This week was a bit of a washout in terms of broader productivity, as I was fighting off a cold bug that SteelyKid brought home from camp. This is, of course, the down side of resuming human contact— all the stupid minor illnesses that come from going out into the world more generally. Anyway, I spent a couple of days at home with a head full of goo, and will be playing catch-up on a variety of actual-work sorts of things for the next couple of weeks, but I did keep up with writing some stuff.
Me on Substack:
A Kick in the Ass: A story about a critical turning point in my college career, which probably would not have been as influential had it been less blunt.
Balance Is an Active Process: Some thoughts about work-life balance, and how flexibility is more important than fixed boundaries.
Double Negative Recruiting: If somebody’s trying to sell a Ph.D. program on the basis of jobs that don’t require a Ph.D., don’t listen.
Romanticizing the Blogosphere: Looking back through the geological ages at whether things were really better online in the heyday of blogging.
Disney’s Gonna Disney: Comparing the end of Loki to similar events in their other big IP spin-off series.
Links Dump:
I didn’t write anything anywhere else this week (see aforementioned head full of goo), but didn’t have a slow enough day here to feel like doing a links dump post, so we’ll do it here:
Academia: The OSS Sabotage Manual and Faculty Meetings: Timothy Burke on the similarities between a WWII-era guide to disrupting meetings and the way faculty normally work. The point about rigidly going in order is a good one.
A Reductive Explanation for Recent Changes in Math Pedagogy: Freddie deBoer is cynical about changes in math instruction. I don’t really agree, as what I see of my kids’ math homework looks like a big improvement to me, but it’s an interesting read.
Higher Education in a World of Singles: I flagged this not because I liked it, but because it seems like a stellar example of stretching an analogy to one’s area of study to make it more relevant.
How Many Numbers Exist? Infinity Proof Moves Math Closer to an Answer.: A nice article about recent work on the Continuum Hypothesis; I almost understood this, which is a big step up from the usual reporting on abstract math.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
Wasn’t a great photo hike last week from the photography standpoint— the woods were very dense, so there wasn’t much to see— but I kind of like the way this shot of a backlit squirrel at the maximum zoom of my telephoto lens came out.
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