Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Paul Allen Smackdown of the Singularity

From Technology Review, hat tip Andrew Sullivan: here. Bottom-line, the “complexity brake” will arrest our acceleration towards Kurzweil’s Singularity.

And the argument has as its basis, the complexity problem as far as a general theory of neuroscience is concerned.

Since I don’t share Kurzweil’s rosy vision of his Singularity, I’m pleased. In addition, this should keep us neuroscientists employed well into the future.

Proposed merger of University of Maryland campuses

The proposal to merge the College Park campus with the Law School and Medical School in Baltimore is reported in the Chronicle here. It’s being strongly opposed by Baltimore City interests, but it certainly would increase the prestige of the university. It also makes sense thinking in the longer term about whether Mason or Maryland will be the dominant public research university in the National Capital Area.

So, as an ardent Mason supporter, here’s hoping that the folks in Baltimore are successful.

Stuxnet II is out there….

From Wired Magazine, this excellent portrait of DuQu. Bottom line: it’s doing active reconnaissance  on cyber systems and it’s as sophisticated as Stuxnet. The implication of the article seems to be the DuQu is setting up for a future cyber attack, learning about specific systems architectures and transmitting that information…somewhere.

Special Teaching Deals Being Called Off…

From today’s Chronicle here. My colleague, Jorge Haddock, dean of our School of Management, is part of the story:

Some administrators are beginning to make changes, sometimes by giving professors a choice in the process. At George Mason University, professors who agreed to chair one of five “areas,” or departments, within the university’s School of Management had always taught just one course a year, compared with the usual faculty load of four courses per year. When Jorge Haddock took over as dean of the management school two and a half years ago, he thought the course release for area chairs was too generous. So he offered them a new deal: They could teach two courses a year, with pay for one month during the summer, or teach three courses a year with pay for two summer months. While the university pays more, Mr. Haddock says it’s worth it to make faculty workloads more equitable across the board and to get full-time professors back into the classroom.

More on ditching Blackboard and powerpoint in teaching…

At least one of my colleagues here at Krasnow teaches using Facebook. I’m guessing he uses some combination of Facebook “pages” and “groups” and I’m hoping he set up another professional identity/login separate from his personal one.

Another colleague, she teaches in the Boston area, mentioned dropping the canned powerpoint slides that come with adopting a textbook these days.

Still other colleagues use Apple’s Wiki Server on in-house machines.

The key to all of these ideas is that the learners and teachers are able to leverage the collaborative power of the Net without falling prey to having the learning process (think learning management systems) absorb all the energy that should go into the class subject matter….this is especially true with regards to neuroscience, since the subject matter can be quite technical.

So here’s a bleg for Advanced Study readers: how would you use what’s free on the Cloud to teach undergraduates science?