Another week, another collection of stuff, linked here for those who might not have seen it. This week was a bit of a mixed bag; I’m basically over last week’s cold, but had to do a bunch of playing catch-up, particularly with my two summer research students, and the current item at the top of the to-do list is slightly annoying to me, so I keep finding ways to procrastinate.
Me on Substack:
Kid Vaccines and Communications Breakdowns: In which I was frustrated with a piece about vaccine trials for younger kids, because it didn’t address the most important question regarding the subject.
The Definitive Take on Faculty Address: We had another flare-up of “How should you address your professor in emails?” which is settled by two simple questions.
Billionaires Innnnn Spaaaace: Why I don’t buy the main arguments that the recent private pace launch ventures are Bad.
Kids Those Days, and These: Reflecting on my two eras of listening to Top 40 pop radio: back in the 80’s (brought back by Tom Breihan’s Number Ones column for Stereogum) and right now (in the car driving the kids to one place or another).
Worry Less About Crazy People: A slightly angrier take on the problems with communication about vaccines, and public health in general, namely that the authorities are shaping too much of what they say around what they imagine Bad People might say or do.
Links Dump:
Academia: Department Chair Blues by Timothy Burke. A really good reflection on the problems of chairing an academic department.
Individual Mask Mandates: Readers Respond by Matt “Dean Dad” Reed. Answers to the question of whether faculty can/should require masks in their classes. I suspect this goes in the “Academics overthinking things” file.
Building Solar Farms May Not Build the Middle Class by Noam Scheiber in the NYT. It did not occur to me that large-scale solar projects might work the same way as extractive industries, but once it was pointed out, yeah, that makes sense.
The Simplest Tool for Improving Cities Is Also Free: by Sara Hendren. A pitch for shifting the use of public spaces on a temporary basis.
We don’t have to choose between Earth and space by Christopher Ingraham: Another take on billionaires in space.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
The weather was craptastic last week, so I didn’t go on a photo hike, so you just get a quick phone snap from our summer research lunch. This is one of my students at the end of his two-minute “elevator pitch” talk about his summer project (the slide is actually the summer project for my other student, as he’d clicked ahead by the time I managed to hit the button.
And that was the week that was. Here are the usual buttons:
And I’ll leave the comments open.