Random bullets (“Is the term actually starting next week?!” version)

*Updating syllabi to reflect the coming semester’s actual meeting days and assignment due dates? Really, really boring. The boredom further propagates when it requires updating a kazillion webpages, then uploading the updates to your site (one at a time, since Fetch thinks it’s cute today to “lose” the connection when you use the feature that lets you set up the whole list of files to “Put” all at once). And don’t get me started on the tedium of undoing the MS Word crappy formatting when you turn your word document into a webpage. I’m guessing there would be buckets of money (plus rose petals and chocolates) for the developer who could provide the mutatis mutandi utility for syllabus and webpage updates.

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Viral information outburst: cool things are more fun when you share them.

David at The World’s Fair has posed another, “Ask a ScienceBlogger, Sort Of” question:

Essentially, as scientific types who tend to analyse, over-analyse, supra-analyse things, and who like to categorize and follow empirical trends, I’m interesting in hearing what you think it is that sparks these viral outbursts of information outreach? This question (and apologies for its convolution) also relates directly to your role as a blogger, where the assumption is that you revel in increased traffic, and are kind of looking for these tricks anyway. I guess, I’m just interested in hearing a scientist’s opinion on this, as oppose to the usual IT expert/academic.

Shorter David: Why do some pieces of information take off and spread like head lice at a preschool? My guess: The pieces of knowledge (or culture or what have you) that really grab us are grabbing us as information it would be important or fun to share with others. Information rattling around in our own heads doesn’t seem as valuable to us as information that has also been transmitted to the heads of others.

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Looking for the appropriate rhyme for “twelve”.

So, in the Free-Ride house we’re pleased as punch that Pluto hasn’t lost its planetary status. (No, we don’t consider the “plutons” lesser planets. Eccentric in their orbits, perhaps, but there’s nothing wrong with that.)
As well, we are pleased that the “tenth planet”, whose local fans call it Xena, will be recognized as a plutonic planet. Indeed, we welcome the other two plutons to the fold.
The only problem is, we’ll be needing a new song.
“Nine planets, fine planets” is a nice little ditty, but now there are twelve. What would we even rhyme with “twelve” in the chorus to an update of the planets song? (“Elf planets” is a non-starter, so don’t even suggest it.) And, the update needs to incorporate information not only on relative distance of each of the twelve from the Sun, but also, one would hope, useful information about the distinguishing marks of plutons vs. classical planets.
The original lyrics are here. Your proposals for updates are welcome in the comments.

Disciplinary misconceptions (philosophy version).

Chatting with the chair of the philosophy department at one of the local community colleges:
CC Dept. Chair: Yeah, so I’m scheduled to teach six classes this term.
Me: Six?! While you’re the chair?!!
CC Dept. Chair: Yeah, six. We have big enrollments, the full-time faculty are fully scheduled, and I can’t find enough part-timers to teach all the sections.
Me: Good grief! So you have to teach them yourself?
CC Dept. Chair: The enrollments are what will get us permission to hire another full-timer, so I can’t not teach them.
Me: Yikes!
CC Dept. Chair: Also, I need to counteract the effect of some of the instructors who, erm, are driving the students away.
Me: Driving them away?
CC Dept. Chair: Yeah. Dry lectures, three hour blue-book exams, that sort of thing.
Me: In philosophy? What the hell?!
CC Dept. Chair: Exactly.
Me: Seriously, philosophy class is supposed to be the one that’s so engaging that it lures you away from what your parents want you to major in.
CC Dept. Chair: That’s my feeling on it.
Me: Have these three-hour-blue-book-exam folks forgotten that our business is corrupting the youth?
CC Dept. Chair: Apparently. Which is why I have six classes worth of youth to corrupt this term.

Disciplinary misconceptions (chemistry version).

Walking outside with a well-known local blogger:
WKLB: I never did take a chemistry course.
Me: Why not?
WKLB: I’m not good at memorizing stuff, and there’s that whole big periodic table …
Me: Hey, my memorization skills are pretty worthless, too. But in chemistry, you don’t need them as much as you do in a field like biology.
WKLB: Really? You don’t ever have to, like, write out the periodic table from memory?
Me: Hell no! The idea is to learn how to turn the periodic table into a device for predicting stuff about the different elements — like a secret decoder ring. They always give you a periodic table. There’s usually a big one hanging right there in the classroom.
WKLB: Oh.
Me: Seriously, my memory can only be trusted with Simpsons dialog and song lyrics.
WKLB: Hmm. I guess, then, that I could have learned chemistry.
Me: You totally could. In fact, there’s still time!

Academia, capitalism, and conscience.

Regular commenter and tireless gadfly Bill Hooker asks what my take is on the movement afoot to get academics to put pressure on (and perhaps completely boycott) scientific/technical/medical publisher and information portal Reed-Elsevier.
What’s wrong with Reed-Elsevier? Among other things, they host “arms fairs” — like book fairs, but with munitions and torture equipment (which means it’s unlikely Scholastic will be hosting an arms fair at the local primary school).
But hey, are we expecting a company to be able to stay afloat on revenues from academic and technical publishing alone?

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Advice: “Am I enabling plagiarism?”

From time to time I get emails asking for advice dealing with situations that just don’t feel right. Recently, I’ve been asked about the following sort of situation:
You’re an undergraduate who has landed an internship in a lab that does research in the field you’re hoping to pursue in graduate school. As so often happens in these situations, you’re assigned to assist an advanced graduate student who is gearing up to write a dissertation. First assignment: hit the library and write a literature review of the relevant background literature for the research project. You find articles. You read. You summarize and evaluate and analyze, over the course of many pages.
What you write is good. Not only is it praised, but it is incorporated — in some cases, word for word — into the chapter the grad student is writing.
Uh oh.
You know (because you have been told) that just doing this kind of literature review wouldn’t be enough to make you an author of any published paper that comes from this research, but your gut tells you there’s something not quite right about the situation. And, another researcher in the lab is taken aback to learn that what you have written is being used this way. In fact, the graduate student’s supervisor makes it clear that your words can’t be used verbatim in the thesis or any manuscripts to be submitted for publication; the wording will have to be reworked.
Are you enabling misconduct? Are you being taken advantage of? And, given that you’re being asked to do some more literature reviews, what do you do now?

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Saturday links of note.

I’m going to dump these links now because I’d hate to get distracted and forget ’em.
Not a fan of the stench-blossoms? Would you prefer a peckish plant? Jo(e) shares a story (and picture) about a vacation visit to darlingtonia californica, a carnivorous plant.
Think stench-blossoms are the only non-human lifeforms worthy of cool blogs? Check out the PigeonBlog that will (as part of ZeroOne San Jose) map air polution data gathered by sensor and GPS equipped pigeons.
And please, check out a timely phase diagram at Cosmic Variance. If I were still teaching P-chem, I could totally see putting this on an overhead.
Have a cool science link to dump? Tell us in the comments.