Blogging has been light because grading has been heavy. But Chad has a post that started me to thinking. (Danger! Danger!) And, since he has stated his desire to avoid a flamewar at this time, it seems only fair that I do that thinking over here so his space can be unscorched.
The question at hand, initially posed by Scott Aaronson, is whether there might be a shortage of women in science because women are more prone to be “repelled by nerd culture” than men.
Yet another sign that doing research may be of use in writing final papers.
I’m marking another stack of papers (because it’s May, and the sun is shining, and apparently I was a real bastard in some previous life).
In these papers, the students were supposed to examine an instance where the interests of scientists and the interests of non-scientists (perhaps various subgroups of non-scientists) might be at odds. The idea is to explain the source of the conflict, connect this to the various values of the different players, and to set out possible strategies for resolving the conflict. It was stressed that giving a fair presentation of each side’s view is key.
Quite a number of the students elected to write about the battles over teaching evolution and/or intelligent design in public school science class. Some of these papers have been quite good, but in a few cases I’m fairly certain nothing like careful research occurred in conjunction with the writing of the papers.
Tangled Bank #54 at Science and Politics
The latest edition of Tangled Bank, the carnival of the blogosphere’s best science writing, is now up at Science and Politics. And, Coturnix makes an announcement that readers of Science and Politics, Circadiana, and The Magic School Bus won’t want to miss.
Science and modeling.
It’s time for anothe installment of “Ask a ScienceBlogger”. This week’s question:
If you could shake the public and make them understand one scientific idea, what would it be?
Here, because others have already snagged my standard answer to this question, and because I’ve already embraced unrealistically high expectations in the last 24 hours, I’m going to opt for something a little more challenging.
I want the public to understand something about how science uses models.
Get-rich-quick ideas for hungry inventors (end-of-semester edition).
Dear inventors,
My personal experience (and what I have heard from the many other academics with whom I communicate) suggests a number of inventions that would sell a bazillion units at colleges and universities world-wide. For your convenience, I list the items that would have the biggest demand first. However, it’s worth noting that even the items at the bottom of the list would make professorial lives significantly better, and that we would gladly dip into the funds currently allocated for recreational reading and hooch to purchase them.
What a night in a Stockholm club has to do with good science.
Yesterday, I returned home after an excellent five days in Stockholm, discussing philosophy of chemistry with philosophers of chemistry, eating as many lingonberries as I could manage, and trying not to wake up instantly when light started pouring through the curtains at 4 AM.
It was a good time.
My last night there, we decided to go to Stampen, a club in Gamla Stan (the old part of Stockholm), to hear the Stockholm Swing Allstars. They were fabulous. If they are playing anywhere near where you are, you should see them without fail. They have no CD (yet), but they have some MP3 demos on their website.
And, watching them perform put me in mind of some of the things that can make good science, like good jazz, really good.
Friday Sprog Blogging: dinosaur sing-a-long!
After some discussion with the younger Free-Ride offspring, I discovered that she does not know one dinosaur or dinosaur-related song; she knows three.
And, because I asked nicely, now so do I.
End of the term cheating grouse session.
Some of you with lives tied to the academic calendar have been done for awhile. Others may still be heading for the finish line. In either case, I’m willing to bet some of you have seen some cheating.
The term is when we deal with practical matters of the prevention and punishment of cheating. The interstitial periods between terms might be better spent thinking about the big picture. Some gestures in that direction (from the vault) after the jump.
The future of humanity?
It’s “Ask a ScienceBlogger” time again, and the question of the week is whether the human race will be around in 100 years.
Folks, I don’t want to get all Clintonian on you (William Jefferson, not George), but I’m going to have to say, it depends what you mean by “human”.
Even younger offspring get older.
Today is one of those days. The younger Free-Ride offspring is a prime number again. (Indeed, she’s a prime number that is the sum of the two prime numbers before it.) The earth has orbited the sun (or vice versa, for my Ptolemaic readers) five times since she arrived on the scene.