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World Ocean Day: A Tribute to the Underdogs
Happy World Ocean Day! (Soon there will be a Happy Anti-Celebration Day in the same way we have Buy Nothing Day; each and every day will be filled with some Hallmark turf--the branding of our calendar year). Don't forget this Ocean Day to 1) check out the newly added book lists and 2) visit the Carnival of the Blue over at Blogfish. This Ocean Day my thoughts are with the ocean underdogs. I'm talking small pelagics, sea cucumbers, eels, hagfish, limpits, blennies. I am talking about the little things that make the oceans tick. I am even talking about salmon. Salmon? Yes, salmon.…
Where have all the science majors gone?
Lately Chad has been pondering the lack of science majors in colleges, paying particular attention to societal factors. The image of scientists as socially inept dweebs who try to find the answers to questions no one asked is certainly a problem, but there are also substantial proximal problems within colleges themselves. [I am, of course, speaking from my own experience. Still, I propose that what I have gone through is not unique to my own university.] Many science classes require prerequisites, particularly precalculus and 100-level introductory courses designed to weed out non-science…
Many Worlds Are Never Exhausted
There have been some good comments on last week's post about the Many-Worlds Interpretation, which I find a little surprising, as it was thrown together very quickly and kind of rant-y on my part, because I was annoyed by the tone of the original Phillip Ball article. (His follow-up hasn't helped that...) But then maybe that's why it succeeded in generating good comments. Tough call. Anyway, I let these slide for a while because of day-job stuff, so I'm going to promote this to a new post, and try to address some of these. Because, apparently, we are never out of universes in which I'm…
The Genomics Bottleneck: It's the Computation, Stupid
The exciting thing about the recent technological advances in genomics is that we have a massive amount of data. The terrifying thing about the recent technological advances in genomics is that we have a massive amount of data. A while ago, I brought this up in the context of bacterial genomics: Most of the time, when you read articles about sequencing, they focus on the actual production of raw sequence data (i.e., 'reads'). But that's not the rate-limiting step. That is, we have now reached the point where working with the data we generate is far more time-consuming... So, from a…
Sexism in science and finding our way across the fault lines
Some of my fellow ScienceBloggers have been hotly debating the role of male science faculty in perpetuating a climate that's chilly and hostile to women. From one end of the ring, we've heard the classic complaint "It's not my fault, I didn't do it." From the other end, we hear: "It is your fault because you're not doing anything to change it." And, in the middle, we have a rational and thoughtful referee, pointing out that both writers see things from different perspectives. I think the question boils down to this: Are you automatically part of the problem if you're not part of the…
Transition and the new Cabinet
There are rumors aplenty, but take them with caution, about potential members of the Obama Administration. Despite understanding, on a cerebral level, what Obama is trying to do, on a visceral level my instinct is to use the majority to implement progressive policies fast and forcefully, to have enough time for those policies to take hold and demonstrate to the people that they are good - two years of gradual economic recovery, new jobs, affordable health-care, serious environmental programs and such can lead to further increase in Dem numbers in Congress instead of decline, and would ensure…
Polio cases in Nigeria are bad news for eradication effort
Last summer, Nigeria celebrated having gone a year without a case of polio. But then last month, just before meeting the two-year mark, two children in Nigeria were diagnosed with polio paralysis, and a third case has now been detected. All three cases are in Borno state (in northeastern Nigeria) in areas liberated from Boko Haram militants. NPR's Jason Beaubien reports: Dr. Chima Ohuabunwo, an epidemiologist who has been working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Nigeria for the past five years, says Boko Haram has cut off parts of Borno state, in Nigeria's northeast…
Stuff That Doesn't Belong on Student Evaluations
This was a good week for "Chad bristles at side issues of massively reshared stories," with the Vox and gender bias stories, and also this PBS piece urging parents to tell their kids science stories. That probably seems surprising, given what I do around here, but while I fully endorse the end of that piece, the opening section in which Wendy Thomas Russell explains why she never liked science mostly makes me think that she's an awful person. She attributes her lack of interest in science to bad teaching, and provides a series of examples ending with: Later, at the University of Nebraska, I…
Experiment in Live-bogging
I have a tablet PC that I am borrowing from work to see if I like the way it works. As a test of it's usefulness, I'm going to attempt to live-blog at least part of the Giants same. So, let's see how this works... The Giants score on their first posses, on, after Dallas missed a FG. Guess Vanderjagt doesn't look so bed... Wacky play - INT by Romo, followed by a fumble. Kiwanuka just can't catch a break. Still, you can't drop that ball. Dallas TD, after a weak pass interference call. So much for the shut-out... More below : So far, so good. The hand writing recognition i5…
Happenings in the Quantum World: Nov 13, 2007
Grad school opportunities, postdoc opportunities, interference experiments, more D-wave, and sabbatical at the Blackberry hole Pawel Wocjan writes that he has positions open for graduate students in quantum computing:Ph.D. Position in Quantum Computing & Quantum Information with Dr. Pawel Wocjan, School of EECS, University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, in sunny Florida I am accepting applications for a Ph.D. position in Quantum Computing and Quantum Information starting in Fall 2008. You can learn more about my research and the research in quantum information science at UCF by going…
The state of science education (2005)
The Department of Education has issued its National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2005 science assessment noting that "[t]he national results show an increase in the average science score since 1996 at grade 4, no significant change at grade 8, and a decline at grade 12." The report is available here (as a pdf) and here (in summary). Assessment was based on students' average science score on a 0-300 scale and in terms of the percentage of students attaining each of three achievement levels: Basic (score over 138), Proficient (> 170), and Advanced (> 205). The cut-off scores…
DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge 2008: more incentives for your donations.
Today is day 10 of Blogger Challenge 2008, in which generous ScienceBlogs readers help public school teachers come up with the funds to deliver the educational goods to their students. As I write this post, challenges mounted by ScienceBloggers have crossed the $10,000 mark. Given that this money has come from 113 donors and that there are about a bajillion ScienceBlogs readers, I'm guessing there are some folks thinking about making a donation but hanging back from actually donating. My hope is that this post will give you that little push forward you might need. You'll recall that I've…
DonorsChoose 2009 Social Media Challenge: day 7 progress, and prizes!
Today is the one week mark in our month-long drive with DonorsChoose to raise funds for public school classroom projects, and it is no surprise that ScienceBlogs readers have been generous in their support. As I write this post, the ScienceBlogs leaderboard indicates: Thirteen challenges mounted by Sb blogs or coalitions of Sb blogs, including a newly-added challenge from Abel Pharmboy. In the lead for most money raised so far, with $1,807, the Uncertain Principles Challenge. In the lead for most donors so far, with 35, Dr. Isis's challenge. The challenge that got the most recent donation is…
Texas Liveblagging 4: The Blaggening
Peter Johnston, parent, fmr. SBOE candidate, lawyer: Teach S&W. History of science shows that we aren't all objective. "Powers that be in science … resist change." Difficult to see outside the box. Maundering on Kuhn. Dunbar: "Mrs. Scott." It's "Dr.," dammit. What's the deal with consensus? Those that are in power resist change. John Huffner, math teacher: "What's wrong with telling the truth?" S&W sounds health to me. Education should be built on truth, not deception. "As a creationist, I don't want creationism taught in school." S&W protects teachers. S&W is…
Your Friday Dose of Woo: Wands imploding, sort of
Now this is unexpected. Normally, I find my victims/targets/subjects for my usual end-of-the-workweek bit of fun and skepticism from one of two sources. Either a reader sends a link to some woo or other that desperately deserves a little bit of Orac's loving attention, or in my wanderings across blogosphere I find some little (or huge) bit of woo that catches my attention and holds it long enough to make the case for a spot on my weekly feature. This time around it was different. While applying a sorely needed bit of skepticism to a story that's been going around the more credulous parts of…
What I Do for a Living
I'm in the process of putting together my tenure documents (I know I've been saying this for weeks. It's a long process, OK?). Most of these are really not appropriate for reproduction here, but I'll post a few of the things I'm writing, when it's reasonable to do so. A major part of the tenure process is finding external reviewers for the research material. As most institutions don't really have enough people in a given sub-field to assess research in-house (especially at a small college), and as trusting such an assessment would be a little dodgy, the research review is traditionally…
What's in a Name?
I am obscurely glad to learn from this Times human-interest story that Kansas center Sasha Kaun is from Russia. Otherwise, he is at the age where any parent naming their child "Sasha Kaun" would've had to deal with everybody thinking "Sasha Kaun Sasha Kaun everybody Sasha Kaun..." Yes, I am both a Bad Person and a Child of the 80's. It's a reminder, though, of how many ways names can go wrong. This is a question of more than academic interest, of course, because we need to come up with a name for FutureBaby in the reasonably near future (we considered and rejected sticking with "FutureBaby…
Photons, Universes, Etc.
I thought about linking this Forbes article on the economic situation simply because it's interesting. What actually made me link it was the sentence at the end: And reality tells us that we barely avoided, only a week ago, a total systemic financial meltdown; that the policy actions are now finally more aggressive and systematic, and more appropriate; that it will take a long while for interbank and credit markets to mend; that further important policy actions are needed to avoid the meltdown and an even more severe recession; that central banks, instead of being the lenders of last resort…
Ask a SBer: brain drain?
So, this week's Ask a Science blogger question is: Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything we can do about it? Others have already put up some excellent posts, so I'm going to take a bit of a different approach after the jump. First, as Chad points out, this question is really made up of a number of other questions. Since I'm rather new to the faculty side of the issue, I can'…
"One science question"
Both RPM and Chad beat me to posting this survey [edited to add: and Janet too! Freakin' quick triggers...] which I've had in my drafts box for almost 2 weeks now. So, before absolutely everyone else beats me to it, I thought I'd pose the questions to y'all, and see how you would answer the question, "What is one science question every high school graduate should be able to answer?" Here were the questions offered by the experts: 1. What percentage of the earth is covered by water? 2. What sorts of signals does the brain use to communicate sensations, thoughts and actions? 3. Did dinosaurs…
Science Envy
I missed this by weeks, but Dave asked a set of questions that I was pondering on, but found no time and energy to answer until now. PZ, Janet, Martin, Chad and RPM responded (I am assuming some people outside SB did as well) and their responses (and their commenters') are very interesting. 1. What's your current scientific specialty? Chronobiology, although I have not seen the inside of the lab for three years now. So, scientific publishing, education and communication - does that count? 2. Were you originally pursuing a different academic course? If so, what was it? Yes, I went to vet…
top that: quark soup, time travel and the end of the internet
From Gordon via Chad Fermilab is claiming single top quark decay to b quark + W ie the accelerator produced a t-quark as part of some quark/anti-quark ensemble, without simultaneously producing an anti-t-quark. So what does this all mean... well, there are three generations of quarks - the up and down, from which all normal baryonic matter is made (ie protons and neutrons); strange and charming; and bottom and top (aka beauty and truth) - with top being the heaviest. The three generations, or "flavours", essentially duplicate each other in key properties, except the successive quark pairs…
An Open Letter to the People of London
Hey, I just wanted to drop you all a note to say sorry about that football game yesterday. I know I've already admitted that rugby is a superior game, but honestly, the NFL can do better. You see, the thing is, the Miami Dolphins are a really bad team this year. And the New York Giants, much as I love them, have a long history of playing down to the level of their opponents. You match those two up anywhere, you're going to get pretty much what you got yesterday. I'm just sorry it had to happen in your fine city. (Though, honestly, the conditions of the field didn't help. You know, in American…
What do science teachers need to say or not say about religion?
... In public schools. According to one Federal Judge in the US, not much. A Mission Viejo high school history teacher violated the First Amendment by disparaging Christians during a classroom lecture, a federal judge ruled today. James Corbett, a 20-year teacher at Capistrano Valley High School, referred to Creationism as "religious, superstitious nonsense" during a 2007 classroom lecture, denigrating his former Advanced Placement European history student, Chad Farnan. The decision is the culmination of a 16-month legal battle between Corbett and Farnan - a conflict the judge said…
Religion and Community
Permit me an amusing juxtaposition. Here's Mira Sucharov, a political scientist at Carleton University in Canada, explaining why atheists and religious folks often talk past each other: Put simply, believers are asking the question, “Can a commitment to contemplating the sacred help us better appreciate the everyday?” (They reply yes.) And atheists are asking the question, “Is the existence of God plausible from the standpoint of reason?” (They reply no.) And here's what happened to a pastor in North Carolina for suggesting that hell was not a place of eternal torment: When Chad Holtz…
Who will stop the rain?
They say the devil is in the details, and climate change is no different. While climatologists have agreed on the general trend of global temperature rise, it's proving quite tricky to predict regional effects. A new paper in the current Nature won't get us that level of precision, but it does take us one step closer, in the form of latitudinal precipitation forecasts. And it's not looking good. From "Detection of human influence on twentieth-century precipitation trends" by Xuebin Zhang et al (doi:10.1038/nature06025): We show that anthropogenic forcing has had a detectable influence on…
Physics and insomina
There's an interesting article in New Scientist that purports to describe "seven questions that keep physicists up at night". The list is very heavy on the "deep questions" that tend to percolate around the more esoteric quarters of the high-energy physics world, and not so much on the vast bulk of physicists who (ad Chad and I like to harp on) do physics that's much more directly connected to the real (i.e., observable) world. For instance, it's the question of high-temperature superconductivity probably dominates the dreams of lots of solid state physicists, but it's not on the list. So…
Happenings in the Quantum World: Nov 21, 2007
Postdocs, APS GQI quantum newsletter, Quantum computing in Waikiki, quantum chicanery, quantum foods. Postdocs at NIST: National Research Council Postdoctoral Research Associateships at Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division of the NIST Information Technology Laboratory The fall newsletter for the APS Topical Group of Quantum Information, Concepts and Computation is available. Included is a report on a recent quantum computing conference in Iran, as well as statements from the people crazy enough to run the topical group officer positions. Wait, I'm one of those crazies? Doh. For…
A modest proposal
A clip from Young Frankenstein.Scientists suffer from an image problem. If you were to ask a child to draw a picture of a scientist, for instance, you'd probably receive a depiction of an old, crazy-haired white male holding a bubbling test tube, the image drawing heavily from Dr. Frankenstein and Albert Einstein. This image seems to be especially difficult to dig out, and at times even the people who want to bridge the gap between scientists and the public resort to childish name-calling, portraying researchers as freaks and geeks (i.e. "... feel free to imagine startled and upset sheep…
Fraggin' … frickin' … frackin' … oh, that f-word again
I've tried a different tack now — I've left several comments on Matt Nisbet's very own blog, in the fading hope that he'll actually pay attention to what I'm saying, rather than what he imagines I'm saying, or what other people tell him that they imagine I'm saying. Comments there are held up for moderation, so in case you really want fast feedback, I've tossed my comments below the fold here where you can savage them instantly … or you can head on over to Framing Science and state your piece there. Nisbet writes about Steve Case on Framing and Dawkins, which is basically a post of some fan…
Leaky Pipelines, Or Locked Doors?
Tim left this comment over at Uncertain Principles on Chad's post The Pipeline Problem: I thought the data was pretty clear about this: past high school, the [physics] pipeline is no more leaky for women than it is for men...here's the Report: Read it for yourselves. Examination of the academic "pipeline" reveals that women disproportionately leave physics between taking it in high school and earning a bachelor's degree. While almost half of high school physics students are girls, less that one-fourth of bachelor's degrees in physics are earned by women. After this initial "leak" in the…
Further reading on scientist-journalist communication
I've had a busy week (and an especially busy weekend--more on that in a later post), so today's activity will again be sparse, but I have a lot on tap (now just to get it all typed up!) I do, however, want to highlight a few other posts you should read if you were interested in my post on the collision of scientists and journalists: First, Mike's post on the topic. As he notes, part of his job is to "deal with journalists," so he has lots of good advice for those on both sides of the aisle. Astroprof left a comment here on the article, and also elaborated on the topic in a post of his…
Next thing, they outlaw cooking at home: it's chemistry, after all....
Robert Bruce Thompson is the author of Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments, a book I have and like, but cannot really use as it is hard to get the chemicals. Thompson now writes a guest popst on MAKE blog: Home science under attack The Worcester Telegram & Gazette reports that Victor Deeb, a retired chemist who lives in Marlboro, has finally been allowed to return to his Fremont Street home, after Massachusetts authorities spent three days ransacking his basement lab and making off with its contents. Deeb is not accused of making methamphetamine or other illegal drugs. He's…
Wednesday Morning Roundup
I took a break from doing the morning roundup yesterday, but everybody's favorite least-read morning "things that I don't have time to really blog about so I'm going to blog about in one fell swoop" post returns today. Today's load is actually on the light side. There are a couple more consequences of climate change to talk about, a question about disability access to labs, and a little more on framing. Iraq and the Virginia Tech shooting are also in the news, but I'm not going to talk about them here. Climate Change Goodies:The more we think about climate change, the more potential…
ScienceBlogs Must Read: Uncertain Principles on Loopholes in Argument
I don't really have time to post stuff today, but this post by Chad at Uncertain Principles is really good. It relates the failure to fully disprove Einstein's idea of Local Hidden Variables (read it and he will explain) to Richard Dawkins failure to fully address ontological arguments for the existence of God: The point is, though, that those loopholes are still there. Any responsible treatment of the subject has to acknowledge them. And, more importantly, anyone who wants to design a new experiment to test Bell's theorem needs to account for those loopholes. Tightening the existing bounds…
A brief list of reasons I'm against capital punishment.
Because Shelley asked (and Josh, Mike, Chad, Nick, PZ, and John have all posted answers), I'm going to chime in. Shelley asks: Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if it's conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty? Rather than giving a detailed argument in favor of my position on capital punishment, I'm just going to enumerate my reasons. Then, I'll see if I can say something sensible on what this ought to mean for my position on war. I'm against capital punishment because: You can't undo…
Chad Is My Muse
This blog doesn't seem to want to write itself. I've got a few posts in the pipeline (including the next on detecting natural selection), but I can't seem to finish them. I'm in this writing funk where I start to lay some words onto paper (well, text editor, actually), and then I can't organize all my thoughts or just can't finish writing the post (do I have an undiagnosed case of ADD?). Luckily for me, I have Chad at Uncertain Principles to inspire me, as he's already done once before. This time he's asking people about their least favorite misconception in their field. One commentor…
Framing Science sparks a seismic blog debate
Our Policy Forum article at Science has generated a monster blog discussion, one that is almost too much to keep up with. I continue to try to keep a summary here with my quick responses, where appropriate. I have also posted several comments at other blogs. I will continue to update as more blog commentary develops. Reactions so far: -->Over at The Intersection, a very strong endorsement from Flock of Dodos director Randy Olson: Nisbet and Mooney are taking on the odious job of being the messengers of the new era for the world of science with their excellent essay in Science this week. I'…
Science Labs
There is a growing, glowing discussion about the usefulness of college science labs that was started with an anti-lab post by Steve Gimbel and responded to, with various degrees of pro-lab sentiment by Janet Stemwedel, Chad, Chad again, Chad yet again, Razib, Jeremy and RPM and numerous commenters on all of their posts (also check older posts on the topic by Sean Carroll and Janet). Of course, I felt a need to chime in. I teach labs, after all (and I took many as a student as well). The core of the problem is the very existence of the institution we call 'college'. Let me explain. There is…
Occupational Health News Roundup
Home health workers who care for the elderly and disabled are an indispensable part of our healthcare workforce â but the Bush Administrationâs Department of Labor decided that they shouldnât be covered by the same wage and hour laws that protect most workers. The Associated Pressâs Sam Hananel explains that the administration based this determination on their interpretation of the Fair Labor Standards Act that was amended in 1974 to exempt babysitters and companions to the elderly and sick. Earlier this week, a group of 15 Democratic Senators, headed by Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, urged…
Cutting Academia Badly
A lot of people have asked me to link to and comment on the SUNY Albany cuts and some of the reactions to it by some online academics... To cut a long story short, the SUNY system took another round of cuts, and the President of SUNY Albany decided to cut whole programs rather than keep trimming around the edges. Classics, French, Italian, Russian, and Theatre cut by directive, at short notice and with little open consultation. Gregory Petsko wrote a high profile defence of the humanities, from a science perspective, and the Dangeral Professor hisself pitches his penny's worth in, while…
Economical with the Astronomical
Ok, here we go again... someone thinks it is funny to compare economics with astronomy... Worse, than that, it is Chad hisself, hovering near one of the antipodes of the blogosphere. It was of course Krugman who started it, but Sean had to go stir it up, didn't he? Then Dave's got to go Pontificate and all, so how can I not? Why, some of my best friends are economists... So, is economics really like astronomy? No! Well, except for our mutual affinity for unreasonably large numbers, mesoscale problems and models that are mostly too messy to actually solve for realistic situations.…
Class Implications of the Brain Drain
Over at Gene Expression, Razib responds to my brain drain comments in a way that provokes some twinges of Liberal Guilt: Second, Chad like many others points to the issue of foreign scientists allowing us (Americans) to be complacent about nourishing home grown talent. I don't totally dismiss this, there are probably many doctors and lawyers out there who could be scientists if the incentives were right (Ph.D. scientists are one of the least compensated groups in relation to how much education they have). But, I would frankly rather focus on tightening labor supply on the low end of the…
Why is FOX News Anti-American?
It is a fiction that the right wing, and the Republican party, and their primary philosophical guru (Rush Limbaugh) and mouthpiece (FOX News) are more American, more security-savvy, and more patriotic than Liberals, Progressives, and Democrats. This fiction is part of a common bully tactic you already know about because you were either bothered by the bullies, or you were a bully, in middle school. The bully takes his nefarious trait and projects it on his victim. And now, we see yet another piece of evidence for this, one among many. FOX News has attacked President Obama for his…
Big Science and Outreach
In comments to my complaint about the over-identification of physics with particle physics, I noted that this is largely because high-energy physicists have been successful in getting the media and general public to buy into their belief that high-energy physics is the coolest and most important thing in physics, for a number of reasons. Jonathan Vos Post asks: The reasons being what, in your opinion, Chad? And, if so, what should we do (as citizens or a physicists)? I think most of it comes down to the scale of the experiments and the collaborations that run them. There are two components…
Football and Error
Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad is talking football. There's this pesky problem of spotting the ball at the end of the play. In a game where fractions of an inch can make or break the end result, too often the issue is determined by a more or less random guess by the referee of where the ball stopped. Instant replay has helped the issue, but not come anywhere close to fixing it. It's too imprecise and often made less useful because there's enormous football players diving for the ball and thus obscuring it from the cameras. There's good suggestions. DGPS, radar, optical tracking, and…
The Golden Compass was not a very good movie
I guess I suspected that Golden Compass might not be good, but I went to see it last night if for no other reason than to see why thousands of people would attempt to boycott it on Facebook. The Catholic League is also organizing a boycott. I haven't read the books that this movie was based on, but apparently the primary objection to the film was from Christian groups to the atheist imagery in the books. The author of the books, Philip Pullman, has also enunciated his desire to create a sort of anti-C.S. Lewis, secular trilogy. Listen, maybe the books are substantially better, but if this…
Athletics and drug abuse
My favorite bike shop has a photo of bicyclists lighting up cigarettes for each other as they rode along during a 1920s stage of the Tour de France. After getting over our astonishment that they can actually manage to light cigarettes without even getting off their bikes, we look at the photo today and think "how could those riders not know what those cigarettes were doing to their lungs?" Surely today's athletes know that using drugs ranging from nicotine to alcohol to cocaine can seriously impair their ability to perform in competition, don't they? Supporters of scholastic athletics point…
Massive amounts of meta
As I approach my one year anniversary of blogging here on ScienceBlogs.com, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the benefits and drawbacks of blogging. Being here on Sb has done a lot of good for me, from speaking engagements to opportunities to write academic & popular articles, but I have also been thinking of what my "next step" should be. Coincidentally, last night a number of bloggers posted some unrelated articles that corresponded to my own questions and concerns about science blogging. At the World's Fair, Benjamin considers the failure of blogging to initiate…
Assorted hypotheses on the science-humanities divide.
Reading the comments on my post and Chad's post about the different societal attitudes towards humanities and arts and math and science (especially in terms of what "basic" knowledge a well-educated person ought to have), I get the feeling that some interesting assumptions are at play. Since I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, I'm just going to lay out some of the hypotheses that have occurred to me as I've read through these discussions: Math and science are objectively harder (and/or require greater intelligence to learn) than humanities and arts. While math and science do not…
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