We’re moving briskly ahead with our plans to offer two short courses for decision makers–one track will cover neuropolicy, the other computational social sciences–we’ll hold them here in the Washington D.C. area, probably here on the George Mason University campus.
The faculty will be world-class, as will the attendees.
Link is above. Money quote:
With the pro-tenure arguments, you might wonder how higher education is supposed to differ from other sectors of the economy. I believe it is this: given that higher education is in part about signaling and certification, socialization and networking of students, “warm glow” of the donors, and research superstars, the later-period shirking of the typical laggard doesn’t hurt actual productivity nearly as much as the schools themselves might like to think.
Daniel Schorr passed away today. The legendary journalist was, to use his own words, “a living history book”. Meeting him two years ago at the Cosmos Club was one of the high points of my life. He was both brilliant and funny. I’ll miss his commentaries on NPR, but the real loss is for American journalism. They’ve lost a giant.
Over at the Atlantic, Megan Mcardle writes about tenure in starkly economic terms. You can read the blog entry here.
Money quote:
Imagine I offered you one cell phone contract for two years at $100 a year, and another for 50 years at $90 + inflation. Would you really consider the second contract “cheaper”?
So what if a computer eventually can feign emotion enough to fool you. Will it experience emotion? Not according to Yale computerscience maven David Geletner. Click the link above.
This is a program that I was very familiar with during my time in graduate school at Michigan. Here at Science Careers Blog is an excellent overview of the NIH funded MSTP program to create physician-scientists. It’s unusually candid about the challenges.
The Chesapeake Bay is an enormous estuary of the Atlantic Ocean and plays a crucial role in life here in the Mid-Atlantic States. I spent this weekend on its waters and was reminded often (the depth rarely goes over 20 feet) that it’s really a flooded river valley and is hence very vulnerable. As editor of The Biological Bulletin, I am struck by the incredible biological diversity of the Chesapeake Bay and the relationship between that diversity and the Bay’s overall health. Yet, many of the animals and plants of the Bay are facing increasing threats from, among other things, polluted water run-off, particularly from large scale agricultural operations, but also from a host of other activities, many of them anthropogenic.
Two contrasting visual memory images from this weekend: the first, a Cownose Ray breaking the surface of the Bay in the vicinity of Oxford Maryland. The second, an empty can of soda floating nearby.
Apparently a new study reveals that there is an inverse relationship between a department’s scientific productivity and the amount of energy it puts into training its students to be teachers themselves. The link is here. Why should this be so?
It seems to me that at one level, there is no doubt, research productivity represents an opportunity cost. But it also seems to me that there must be innovative ways to combine research and pedagogical training that ends up being synergistic. Let’s put away the notion of “teaching assistant” and think outside of the box!
In the New Statesman, Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s prescription for avoiding another financial crisis is here.
His central point: we should take our lessons from the natural world around us.
