Great day in physics!
Last Tuesday was the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, and today it’s the turn for physics. Yeah, I know: you have already probably heard about the record collision at the Large Hadron Collider announced this morning. But that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s my oldest nephew’s 25th birthday, and […]
Happy Thanksgiving
When I was a young(er) adult, Elizabeth and I would visit her maternal grandparents for Thanksgiving. There were some significant differences between those meals and the Thanksgiving traditions I grew up with. First, Elizabeth’s relatives could cook, and while my mother is a wonderful human being and could make sure that a bird was prepared […]
My phone number is more accurate than your research
One minor irritation while I’ve been an editor this past half-decade has been the occasional slight sign that a manuscript author dumped the entire output of SPSS or SAS into a table, complete with 10 digits of specificity. Ten digits! Yes, these folks who compute regression coefficients, p-values, and R2 to the tenth digit based […]
Race to the Top: review, revise, redux
I am in California this weekend for the Social Science History Association annual meeting, where we get to talk about Maris Vinovskis’s book on the last quarter century of school reform, and since one of my copanelists Saturday morning is Jennifer Jennings, I finally get to meet the sociologist-formerly-known-as-Eduwonkette in person, face to face. Because […]
Methodoxology
My graduate students are reading Jeff Henig right now, and it appears that few editorial boards or other advocates have taken his argument in Spin Cycle seriously, at least from reactions to the latest sets of charter-school reports issued by think tanks. Ritualistic incantations at the publication of the Brand New Latest Report Showing That […]