Recommended reads #152
A wave of graduate programs drops the GRE application requirement, with biology programs leading the way.
Can you really do humanities research with undergraduates?
Taiwan considers going double blind for grant review
“If you’ve ever been at a wedding or conference or on board a United connection from O’Hare, and been cornered by a man with Theories About It All, and you came away thinking, ‘That was a great experience,’ have I got the book for you.” So begins what I think is a generally Important Review of the most recent Jared Diamond book. It’s important, for the broader academic community, because it puts stark light on the absence of fact checking of popular academic nonfiction. It’s also an entertaining review to read, unless you’re uncomfortable with scrutiny of the more specious ideas forwarded by Jared Diamond.
The crowding on the final steps towards summit of Sagarmatha/Chomolungma/Everest is quite something. Folks might have to wait for several hours. In the “dead zone.” In traffic.
College students aren’t checking out books
To normalize parenthood in the workplace, don’t hide it
Abortion is immoral, except when done by my mistresses
“What changed my mind about climate change?” from a guy who was with the Cato Institute and was working for years to undermine action on climate change.
“You know, of course, what the most grating and infuriating human behavior is. It is not when another person is simply being unreasonable. It is when that person is constantly insisting that they are Just Being Reasonable, and wondering why you’re acting so crazy and irrational, while they themselves are in fact being extremely goddamn unreasonable. It is not when they are just wrong, but when they top it off by patronizingly explaining your own views to you, purporting to refute them, while not having the faintest understanding of what those views actually are. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker is that guy.”
Here’s an update on the story on the Voynich manuscript I linked to quite a while ago. That person who said they figured it out? Nope.
One aspect of this story that I find fascinating is the way in which Google has recreated the really absurd bifurcation of labor that you see in universities between tenure track and adjunct faculty. https://t.co/NWtIea4wyb
— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) May 29, 2019