I have this recurring thing where all the muscles in the right side of my neck and down into my shoulder get really tight, and it becomes painful to do things like turning my head. This can be brought under control with ibuprofen/naproxen and a heating pad, but one of the biggest factors in getting it cranked up in the first place is spending too much time typing on the computer. Which is a strong argument for limiting my blogging time, particularly at the start of a new term when I’m teaching a new-to-me class and also have to be department chair.
I have managed to carve out a bit of writing time here and there, though, and piled up a lot of open tabs with stuff for a Links Dump, so it feels like time for a three-weeks-in-review round-up:
Me on Substack:
— 51 First Days: Getting contemplative on the first day of the new academic year.
— Annual Plea for More Forward-Looking Nobel Coverage: Let’s hear more about people who could win, and not just about past wrongs.
— Less Symbolism, Please: In which I get grumpy about meaningless “news.”
— Physics Is a Liberal Art: Liberal Arts Education is an approach compatible with any major or type of school, so it’s a mistake to try to restrict the term to just one collection of subjects.
— Rankings and Randomness: Some reflections prompted by the latest edition of the US News college rankings.
Me Elsewhere:
— What is the Standard Model, the subatomic physics theory that has been tested more than any other? by Paul Sutter at LiveScience: I was interviewed for this, and am quoted quite a bit.
— Liberal Arts and Servile Arts by Matt Reed: “Dean Dad” with a very good response to the liberal arts piece linked above, which I’m putting here to boost it above the lengthy Links Dump section below.
Links Dump:
— Academia: After Diversity by Timothy Burke: Some thoughts on what might follow a Supreme Court decision that overturns the current standards for affirmative action.
— Schools should try to teach kids the basics by Matt Yglesias: This ought to be uncontroversial.
— Love of Reading by Matt Reed: I like the idea, but at the same time, I probably did less reading for pleasure during my undergrad years than any other stretch of time before I had kids, so…
— Separating Sports by Sex Doesn’t Make Sense by Maggie Mertens: I find large portions of this completely bizarre, as someone who’s played a lot of sports with both men and women, but the whole subject is so radioactive I’m unlikely to write about it at length.
— Bad Takes, Episode 3: How Joe Rogan bullied Matt into losing weight, by Matt Yglesias and Laura McGann: Another one that I found really odd, having recently lost north of 25 pounds by eating less and exercising more, but again, such a radioactive topic I don’t want to write about it at length.
— Sick City by Leighton Woodhouse: Sort of bizarre in the opposite direction, as we spent a few days in SF this past spring, and it didn’t seem all that bad.
— Why did we wait so long for wind power? Part I by Brian Potter: An interesting look at the history of using the wind to generate electricity.
— Adam Silver Flees the "Good NBA Commissioner" Trap by Ethan Strauss: There’s a very particular slant to a lot of this, but I think it’s generally good on the impossibility of Silver’s position.
— Meritocracy is Vital by Jeff Maurer: It’s a powerful idea, as I was saying a while back, and I always enjoy hearing other people say things I find congenial.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
We’re back to the thing where I need a flashlight when I walk the dog in the morning, and I’m not happy about that. It does at least allow for the occasional cool photo of the pre-dawn crescent moon, though.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
One of the greatest spoof country songs ever, off a semi-obscure Canadian sketch comedy album that my lab partner in undergrad used to play around the office.
So, yeah, that’s a bunch of stuff. These will probably continue to appear at a slower-than-weekly pace, because between my day job responsibilities and the neck thing it seems like I’ll be doing around two posts a week for the rest of this term, at least. If you’d like to see those as they happen, rather than waiting for me to blog enough to be worth a round-up, here’s a button:
And if you want to respond to any of the many things in the above, the comments will be open: