Interesting confluence of views from today’s feeds:
Let’s face it, science is boring – science-in-society – 21 December 2009 – New Scientist
“Science is not a whirlwind dance of excitement, illuminated by the brilliant strobe light of insight. It is a long, plodding journey through a dim maze of dead ends. It is painstaking data collection followed [...]
Susie Bright asks: What makes a person change the course of their life?
Why bother learning stuff?
Social Media Venn diagram
As he turns in his dissertation, Cal Newport (of Study Hacks blog fame) reflects on his grad-school experience
A thought on the university as “an ethically superior institution”
James Fallows is back in the US after several [...]
James Fallows on the China Xinjiang / Uighur controversy: “The point about separate fact-universes is one of the sobering marvels of the modern info-age. It’s true within the United States, as discussed long ago here; and it’s true between countries, as China, Turkey, and the rest of the world all digest different versions of the [...]
Tagged Evan Dorkin, history, informatics, James Fallows, Jane Austen, language, Monty Python, poetry, secondacts“A comparison of the 2008 population — using data from a variety of sources — with the first census in 1881 shows that the number of Cocks has shrunk by 75 per cent…” Read the rest for the context.
How to e-mail a professor. They may not notice, but then again, they do notice.
Saaien Tist on [...]
Haunting poem.
Leddy on academic entitlement.
Why I don’t use “lol” in emails. Example 2 is the killer.
Brooks on the benevolent power of institutional thinking.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb goes off in your city? Wonder no more with the Ground Zero Calculator. [via Librarian of Fortune]