Another week, another collection of stuff. I’m honestly a little surprised a couple of these didn’t generate more reaction than they did, but I guess events in Central Asia really sucked up all the oxygen for the week.
Me on Substack
—End of an Error: The obligatory comment on the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.
—On Reference Letters: Every year there’s a big argument about whether it’s appropriate to ask faculty candidates to arrange for recommendation letters at the start of the process. Here are my thoughts on why those letters are useful.
—Science in Disguise: Using a recent story about medicinal clay to revisit the core idea of my book Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist.
—Fall Plans, Despite Variants: The new academic year is rapidly approaching with in-person classes for both Union and my kids’ school, and I’m basically okay with that because I think they can do what needs to be done to operate safely.
—Motivation and Agency: A thinking-out-loud post about some recent items touching on academia and motivation to learn things.
Links Dump:
—The news was dominated by the Afghanistan story, and as a result so was my reading this week. I’m going to pull a bunch of them into one item here, though, so it’s not just an endless bulleted list of pieces about the Taliban, Biden, and the media. In sorta-chronological order, pieces from: Noah Smith, Matt Yglesias, Timothy Burke, Yglesias again, Judd Legum, and Josh Marshall.
—Why COVID-19 Is Here to Stay, and Why You Shouldn’t Worry About It by Phillippe Lemoine. I can’t really evaluate the biology in this on a technical level, but it was interesting.
—Astronomer Vera Rubin Taught Me about Dark Matter—and about How to Live Life, by Ashley Jean Yeager. There’s actually not a lot to this specific piece, but I’m linking it as a reminder to check out the biography of Rubin that it’s promoting. She’s one of my favorite of the scientists I had to read up about for Eureka.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
This is from a photo hike in downtown Albany last weekend. I liked the way the tips of the steeples and the smokestack all fall in a line. I spent a long time trying to get the color version of this to look right, before realizing that the right move was to make it greyscale.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
I have no idea what this is about, but it’s always nice when it come up on shuffle play.
So, yeah, that’s some stuff. Here are some buttons:
And if you’d like to suggest interpretations of that song, feel free to leave them in the comments.