In this post: the large versions of the Education & Careers and Politics channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.
Politics. From Flickr, by art_es_anna
Education & Careers. From Flickr, by Irish Typepad
Reader comments of the week:
In Scientific Virtue, Jonah Lehrer of the Frontal Cortex shares an excerpt from an interview with Steven Shapin, author of The Scientific Revolution and the upcoming The Scientific Life. Shapin criticizes the supposed differences between "true" academic scientists and scientists working in industry and government, contending that the division is mostly drawn by academics themselves and that the ideal of the pure, passionate, knowledge-driven scientist can be greatly overblown.
Reader bob koepp has a slightly different perspective:
Sure, characterizing science as the pursuit of truth its own sake is an idealization. But isn't that the way it usually is with ideals? And isn't the pursuit of truth for its own sake a worthy ideal?
It's hard to argue with that.
In Those Fiscally Responsible Republicans, Ed Brayton posts the following chart showing the growth of the U.S. national debt since 1968. Though five of seven presidents during that time period were Republicans—supposedly the lower spenders of the two major parties—the debt has increased 20-fold.
Some readers argued that the increase was due to inflation, but reader Matthew Hussein Platte had another issue to point out:
Y'all talk as though there's a significant difference between the two major branches of today's Money Party.
Some other Education & Careers posts we thought were cool this week were:
'Aint no cure for the [blogging] blues
PloS In Nature: The Big Picture
Women, Science, and Publishing Revisited
Tales From the Front Line in The Animal Research War
And from the Politics channel:
Secret Report Reveals Biofuels Causing Worldwide Fuel Crisis
Porn, Law, and the Law of Unintended Consequences
An Earth Systems Science Agency
An Open Letter To the Future President
Look for highlights from other channels coming up!
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That Ed and Careers channel needs to be split up or something. It's gotten really active in the past 6 mo or so. Maybe divide the active-scientist stuff on grant funding, mentoring and paper publishing from the old traditional academic-university-prof stuff?
Thanks for the suggestion, Piled; we may be rearranging the channels at some point in the future and we'll definitely take that into account.