Regular readers of this blog know that I am hoping to be on a sabbatical leave during academic year 2008-2009. Indeed, some of you have asked, “Where are you going to go?”
The answer:
Category Archives: Personal
Ask a ScienceBlogger, sort of: my life in half a dozen words.
Once again, Dave Ng at The World’s Fair issues a challenge:
If you had to write your memoirs in 6 words, what would they be?
Writing that memoir today, here are mine:
Chemist. Philosopher. Parent. Blogger.
Grown-up? Someday.
Six words fit very nicely in the comments field — what’s your life story?
Learning student names.
Today was the last day of the semester for students to add courses, and the last day to drop a course without it showing up on one’s transcript was a week ago. (The order of these two dates, it seems to me, should be switched, but I don’t make the rules around here.) In any event, enrollments for classes have more or less stabilized.
Which means that I’m poring over iPhoto trying to learn each of my student’s names.
Blogiversary programming notes.
Hey, today is the third anniversary of my first post on “Adventures in Ethics and Science” at the original digs. I can honestly say that when I started the blog as a virtual extension of class discussions in my “Ethics in Science” I didn’t imagine that it would continue past the end of the semester, nor that it would get scooped up to become part of ScienceBlogs.
A few notes before the cupcakes:
A (qualified) ‘woo-hoo!’
I hold in my hand a letter from our Provost informing me that my sabbatical leave for academic year 2008-2009 is awarded.
Of course, this is contingent on:
Blogroll Amnesty Day
By way of Abel and DrugMonkey (among others), I see that today is Blogroll Amnesty Day. Jon Swift has the must-read post on the origins of the day and what it means now:
The idea that links are the capital of the blogosphere seems so obvious that you would think an economist like Atrios of Eschaton would have realized it long ago. And as he is a progressive who has accumulated quite a bit of link wealth, you might also think he would be in favor of redistributing some of that wealth instead of just letting it trickle down. So when he announced last year that he was declaring February 3 Blogroll Amnesty Day, and other bloggers followed suit, I assumed he meant that he was opening his blogroll up to the masses…
When February 3 rolled around, many bloggers discovered to their horror that instead of adding new blogs to his blogroll he was throwing many off, including some bloggers who were his longtime friends. Blogroll Amnesty Day, it turned out, was a very Orwellian concept. Instead of granting amnesty to others he was granting amnesty to himself not to feel bad for hurting others feelings. Though Atrios has stubbornly refused to acknowledge that he made a mistake, some bloggers who initially joined him, backtracked. Markos of the Daily Kos instituted a second blogroll that consisted of random links from diarists. PZ Myers of Pharyngula now has real Blogroll Amnesty Days where he invites anyone who has blogrolled him to join his blogroll. And in the wake of the bloodletting quite a number of smaller blogs, like my friend skippy the bush kangaroo, changed their own blogroll policies and now link more freely to others.
Ironically, Blogroll Amnesty Day had a net positive effect for the blogosphere as a whole. I discovered a number of great blogs and made new friends and I am sure that is true for others as well. And so instead of remembering February 3 as a day that will live in infamy, let’s turn this day into a celebration of the power of smaller blogs. Let’s recognize that building an inclusive community of diverse voices is what the blogosphere should be about, not creating a new elite to replace the old mainstream media elite.
Why I teach.
PZ tagged me with a teaching meme. The question is “Why do you teach and why is academic freedom critical to that effort?”
Unlike PZ, I knew I had a thing for teaching long before I had a clue what discipline I would end up pursuing. (My first official paycheck for a teaching gig was issued in 1985.) But at this stage of my life, my reasons for teaching are a bit more complex than “I like it,” “I’m good at it,” and “It’s a requirement of my job to do so.”
They’re complex enough, in fact, that I’m going to subvert the question a little and talk about why I teach the two main courses I regularly teach, “Philosophy of Science” and “Ethics in Science”.
A few thoughs on conferences.
It’s been pretty quiet here. Not only have I been engrossed in preparations for the Spring semester (classes start today), but I also went to the 2008 NC Science Blogging Conference. So it seems like a good time to ruminate a bit on how conferences fit into the patterns of (my) academic life.
Random bullets and programming notes.
Happy 2008! Let the bullets commence:
*I am now to the point of totally refusing to acknowledge this interstitial period between semesters as a proper break. Far too much of it has already been taken up with matters from last term, and there’s no end of that in sight. Meanwhile, certain details of the upcoming semester are still sufficiently unresolved that I cannot yet do things like updating my course calendars.
*A piece of free advice to students: If you are emailing your instructor during an official break and would like a prompt and helpful response, avoid being abusive in that email message. (Look it over before hitting send.)
New Year’s Eve: fun with cover versions.
There are less than seven hours left in 2007 as I write this post, and as yet, my better half and I have no idea what we’re doing tonight.
If we manage to get out, chances are good that a cover band may be involved.
In general, cover bands aren’t really my thing, but every now and then a cover version puts a thrillingly unexpected twist on a beloved song. Here are three that I really like: