ingraffea.jpg Cornell University Professors Robert Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea made waves in April 2011 when they unveiled what is now known simply as the "Cornell Study." Published in a peer-reviewed letter in the academic journal Climatic Change Letters, the study revealed that, contrary to the never-ending mythology promulgated by the gas
Continue readingTag: Academia
Exponential Book: The boss is out to lunch
The two basic criteria to establish whether someone is your boss are: – Can they fire you ? – Can they give you a raise ? Unless the answer to both questions is yes, then they are not your boss. (can’t recall who said that to me… my dad, maybe
Continue readingExponential Book: Must be me…
The Globe and Mail has a story about an “experiment” (I use quote-unquote because I personally see nothing new about it, but I come back to this below) carried out by a college teacher who has broken down her 200-student class into small gr…
Continue readingExponential Book: Rantings over rankings
Times Higher Education has just published its influential rankings of World universities. I imagine that university presidents all over the world, at this time, are either pounding their chests, proudly announcing to their students that the reputable i…
Continue readingExponential Book: Sliding into Fall
Oops, it did it again…. The Fall term 2011 has managed to sneak up on me, like its 2010 predecessor. All of a sudden, it’s all back. I am facing a crowd of 400+ students, teaching the same introductory physics class I taught last year, in t…
Continue readingExponential Book: Exams never end
(Title of famous play by Italian playwright Eduardo De Filippo. To my knowledge, it was not inspired by his own PhD defence) Dear fellow Committee Members, as the appointed Chair of the Examining Committee for the upcoming doctoral exam of Mary J. Grea…
Continue readingThe Skwib: The Chair That Sat Back
Mephistopheles relaxed after a good (evil) day’s work. He’d chalked up three witches, a magus, a handful of brick-makers who’d had too much to drink, and Michael Bay. (Boob, explosions and flash-cuts could only get you so far.) The day’s coup had to be snagging the eternal mojo of an untalented, passive-aggressive tenured professor of […]
Continue readingExponential Book: Impact factor trends
A few days ago, I received an e-mail message from the Publisher of my favourite physics journal (JLTP), who was pleased to inform me that its Impact Factor (IF) climbed in 2010 to 1.403, seemingly a significant improvement from the 2009 value of 1.074….
Continue readingExponential Book: Free agent professor
If you’re a college or university teacher, whom do you work for ?” Thus begins Stanley Fish‘s latest New York Times editorial on the subject of academia. Here are a few excerpts: “Academics […] want […] to work in an organizatio…
Continue readingredjenny: How useful am I?
As an academic, I question my usefulness. Society will always need carpenters (or plumbers or tailors or nurses or farmers). Their benefit is pretty clear and obvious. Will it always need historians? How important is my obscure research that might only…
Continue readingredjenny: How useful am I?
As an academic, I question my usefulness. Society will always need carpenters (or plumbers or tailors or nurses or farmers). Their benefit is pretty clear and obvious. Will it always need historians? How important is my obscure research that might only be read by a handful of other obscure historians?
Continue readingredjenny: How useful am I?
As an academic, I question my usefulness. Society will always need carpenters (or plumbers or tailors or nurses or farmers). Their benefit is pretty clear and obvious. Will it always need historians? How important is my obscure research that might only be read by a handful of other obscure historians?
Continue readingExponential Book: Make up your mind, already !
Academic job seekers are sometimes in the fortunate position of choosing one of several job offers (not often these days, given the difficult job market). This happens both at the postdoctoral, as well as the faculty level. The reason is simple; someon…
Continue readingExponential Book: Great blog. By the way, you are full of it.
Last week I was in Dallas, at the annual March meeting of the American Physical Society, attended by members of the Division of Condensed Matter and Computational physics. For different reasons I ended up spending quite a bit of time talking to postdoc…
Continue readingFive of Five: Flanigan: Diminished Expectations
I’m still taking in the Tom Flanagan’s comments about assassinating Julian Assange. What amazed me about the comments was how casual and glib they were – as if another man’s sub-judicial, illegal killing was academic. The snicker chilled me.He apologi…
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