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Around the Web: Research Works Act & Elsevier boycott
Note: this post is superseded by: Around the Web: Research Works Act, Elsevier boycott & FRPAA. This post has superseded my previous post which focused solely on the Research Works Act. I have added some coverage of the Elsevier boycott which at least partially grew out of opposition to the RWA. I'm not attempting to be as comprehensive in coverage for the boycott as for the RWA. Some relevant resources: The Cost of Knowledge: Researchers taking a stand against Elsevier (Boycott declaration site) Notes on the Research Works Act a wiki maintained by Peter Suber, hosted by the Berkman…
Emerging disease and zoonoses #4--war and disease
I mentioned in part 2 of the introduction the role that war plays in the emergence and transmission of infectious disease. Accurate numbers are difficult to come by, but currently, it's estimated that approximately 120 million people worldwide are affected in some way by conflict. In 2003, it was estimated that more than 72 countries were identified as unstable, and various conflicts have resulted in over 42 million refugees and internally displaced people worldwide. War and its concomitant devastation and social upheaval leaves its victims at an increased risk of disease transmission…
Eat this!
There is this food meme going around everywhere, so I checked out what Chad, Archy, Mark CC and Rev. BigDumbChimp picked. I have to admit I had to use Google for a lot of these, often realizing that I have, indeed, tasted some of these but under a different name. Different people do it differently, i.e., adding comments, or bolding those they tried, perhaps also italicizing those that they tried and spit in disgust. Here is my list with comments: 1. Venison (deer and elk). Yes. Very tasty. 2. Nettle tea. Yes. Not very tasty, but OK. 3. Huevos rancheros. No. Mexican food is too new and…
What Does Slate Have Against Physicists?
Benjamin over at The World's Fair and Chad over at Uncertain Principles have already blogged this, but neither acheves the proper level of indignation in my opinion. In this post from September 15, I discussed an astonishingly poor discussion of string theory, written by Gregg Easterbrook and published in Slate. Now, in an apparent effort to cement its reputation for unreliable commentary on science, they have run this silly essay. The subject is a recent experiment by sociologist Henry Collins. He posed seven questions about gravitational waves to a professional physicist. Both Collins…
I personally put Al Franken in the Senate
Today is Minnesota Senator Al Franken's Birthday. In honor of that, I'm reposting this historically accurate and important essay, which first appeared on this blog on April 23, 2009 at 3:56PM: I personally put Al Franken in the Senate Al Franken is about to be seated as the Junior Senator from Minnesota after a long and costly battle between loser Norm Coleman and Senator Franken. Al won the election by just a few hundred votes, and three of those votes are mine. So, we have me and about 100 other people just like me to thank for overthrowing the Coleman Regime. Let this be a lesson to…
Teaching Science in SF
In a comment to my Worldcon wrap-up, "fvngvs" asks a question following up on the science in SF panel: So Chad, now that you've had some time to think about it, can you think of a list of books/stories with a really good treatment of science concepts? It's a good question, and deserves a full post in response. It also probably deserves better than to be posted on a Saturday morning, when nobody's reading, but oh, well. Anyway, the question stems from a question posed during the panel, asking for books or stories that do a particularly good job presenting some science concept or another. I…
Newton's Laws in Science Fiction TV and Movies
Chad notes, in response to PZ's rather absurd assertion that biology is the only Dumped Upon science, and that physics is so well treated in movies and TV, that "Most of the SF movies I see are lucky if they can get Newton's Laws right, let alone any of the finer points of astrophysics." Indeed, this was the topic of one of the two talks I gave at Hypericon a couple of weeks ago. Let me try to explain one aspect of this: specifically, the motion of space fighters. Don't get me wrong. Star Wars is a great movie, one of my all-time favorites. It's even still a pretty good movie if Han doesn't…
When writing a pop-sci book, your editor is your friend
A few weeks ago the first packet of edits for Written in Stone was slipped under my door. I did not know exactly what to expect. As I opened the mailing sleeve I started having flashbacks of returned elementary school writing assignments, the pages cut and bleeding from the merciless slashes of the teacher's terrible red pen. Had my editor also cut my prose to ribbons? I took the sheaf of papers, covering the first two chapters of my book, and sat down with my laptop to start making corrections. Nothing on page one. So far, so good. A typo on page two, marked in black (thank god) ink. Not so…
Noticing class privilege.
Via Bint Alshamsa, this is a version of a "social class awareness experience" used in the residence halls (and possibly also classrooms?) at Indiana State University by Will Barratt et al. In the classroom, students are asked to take a step forward for each of the statements that describe them; they don't talk about the exercise (and how they feel about it) until after they've gone through the whole list. Doing this online, I'm bolding the statements which describe my background. Also, I'm including a second list that Lauren added based on the suggestions Bint's commenters made as to other…
New and Exciting in PLoS today
So, let's see what's new in PLoS Medicine, PLoS Biology and PLoS ONE today. First, my SciBlings Shelley, Nick and Tara just published a PLoS Biology article about science blogs: Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the Academy: Scientific discovery occurs in the lab one experiment at a time, but science itself moves forward based on a series of ongoing conversations, from a Nobel Prize winner's acceptance speech to collegial chats at a pub. When these conversations flow into the mainstream, they nurture the development of an informed public who…
What kinds of posts bring traffic?
Chad did an interesting analysis the other day - looking at the traffic attracted by science posts vs. non-science stuff (e.g., pretty pictures, politics, etc.). This made me look at my all-time traffic here (I know some of the posts are re-posts from the old blogs where they got lots of traffic as well, but I can ignore that for the purpose of this exercise). I rarely ever check Google Analytics, so the first surprise was my 6th place in overall traffic for the past month! And then I looked at the Clock content to see what have been the greatest hits over the past two years. Considering I…
More to the Food Story than Prices: Protracted Crises Keep Hunger High in 22 Countries
Earlier this week, riots erupted over food prices in several Algerian cities - according to Reuters, prices for flour and salad oil there have doubled over the past few months. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization's food price index is now slightly higher than it was during the last global food crisis in 2008, though the New York Times' William Neuman points out that the absence of inflation adjustments makes a direct comparison tricky. The overall situation isn't as bad as it was in 2008, but whether the world tips over the edge into another full-blown crisis depends largely on upcoming…
Why teach biology?
I've been tagged with a teaching meme: I'm supposed to answer the question, "Why do you teach and why is academic freedom critical to that effort?". We science types are late to the game; there are already several examples online, mostly from those humanities people. First, I'll be forthright in one thing: teaching was not my initial goal, nor was there anything in my training to encourage teaching. Especially if you get into a program with biomedical funding, there's active dissuasion from pursuing teaching: I was a TA for 3 quarters in my first year of graduate school, and then got put on…
When learning maths, abstract symbols work better than real-world examples
You all know the score. A train leaves one city travelling at 35 miles per hour and another races toward it at 25 miles an hour from a city 60 miles away. How long do they take to meet in the middle? Leaving aside the actual answer of 4 hours (factoring in signalling problems, leaves on the line and a pile-up outside Clapham Junction), these sorts of real-world scenarios are often used as teaching tools to make dreary maths "come alive" in the classroom. Except they don't really work. A new study shows that far from easily grasping mathematical concepts, students who are fed a diet of real-…
The Worst Physics Article Ever
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the worst physics news article I have ever seen: Freaky Physics Proves Parallel Universes Exist Every word in the title is wrong but "physics". It's not freaky, doesn't prove anything we didn't already know, and has nothing to do with parallel universes nor does it shed any light the question of their possible existence. Look past the details of a wonky discovery by a group of California scientists -- that a quantum state is now observable with the human eye -- and consider its implications: Time travel may be feasible. Doc Brown would be proud. Quantum…
The line between chemistry and physics during the chemical revolution.
Following up on the earlier discussion here and at Chad's about the "fundamental difference" between chemistry and physics, I wanted to have a look at a historical moment that might provide some insight into the mood along the border between the two fields. It strikes me that the boundaries between chemistry and physics, as between any two fields which train their tools on some of the same parts of the world, are not fixed for all time but may shift in either direction. But this means that there are sometimes boundary disputes. One locus of the dispute about boundaries is the chemical…
A few words on faculty searches.
Chad has an interesting post explaining the timescale of a faculty search at his college. One of the rate-determining steps he notes in the process is the posting of the job (and its deadline for applications): So, why does it take so long? Well, to start with, you need to post the job and set the deadline so as to obtain a reasonable pool of applicants. Academic job-hunting season traditionally begins in September or thereabouts, so jobs tend to be advertised on major academic sites during September, October, and November. If you post the ad and set the deadline too early, you won't get…
Matt Entenza's Claim Rejected By Three Judge Panel
The 2000 election was probably won by Al Gore. But George Bush was put into office anyway. Imagine what this world would be like had Gore been ensconced in the white house? The Tea Party would probably have emerged sooner and madder, but less organized; global climate change would have become a widely accepted issue to do something about within a couple of years, instead of much later (cuz, you know, that hasn’t even happened yet). We probably wouldn’t have had this war in Iraq. If Gore had continued Clinton’s policy dealing with Al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden (no relation) there probably…
Global Warming, the Blog Epic ~ 07 ~ Sea Level Change
This is the seventh in a series of reposts from gregladen.com on global warming. This installment is about sea level rise and fall, in the past. Sea level change that results from the formation and melting of glaciers not only has an enormous impact on the physical nature of the landscape, but it also would not have gone unnoticed by people living ever pretty far from the sea! With large amounts of the world's water trapped in glaciers (mainly continental glaciers), the sea level drops. When that ice melts, the sea level rises. As you know, the earth is covered by two kinds of surface:…
Further thoughts on the recount
Think back to Florida eight years ago. There is a reasonable argument that Al Gore was duly voted, even via the electoral college, to be President of the United States, but George W. Bush was placed in that office for one and only one reason: The recount process in Florida was transformed into a circus, and the mainstream press in the United States whipped large parts of the populous and many involved in the process into a panic. The delay in determining the winner was going to damage democracy. The free world could not survive any more waiting. It did not matter that the guy running…
Learning What the Best College Teachers Do
Photo source. This article was co-authored with Ms. Julie Dalley, Program Coordinator for the Research Academy for University Learning at Montclair State University. Why pursue a college degree? It is a fair question. People pursue a college degree for many different reasons. It may be the realization of a personal goal, have cultural significance, or may simply be a stepping-stone to professional success. No matter what the motivation, all students have an expectation of learning and many pay a high price to achieve their learning goals. But is learning taking place? And if so, how?…
Dark Energy Considered Harmful
Simon White has written a treatise published on astro-ph (arXiv:0704.2291v1) where he argues that Dark Energy, or, more specifically, the current bandwagon of interest in Dark Energy, is potentially harmful for astronomy. Despite the fact that I'm deeply interested in cosmology and Dark Energy, despite the fact that those subjects are my favorite topics for public-outreach lectures, and despite the fact that I was there as one of the major contributors tot he 1998 discovery of the acceleration of the Universe's expansion and hence Dark Energy, I agree with almost everything Simon White has to…
Global Warming, the Blog Epic ~ 07 ~ Sea Level Change
This is the seventh in a series of reposts from gregladen.com on global warming. This installment is about sea level rise and fall, in the past. Sea level change that results from the formation and melting of glaciers not only has an enormous impact on the physical nature of the landscape, but it also would not have gone unnoticed by people living ever pretty far from the sea! With large amounts of the world's water trapped in glaciers (mainly continental glaciers), the sea level drops. When that ice melts, the sea level rises. As you know, the earth is covered by two kinds of surface:…
Defining scientists
I never quite know what to say when people call me a scientist. I take it as a compliment, certainly, but I'm usually unsure as to whether I can apply the word to myself or not. Is a scientist defined by their journey through the academic meat grinder? By expert knowledge? By skeptical thought? The popular imagery of scientists is often of a socially-inept nerd or of a mad scientist, both archetypes representing scientists as being so detached from the public that they almost literally don't speak the same language. As I've said before I find this characterization unfortunate, but in order to…
What (not) to do when the system is broken.
When I was a kid, my mother went back to school with the intention of getting the physics training she needed to pursue her dream of a career in astronomy. Part of this journey, of course, required that she be plunged into the life of a graduate student. It wasn't any prettier then than it is now. While my mom was in the thick of the horrors visited upon graduate students, she was a little bit freaked out by coverage of a parole hearing for one Theodore Streleski, an erstwhile math graduate student at Stanford who killed his advisor with a ball peen hammer. Streleski actually refused…
Fear of Falling
The American Geriatric Society has announced that falls are a leading cause of serious injury and death among the U.S. elderly. HealthDay News reports: Each year, about one in three Americans aged 65 and older suffers a fall, and 30 percent of those falls cause injuries that require medical treatment. In 2005, almost 16,000 older adults in the United States died from falls, 1.8 million were treated in emergency departments, and 433,000 were hospitalized. Improving nighttime lighting, reducing clutter, and wearing non-slip footwear can reduce risks in the home, which is where most falls take…
What is a Science Blog?
A blog is software. Importantly: a blog is free software. Everyone can use it in any way they want. If there are 100 million blogs out there, there are 100 million blogging styles and 100 million ideas what blogging "is". And anyone who dares tell others how to do it incurs the wrath of the other 100 million who are NOT going to be told what to do. Blogosphere is democratic - the voice of millions of individuals who finally have the ability to have their voices heard. They will never accept any authority telling them how to do it and what they can or cannot write. This means that one also…
A destructive executive action for global health
President Trump’s callous and short-sighted executive order restricting US entry for refugees and travelers from certain countries is rightfully getting a lot of attention, but it risks overshadowing another destructive thing he did for global health during his first week in office: reinstating and expanding the Mexico City Policy, also known more descriptively as the global gag rule. Trump’s adoption of this policy is even more reprehensible than it was for his Republican predecessors, for two reasons: First, he has broadened its scope so it appears to cripple not only family planning, but…
Comments of the Week #6: From Matter/Antimatter to Eclipses
"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong." -Voltaire It's been another great week over on the main Starts With A Bang blog, where we got to touch on a number of remarkable topics, including: Why are we made of matter? (For Ask Ethan #31) Trompe-l’œil Art (For our Weekend Diversion) The Farthest Messier Object for now, M58 (For Messier Monday) The secret of the galaxy’s most famous nebula Incredibly rare “back-to-back” maximum eclipses are coming! and The Lives and Deaths of Sun-Like Stars (For Throwback Thursday) As always, you've had your say…
Selection of Antidepressants: Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq)
I haven't gotten back to the "selection of antidepressants" series. Mostly that is because, alphabetically, the next one is supposed to be citalopram. While href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citalopram">citalopram (Celexa™) is a perfectly fine antidepressant, it is kind of boring. So to spice things up a little bit, I'm going to jump ahead to href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desvenlafaxine" rel="tag">desvenlafaxine. This is a drug that is in development by href="http://www.wyeth.com/" rel="tag">Wyeth. They plan to market it with the brand name, href="http://www.wyeth.…
Some thoughts on ClimateGate.
It's quite likely, if you're reading anything else on the internets besides this blog for the past few weeks, that you've already gotten your fill of ClimateGate. But maybe you've been stuck in your Cave of Grading and missed the news that a bunch of emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) webserver at the University of East Anglia were stolen by hackers (or leaked by an insider, depending on who's telling the story) and widely distributed. Or maybe you're still sorting out what you think about the email messages in question and what they mean for their authors, the soundness of…
Praxis #1
Welcome to the first experimental issue of the newest science blog carnival - Praxis. Why experimental? Because we still have to see where to set the boundaries. If it is "Life in Academia", then pretty much everything on science blogs is eligible and the effect is diluted. If we narrow it down to one topic, e.g., Open Access publishing, then there will not be sufficient posts and sufficient interest to keep the carnival alive. We'll have to define a happy middle. We want people to find each other here - folks that write about the business of science, about publishing and Science 2.0,…
Spin polarization and quantum statistical effects in ultracold ionizing collisions
This is the last of the five papers that were part of my Ph.D. thesis, and at ten journal pages in length, it's the longest thing I wrote. It was also the longest-running experiment of any of the things I did, with the data being taken over a period of about three years, between and around other experiments. As usual for this series of posts, I can sum up the key result in one graph: (No spiffy color figure this time, as the experiment never made it onto the old web page, and my original figures are three or four computers ago.) What we found was that when we prepared samples of metastable…
The boring truth
Yes indeed, time to weigh in on the great issue of the day: Mr Justice Burton vs Al Gore. My first point was going to be, that it was a poor idea to have judges deciding science. Its still a point, but possibly not a major one in this case, because it looks like the amended guidance notes, which contain the core of what needs to be said to correct the film, were "agreed during the case" - exactly who agreed them is unclear, especially on the govt side, but at least it wasn't just the judge. [Update: IPCC and Gore get 2007 peace Nobel "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater…
I am the über-nerd. Bow before me.
Janet, Janet, Janet. What have you wrought? I know you're hosting the Skeptics' Circle next week, which gives you much cred in my book, but why this now? Annoyed at being shut out of the hottest scienceblogger list, you decreed a nerd-off, and then everybody had to get into the act, including Nick, Chad, Janet again, Joshua, PZ, Shelley (who in reality should be automatically disqualified, having been elected the hottest scienceblogger), John Wilkins, Afarensis, Razib, and Mike Dunford. (Bora tried to deny that he is a nerd, but I detect serious nerdiness underneath that seemingly cool…
The Authoritarian Reseponse (More Gun Control?)
NOTE added 04/17: from the response I've seen, and from the all-out assault Chad directed at me and others, it's clear to me that I made some mistakes in my original post, undermining what was my main by inadvertently pushing a hot button or two. I leave this post here in the interest of honesty, but please read the updated version of this post instead of this one! It's terrible and tragic news, what has happened at Virginia Tech. Given that, this entry is probably coming at an extremely insensitive time, given what I'm going to say-- but on the other hand, I really believe that it is at…
My Claim to Scientific Fame: "Squeezed States in a Bose-Einstein Condensate"
In Monday's post on squeezed states, I mentioned that I really liked the question because I had done work on the subject. This is, in fact, my claim to scientific fame (well, before the talking-to-the-dog thing, anyway)-- I'm the first author on a Science paper with more than 500 citations having to do with squeezed states. And since I've never written it up on the blog before, I'll leap on this opportunity to do some shameless self-promotion... Well, aren't we Mr. Ego today? What's this paper that you're so impressed with about? I've never been all that good with titles, but I like to think…
What philosophy of science and "postmodernism" have in common
Lately there has been a rediscovery on the blogia of C. P. Snow's Two Cultures - which initially was the divide between those who understood the Second Law of Thermodynamics and those who don't, but is now, it appears, between those who know math and those who don't, and the respective attitudes. In Chad's initial post, the discussion turned to the Sokal hoax and what it is supposed to prove. So what I want to do here is a little "compare and contrast" between what is usually thought to be the main themes of postmodern philosophy (not being an expert, I may be... no I certainly am…
Ask a ScienceBlogger: Time
Time - He's waiting in the wings He speaks of senseless things His script is you and me, boys Time - He flexes like a whore Falls wanking to the floor His trick is you and me, boy Time - In Quaaludes and red wine Demanding Billy Dolls And other friends of mine Take your time Excerpted from Time by David Bowie(one of my favorite Bowie songs) Uh-oh. This week's Ask a ScienceBlogger question strikes a bit close to home. This week, our Seed overlords demand of us: How is it that all the PIs (Tara, PZ, Orac et al.), various grad students, post-docs, etc. find time to fulfill their primary…
Dirty Rotten Infinite Sets and the Foundations of Math
Today we've got a bit of a treat. I've been holding off on this for a while, because I wanted to do it justice. This isn't the typical wankish crackpottery, but rather a deep and interesting bit of crackpottery. A reader sent me a link to a website of a mathematics professor, N. J. Wildberger, at the University of New South Wales, which contains a long, elegant screed against the evils of set theory, titled "Set Theory: Should You Believe?" It's an interesting article - and I don't mean that sarcastically. It's over the top, to the point of extreme silliness in places, but the basic idea…
Selective pressures and the evolution of alternative medicine
I wish I had thought of this one, but I didn't. However, I never let a little thing like not having thought of an idea first to stop me from discussing it, and this particular idea is definitely worth expanding upon because (1) it's interesting and (2) it combines two of my interests, alternative medicine and evolution. I agree with parts of the idea, but it's not without its shortcomings. Indeed, I'd very much welcome any of the evolutionary biologists who read this blog to chime in with their own ideas. Fellow ScienceBlogger Martin Rundkvist over at Aardvarchaeology has proposed a rather…
Andrew Bolt gets a perfect score on global warming
Andrew Bolt welcomes Al Gore to Australia with a column that accuses Gore of being "one of the worst of the fact-fiddling Green evangelicals". Bolt writes: Well, here are just 10 of my own "minor quibbles" with Gore's film. These are my own "inconvenient truths", and judge from them the credibility of Gore's warnings of the end of all civilisation. So let's assess Bolt's 10 "inconvenient truths". I'll classify them as either: wrong, or not wrong but misleading, Bolt having omitted other facts that undercut his position, or a valid point about Gore's movie. To get a passing grade Bolt needs…
Neil Munro goes after Riyadh Lafta
Neil Munro has had another go at the Lancet studies. This time he has gone on right-wing talk shows to attack Riyadh Lafta. On Glenn Beck he claimed This study -- the guys in this study have not shown the forms and the date and the sheets collected by the surveyors who worked for an Iraqi without U.S. supervision. This particular Iraqi was once employed by Saddam Hussein, where he produced crummy scientific papers as part of Saddam`s effort to lift economic sanctions in the 1990s. On Mike McConnell he elaborated (search for "neil munro" at the link): The strange thing is that the entire…
Can it be real? The FDA brings the hammer down on bogus cancer cures
I'm a cancer surgeon, and if there's one thing that drives me straight to the liquor cabinet it has to be quack cancer "cures." Very early in the history of this blog, I discussed one of the biggest quacks of all time, a woman who thinks that all cancer is caused by a liver fluke (but only if the patient has propyl alcohol in his body, which, according to her, allows the fluke to become established) and that she can cure all cancer with a combination of herbs and the use of a device that she calls a "Zapper" (which looks suspiciously like a Scientology E-meter). I'm referring, of course, to…
Link love and long tails
A post up at Bayblab is causing a bit of a stir; ScienceBlogs.com is singled out as an incestuous conclave of hacks* where bloggers are paid substantial sums to turn out tabloid-quality science writing. Alright, maybe such a summary isn't entirely accurate, but the post by "Anonymous Coward" paints an unfavorable caricature of ScienceBlogs, making it seem like my colleagues and I care more about popularity than about science. [*Using "hacks" to refer to popular science writers who are looked down upon for not writing how members of the scientific community want them to write.] AC starts off…
Encounters with gigantic orangutans
Over the past couple of months I've been reading John MacKinnon's In Search of the Red Ape (Collins, 1974) - one of the first books anyone reads whenever they want to learn about orangutans. The book is stuffed full of anecdotes and other natural history tales about Borneo and Sumatra, and it seems that MacKinnon (who, these days, is best known for his association with the discovery of the Saola Pseudoryx nghetinensis in Vietnam (MacKinnon 2000, Van Dung et al. 1993, 1994)) encountered just about every creature you could hope to encounter in the tropical jungles of the region... yes, even…
Boorish Behavior in Poker
The behavior of Josh Arieh during the World Series of Poker main event, aired recently on ESPN, has sparked a great deal of controversy in the poker world. For those who haven't been watching, Josh Arieh is a terrific poker player, one of the up and coming pros to watch in the future. But here are a couple of examples of his behavior during just this one tournament: In a hand with Harry Demetriou when they were down to less than 3 tables, Demetriou had AJ unsuited and Arieh had 9h10h. The flop came AKQ with two hearts. Arieh bet, Demetriou raised him (he had more chips than Arieh), Arieh…
Makayla Sault's mother: Racism, trust, and science-based medicine
One of the recurring topics I write about is, of course, cancer quackery. It goes right back to the very beginning of this blog, to my very earliest posts more than 11 years ago. Over the years I've covered more cases than I can remember of patients relying on quackery instead of real medicine. In particular, tales of children with highly curable cancers being treated with quackery bother me most of all. Many have been the examples throughout the years: Abraham Cherrix, Katie Wernecke, Chad Jessop, Daniel Hauser, Sarah Hershberger, and teens like Cassandra Callender, who wanted to use…
Selective pressures and the evolution of alternative medicine
Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you've come to expect. This is one of those times. So enjoy this bit of Classic Insolence from back in November 2007 and be assured that I'll be back tomorrow. Remember, if you've been reading less than two and a half years, it's new to you, and, even if you have been reading more than two and a half years, it's fun to see how posts like this have aged. I wish I had thought of this one, but I didn't. However, I never let a little thing like not having thought of…
Advice for junior faculty at a research university
Chad just posted a bit of pre-tenure advice, including the very important advice to take all advice with a grain of salt. I would say that also applies to the rest of his advice, because I'm about to post contradictory advice. You should also take my advice with a grain of salt. Be aware that it comes from somebody who has been beaten into being very cynical about the system. On the other hand, you can learn from my mistakes. My advice here is specifically for faculty at a research University, most specifically Vanderbilt. It's primarily for physics and astronomy (indeed, primarily the…
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