Monthly Archives: April 2011

The Non-Science That Explains What’s Wrong with Science Explaining Non-Belief in Science

I’ve found Chris Mooney’s past work on the politics of science and on scientific literacy interesting, but there is something that gently grates on me in his Mother Jones essay published last week. In the essay, Mooney reviews arguments from … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics, Popular Culture | Comments Off on The Non-Science That Explains What’s Wrong with Science Explaining Non-Belief in Science

Adaptation

I really love the idea of courses which combine trying to apply a body of knowledge to a practical problem with exploring why said practical problem actually poses intellectually challenging questions with no clear answer. I’ve mentioned before at the … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Intellectual Property, Popular Culture, Sheer Raw Geekery | Comments Off on Adaptation

Two Cups Short of a Full Service

Jon Krakauer’s lengthy take-down of Greg Mortenson adds a lot of detail and bite to the expose aired on 60 Minutes this past week. Reading across a lot of message boards, I think it’s fair to say that a great … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 5 Comments

Keeping the Keys to the Kingdom

In February, Margaret Price published a thought-provoking piece at Inside Higher Education arguing for systemic reforms to the recruiting and promotion of faculty in order to mitigate or eliminate discrimination against professors “with mental disabilities such as bipolar disorder, severe … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 2 Comments

Courseblogs: An Experiment in Progress

I’m going to talk tomorrow a bit about the courseblogs I’ve got going this semester: History 83: What-Ifs and Might-Have-Beens and History 1Y History of the Future I’m particularly keen to attract interested comment on the research proposals the students … Continue reading

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