I didn’t do a week-in-review post last week because The Pip’s birthday was last weekend and my parents came up to visit on Saturday to see his last rec soccer game of the year. Their visit took up a lot of the time I otherwise would’ve spent summarizing what I’d been up to online (I did do the Sunday “Week in Movie Nights” post, though…). So you get two weeks’ worth of stuff this time out…
Me on Substack:
— On Assessment: Some thoughts on the way that academia is both all about evaluating work and also opposed to the concept of assessment.
—This Email Could’ve Been a Meeting: On paper it might seem like academics would be a group of people perfectly suited to shift work to email, but faculty are just spectacularly bad at dealing with the medium.
—What Scientists and Science Reporters Should Learn from Economists: It’s okay to publicize preliminary data, and update as better information becomes available.
— What Are We Doing, Here?: Some existential wibbling about working in a tiny elite corner of academia.
— Social Media Isn’t Mandatory: Some advice for students (or anyone else) thinking of venturing into publishing stuff via social media.
— My Brief Moment in Sports Journalism: A look back at the time when I wrote rugby game articles for my college paper.
— The Path to Flexibility: If we want more people to have flexible working hours, we need to accept people doing work at weird hours.
Me Elsewhere:
— How Did We End Up Needing To Change Our Clocks Twice A Year? at Forbes: In honor of the end of Daylight Saving Time, a look at the history behind the adoption of time zones and how that enabled the “spring forward, fall back” time switching.
Links Dump:
— The Catskill Turnpike in Stage Coach and Tavern Days: Some old history of the region of New York where I grew up.
— Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV by Richard Hanania: Weirdly, I find this more plausible because Hanania’s coming from the Right than I would if it had been published by, say, Kevin “Fox News Delenda Est” Drum.
— Please Just Fucking Tell Me What Term I Am Allowed to Use for the Sweeping Social and Political Changes You Demand by Freddie de Boer: This week in “I Bet That Was Cathartic.”
— Confusing Human Universals For The Inventions Of White People by Razib Khan: A rare sensible post among a lot of wearyingly dumb recent arguments about “Critical Race Theory.”
— When Keeping It ‘Woke’ Gets Racist, Liberals Should Say So, by Eric Levitz: Ditto.
— Biden’s science guy is driving folks mad in Politico: This week in “Confirming All Your Worst Stereotypes Regarding Scientists, Politicians, and Political Reporters.”
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
This is a rare photo of The Pip wearing long pants, but there was a thick layer of frost on the field when we arrived for the 8:30 game (one of the kids exclaimed “The grass is crunchy!”), so even he had to agree to some leg covering. When he goes off to college, he’s going to be one of those guys who shows for class up in shorts and a hoodie in the middle of a snowstorm in February.
Later that day, he got his first Covid vaccine shot (thanks for the clinic at the main library, Schenectady County!), and the next day he turned ten, so it was a big week for our favorite Little Dude.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
This one seems to come up on shuffle play a lot more than probability would suggest, but I enjoy it, so that’s not a bad thing.
So, there’s your regular-ish round-up, and here are your regular buttons:
And if you want to respond to any of this, the comments will be open.