bird, beyond all reasonable doubt, as a duck." The journalist nodded silently at this assertion. "I also am a skeptic," said the second, "but evidently of a more refined sort, for I demand a much higher standard of evidence than you do. I see no…

The King is Dead

Elvis In 1977 I drove from Nashville down to Memphis with no particular plans regarding Memphis. It was just a place to stop on the way to Hot Springs, Arkansas. I had the name of a cheap motel and a vague idea of where it was. But I kept getting lost. Every time I came to about where this major street was supposed to be, there was a different street there. What the hell was going on? About the fifth time I came to the right/wrong location, it dawned on me ... "Elvis Presley Boulevard" must have just recently been named as such ... That, I realized, could also explain another…

The Tabouli Craving

Amanda, who is pregnant, claims to have had no food aversions and she claims to have no food cravings. This makes me laugh. One reason it makes me laugh is that Amanda is one of the most rational, straight thinking people I've ever known. She knows there is a reality, she faces it daily, and she even teaches about it in a high school. So when she claims to have had no aversions and no cravings, I can only assume that denial of such things is itself some sort of side effect off pregnancy. To be fair, the preponderance of evidence has eventually convinced even her that she has had aversions…

Order of the Molly for February 2007

This is meta, if you'd rather skip it. I think we've got a good community of commenters here, and in order to encourage a more perfect expression of interactivity, I'm going to implement a few new things. First, the stick. I'm posting the Pharyngula filter file contents in that Dungeon tab at the top of the page. Now you can see a list of everyone who has been banned from commenting at this site, with some short comments about why. Try to avoid joining them, OK? Second, the carrot. I know most of you probably have favorite commenters here—people whose names you look forward to seeing in the…

Franken Wins Court Battle, Unclear if Pawlenty will Sign

UPDATE: COLEMAN CONCEDES The Minnesota Supreme Court has rejected a legal challenge by Norm Coleman, thereby leaving the vote count determined by an election contest judicial panel placing Franken in the lead standing. The basis of the Coleman legal challenge is was essentially that all abentee votes shoudl be counted no matter what, because they are, after all, votes. The reason that is bad election procedure and bad law is that absentee voting is subject to serious abuses, and thus demands a certain amount of procedural control. This has been established previously. The absentee…

Swine Flu Alert Level Raised by WHO

The long-awaited pandemic announcement is scientific confirmation that a new flu virus has emerged and is quickly circling the globe. WHO will now ask drugmakers to speed up production of a swine flu vaccine. The declaration will also prompt governments to devote more money toward efforts to contain the virus. This means that the alert level is going to Level Six. Ominously, WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan said: "The world is moving into the early days of its first influenza pandemic in the 21st century, ... The (swine flu) virus is now unstoppable." We are warned that a second wave of the flu…

Music, the kinda universal langauge

One afternoon I was sitting by the hearth writing notes on the morning's data collection, and a cassette player was running nearby. The Beatles White Album was on. Happiness is a Warm Gun was playing. Lengotu, an Efe man I had been working with, who had made the claim to be a rain shaman (which in the case of the Rain Forest, meant someone who could stop the rain from being so severe) came over to me and said "You have to turn off that song." "Why?" I said. Then, right after I said that I took in the look on his face. He was clearly disturbed. Without saying another word, I walked over…

Dawkins in Minneapolis

Richard Dawkins came to Minneapolis and gave a talk, sponsored by CASH, the primary atheist/humanist group on the UMN campus, on "The Purpose of Purpose." Before the talk, several of us got together at Annie's Parlour. It was harmonic convergence, in a sense, of numerous independent groups all planning to go to Annie's and ending up at the same table, including but not limited to Amanda and myself, PZ and his wife and daughter, Stephanie, Mike, Mr. and Mrs. Linux in Exile, Lynn, and a few others who don't have links. After the talk, we spent close to an hour hanging around with Amanda and…

I look forward to my new career as an election overseer.

So, for the next two weeks or so, an army of volunteers, state workers, and lawyers are going to be counting and observing the counting, and contesting and arguing about, every single one of the nearly three million ballots cast last election day in Minnesota in the race for Senator. I had spent some time during the latter period of the election season working on the election, mainly for Ashwin Madia, but also for Al Franken and Barack Obama. The recount extends my own commitment, and that of thousands of others, to keep working on this. (Yes, I'm trying to make you feel a little bad if…

Throwing McCain Under The Bus

Some of you have been asking "What has happened to Ann Coulter lately? We have not seen much of her." Well, I've been seeing a lot of Ann, so I'm not quite sure what you are asking about. Coulter has continued to write for her usual outlets, including her column in Human Events which, which I read. The difference between a year and a half or so ago and now is that mainstream media has stopped picking her up. I think her run in with Elizabeth Edwards that served as the last straw in that regard. I read Coulter's column for obvious reasons, but I should point out that I don't subscribe to…

Scary Christian Running for Minnesota Supreme Court

Tim Tingelstad says: ".... I believe that justice is served when judges fear God and love the people, and as a Minnesota Supreme Court Justice, I will be impartial to the parties, while partial to the original intent of the Constitution." And of the Constitution, on his web site, he notes: "We the people, of the State of Minnesota, grateful to God for our civil and religious liberty, and desiring to perpetuate its blessings, and to secure the same to ourselves and to our posterity, do hereby establish and ordain this Constitution." -Preamble to the Minnesota Constitution and his motto, on…

Polls 30 days out

In the Gallup Tracking Poll for the US election, Obama leads McCain for the ninth straight day, and for the seventeenth out of the last nineteenth pollings. We will have to see if the absurd new tactics being attempted by Palin and her running mate McCain will have an effect on this one way or another. The current Real Clear Politics estimate has Obama/Biden with 49 percent of the electoral college votes, to Bush/McCain's 30%, with 21% in the 'tossup category." If we look only at the 'solid' electoral votes ... the ones that no one expects to change ... it is Obama with 42% and McCain…

Obama's Religion is the problem

Man, it's so annoying when the little sites take a poke at me, hoping to trigger a strong reaction so that I'll send lots of traffic their way. It's pathetic, and you know I can't resist. This particular site is trying to yank my chain by complaining about my lack of support for Barack Obama, and along the way they confirm my point. What's interesting to me about all this is that when you get down to it, Obama presents conservatives with a category error. Democrats are liberal, and therefore cannot be religious, q.e.d. It simply fries their circuits that Obama won't stick in the pigeonhole…

Plan B

This is from Robert Reich's blog: Prediction: A scaled-down bill will be enacted by the end of the week. It will provide the Treasury with a first installment of $150 billion. Treasury can use it to back Wall Street's bad debts with lend no-interest loans of up to two years, until the housing market rebounds. Or to invest in Wall Street houses directly, in exchange for stocks and stock warrants. There will be strict oversight. Congressional leaders will promise further installments, but with conditions calling for limits on salaries and relief to distressed homeowners. Some or perhaps most of…

How to ruin it for everybody ...

This is almost National Lampoon Vacation Movie funny, except that it is not funny. As five of you, who have read my piece at the new blog A Vote for Science know, the ultimate outcome of events ... and how society reacts to them ... may depend on the level at which were are set up to respond, and by level, I mean level in the hierarchy of government. So one of the most threatening dangers to which our children are exposed ... ice cream trucks ... are ignored. Meanwhile, Killer Clothing, which is actually quite rare, is under lock down at the Federal Level. I have not even learned to "…

Ike: Yikes!!!

Ike is now a Category Four Hurricane, and quite a nice looking one at that. Hurricanes are giant engines made of air that are driven by the transfer of heat from the sea surface to the top of the troposphere. The greater the difference in SST (sea surface temperature) and higher altitude temperature, the more power in the engine. But, there are some very strong wind currents in the atmosphere above the troposphere, and that matters as well. When you fly in a commercial air liner over a long distance, sometimes (depending on the airline) they display a chart that shows current location,…

The King is Dead

Elvis In 1977 I drove from Nashville down to Memphis with no particular plans regarding Memphis. It was just a place to stop on the way to Hot Springs, Arkansas. I had the name of a cheap motel and a vague idea of where it was. But I kept getting lost. Every time I came to about where this major street was supposed to be, there was a different street there. What the hell was going on? About the fifth time I came to the right/wrong location, it dawned on me ... "Elvis Presley Boulevard" must have just recently been named as such ... That, I realized, could also explain another…

Anonymityville Horror?

Food for thought from On the Media: Recently there's been a bit of a backlash against the angry commenter, especially the anonymous angry commenter. Newspapers around the country have had to disband comment sections because of racist content, ad hominem attacks and vulgarity. The Mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, Eddie Perez, actually staged a protest outside of the offices of The Hartford Courant in response to what he called "hate speech" on the paper's site. ... And so on. Anonymity is important, for very good and legitimate reasons. There are people who feel threatened by others because of…

The odd logic of home school jingoism

It has been said that home schooling is a bit suspicious because it is possible for people to keep their kids home to abuse them. This is probably very very rare, but yes, it is possible and there are examples of it. however, home schoolers often (at least the most vocal amongst them) insist this is impossible and that it is merely a ploy to ... ah, do to something, I'm not quite sure what. As these arguments waft and weft across the intertubes, there is a very common kind of pseudo-logic that we hear. This is what is looks like: "Home schooling is not bad because public schools are bad…

The More Things Change...

One benefit of spending a lot of time lying down waiting patiently for your back to feel better is that you get a lot of reading done. I just polished off the novel Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, published in 1920. (Short review: Enjoyable, but not as good as Elmer Gantry.) Anyway, the main story follows Carol Kennicott, a city-girl who finds herself living in the small town of Gopher Prairie, MN, after marrying the town's doctor. She finds it hard to adjust to the insularity of her new home. The following paragraph jumped out at me as being pretty timeless. Carol is at a family…

Why havent we cured cancer yeeeeeet?

A neat paper was just published in Nature, where they did complete genome sequencing of the prostate cancer tumors from seven advanced/aggressive prostate cancer patients. The genomic complexity of primary human prostate cancer Why did they want to do this? They hoped to identify some new features of aggressive prostate cancer that could be exploited for treatment purposes. A mutation obliterates Gene X? Maybe administering Protein X helps. A chromosomal rearrangement plops a strong promoter in front of Gene A? Maybe administering inhibitor of Protein A helps. Heck, maybe everyone has a…

Usher II

Im a voracious reader. Always have been. We didnt have cable or a lot of cool toys or anything growing up (dont feel sorry for me. we did get a NES when they came out, and a Tandy 2000) but Mom would always take us to the library for a new book at the drop of a hat. But I dont read a lot of books. I do occasionally pick up something different, but normally I read the same books over and over and over and over and over. The 'worst' are 'The Three Musketeers' and 'The Martian Chronicles'. I have read them both at least a hundred times (and its my moms copy of 'Martian Chronicles', doesnt…

... believe in God? Join the club. Media round up!

HAHAHA! Sweet. Nick Singer is the current president of OKC Atheists. Hes ushered us through an absolutely massive growth spurt. Like, a so large it is actually kind of obnoxious growth spurt. We do at least a dozen activities a month, from parents and kids hanging out at the zoo or a museum to the grown ups partying at a bar to movie nights to volunteer days to podcasts... and like, the activities are packed. The last pizza party I went to, we basically took over the entire resturant (there used to be a Church group that came the same night. we ran them off with our massiveness). Men,…

BALLS!

From my post on testicular cancer and ERVs earlier this week, to Randys balls in the last episode of South Park, the word of the week appears to be "BALLS!" This trend is continuing, considering Judy Mikovits/the Chronic Fatigue communities vociferous support for anti-vaccination cranks: The increasing incidence of mumps orchitis: a comprehensive review-- There has been a recent increase in mumps orchitis among pubertal and postpubertal males. These outbreaks can be attributed to a reduction in the uptake of measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine during the early to mid-1990s in children who…

LOL 'Value Voters'

'Value Voters' are so weird. I mean, I like weird kids! After Lady Gagas performance at the VMAs, I liked her. But Value Voter weird... thats a whole nother level of weird that I cant deal deal with. For example, when Tom Coburn was running for his senate seat in 2004, he made one of the weirdest 'value voter' statements I have ever heard a politician make: ... lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom. Now think about it. Think about that issue. How is it that that's happened to us? Ah yes, southeast Oklahoma,…

HIV-1 Vpu and Nef-- 'An unfortunate evolutionary coincidence'

Long-time readers of ERV know lots about HIV-1. You might think you dont, but you do. You know how 'drug resistance' works in a quasispecies. Most people dont. You know that AIDS is actually an exhausted hyperactive immune system, not a 'weakened' immune system. Most people dont. And you know some fun HIV-1 evolution facts, like where it came from, and what its doing now. So I think you all will really like this Nature Reviews opinion piece about Vpu: Is the high virulence of HIV-1 an unfortunate coincidence of primate lentiviral evolution? Vpu is not a 'core' retroviral gene (gag, pol…

Controversy brewing at University of Oklahoma!

lol Not really. (H/T AtBC) Some UD IDiot wrote a letter to OU pres David Boren (whos actually a pretty cool guy) bitching about how OUs Darwin Year celebrations dont have anyone from the Creationist Camp included! As an institution of learning in the state of Oklahoma, it is my hope that OU would present to the public the full range of opinion that is present within science over Darwin's theories. In addition to the action of natural selection, many other theories as to the origin of the species have been considered and discussed, including, but not limited to, evolution by symbiogenesis (…

First Buckley, Now Hitchens!

Following on the heels of Christopher Buckley's surprising endorsement of Obama, now Hitchens comes on board: On “the issues” in these closing weeks, there really isn't a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their “debates” have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week's so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both…

Biden in a Rout

Granted, I'm hardly an unbiased source. But come on folks! I know these debates are decided far more on style than substance, but surely at some point you have to say something. The country just can't be so far gone that ninety minutes of contentless babbling that stops just short of utter humiliation now makes you look Presidential. Unlike in her interviews Palin this time managed to speak in complete sentences and her words mostly cohered into actual thoughts, albeit thoughts that were totally irrelevant to the question that was asked. Who outside a brain-dead contrarian pundit or an…

McCain is an Embarrassment

Yesterday, John McCain said this: We know there has been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street. And people are frightened by these events. Our economy still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong. “The fundamentals of our economy are strong,” is a standard cliche politicians use when faced with a shock to the economy. It is one of those useful, empty statements that sounds intelligent and can be used to deflect political blame in the face of bad economic news. Sometimes it's even true. There are times when a shock to the economy causes short-term hardship, but…

Romney on Evolution

According to Michael Luo at The New York Times blog, Mitt Romney has clarified his views on evolution. Here's the set-up: Mitt Romney expanded on his belief in evolution in an interview earlier this week, staking out a position that could put him at odds with some conservative Christians, a key voting bloc he is courting. Mr. Romney, a devout Mormon, surprised some observers when he was not among those Republican candidates who raised their hands last week when asked at the Republican presidential debate if they did not believe in evolution. (Senator Sam Brownback, former Gov. Mike Huckabee…

State of the Union

There was only one small part of Bush's State of the Unon address that really jumped out at me. Here it is: This war is more than a clash of arms -- it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance. To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come and kill us. What every terrorist fears most is human freedom -- societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience, and live by their hopes instead of their resentments. Free people are not drawn to…

Monty Hall Variants

Speaking of the Monty Hall problem, I recently came across this terrific essay (PDF format), by Jeffrey Rosenthal, a professor in the Department of Statistics at the University of Toronto. Rosenthal discusses several variants of the Monty Hall problem, and shows how a clever application of Bayes' Theorem helps to distinguish between them. Here are the variants he considers: Monty Hall Problem: A car is equally likely to be behind any one of three doors. You select one of the three doors (say, Door #1). The host then reveals one nonselected door (say, Door #3) which does not contain the car…

260 Million Scientists a Month

The day I bought my iPad, as I was taking it out of the box, SteelyKid (then 3) came bopping into my office, spotted it, and declared "I want to play Angry Birds!" It's a remarkable demonstration of the genius of their product: not only have they created a game that a three-year-old can play, they've managed to make every three-year-old in the industrialized world aware of their product. It's also a testament to my current obsession, the universality of science, and not just because you can use the game to illustrate physics. After all, the process of playing the game serves as a good…

A Tale of Two Columns

I only have time for quick blogging today, so how about a brief observation. Here is Paul Krugman's latest column. It is a characteristically lucid and informative column about some bad economic ideas that are circulating around Washington these days. Here's a sample: What ideas am I talking about? The economic historian Peter Temin has argued that a key cause of the Depression was what he calls the “gold-standard mentality.” By this he means not just belief in the sacred importance of maintaining the gold value of one's currency, but a set of associated attitudes: obsessive fear of…

Atheist Sign Stolen

As I write this, Bill O'Reilly has devoted a major chunk of his show to how “out of control” the situation in Washington is. He dug up some troll of a preacher to declare that Christmas is the most sacred of Christian holidays (which is absurd). And he's lambasting Governor Gregoire for her fecklessness. The occasion for this is that the big sign was stolen today. An anti-religion placard posted alongside Christmas displays drew a thief, a preacher, a part-time elf and a security detail to the state Capitol on Friday, as a weeklong uproar over religious speech hit a bizarre peak. It all…

Links for 2009-09-17

KFC's Double Down Sandwich | Update | A.V. Club "God clearly did not mean for humans to eat chicken, bacon, and low-quality, gelatinous cheese at the same time. I was suddenly struck with a strange urge to keep kosher. Each bite became a grueling endurance test, as the cheese and grease began to override the chicken breasts, and the sandwich grew more revolting-looking with each bite." (tags: food avclub silly) Dresden Codak » Archive » 42 Essential 3rd Act Twists "Schedenfreude proves unruly." (tags: comics writing literature theater fantasy mystery sf silly) AAUP: Creating LGBTQ-…

Neil deGrasse Tyson Owes Emmy a Cookie

I'm watching an episode of NOVA scienceNOW (eccentric capitalization makes it hip!), and Neil deGrasse Tyson is doing a segment on extrasolar planets. I'm only half listening, because I'm also trying to keep SteelyKid from trying to eat any of the furniture, but it's quite good. All of a sudden, Emmy's head snaps up. "Hey!" she says. "He owes me a cookie!" "What?" I ask. "Who owes you a cookie?" "The human on the tv. He was just explaining science using dogs. Inferior dogs. That's my job!" "Technically, it's my job. I'm the one who does all the writing, after all." I rewind the DVR a bit to…

Pop Quiz Answer

Yesterday's Michelson Interferometer quiz was surprisingly popular-- as of 8:30 pm Tuesday (when I'm writing this), just under 1500 people have voted in the poll, three and a half times as many as in the next most popular poll I've done. Who says there's no audience for physics? So, what's the right answer, you ask? The correct answer finished a distant second (as of 8:30 it has 21% of the votes, to 52% for the leading wrong answer). The answer is that the light goes back where it came from. Bob Hawkins and MattXIV have the right explanation: on the return trip, half of each beam goes to the…

Wanted: Better Hugo Nominees

I'm eligible to vote for the Hugos this year, as a paid-up member of Anticipation. As such, I got the free packet of nominated works that they put together for the voters, and have started working my way through the short fiction (I've read all the novel nominees that I'm going to). Whether you're eligible to vote or not, you can get links to most of the nominated works here. I've only read the Short Story nominees so far, and I have to say, I would vote for "No Award" five times if it was a choice between that and "Article of Faith" winning. I really could've sworn that this vein of crap was…

Links for 2011-03-10

When Lew Alcindor defeated Scott Ostler at Pauley "The UCLA freshman team featured Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Lucius Allen and three other prep All-Americans. In a game to open the new Pauley Pavilion, UCLA's frosh beat the varsity by 15. The varsity was coming off back-to-back national championships and was ranked No. 1 in the nation. Our foes trotted out not only the future NBA career scoring leader, and a future NBA star guard in Allen, but also another guy who played briefly in the NBA and a fourth player who started for UCLA's subsequent three NCAA championship teams. So…

Links for 2010-12-22

Hyperbole and a Half: The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas "I walked through my front door with purpose and gathered my family members in the living room to tell them about my vision. I was going to rewrite the birth of Jesus Christ and I was going to make it POP. My mom, always wanting to nurture my creative side, agreed on behalf of everyone that we should go forward with the production. I would be playing the part of Mary and my dad would be Joseph. My aunt and my grandma would play the wise men. My mom would be filming. The dogs were slated to play the animals in the manger, but they…

Teaching, Research, and Teaching Research

Melissa at Confused at a Higher Level has a nice post on the tension between faculty research and teaching: Malachowski writes, "We all know that working with undergraduates is time consuming and in some cases it slows down our research output, but work with undergraduates should be supported, celebrated, and compensated at a high level. For most of us, the process involved in research with students is as important as the product." If colleges adopt a narrow definition of scholarly productivity measured only by publications, they may unintentionally provide incentives for faculty not to…

Links for 2010-09-10

NFL 2010: The biggest thing fans don't understand about life in pro football. (1) - By Stefan Fatsis, Nate Jackson, Josh Levin, and Tom Scocca - Slate Magazine A great discussion of the modern NFL, including a couple of former players. (tags: sports football slate culture) I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat (but farm it right) | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian "This will not be an easy column to write. I am about to put down 1,200 words in support of a book that starts by attacking me and often returns to this sport. But it has persuaded me that I was wrong.…