Another multiple-week recap because we were on the road again. Some cool stuff in these weeks, though…
Me on Substack:
— Hall Passes and Word Problems: Some thoughts about the tricky question of how much student support is too much.
— A Modest Proposal for the Saving of Daylight: As you can tell from the title, a totally sensible and serious proposal for keeping the good features of Daylight Saving time and losing the bad ones.
— Happy Birthday, Dad: We went down to my parents’ for the weekend to celebrate my dad’s 75th birthday.
— GIVE WAR A CHANCE by P.J. O’Rourke: Prompted by tributes following his death, a re-read of an essay collection from 1992.
— Hard Numbers: Gender Balance in Physics Faculty: The issue of gender equity in academia is often discussed with a confusing mishmash of percentages and absolute numbers; this is my attempt to lay them out more clearly.
— TV Review: REACHER: Pretty much perfect bike-to-nowhere watching material.
— Daylight Saving Redux: A brief return to the topic, thanks to the US Senate.
Me Elsewhere:
— Science and medicine won’t decide the daylight saving time fight, in the Washington Post: Following the Senate’s surprise passage of a bill to move to year-round DST, a friend in the Communications office pitched an op-ed based on my book to media outlets, and the Post’s “Made by History” feature picked it up.
Links Dump:
— Every Neil Young Studio Album, Ranked, by Steven Hyden: Even the weird ones from the 80s.
— Will 2020 Be Our 1968? by Jeff Maurer: Well described by his subtitle, “Meaning: Will it be the year that none of us ever shut up about?”
— What Happens When an Élite Public School Becomes Open to All?, by Nathan Heller: The San Francisco schoool system does not seem to be run all that well.
— Preprint server removes ‘inflammatory’ papers in superconductor controversy by Robert F. Service: Tempers running high in the condensed matter community.
— Russia Has Had Its Dick Caught In Basically This Same Beehive Before, by Jeff Maurer: Those who fail to learn from history, etc.
— Cancel culture: A brief little listicle by Kevin Drum: I’ve been staying out of the latest dumb arguments about this, but mostly agree with Drum’s take here.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
The Pip has gotten interested in basketball, so I checked another box on the suburban Dad checklist this week by buying and assembling (with help from Kate) a portable hoop to go in the driveway. We’re also going to get our extremely rutted driveway redone, assuming I can get the contractor on the phone, anyway…
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
This is off the much-anticipated new album from the Aussie band Gang of Youths, for relatively narrow values of “much anticipated,” anyway… It’s got some kind of heavy stuff on it— a bunch of the songs are about how the singer’s father had a secret second family that they didn’t find out about until he died—but a big open “heartland rock” sound that I really enjoy.
And that’s… a bunch of stuff. Here are some buttons:
And if you want to talk about any of it, the comments will be open.