Michael Graziano on consciousness…..

The Princeton University neuroscientist on his theory of consciousness here. Consciousness remains a central question for our faculty here at the Krasnow Institute, even as our research covers the entire waterfront of cognition related phenomena.

Thoughts on the Obama higher ed plan

First, I’ve never been impressed with government ability to pick winners and losers (NIH and NSF are such successful agencies precisely because they emphasize peer review). Second, as Tyler Cowen pointed out, there will be colleges that game the system–just as they do with the US News ratings today. Third, in my opinion, the underlying problem is the macro-withdrawal of state support for the public institutions that used to be the core of affordable higher ed. This withdrawal is what has generated the large increases in tuition–this contrary to much of the conventional wisdom on this issue. The Obama higher ed plan without any substantive change in state support creates a zero-sum game for the colleges, but it’s not going to be able to magically solve the problem.

Finally, I can’t conceive that this plan will be able to make its way through the paralyzed Congress–at least now.

So I’m skeptical.

Stay tuned….

Obama’s higher ed plan….

The WAPO article with a video of the speech is here.

Tyler Cowen’s take is here.

The story from the Chronicle is here.

I’ll have more to say about the proposed plan soon, but at the moment the Institute is in the middle of its annual science retreat.

What NYC is best at….

Unfortunate poll result here. But, note apparently they have the best food. And Alaska has the worst.

All I can say, is I had the best fish of my life here.

Management theory run amok…

Buzzword trajectories according to Google

From Judith Shulevitz in The New Republic, here. In her excellent piece she goes after the term “disruption” but she could have really gone after the whole genre.

Of course we have these issues with fads in neuroscience too. Cell assemblies led to pleasure centers led to LTP led to connectomics. But a crucial difference is that these neuroscience “fads” were actually related to real phenomena. I’m not so sure about the stuff of management theory….

Tyler Cowen on ersatz job ads…

The blogpost is here. If companies had really hired into the positions they had advertised, we’d be back at full employment–what gives? Two hypotheses in the post: wages are too low or companies are too picky. Another is that companies are hiring internally (i.e. the job ads are “wired” for a specific individual inside the organization).

What about that it’s all about PR? One thing that is very true in science: placing a bunch of job ads in Science and Nature Magazine is a sure way to get the buzz going–and in a good way. Is there actually an obligation to follow through?

Shiller on innovation….

Robert Shiller’s NYT column this morning is about the centrality of individual innovation to national success. It’s here. What makes the piece exceptional to me however is Shiller writing about his own trajectory which of course combined being a Yale economics professor with an entrepreneurial bent that led to the creation a very famous real estate index.

Even more interesting to me is that Shiller attributes the origin of his success outside the academy to the support of the National Science Foundation. Money quote:

Long before I started any commercial ventures of my own, I received some federal government support — in the form of National Science Foundation research grants, awarded to me decades ago as a young professor. They allowed me to do research, and though it was not directly related to my later business endeavors, the process developed my expertise and reinforced a sense of entrepreneurial opportunity.

I’m currently serving a term on the NSF’s Advisory Committee for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate–that’s the piece of NSF that supports young economists, future Shillers of the world. Today’s column makes that service feel all the more useful.

Ready, set, go!

The academic year begins for me today–Mason holds its annual planning conference over the next several days. That’s always the sign that the freshman move-in is imminent, and with it, the return of faculty and the start of classes.

This year, I’m additionally taking on the interim-chair position at our Computational Social Sciences Department, while my colleague Rob Axtell is on sabbatical at Oxford. Kim Blackwell, vice-chair of Molecular Neurosciences will be serving in my stead as interim chair of my home department. Should be an interesting year!

Latest solar cycle….

Article is here. And the money quote is:

The current predicted and observed size makes this the smallest sunspot cycle since Cycle 14 which had a maximum of 64.2 in February of 1906.

From Wikipedia, here’s the longer time graph:
As you can see the current predicted Maximum will be pretty low, comparable with a period from 1790 to 1820 known as the Dalton Minimum.

Hat tip to Ben Sandiland’s blog Plane Talking which I usually read for his very insightful civil aviation reporting.

More on advice on graduate school….

This time from Adam Kotsko, who is a professor at Shimer College, here. I don’t completely endorse this advice, but it well reflects the times we live in and I think Adam was quite crafty in his approach.

In the sciences, I don’t think there is remotely enough time to moonlight during grad school. Bench top experiments are somehow all consuming. Perhaps however this might be useful for students who are doing computer simulations only–although if you got your PhD in a computer sciences field, I can’t imagine you’d ever need to “hide” your over-education.