Picture and a Thousand Words

This, from PhD Comics, is a gem.

That's all.

A 'Special' Resonance

Resonance, the "journal of science education" published by the Indian Academy of Sciences, had something 'special' in its March issue: as Guest editors Prajval Shastri and Sudeshna Mazumdar-Leighton write in their editorial, "while this issue is no different from any other in intent, it is ‘special’ because it has an all-female authorship."

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Hat tip to Vasudevan Mukunth's article in The Wire, which also points to special issues of Current Science and Physics News, but I am not able to locate their URL.

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Update: The original post had a link to the special issue of Current Science; a friend alerted me that this issue has not yet been published.

"Removing Morons from the Productive Flow"

This profile of Scott Adams, the genius who created the Dilbert comics, has its focus elsewhere (his rationalizations of the rise and rise of Donald Trump during the US Presidential primaries and election), but somewhere in the middle is this gem (in bold, below) [If you are wondering why it stuck a chord, you haven't seen this ... (;-)]:

Adams’s Dilbert empire has been growing for three decades. When he launched the strip in the late ’80s, long-running staples such as Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, and Blondie seemed saccharine and dated. Adams’s creation was fresh, starring a sardonic software engineer named Dilbert; his conceited and grandiose dog, Dogbert; an incompetent boss; and a host of odd co-workers. Early installments showed Dilbert at home. When Adams refocused the strip on the workplace, it caught fire among a generation of office drones who spent their days staring at spreadsheets and slide decks. While workers had long tacked comics like The Far Side and Cathy to their felt cubicle walls, to say something about themselves and their brand of humor, here was a subversive comic about cubicle culture itself. During the ’90s, amid waves of corporate downsizing and the tech boom, a zeitgeisty Dilbert graced the covers of Newsweek, Time, and Fortune. Adams churned out Dilbert-themed calendars, knickknacks, and even a TV show. He also penned op-eds and business tomes, including The Dilbert Principle, based on the theory that companies tend to promote their least competent employees to middle management, “removing morons from the productive flow.”

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Update: Wikipedia has an entry on the Dilbert Principle, in case you are interested.

Links

1. What if Sociologists Had as Much Influence as Economists? | The Upshot | Neil Irwin [See also: Is ethnography the most policy-relevant sociology? | Fabio Rojas]

2. ‘Copy and paste’ content spotted in IISER Thiruvananthapuram director’s papers | Journo's Diary | R. Prasad

In other words, "Get a Life"

Very little has been written on jealousy in academic life, and yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that it is prevalent in our profession. This is unsurprising. As Chronicle readers are well aware, academe today is a place of increasingly precarious employment conditions — where the "publish or perish" mantra is more relevant than ever and the pressure to win grant money has reached fever pitch.

In such an environment, it’s little wonder that jealousy can take hold. I’ve certainly felt my share (and I herewith apologize for privately cursing those of you who got positions and/or book contracts that I wanted). Jealousy may come with the academic turf but that’s rarely a good thing. So what can we do to better manage our envy at all stages of the academic career?

That's from Jay Daniel Thompson in The Chronicle of Higher Educationn: Maybe You’re Just a Jealous Academic. Can you spot the understatement of 2017? Hint: it's in bold.

This article eventually gets to "self-help" domain of how to deal with jealousy of the academic kind, and has an advice-list that might help you cope. The last piece of advice? "Develop interests outside the academy." In other words, "Get a Life".

From the Annals of Consumer Complaints: Boring Lectures!

From The Guardian:

Graduate sues Oxford University for £1m over his failure to get a first
Faiz Siddiqui claims ‘appallingly bad’ teaching during degree course prevented him from having a successful career

An Oxford graduate is suing the university for £1m claiming the “appallingly bad” and “boring” teaching cost him a first-class degree and prevented him from having a successful career.

Faiz Siddiqui, who studied modern history at Brasenose College, told the high court he believes he would have had a career as an international commercial lawyer if he had been awarded a first rather than the 2:1 he achieved 16 years ago.

QoTD

I am not a fan [of flag burning]. I agree that the American flag should not be disrespected. It's a sacred symbol that should be honored, whether it be on paper plates, or napkins, or banana hammocks.
-- Stephen Colbert [The Late Show (30 November 2016); the clip is also embedded below -- the relevant part starts at the 7th minute.]

Whistleblowing is Hard (and Dangerous): Theranos Edition

Just drop everything and read this absolutely gripping WSJ story on Tyler Shultz, the Theranos whistleblower (who also happens to be the grandson of former Secretary of State George Shultz, who was -- and continues to be -- associated with Theranos).

This snippet is from the section where the lawyers appear:

A few weeks later, Mr. [Tyler] Shultz was confronted by his father after arriving for dinner with his parents at their home in Los Gatos, Calif. His grandfather had called to say Theranos suspected he had talked to the Journal reporter. Theranos’s lawyers wanted to meet with him the next day.

He says he called his grandfather and asked if they could meet without lawyers. The elder Mr. Shultz agreed and invited his grandson to his house. The mood was tense but cordial, Tyler Shultz recalls, and he denied talking to any reporters. He says his step-grandmother was present during the conversation.

His grandfather asked if he would sign a one-page confidentiality agreement to give Theranos peace of mind. According to Tyler Shultz, when he said yes, his grandfather revealed that two lawyers were waiting upstairs with the agreement.

Links

• Avery Thompson in Popular Mechanics: 5 Simple Math Problems No One Can Solve. "Easy to understand, supremely difficult to prove."
• Jordana Cepelewicz in Nautilus: The Social Physics of Trump Tactics. [Published a couple of weeks before the US elections, its title could very well have been "Phase Diagram of Bad Ideas"].
• Joanna Rothkopf in Jezebel: Here's What Happens to Your Body When You Die [video; 10 minutes].

Links

• Christian Catalini, Christian Fons-Rosen, and Patrick Gaulé in Vox.eu: Cheaper flights and scientific collaboration

• Noah Smith in Noahpinion: Do economists have physics envy? (Part 2).

• Maria Konnikova in New Yorker: Practice Doesn't Make Perfect.

• Rhaina Cohen in The Atlantic: What Programming's Past Reveals About Today's Gender Pay Gap.

• Gina Kolata in NY Times: Lost in Academia: So Many Research Scientists, So Few Openings as Professors.

"Trump Begins: The Dawn of the Donald"

Turbulent events demand an origin story. To make sense of "Just What Happened?"

Here's one from the land of Stephen Colbert [Update (24 November 2016): It looks like the embed doesn't work, but this link works, at least for now: The Dawn of the Donald].

Laura Benanti, the Awesome

In these grim times, there's nothing better as a cheerer upper than Laura Benanti's impersonation of Melania Trump. Here are the three "Late Night with Stephen Colbert" shows she has appeared in so far:

Quotes

If you are going to use mice in your research, there are all these federal requirements that have to be complied with. [...] And yet, when it comes to your teaching assistant, [there is] no such requirement that you treat them in a humane way. [...] If someone has engaged in sexual harassment, or if someone has discriminated, or if someone is a sexual predator, they should not have access to federal dollars.
-- Congresswoman Jackie Speier.

That quote is from this CNN story on sexual harassment in science that uses Geoffrey Marcy's case in UC-Berkeley as an example. Here's another quote:

... Institutions are incentivised to protect their faculty.
-- Jessica Kirkpatrick, Astrophysicist.

Are kids natural scientists?

SMBC has an answer that you really ought to check out!

The New Yorker on the Deutche Bank's 10 Billion Dollar Scandal

As always, we go the extra mile to get you the juiciest of excerpts from the actual story:

Although the bank’s headquarters remained in Germany, power migrated from conservative Frankfurt to London, the investment-banking hub where the most lavish profits were generated. The assimilation of different banking cultures was not always successful. In the nineties, when hundreds of Americans went to work for Deutsche Bank in London, German managers had to place a sign in the entrance hall spelling out “Deutsche” phonetically, because many Americans called their employer “Douche Bank.”

[Bold emphasis added, in case any nanopolitan reader needed a confirmation].