Spring quarter starts for me tomorrow: Categorical Data Analysis. I am curious how it will go. I have been urged to switch my teaching around so that next year I would teach Fall and Spring quarters here, with Winter quarter off. I’m not sure how to feel about this.
I was thinking today [...]
The London Review of Books has an interesting article about the development of profit in science (biomedical science in particular). It’s by Steven Shapin, who studies the history of science. Shapin tracks the changes in the desire for monetary gain in Science. He begin,
Until fairly recently, you did not choose a scientific career with the [...]
That blogger that abarian pointed out to me just got a massive book deal. What do you think our chances are? More importantly, how would we divy up the cash?
From a friend: ”There is a cluster of galaxies called the Perseus Cluster, which is 250 million miles away from Earth. Scientists found that all of the sound waves it is emitting form a single note…B flat. “
Apparently, this is the deepest note ever generated in the cosmos (?!).
In other geekly weekend highlights: Quantum Hoops is the history-of-science-and-underdog-sports-team-documentary [...]
I didn’t know about this. But apparently TODAY there is a global movement to turn off your lights for an hour (starting at 8PM). This reminds me of when I was a kid visiting my family in Pakistan. Every night for an hour electricity was shut off to parts of Lahore. There wasn’t enough of [...]
Course evaluations came in for my undergraduate course a couple days ago. Mine were good, not fabulous like the evaluations for the comparable course at Wisconsin, but certainly fine given my long layoff from teaching and ways that I already know I can make the course better.
Evaluations at Northwestern are online and include part [...]
Thanks for all the kind responses to my post about my mother’s infirmity. She is doing somewhat better and still hopes to improve more. She does not want to make drastic changes in her life (like acquiring a permanent housemate-helper) until she figures out what her long term prospects are. It looks like a good [...]
~5 year old: Dad, what’s the biggest building?
D: That’s a good question. Do you mean what’s the biggest building in Boston, or in the United States, or in the whole world?
5: In the whole world!
D: That’s hard to answer, because they keep building very tall ones, but I think it’s in Malaysia. Why don’t we look [...]
At the risk of becoming the first Internets Anonymous blog, I thought that all those of you out there who feel like your habits are getting out of hand might like this useful tool to monitor your focus: the interruptron.
It’s just a neato little gadget that lets you monitor when you’re working on task and [...]
I really don’t think blogs without comments should be allowed. Really.
For example, there is this post over on The Soc Shrine, and yet, there is no where for me to point out that while the Queen song did in fact go, “dum, dum, dum, da, de, dum, dum,” that the Vanilla Ice song actually [...]
Not that I post often, but I haven’t been posting at all lately. Not that I need to offer an account, but I am about to do just that: I’m being bullied.
I thought that there was something wrong with me if I could be bullied by colleagues and students, but it turns out that I’m [...]
I have received journal review requests from three different journals within the past 18 hours! In February I turned down four because I had not gotten done the previous four I said yes to before Christmas. Seems like somebody out there is not doing their share, or I am on everyone’s A list. Just saying.
Earlier, I refused to link to the soc shrine blog because I thought they had “proto-noxious” intentions toward the sociology blogging community. As far as I can tell, I was wrong about this, and I’ve also been finding it fun to read. My original title for this post was “tentative mea culpa,” but [...]
The Kid is sick today, and since Husband has been primary parent for the last week and a half while I completed the copyedits on my upcoming book, I drew the straw of canceling class and staying home. So, following on the scatterplot zeitgeist, here’s what we’re watching today:
So, I haven’t been posting lately, in no small part because changes wrought by LeechBlock. If anything, I’m trying to figure out more ways to expand my means of protecting myself from mywebcompulsiveself. More on that maybe later. (Kieran in the comments to my earlier post compared my use of LeechBlock [...]
From an esteemed colleague:
What set of issues should be discussed before two (or more) people agree to write a paper together? There are obvious contenders here - order of authorship, timeline, etc. - but what else is important?
Yes you, fellow scatterbrain posters. I know you’re all busy. But so am I. I can’t keep this going by myself. So post, damn it. Post!
Bees might as well be dancing in the dark. Why? No one cares when they do. I feel their pain. They’re also dying off at an alarming rate. Which has me really worried. I seriously have been up at night thinking about it (apparently they are responsible for the reproduction of about 1/3 of the [...]
The NYTimes has a pretty good article on health disparities in the US. Though I must express frustration that of the list of reasons why there are increasing health gaps between rich and poor, health care is listed as the last reason. Most interesting to me is the widening of the gap, both across race [...]
I have been cutting back on my “informed citizen” time recently in attempts to get my work done. So somehow I missed what Bush said on the 5th anniversary of the war. In a video conference to troops in Afghanistan, Bush told troops,
I must say, I’m a little envious. If I were slightly younger and [...]
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