Tag: Tenure
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Infringement calling infringement black
I’ve always had an uneasy feeling about Retraction Watch and the ‘replication crisis’. Like the AI em-dashers they’re working on the wrong end of the problem, trying to clean things up by sorting out a few especially bad-looking products. Reminds me of Porkbusters Coburn and Proxmire who ridiculed “silly” government projects, mostly agricultural because aristocrats…
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Not scary
Scare headline in Verge: The war against ‘woke’ could end US science as we know it YES! PLEASE! DO IT! MORE! MORE! MORE! US science as we know it is FUCKED and LOST and RUINED by 80 years of tenure and competitive Deepstate grants. China is winning for two reasons. 1. China doesn’t give the…
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Understands that science is entertainment
In Preparation is a fairly new Substack publication performing a task that has been missing for a LONG time. It treats science as entertainment, parodying the bizarre excesses of Publish Or Perish and other old and new trends. The writer is extremely careful to label it as satire, which is crucially necessary in the online…
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Who are the customers?
The most basic question about any organization is: Who are the customers? In a small or midsized business the answer is straightforward. Customers are the people who pay for the product or service. A business that wants to succeed must please its customers. Simple closed feedback loop. For larger organizations the obvious answer is usually…
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Small and large mother-in-law / Cadillac
Small MIL/Caddy: Trump to Close Voice of America’s Overseas Offices and Radio Stations. The push to close the offices appears to contradict a federal judge’s order from April, which required Trump officials to resume operations at V.O.A. Cadillac: I hate to see any shortwave station abandoned. I used to enjoy shortwave. Mother-in-law: VOA never fulfilled…
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Reprint on tenure
Linked in previous, worth a reprint. = = = = = START 2020 REPRINT: Some people are starting to catch on to a chronic long-standing problem, which has become acute and GENOCIDAL in the current fake “emergency”. Retired officials and professors and doctors have been speaking truth openly on all the fake “emergencies” from “9/11”…
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Unhappy 50th, “global warming”
Unhappy 50th, global warming! Or Climate Crisis or Climate Emergency or Climate Chaos or whatever you’re calling yourself at this hour. Before October 26, 1975, actual scientists (and government and media and schools) UNDERSTOOD CORRECTLY that the weather is an infinitely complex set of local, global and solar cycles and random changes. Before October 26,…
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Unsurprising discovery
Well, it’s unsurprising in one way. It’s also distinctly fascinating, possibly starting a revolution in the scientific understanding of brains and nerves. Bacteria and other one-celled critters often use wires to connect with each other. Now some brain researchers have found that neurons use the same type of tubes to pass atoms directly. This is…
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Speaking of Gaian suckers…..
Via RealClear: Biologists in Texas have found a rare crossbreed of a bluejay and a greenjay. The two species aren’t as closely related as their names would imply, but they can crossbreed. Instead of simply finding the cross interesting and unusual, the UTexas biologists had to invoke “climate emergency” as the Universal Cause Of Everything.…
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How to feel old
Somebody at Substack was trying to think of new ways to fund science now that the Feds are PROPERLY cutting off some funding. I don’t give a fuck if Demon Trump and Demon Elon are doing it; letting EVERYTHING depend on politics was always an atrocious idea. I’ve been hammering on it in this blog…
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Don’t just shout there, DO SOMETHING.
Dems are holding a “science fair” to show off some projects canceled by Trump and Elon. Dammit, protesting doesn’t help. You should be FUNDING THE SCIENTISTS instead of showing them off. You have billionaires on your side who are allegedly pro-science. Get them to set up a new system of aristocratic patronage. Most of the…
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How to beat a lottery
NewScientist has an interesting bit of mathy history about beating a lottery. It takes a lot of work and usually some inside help to buy all the tickets and guarantee a win. Success also needs careless design of the lottery itself. The article lists three times when gangs succeeded, at least partly. The first was…
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Why the divide?
Writing this for my own purposes, trying to figure out WHY historians suddenly started looking at medieval times. WHEN is clear, around 1995. Googlebooks has abundant books after 2000, almost zero before. Sherri Olson’s first book was published in 1996. She does historiography along with history, discussing the timeline of people studying medieval times. She…
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Financial, not industrial
The print edition of History Today has a short article with a BIG myth-breaker. The Industrial Revolution of the 1700s was more about finance than industry. Industry’s share of Britain’s overall economy went from 36 percent in 1600 to 41 percent in 1700, then stayed around 35 percent through the 1700s. No net change. Services…
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Proved my point
Somebody on substack claimed that quality is the best way to be read online. If you publish the best account of a subject, better than existing work, people will “beat a path to your door”. I responded that it doesn’t work that way, in science or in social media. I linked to my ACTUAL RESEARCH…
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