University Life Archive

Dissertation Summer, Icon Index Symbol Relaunch

I’m on an academic work push this summer – the dissertation pretty much has to get done – so naturally it’s time to relanuch Icon Index Symbol. I was going to try to kickstart the process by writing “conspiracy theories” in the middle of a piece of paper and then playing with colored pencils, but [...]
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Tuesday Random Anger – Self-Congratulatory Nonsense In The Academy Edition

IHE has an article suggesting that we can improve goverment deliberation by modeling it on university and departmental meetings: Civilized political behavior needs to be learned. And that’s where universities come in, Mallory suggested, as nascent laboratories of democratic engagement. “I think … the fundamental principles are [a commitment] to civil discourse, and listening, and speaking. [...]
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Hey Real Quick, What’s 29 Plus 4?

The spread at the beginning of the game was 29.5. You people can have your “ancient religions”. We have found a new object of worship, and his name is LeSean McCoy. References: * Pitt throws curveball at BCS with win over No. 2 WVU [ESPN] Previously: * Mark Ronson And Amy Winehouse Are Very Good For Each Other [Video] * [...]
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Wednesday Link Dump – Screaming Chimps, Powerpoint Poisons Everything, Rhetorical Advertising, Etc

This is a preview of Wednesday Link Dump – Screaming Chimps, Powerpoint Poisons Everything, Rhetorical Advertising, Etc. Read the full post (285 words, 1 image, estimated 1:08 mins reading time)
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Open Knowledge Roundup – Google Good, Google Bad, Etc

This is a preview of Open Knowledge Roundup – Google Good, Google Bad, Etc. Read the full post (241 words, 1 image, estimated 58 secs reading time)
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Don’t Read Your Goddamn PowerPoint Slides Out Loud [Video]

For the seventh year in a row, we return from NCA with a single, incredibly angry, all-consuming thought: don’t read your goddamn PowerPoint slides out loud: | View | Upload your own That is all for now. Regular blogging will return shortly, as we cobble together our prospectus from disparate blog posts. Then comes the adviser-side [...]
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Linguists Troubled By Conceit Of Ahistorical, Atheoretical Number Crunching

Passed on without comment from academic uberblog Language Log: This is a preview of Linguists Troubled By Conceit Of Ahistorical, Atheoretical Number Crunching. Read the full post (233 words, 1 image, estimated 56 secs reading time)
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Engineer Builds Self-Aware Robots That Learn And Self-Replicate. Umm… What? [Video]

You know, we’ve seen more than a few movies that begin this way. And they always end badly. Always. Here’s uber-genius Hod Lipson giving an engaging presentation that was – for reasons inscrutable to us – not subtitled “how I spent my summer vacation ushering in the Age of the Machines:” At least he’s enthusiastic about [...]
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Open Knowledge Roundup – Cal And MIT Have How Many Lectures Up Now?

This is a preview of Open Knowledge Roundup – Cal And MIT Have How Many Lectures Up Now?. Read the full post (208 words, 1 image, estimated 50 secs reading time)
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Social Science Partisan Attacks Critic For Lack Of Social Scientific Rigor

We actually agree with a large swath of IRB bad arguments, which is what this little spat is about. But still: The idea that the “typical journalistic interview or survey” involves great questions of war and peace and commerce and culture, while the typical social-science interview or survey involves dog owners, is, I suppose, a testable [...]
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Calvin And Hobbes Mural Shows Dedication, Potentially Misplaced Academic Priorities [Video]

Behold exhibit A in our next “you might be the least productive student I’ve ever met” meeting with the Adviser: Of course the Adviser’s answer is going to be “yeah, but at least they produced something.” Outflanked again. References: * Calvin and Hobbes Post-It Note Mural [proctris / YouTube] Previously: * The Cute Yellow Thin Wedge Of The Coming Robot [...]
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Disturbingly, Quantitative Analysis May Have Methodological Shortcomings – Medical Studies Edition

Fetishized social scientific methodologies from dissimilar fields are adapted by grant-hungry researchers and applied to unrepresentative samples of 18-21 year olds in large Midwestern universities before being coded by untrained and apathetic work studies – and you’re saying this doesn’t produce robust results? This is a preview of Disturbingly, Quantitative Analysis May Have Methodological Shortcomings – [...]
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Cog Sci Blog Roundup

We’ve got a couple posts in the hopper – a Peirce vs. Deleuze post (of all things) and a post about how scientific triumphalism empowering anti-science right and the left – but little time to clean them up right now. Plus we’re still working our way through posts going back to May – quals was [...]
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USC’s Student Portal Just Plain Mean

USC’s IT infrastructure sometimes seems like it’s run by a bunch of meth-addicted hamsters. True conversation from last week: Omri: The wireless network is crashing every few minutes Them: Yeah, that always happens during the first week of school Omri: ::blink:: Nonetheless they’ve managed to set up an electronic portal to various campus resources, and it’s actually quite good. [...]
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Job Call Roundup – Who Got Their Calls Into Spectra On Time? Edition

We were going to separate these calls into really obnoxious categories – “best line that no one will share any rumors about”, “best call that makes absolutely no sense”, “best offer with prospects for free catered lunches”. Then we remembered that this is not an anonymous blog and that we don’t have a job. So [...]
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