It’s peak Admissions Season in academia, which means I’ve been asked to help out with a number of upcoming events (including a “simulated class” this morning for an accepted students event). Also, as a part of the general “Nature is healing” vibe of this year, colleges are having in-person speakers again, and I’ve been invited for a few of those. As a result, I spent a lot of the week doing talk-prep kinds of things, which slightly reduced my Internet output.
Me on Substack:
—Einstein's Legacy: Modern Physics All Around You: Some information about the new course I did for The Great Courses, based on material from Breakfast With Einstein.
—Cynicism on the Curriculum: A lot very well-intentioned curriculuar initiatives strike me as the kind of thing that college-age me would’ve responded to in a very cynical way.
—Soft in the Center: Thoughts on the many culture-war topics I’ve started and abandoned writing about.
Me Elsewhere:
— Einstein’s Legacy: Modern Physics All Around You: You didn’t really think I’d do a week-in-review without a direct link to the course, did you?
Links Dump:
— Maize under threat, and morality for cars: Books in brief by Andrew Robinson: A brief review of A Brief History of Timekeeping in Nature.
— COVID Won’t End Up Like the Flu. It Will Be Like Smoking. by Benjamin Mazer: This seems about right.
— Democrats Have Become Too Reliant on Corporations to Push Progressive Values, by Josh Barro: I would add to this that this kind of politics by other means is of a piece with this hyperpolarized moment where political opponents aren’t just mistaken, they’re terrible people who shouldn’t even be talked to.
— I’m an optimist about higher education by Matt Yglesias: I hope he’s right.
— Is There Even the Slightest Chance That We, As a Nation, Are Becoming Somewhat Humorless? by Jeff Maurer: I like the analysis here, and as a bonus, the musical number he included is fantastic.
— Former President Of The United States: “It Went CLANK Into The Hole” by David Roth: The late Deadspin was always very hit or miss for me, but the hits are really good.
— Astronomy’s 10-year wish list: Big money, bigger telescopes and the biggest questions in science by Chris Impey: A run-down of the decadal survey that helps set goals and priorities for the field.
— Idol Words by Scott Alexander: a lovely bit of writing, though in keeping with the Slate Star Codex ethos it’s probably about 15% longer than it needs to be.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
I made cinnamon rolls on Tuesday, because I wanted to vary up my breakfast a little, and this picture got more social-media engagement than any of the things I put effort into writing. Go figure.
Weird thing: The icing recipe I got from a different site calls for 2tsp of vanilla, which I assumed meant the extract. That much vanilla extract gives the icing a distinctly brownish tint, though, and an absolutely overwhelming flavor. It turns out that a quarter-teaspoon is about enough. Is there some other common volumetrically-measured form of vanilla that this was looking for that would explain the factor of 8 discrepancy?
Pseudo-random Song of the Week:
Bought this at the same time as the Gang of Youths album I mentioned a couple week-in-review posts back; they go well together.
And there you have this week’s output. Here are some buttons:
If you know what form of vanilla would’ve made more sense for the cinnamon roll icing, please do leave a comment.