Academia
catdynamics | December 21, 2011Books, of course, but which books...?
One of these "be careful what you wish for" things, is that I now get a lot of requests to review books (and DVDs and online games etc), just as I reach the stage of my life where I spend most of my time doing reading reformatting paperwork instead of reading fun new things... which is a shame, because the books I get sent are pretty much generally exactly those I spent most of my very limited disposable income on when I was younger...
One day soon I'll catch up on the backlog.
In the meantime, here are three good looking physics books that any good…
jdupuis | December 16, 2011OK, the blog post in question isn't actually that funny. But the title is. And, it's really worth reading for the seriously intentioned message it contains.
How to argue with a scientist: A guide.
I notice it all the time- on Facebook, in the comments of a science blog, over family gatherings, or listening to a radio talk show. Someone, maybe you, is patiently trying to explain how vaccines cause autism, perhaps, or why so-called "anthropogenic" global warming is really just due to sunspots or some other natural cycle. Perhaps you are doing pretty well at first, making use of passionate,…
catdynamics | December 15, 2011For my class, one f the things I asked is what I should tell them about which I did not do.
Somewhat to my surprise, one question, endorsed by a number of other students, was whether I could recommend some good science fiction to read over the holidays.
Why, yes, yes I can...
Ok, we'll jst let rip in random free association...
I'll also mention some more fantasy oriented stuff at the end, just for fun.
I'll presume everyone knows of Wells and Verne, and Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein?
Heinlein: I'd go for the early shorts and mid-career juveniles. The later novels are mostly for hardcore…
catdynamics | December 8, 2011 Do not bring the University into Disrepute or through Inaction Allow the University to be Dissed
Bring Funding to the University and do not let the Funding stop through Inaction, Except where such Funding would Conflict with the First Law
Protect your Own Existence as long as Such Protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
catdynamics | December 2, 2011This is an old favourite. re-presented here to lay the ground for the great return to the phys ed education debate...
Several years ago, a major organ of our professional society raised a troubling issue: namely whether the three major subfields were being taught in the proper order at the high school level .A furor arose in the letter pages, debating the merits endlessly. Which first, which last? (also here).
Now, I think we can all agree on the basics - there are not enough resources to teach all subfields each year of high school, and I am told scheduling is also impossible if people are…
drorzel | November 28, 2011One of the many things I wish I had had time to blog about during the just-completed term was the big New York Times article on attrition in science majors. This generated enough commentary at the time that people are probably sick of it, but I haven't seen anything that exactly matches my take, so I'll belatedly throw this out there.
The big point of the article is that lots of students who enter college planning to major in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math (the "STEM" fields, in an awkward but now inescapable acronym) end up graduating with degrees in something else:
But, it turns…
catdynamics | November 27, 2011I've been a naughty blogger, I went off to the Mars Surveyor launch, and didn't blog about it, yet.
In no small part because I forgot to bring a USB cable.
But, honestly, mpostly because I wanted to just revel in the moment.
(Ok, I tweeted and fb'd a bit).
I'll get back to MSL, in the meantime I need to core dump some random links I've been meaning to ponder:
...does blogging have a wider role to play in the scientific discourse? - Yes.
Can the quantum state be interpreted statistically? - No.
Is The Reason Why Science Majors Change Their Minds That It Is Just So Darn Hard? - Yes and No.
Hm.…
jdupuis | November 21, 2011This past Friday there was a one-day symposium on the state of academic librarianship at the University of Toronto entitled Academic Librarianship - A Crisis or an Opportunity?.
In response to recent developments in academic libraries in Ontario and elsewhere, academic librarians are invited to gather to discuss the challenges facing the profession of academic librarianship today.
This one-day Symposium will serve as an opportunity to hear stakeholders' views of the profession as well as an opportunity for academic librarians to explore ways of re-affirming the legitimacy and the integrity of…
drorzel | November 21, 2011As noted in previous posts, I've been trying something radically different with this term's classes, working to minimize the time I spend lecturing, and replace it with in-class discussion and "clicker questions." I'm typing this while proctoring the final exam for the second of the two classes I'm teaching, so it's not exactly the end, but nearly everything is in but for the student evaluations, so here are some semi-final thoughts on this experiment:
-- On the whole, I think it went reasonably well, though things definitely flagged toward the end, particularly in the regular mechanics class…
drorzel | November 20, 2011Including pretty much anybody wearing a helmet in this video from UC-Davis:
That's just disgraceful, all the way around (with the possible exception of the chubby hatless cop in the first part of the video, who appears to be behaving in a more reasonable manner than his armored colleagues). I feel a tiny bit bad for the fact that the pepper-spray-wielding officer now has his name and contact information splashed all over the Internet, and the resulting world of shit that will crash down upon him. After all, as Alexis Madrgial notes, he's the product of a terrible system. But then again,…
tfk | November 17, 2011Marie-Claire Shanahan teaches science education at the University of Alberta, and blogs about her own research and about the state of science education (and science education training:Â science education education if you will). Her latest post summarizes her findings from reviewing science teaching guides going back over a century:
Educators, critics, and scientists often argue for improving science education by teaching the processes of science, emphasizing critical thinking, and actively engaging students in doing science. Almost always, this is argued to be a great improvement over…
drorzel | November 10, 2011I've been incredibly busy this term, but not so busy I couldn't create more work for myself. Specifically, by writing an opinion piece for Physics World about the FTL neutrino business, that just went live on their web site:
The result quickly turned into one of the most covered physics stories of the year, with numerous articles in magazines, newspapers and on television asking whether "Einstein was wrong". Just as quickly came numerous physicists denouncing the media frenzy, with Lawrence Krauss from Arizona State University and Cambridge University cosmologist Martin Rees both calling the…
jdupuis | November 9, 2011I was at The Charleston Conference last week, thanks to Mike Diaz of Proquest who invited me to be on a panel that he moderated, along with Karen Downing and Clifford Lynch. The topic of the panel was Keeping Up with the Things That Matter: Current Awareness Tools and Strategies for Academic Libraries. Karen, Cliff and I came up with different takes on the subject but overall the panel was quite well attended and I think useful and interesting for audience members.
Not surprisingly, my take was a bit on the "stealthy librarian" side of things:
I enjoyed being a bit provocative and think…
catdynamics | November 9, 2011I live just around the corner from Joe Paterno.
This morning there was a little horde of reporters and cameras across the street, hoping to get that little 15 second glimpse of the man, for the early evening news shot.
Last night, several hundred students gathered outside to voice support for the Paternos, who were clearly moved and grateful for the demonstration, which also provided some scenic shots for the news.
I can't comment on the case.
I also have no first hand knowledge, just what I read in the news.
The last few days have been an interesting ongoing lesson, not just in the evil…
jdupuis | November 8, 2011Before heading off to the Charleston Conference last week, I blogged about the big announcement of Pierre Lassonde's big $25 million donation to York to found the Lassonde School of Engineering.
I attended the announcement and livetweeted it quite extensively: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
I also created a Storify story of a fair bit of the quite extensive twitter traffic of the annoucement and that is here. I've embedded the Story at the end of this post. It's mostly tweeting form the day of the announcement but I have…
tsmith | November 8, 2011As you may have noticed from the extended radio silence, it's been a busy few months between classes (both taking them and giving them), tenure packaging, and research. To add another responsibility to the mix, I gave a talk a few weeks back at the National Institute for Animal Agriculture's annual symposium. This year, the featured topic was antibiotics and agriculture, so I was invited to give an overview of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and livestock.
While I'm always happy to give talks to new audiences, discussing my work and the state of the field in general, I have to…
drorzel | November 1, 2011This coming June will mark ten years since I started this blog (using Blogger on our own domain-- here's the very first post) and writing about physics on the Internet. This makes me one of the oldest science bloggers in the modern sense-- Derek Lowe is the only one I know for sure has been doing this longer than I have, and while Bob Park's "What's New" and John Baez's "This Week's Finds" have been around longer, they started out as mailing lists, not true weblogs.
As such a long-term denizen of the Internet, I'm pretty much contractually obliged to have an opinion about Michael Nielsen's…
jdupuis | October 28, 2011As reported here and elsewhere, Amazon is actually dipping its toes into the world of publishing.
Which of course is an interesting challenge and threat for traditional trade publishers. And who knows, maybe academic publishers too, if Amazon decides it wants to disrupt that market as well.
In any case, The New York Times has a nice set of four essays debating the topic, Will Amazon Kill Off Publishers?.
Amazon is getting a lot of heat these days over its attempts to push its way into the hearts and minds of readers, writers and the larger book culture -- even comic books. Indeed, the news…
jdupuis | October 26, 2011Ah, #OccupyScholComm.
The perfect Open Access Week topic!
And just like the broader Occupy protests movement, the aims and policy pronouncements of the "movement" are perhaps not as vague as they might seem to the casual observer.
Basically, #OccupyScholComm is about scholars rejecting profit-driven toll-access publishing and taking back the control of their own scholarly output.
Or something like that.
Anyways, it all started with this tweet from OpenAccessHulk:
OA HULK WANTS TO KNOW WHO TO OCCUPY! ELSEVIER!? ACS!? HARPERCOLLINS!? YOU NAME IT, OA HULK WILL OCCUPY AND SMASH! #…
catdynamics | October 25, 2011Computer Science has had a hard few days:
First Steve Jobs of Apple died
then Dennis Ritchie co-developer of Unix and C dies
and now John McCarthy has died
John was the author of LISP and is credited with coining the concept of Artifiicial Intelligence.
He also turned his attention to a number of other issues
I first came across John when he was nominated for a Distinguished Alumni Award at Caltech, shortly afterwards I moved to NoCal and met John, he was starting thinking long term and I put him in touch with Greg Laughlin who had done some work on a similar project.
I exchanged occasional…