I want to blog, but I’m trying to catch up with grading and grant-writing and such in the aftermath of the PSA. I won’t offer a detailed list of excuses like some bloggers I could name. (However, I will say that I’m going to check WebMD to see if intracranial bleeding is a normal reaction to a seminar paper that discusses elan vital.)
Luckily for you, there are a great many blog carnivals which have posted recent editions, including:
Category Archives: Linkfest
Some academic links worth following.
There is a bunch of interesting stuff to read on the subject of teaching, learning, and being part of an academic department right now. Here are a few links I think deserve your attention:
So much to blog about, so little time!
Things have been busy here, but there are some interesting stories I’ve been watching that I thought I should mention (as well as the usual fodder for rants, and a cartoon series that might be funny, if it’s not just seriously twisted):
Learning science, reporting science.
As usual, there are more interesting tidbits in the science-y blogosphere than I have time to deal with sensibly, so it’s time for me to pass you some links:
- Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean takes note of a finding that kids in the U.S. may think they’re better at science than they really are. On the one hand, I find it refreshing that science teachers may not be as effective as I feared at convincing students that science is way too hard for anyone of normal intellect to learn. On the other hand, it would sure be nice if science teachers could impart more scientific knowledge with that self-confidence.
- Speaking of self-confidence, Chad at Uncertain Principles comments on a sociologist’s success passing himself off as a physicist — to actual physicists. I agree with Chad that this isn’t an indictment of the field of physics, since Harry Collings, the sociologist in question, achieved this feat of “passing” as a physicist by learning enough to write good qualitative answers to questions about gravitational waves and detectors. Writes <a href="“>Chad:
[T]he reason why the experts picked Collins’s answers: he didn’t use any math. The real expert threw in a lot more technical jargon, and the expert judges thought that it sounded like somebody trying too hard to impress people. This probably indicates that most experts are deluding themselves about the degree to which they avoid jargon in explaining things to each other and to the public.
This suggests something further to me: physicists don’t fall into the same trap that non-scientists (and science students) often fall into of assuming the more complicated/math-laden/jargon-filled someone’s explanations, the smarter they must be. This fact about physicists pleases me.
- Meanwhile, Rob at Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk has his students doing a lovely exercise in critical thinking and reading: tracing errors in transmission between press releases and newspaper stories on the Artic winter sea ice cover. Do you suppose they do exercises like this in journalism school?
- Finally, having seen a media circus up close, Pinko Punko at Three Bulls! is not feeling good about the state of science journalism The potential routes for really fixing the problem, given where we are now, seem extreme — so, I’ll be blogging about my cunning plan soon!
If there are other good science-y posts you’d like to bring to our attention, please share them in the comments!
Carnivals, challenges, et cetera.
There are some recent carnivals of note that I should mention:
*Skeptics’ Circle 44 at Salto sobrius.
*Carnival of the Godless 50, also at Salto sobrius.
*Teaching Carnival #13 at A Blog Around the Clock.
As well, if you have a hankering for SAT-style essays, you’ll want to check out the results of the bloggers SAT Challenge.
If ye be talkin’ like a pirate, ought ye be walkin’ like a pirate?
Avast, it be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and we’ve seized this blog from that landlubber Stemwedel! We’ve run up a new flag (designed by that pirate’s pirate Pough), and Cap’n Free-Ride is drivin’ this ship now.
But, me hearties, ye know that there’s honor among pirates, don’t ye?
A hail of random bullets until I find time for a real post.
I actually have a longish post I’m working on (about whistleblowing), plus a bazillion submissions for the upcoming Skeptics’ Circle to sort through, but between teaching and grading and coaching and making lunches, well, there are a bunch of important tidbits that will fall through the cracks unless I give you a random bullets post:
The cultivation of girl geeks.
It’s been cool to see my ScienceBlogs sisters Sandy, Shelley, and Tara represent in our little nerd-off. I’m inclined to say this offers at least some evidence that women can get as geeky as the geekiest men. Sadly, there seem still to be many people — including people selling stuff — who just can’t wrap their heads around that idea.
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.
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.