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More on Twentieth Century Science

From Daniel Lemire, a reflection on the prestige accorded to certain professions. I copied out a section from Daniel's post, and highlighted something relevant to my cocktail party theory of twentieth century science. I think that Matt’s decision might be hard to understand—at least, his departement

Real Life Jobs that use Algebra

That is a little more true than most people like to think. It is useful for me to have studied algebra, but I don't often need to directly apply the skills you learn in algebra class.

g-loading for pilots and astronauts

With the passing of Neil Armstrong, Charles Murray gives us this anecdote about Gemini 8: Jerry began to reminisce about Gemini 8, Neil Armstrong’s previous space flight. Armstrong and his copilot, David Scott, had rendezvoused and docked with an Agena rocket as part of the rehearsal for techniques that

Science Jobs

The Washington Post has an article on the disparity between our public policy goal of churning out lots of new science PhDs, and the not very well kept secret that many PhDs are unable to find work in their fields. There are some really good points here. The life sciences

The New American Divide

Charles Murray is taking a tour of the opinion pages, stumping for his new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. I've been looking forward to this book for some time now. Murray is arguing that Americans of all classes used to share a common civic

In-sourcing

The big business news of the moment, other than cheap oil and gas from fracking, is the continuing growth in US manufacturing. What this hasn't meant is a ton of new jobs. The reason for this is pretty simple, US workers are about three times more efficient than

Grit

John D Cook linked to an article on "grit" by Venkatesh Rao. This article really got me thinking. Ever since I discovered the utility of psychometrics for personality, I have spent a great deal of time pondering the relationship between the gifts we are given, and what we