Academia
drorzel | February 6, 2009Not long after I posted my comments about textbook prices, I went to a panel discussion on teaching, where a social scientist made an interesting observation about the ways different disciplines interact with books.
In the humanities, the whole point of the class is to discuss the books. Nothing useful can be done until and unless the students have had the chance to do the reading. This is why humanities classes tend to let out early on the first day of the term, and have a full class on the last day of the term: the important reading has to be done before class.
In the sciences, on the other…
drorzel | February 6, 2009There's a new paper from the PAMELA dark matter search out that's written up in Physics, including a link to a free version of the PDF. This paper is considerably less dramatic than one that appeared last year, leading Physics World to suggest that they're backing off the earlier claim.
What's the deal? Sean Carroll has you covered, with a detailed explanation of what's in both papers, and why the findings have been published and reported the way they have:
What happened is that the PAMELA collaboration submitted their second paper (anomalous positrons) to Nature, and their first paper (well-…
catdynamics | February 5, 2009just had an occasion to zip about the country a bit, and feel a need to free-associate random bits of anecdotal impression
The US Senate has stopped vote on the stimulus package, for tonight.
In the process of bipartisan cutting the package seems to have grown by few tens of billions.
Couple of days ago I was in line at a university cafeteria.
A well dressed young woman was holding up the line while she asked for a custom pack of sushi be made up - not someone to eat a 20 minute old pack of california roll, her.
But, oops, she had no money, and no funds left in her pre-paid campus card.
No…
clock | February 5, 2009That was last week, but I had no time to listen until now - check out the podcast (in the upper left corner of the page):
In 1989, Dr. Harold Varmus won a Nobel Prize for his cancer research. He was director of the National Institutes of Health during the Clinton administration, and now heads the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Recently, President Obama named him to co-chair his Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. And he's written a new book, "The Art and Politics of Science." In this segment, Ira talks with Harold Varmus about his work, biological research, and the…
drorzel | February 5, 2009Having mentioned this a few times in course reports, I thought I'd throw out a link to my lecture notes (PDF) on complex numbers. This is the one-class whirlwind review of complex numbers from defining i to Euler's theorem about complex exponentials.
To answer a slightly incredulous question from a commenter, this is necessary because the math department does not teach about complex numbers exponentials (edited to correct an inadvertent slur against the math department) in the calculus sequence, and the only math prerequisites for the sophomore modern physics class I'm teaching are calculus…
clock | February 4, 2009From Michigan Daily: University professors turn to the blogosphere, for classes and recognition:
In recent years, academics across the country have started using blogs to relay information and ideas. Many are now incorporating the medium into their classes, asking students to take to their keyboards and post thoughts or resources on course material.
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The time commitment means professors need to prioritize when it comes to blogging. Those who write personal blogs do so outside of their teaching requirements, but as blogs become more popular, the question of their role in…
jstemwedel | February 4, 2009There's a lively discussion raging at the pad of Dr. Isis (here and here) about whether there isn't something inherently obnoxious and snooty about identifying oneself as having earned an advanced degree of any sort. Commenter Becca makes the case thusly:
"Why are people threatened by the idea that a profession ought to have professional standards, anyway?"
1) It gives the gatekeepers even more power than they already have. Given a world where professional credentials are denied to certain groups, it can get a bit ugly. I think the worst part is that people who are traditionally trodden…
drorzel | February 4, 2009I got the last round of line edits on the book-in-progress Monday night after work, but I haven't had a chance to do more than leaf through the pages. This is mostly because I had lab reports to grade-- the second written report is due Sunday, and I needed to get comments back to the students before they start on the next report.
(Yes, I know, as a practical matter, I could've waited until Saturday for that, but I hope for better.)
Grading labs is just about my least favorite part of the job (narrowly edging out committee meetings), and since this is turning into a blog primarily about…
drorzel | February 4, 2009In the last report from my modern physics course, we wrapped up Relativity, and started into quantum mechanics, talking about black-body radiation and Planck's quantum hypothesis. The next few classes continue the historical theme
Class 10: I make a point of noting that Planck himself never liked the idea of quantization of light, and in fact never applied the idea to light directly. His quantum model for black-body radiation was based on the idea of having "oscillators" in the object emitting the radiation. Einstein was the first to apply the idea of quantization to light directly, and take…
drorzel | February 2, 2009Via Janet, the LA Times gets snooty about titles:
"Ordinarily when someone goes by doctor and they are a PhD, not an MD, I find it a little bit obnoxious," Sullivan said. "But it makes me smile because it's a reminder that she's her own person. She wasn't there as an appendage; she was there as a professional in her own right."
Newspapers, including The Times, generally do not use the honorific "Dr." unless the person in question has a medical degree.
I've had a low opinion of the LA Times since I was in Long Beach when Bill Phillips, Steve Chu, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji won the 1997 Nobel…
jstemwedel | February 2, 2009It would seem that the Los Angeles Times is uncomfortable around people who don't hide their advanced degrees:
[Jill] Biden [who earned a doctorate in education from the University of Delaware and is currently teaching two courses at Northern Virginia Community College] is thought to be the first second lady [i.e., spouse of the Vice President] to hold a paying job while her husband is in office.
"I think she is unique," said Joel Goldstein, a professor at St. Louis University School of Law and an expert on the vice presidency. Other second ladies -- Cheney, Quayle, Tipper Gore and Joan…
drorzel | February 2, 2009There's a mini media blitz underway promoting Denis Dutton's new book The Art Instinct. He was on the Colbert Report last week, he's reviewed in the Times, and he's featured in this week's Bloggingheads Science Saturday:
While it's kind of entertaining to listen to John Horgan struggling to get a word in edgewise, I'm kind of skeptical about the book. Dutton's argument is that human aesthetics are, contrary to the claims of the academic art establishment, more universal than socially constructed, and can best be understood through evolution. Or, to be more precise, through evolutionary…
jstemwedel | February 2, 2009
Some of you may be aware that, at least in certain corners of the blogosphere, November is celebrated as International acaDemic Writing Month. Indeed, in November 2007 I jumped onboard the InaDWriMo bandwagon.
This past November I did not, largely because my November usually turns out to be a ridiculous month for serious writing. There's Thanksgiving and the attendant food-related preparation activities, plus the run up to the December holidays. Also, this year my kids were still playing soccer into December (which is what you get for being too successful in your weekly games), so I was…
drorzel | February 1, 2009Theorem:
The set of students who can learn the material of a course without attending lectures or working homework problems is always smaller than the set of students who think they can learn the material of a course without attending lectures or doing homework problems.
Years of intense study have so far failed to produce a counterexample to this theorem, but no airtight formal proof has yet been devised, either. The closest attempt attempts to prove it by assuming the opposite, and finding a contradiction, arguing that were the set of students who think they can learn without homework of…
terrasig | January 31, 2009I've been terribly behind on a billion things lately, most importantly spending time with my family and calling PharmSis and PharmMom.
However, DrugMonkey's post on Mentoring 101: Let's Talk About the Money drew from me a comment I feel I should post here despite coming after 60+ other comments there.
The bulk of the discussion was on 1) what do you do to educate your lab on the actual budget of running the show, 2) do NIH research grants really support graduate and postgraduate education? and 3) does recovery of indirect costs (ICRs) represent a boondoggle for university administration, an…
drorzel | January 31, 2009I'm getting twinges in my neck indicating that I've been spending too much time looking at the computer, and I've got some computer-heavy work coming up in the next couple of weeks, so expect reduced blogging in the next few days. I couldn't let this essay in the New Yorker (via Matt Yglesias) pass without comment, though. It's arguing for a model of endowment-supported nonprofit journalism, but along the way it takes a shot at my alma mater:
Not to pick on any one institution, but, from a constitutional perspective, how did we end up in a society where Williams College has (or had, before…
drorzel | January 30, 2009This week's lab (well, half of it-- the class is so big that I have to run two experiments in parallel) is somewhat controversial, so I thought I would throw this out to my wise and worldly readers to see what you all think.
The problem is this: we have two different set-ups for doing a photoelectric effect experiment. One of these is a PASCO apparatus with the phototube wired to a circuit inside an actual black box. You shine light into the tube, press a button, and the output of the box rises to the stopping potential for that frequency in a more-or-less exponential manner. This gives very…
tfk | January 29, 2009The endlessly entertaining Zero out of Five collects catastrophically wrong test answers.
This one got 0 points, but I think that a recently passed law in Louisiana (and similar laws introduced in Oklahoma and elsewhere this year) might make that grade illegal:
I think that illustration was copied from a Discovery Institute meteorology textbook. Surely that's worth partial credit. 1 point out of 2?
tfk | January 29, 2009Tough economic times are squeezing university budgets in Europe, creating tension between sceintists and their governments.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is unhappy with French scientists. In a recent speech
Sarkozy lambasted the [French] research system as "infantilizing and paralyzing," argued that French scientists aren't productive enough, and announced that after decades of failed attempts at change, radical reforms are now his government's top priority. "The forces of conservatism and immobilism have always triumphed," he said, "and that has to stop."
French scientists responded…
