Inside Higher Ed notes in passing a new bill from the Senate supporting scientific research. There’s a lot of bafflegab there, but if you scroll to the bottom, you can find the executive summary: More specifically, the Commerce and Science Division of the America COMPETES Act would: Increase Research Investment by: Establishing the Innovation Acceleration […]
Month: April 2007
Family Friendly Competition
No, I’m not talking about the sort of thing where teams play cooperative, non-competetive games, and everybody gets a trophy at the end. I’m talking about academia, here, and specifically the recent flurry of colleges and universities offering child care support: In the last week, both Stanford and Yale Universities have announced significant expansions of […]
Two Versions of “Oh. My. God.”
Every now and then, you run across things on the Internet that make you say “Wow, this is really cool!” For example, the fake trailer for Greg Bear’s Eon (via Tobias Buckell). I haven’t read the book in years, but that trailer looks amazing. And, of course, every now and then, you encounter something that […]
Fair Use: Ditto
Shelley Batts at Retrospectacle got a nasty letter from a publisher over a blog post in which she reproduced a part of a figure and one data table from a paper. It’s more than a little surprising to me that the publisher thinks this is a good use of their time, but who knows? Maybe […]
When Honor Codes Go Bad
I’m currently on a committee that’s investigating whether to switch to an honor code system for academic honesty issues, and possibly social violations as well. This is about as much fun as it sounds like. For those not up on the internal practices of academia, schools with honor codes require students to sign a pledge […]
Stop and Smell the… Weeds
The other day, I was talking to our neighbor in the back, and she said “Your flowers are coming in really nicely.” “Um, thanks,” I said, “but I sort of think those might technically be weeds…” They are pretty, though: Close-up below the fold:
New Rocky Planet
I have two labs on Tuesdays, which is even more exhausting than it sounds, so I went to be early last night. And woke up to find a whole new planet. You guys need to give me some warning about these things… Anyway, the planet in question orbits a red dwarf star a mere 20 […]
People Are Scum
From an all-campus email this morning: A non-specific bomb threat was discovered overnight in [Building]. A note was discovered at 4:16 a.m. Following our emergency response plan, the Schenectady Police were immediately notified. A sweep of the building was conducted by the Schenectady Police, State Police and the Sheriff’s Department and it was determined there […]
Impossible Guess-the-Lyrics Game
Until I get around to making an iTunes run, I’m listening to the four-and-five-star playlist, which is much better fodder for the “Random Ten” thing than a bunch of filler tracks off really recent albums. We’ll do this in guess-the-lyrics fashion because, well, because I can. Despite the title, there are some absolute meatball songs […]
Virginia Tech
Another way of reading some of what I said last week would be as a statement that I would say something about the Virginia Tech killings, and what I think they mean in policy terms. This is really tough to do, in part because I still think it’s kind of tacky to be making political […]