This just in: "Narcissism No Longer a Psychiatric Disorder"

Here's Tara Parker-Pope in NYTimes:

Narcissistic personality disorder, characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance and the need for constant attention, has been eliminated from the upcoming manual of mental disorders, which psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness.

As Charles Zanor reports in today’s Science Times, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — due out in 2013 and known as D.S.M.-5 — has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition. The best known of these is narcissistic personality disorder. [Link added by me]

Charles Zanor's story, which Parker-Pope refers to, has a great headline: A Fate That Narcissists Will Hate: Being Ignored. This story will resonate with you even more if you think about your least favorite narcissist in your circle; here's an excerpt:

The second requirement for N.P.D. [narcissistic personality disorder]: since the narcissist is so convinced of his high station (most are men), he automatically expects that others will recognize his superior qualities and will tell him so. This is often referred to as “mirroring.” It’s not enough that he knows he’s great. Others must confirm it as well, and they must do so in the spirit of “vote early, and vote often.”

Finally, the narcissist, who longs for the approval and admiration of others, is often clueless about how things look from someone else’s perspective. Narcissists are very sensitive to being overlooked or slighted in the smallest fashion, but they often fail to recognize when they are doing it to others.

Awesome Lightness in Links

1. Science is Bueauty features a picture on The Course of Science. Note especially a lone infinite loop on the left called "Management Directives"!

2. Via Science is Beauty [have I mentioned it's absolutely awesome?]: An excellent set of pictures of Magnet Designs.

3. Making Light features an awesome Amazon review of ridiculously expensive speaker wires -- yes, Speaker Wires!

Links ...

1. Gretchen Vogel in Science Insider: Germany's High Court Preserves Restrictions on GM crops.

2. David Sosa in Opinionator: The Spoils of Happiness: "Happiness isn’t just up to you. It also requires the cooperation of the world beyond you. "

3. Thomas Benton in The Chronicle of Higher Education: On Gratitude in Academe

4. Richard Larivier in WSJ: Saving Public Universities, Starting With My Own .

This sounds so familiar ...

America's Great Scientists Rapidly Decreasing. Sounds familiar? This was the headline of a NYTimes Magazine story from 1910!

[By the way, check out the Sunday Magazine blog featuring "the most interesting articles from the New York Times Sunday Magazine from 100 years ago."]

Bonus Link: Maïa de La Baume in NYTimes: French Professors Find Life in U.S. Hard to Resist.

"The acceleration of French scientific emigration to the United States is recent and worrisome,” said the report, called “Gone for good? The expatriates of French higher education in the United States.”

Of the 2,745 French citizens who obtained a doctorate in the United States from 1985 to 2008, 70 percent settled there, the study found.

This just in: Harvard loses a tenured professor to Google

Actually, the news is over a week old. I don't really have a broader point to make about the two links below -- I mean, it's not all that difficult to imagine someone leaving a good, happy situation to a better and happier, situation. Still, the following two posts are worth reading for the way two smart people have articulated their thoughts about the kinds of things that contribute to their big decisions about changing (or, not changing) their career paths.

First, Matt Welsh on why he's leaving his tenured professorship at Harvard to join Google:

... The question for me is simply which side of the innovation pipeline I want to work on. Academics have a lot of freedom, but this comes at the cost of high overhead and a longer path from idea to application. I really admire the academics who have had major impact outside of the ivory tower, like David Patterson at Berkeley. I also admire the professors who flourish in an academic setting, writing books, giving talks, mentoring students, sitting on government advisory boards, all that. I never found most of those things very satisfying, and all of that extra work only takes away from time spent building systems, which is what I really want to be doing.

Welsh has posted a response from Michael Mitzenmacher, Area Dean for Computer Science at Harvard, on "Why I'm Staying at Harvard":

I suppose the question that's left is why I'm staying at Harvard -- that is, why I still like being a professor. (And thank you to those of you who think the obvious answer is, "Who else would hire you?") I enjoy the freedom of working on whatever I find interesting; being unrestricted in who I choose to talk to about research problems and ideas; having the opportunity to work with a whole variety of interesting and smart people, from undergraduates to graduate students to CS colleagues all over the globe to math and biology professors a few buildings down; the ample opportunity to do consulting work that both pays well and challenges me in different ways; the schedule that lets me walk my kids to school most every day and be home for dinner most every night; and the security that, as long as I keep enjoying it, I can keep doing this job for the next 30+ years.

Mitzenmacher balances the good bits with the not-so-good bits (which those wishing to become faculty members ought to keep in mind):

Of course I don't like everything about the job. Getting funding is a painful exercise, having papers rejected is frustrating and unpleasant, and not every student is a wondrous joy to work with. I sometimes struggle to put work away and enjoy the rest of my life -- not because of external pressure (especially post-tenure), but because lots of my work is engaging and fun. Of course that's the point -- there's good and bad in all of it, and people's preferences are, naturally, vastly different. I don't think anyone should read too much into Matt's going to Google about the global state of Computer Science, or Professordom, or Harvard, or Google. One guy found a job he likes better than the one he had. It happens all the time, even in academia. It's happened before and will happen again.

Links ...

1. Female Science Professor answers a reader's question about on how to deal with "professors emeriti who are well-meaning but who have not found productive ways to spend their days without distracting the more-busy and without wreaking minor havoc on various parts of the department infrastructure."

2. Celia Dugger in NYTimes: Campus That Apartheid Ruled Faces a Policy Rift -- the rift refers to the raging debate on the legitimacy of the use of affirmative action at the University of Cape Town.

   Affirmative action’s champion on campus is Max Price, the vice chancellor, who was himself detained as an anti-apartheid student activist in the mid-1970s. Dr. Price, who grew up as a child of white privilege, contends that preferences based on apartheid’s racial classifications provide a means to help those harmed by that system to gain critical educational opportunities.

   The university has an openly stated policy of admitting blacks who have substantially lower test scores than whites, but whites still outnumber blacks almost two to one — 45 percent versus 25 percent — among the 20,500 South African students at the university. In South Africa, 79 percent of the population is black and only 9 percent is white.

WTF of the Day: DST Seeks Your Ideas for Better Skin Whitener!

In partnership with Procter and Gamble, the Department of Science and Technology launched a brand new crowdsourcing initiative: DST - P&G Challenge of the Month -- a contest in which people suggest solutions to a specific technical challenge, with cash awards going to the "most suited solution."

This initiative was launched just this month. Here's the first "Challenge of the Month":

Innovative Whitening Technologies superior to Hydroquinone

Current best topical chemical active technology for skin whitening is hydroquinone. However, it induces skin irritation and sometimes hypo-pigmentation, thus not practical for cosmetics/quasi-drug usage. It is also banned (or may be banned) to use for cosmetics in several countries.

Challenge yourself to look for Innovative whitening technology or approach that could reduce facial hyperpigmented spot and lighten skin tone equivalent or better than hydroquinone.

The symbolism and the irony are just killing me ...

SRM University and Its Curious Relationship with the UPA Government

An update appears at the end of this post.

* * *

On the one hand, the UPA government's HRD Ministry is fighting hard in the Supreme Court to establish the legitimacy and authority of its 2009 review of deemed universities [1]. Among other things, this review placed the SRM (Deemed) University in the "deficient" category -- a category that includes institutions,

... which on an aggregate we find to be deficient in some aspects which need to be rectified over a three year period for them to ... [continue] as "deemed universities" [Source (18MB, PDF), Pages 21-26]

On the other hand, the government's own law minister graces the occasion, and delivers an address at SRM University's convocation this year.

And the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister receives an honorary doctorate from that "deficient" university at the same ceremony.

Amazing.

What are we going to get next -- the commerce minister at the IIPM convocation giving away MBA degrees [issued by IMI, Europe]?

* * *

Update: Wow! Note the contrast [Hat tip to Dr. Katte]:

The varsity [Bharati Vidyapeeth, a deemed university in Pune, Maharashtra] was found deficient in standards by a human resource development ministry panel last year. “Bharati Vidyapeeth has been found lacking in standards by the P.N. Tandon committee. I want to keep a distance from such a controversial conference,” a vice-chancellor of a central university said.

The conference he/she is referring to is actually a conference of vice-chancellors of Indian universities, supported by very generous funding from the UGC itself.

* * *

[1]: See, for example, this, this, and this.

Grad School Advice: The Beginning and The End

1. Female Science Professor on what is appropriate in a prospective grad student's first letter asking "if I will be taking on new students in the next academic year." Her article is filled with very good advice; I want to excerpt here a particularly perceptive part:

   Of course, the questions that students really want answered aren't appropriate to ask, at least not to me directly: Am I a mean adviser or a nice adviser? Do I expect my students to work nights and weekends? Am I a control freak, or do I have a sink-or-swim advising philosophy? Will I scream at them if they don't run a spell checker before handing me a document, or will I merely sigh?

   To find out that kind of information, you will have to write to my current and recent graduate students—something I encourage potential applicants to do.

2. McSweeny's has a fantastic FAQ on The "Snake Fight" Portion Of Your Thesis Defense. [Warning: It's from McSweeny's!]

   Q: Why do I have to do this?
   A: Snake fighting is one of the great traditions of higher education. It may seem somewhat antiquated and silly, like the robes we wear at graduation, but fighting a snake is an important part of the history and culture of every reputable university. Almost everyone with an advanced degree has gone through this process. Notable figures such as John Foster Dulles, Philip Roth, and Doris Kearns Goodwin (to name but a few) have all had to defeat at least one snake in single combat.

   Q: This whole snake thing is just a metaphor, right?
   A: I assure you, the snakes are very real.

Orchestral Version of 4' 33'' by John Cage

Watch [Hat tip: Jason Kottke]:

BTW, that YouTube page has quite a few links to "performances" of 4' 33".

Here's a previous post on Cage ;-)

Why are Private Universities Seeking So Much of Public Land -- And Getting It?

Let me lead off with an excerpt from Amy Kazmin's report in FT on the latest legal trouble that could be fatal for Vedanta University:

Anil Agarwal, the Indian billionaire who controls Vedanta, the UK-listed mining group, has suffered a setback to his philanthropic ambitions, hard on the heels of legal problems this year involving some of the group’s Indian operations.

Mr Agarwal’s plans to build a $3.3bn (£2.1bn) university in a coastal area of impoverished Orissa, starting with a $1bn endowment from his personal fortune, have fallen foul of the law – and a powerful Hindu deity, Lord Jagannath.

The Orissa High Court has ruled that the Orissa government’s acquisition of about 6,500 acres of land – including 500 acres from Puri’s famous Jagannath temple – and the land’s subsequent transfer to Mr Agarwal’s eponymous foundation to build Vedanta University was illegal.

The court has ordered that the land be returned to its original owners. The judgment – in response to a clutch of public interest lawsuits challenging the land acquisition – will bring a formal end to the long-stalled plans for the university, which Vedanta had already concluded was unlikely to ever get off the ground in Orissa.

Thanks for the tip-off to T.T. Ram Mohan, who also points to a Business Standard column by Kalpana Pathak -- Land largesse for corporate universities -- that raises serious questions about private universities / institutions seeking vast quantities of public land -- and getting it. Here's Ram Mohan:

The ruling has brought to the fore the question of land being acquired for setting up of private universities and colleges. BS has an interesting feature on the subject today. The article notes that the Anil Ambani group has recently been alloted 110 acres by the MP government for its foray into education while ISB got 70 acres of land in Mohali. The land allotment is disproportionate to the requirement in many cases. Where it is made over to private parties, the suspicion of a land group is bound to be there.

BS notes that a good engineering institute can be set up on 10 acres and a management institute on 5. So why are private institutions asking and getting so much land? It also notes that Infosys' Mysore training facility is on a 337 acre campus. This is not even a degree-granting facility, it is strictly for a private company. Interestingly, Shiv Nadar and Aziz Premji are acquiring and pay for the land they need for their educational ventures instead of seeking concessional land from the government.

Kumari L. Meera Memorial Lecture

This is for the Bangaloreans (and those who plan to be in Bangalore on 23 November 2010): The nineteenth lecture in this series is entitled "The Graver Side of Light," and will be delivered by Prof. Rajaram Nityananda of the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Pune.

Anant has the full announcement, with all the details.

Do You Know PowerPoint?

Executive devil interviewing another: "I need someone well versed in the art of torture -- do you know PowerPoint?"

From this cartoon in the New Yorker.

G.V. Ramanathan: How much math do we really need?

Ramanathan, an emeritus professor of math, statistics and computer science at U-Illinois at Chicago, asks this question in a Washington Post column.

How much math do you really need in everyday life? Ask yourself that -- and also the next 10 people you meet, say, your plumber, your lawyer, your grocer, your mechanic, your physician or even a math teacher.

Unlike literature, history, politics and music, math has little relevance to everyday life. That courses such as "Quantitative Reasoning" improve critical thinking is an unsubstantiated myth. All the mathematics one needs in real life can be learned in early years without much fuss. Most adults have no contact with math at work, nor do they curl up with an algebra book for relaxation.

Those who do love math and science have been doing very well. [...] As for the rest, there is no obligation to love math any more than grammar, composition, curfew or washing up after dinner. Why create a need to make it palatable to all and spend taxpayers' money on pointless endeavors without demonstrable results or accountability?

Link via Edward Tenner's post -- Is Math Overrated? -- at The Atlantic.

Cindy Royal's Open Letter to Wired: "I'm breaking up with you"

... You’re better than this. You don’t need to treat women in this light to sell magazines. You have the power to influence the ways that women envision their roles with technology. Instead, you’re not helping. Like Jon Stewart said (stealing his quote criticizing the now defunct TV show Crossfire), “You’re hurting America.”

So, I’m breaking up with you ...

Read the whole letter.