Author: defjaf

Why do UK newspapers all feature these not particularly well written, not particularly insightful or funny, slice-of-my-life weekend columns? As much as I loathe their ideas and politics, I’d rather read Ross Douthat or David Brooks than (names removed to avoid too much snark).

Of the 5 (of ~100 who took the exam) students to give “free text comments” on our astrophysics course this year, one was very positive, two were equivocal, one complained about our email response times, and one was “delete this module”.

There is a scary & common misconception in physics that students work better if… supervisors & … senior group members pressure them with negative, condescending language.

—Physics World, July ’22. Print only?

WTF. Does anyone really believe this?

I ordered a Mac Studio Display through an Apple Educational reseller in the UK around 1 April. It hasn’t arrived yet. Has anyone had any similar (or otherwise) experience of such lengthy delays (~16 weeks)?

If the ROI from programs like this is so good for businesses, why not make them pay for it themselves instead of funnelling so much money to private industry (and let government invest in more blue-skies research instead)?

Yes, I know, I am biased, and it’s not zero-sum.

I was out of contact for five days, four of which were holiday or weekend, and it still took me over two hours to deal with all the accumulated emails and messages.

My grandmother was born in 1911 in Shepetivka, Ukraine, when it was part of the Russian empire. At a time of pogroms against the Jewish population, she fled to the US after WWI, following her father who had made it to New York before the war.

I only just realised that there are two different von Mises.

Things made a lot more sense when I discovered that statistician Richard was different from his brother, free-market-musketeer Ludwig.

(Perhaps I should have written “I was today years old when…” but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do that.)

Was just asked by a funding agency for whom I have written a grant review to change “young researcher” to “early career researcher”. I think this was a good catch and an appropriate request, but still somehow feels weird.