"With regards to students' written work: My field is meteorology. I too used to give students in my survey-level meteorology class opportunities to "express themselves" via short answers (a paragraph or two) on exams. I stopped because it was so hard to grade many of them because they were written so poorly. In addition to that, it is very difficult to grade short answers in a consistent way. For many of the short-answer questions I would usually end up just writing a number down ("Hmm.. this feels like a 3-points-out-of-5 answer") which real doesn't feel right... but what do you do when the concepts are confused, spelling and grammar are terrible but they have expressed some knowledge of the material?"
Very much my experience, too. And my big class is over 100.
The rest of what you say about the upper-level major courses and writing is very important. Communication skills are HUGE in science. If you can't write papers and proposals, and give good talks, your science and your career are going to stall and perhaps even die. This area cannot be neglected and poor verbal skills are something to be conquered, not accepted.
Some weeks I take it easy, around 40 hours. There has been many a week when I've pulled all-nighters, or stayed up until 2AM to make sure my class prep was in order. I teach two classes a year and have a significant research program (two postdocs, multiple students). And many non-professors would be amazed at the amount of time spent on "department activities/politics" which includes a lot of things like advising, admitting new grad students, hiring new faculty, revising cirricula, etc. Seems like the less important it is, the more people want to argue about it.
The Turing Test is a lot more general. This program can presumably do some things, like grade a paper, but it can't play chess, or learn to play chess, or make up stuff about its father, or Michael Jackson. This is an expert system, not anything close to strong AI.
This is a tough issue. At my university, the dean actually loves to see low grades and high evaluations. It's possible to do, but teaching evaluations tends to correlate with grade expectations.
I think what Princeton is doing, capping the maximum percentage of A grades, isn't a very smart solution. That will create unfair situations, and remove flexibility from professors.
Hmm...the NSF grant provisions I recall seeing the last time I submitted one discouraged, or even ruled out, supporting commerical activities. This does sound a bit funny to me, too.
I'd be pissed off, too, but don't let one bad professor sour you on all of us. My base pay is less than $60k a year, but with summer salary from grants I'm in your range. And I work way more than 20 hours a week. Way, way more. But what is this "union" you speak of? I know of no such union (although tenure can provide significant job security).
I used to give short answer/essay questions to my astronomy students the first couple of semesters I taught the big non-major course. It took a tremendous amount of time to grade which was one reason I stopped, but not the primary reason. I'm a novelist, and I know how to write, and there was a consistently high fraction of exams written so badly it was very painful to read. Perhaps I should have kept at it, with the idea that it's good for the students. But a few essays in a science class won't dent the problem that starts in k-12 education.
Actually the primary reason JWST will operate in the near-to-mid IR is NOT to see through the dust in our galaxy (although it will help with that). The primary design principle of JWST is to see the first stars and first galaxies, at large distances, where universal expansion has redshifted the optical and ultraviolet light of these objects into the near and mid infrared.
The ultraviolet spectrograph (COS) originally slated to go onto Hubble during the refurbishment mission would be useless on JWST because its optics are optimized for the IR, and I'm pretty sure the UV is blocked entirely.
Re:At last, Iain M Banks gets a bit of recognition
on
2005 Hugo Nominations
·
· Score: 1
I've read one Ian Banks book, The Player of Games, and would strongly second the suggestion. Good stuff.
Re:There should be more online awards given.......
on
2005 Hugo Nominations
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I was eligible to nominate both for the Hugo and Nebula this year...but I only nominated a few stories from the preliminary Nebula ballot because I've been too busy to read much of the newer work. The Hugo and Nebula award periods are not exactly the same cycle. Here are the current Nebula best novel finalists:
Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold
(Eos, Oct 2003)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow
(Tor, Feb 2003)
Omega, by Jack McDevitt
(Ace, Nov 2003)
Cloud Atlas: A Novel, by David Mitchell
(Sceptre, Jan 2004)
Perfect Circle, by Sean Stewart (link to Private Edition)
(Small Beer Press, Jun 2004)
The Knight, by Gene Wolfe
(Tor, Jan 2004)
PALADIN OF SOULS won last year's Hugo, for instance.
SFWA also has a committee whose job is to read "less popular" books that may be great but overlooked and add one such book to the ballot. You don't get that with Hugos. I'm not sure such an added book has ever won, however, but I imagine it might helps sales a bit.
The basic design is a rocketship, but the details change from year to year. Different artists, materials, and different designs, so each year is unique.
Robert Sawyer's HOMINIDS was nominated and won the Hugo when Worldcon was in Toronto (Sawyer is Canadia). Worldcon members nominate the Hugos, and there are a lot from the UK this year since the next Worldcon is in Scotland. There are many fine British writers, and probably all the novels nominated here deserve their nominations, but it doesn't mean British SF is better than American SF right now necessarily (a whole thread above). It means a few hundred people, with more UK people compared to Americans than usual, like these 5 books best. From what I've read of and about these authors, you can't go wrong here. If the next Worldcon was in the US, I'd expect several of these books to make it, but perhaps a few American books on the list -- somewhat a matter of different tastes and somewhat a matter of different distributions.
Re:A Hugo First: The British Invasion
on
2005 Hugo Nominations
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Read my novel then, please -- it's old-fashioned in some ways, but also on the forefront in other ways. It's free on line, and it was published in both the US and the UK. Hugo nominations are made by the past worldcon attendees and members of the new worldcon...in Glasgow, Scottland. There's going to be a pro-Brit bias in the nominations this year.
And I like many of the newer Brit writers, but I would not call American Sf in the "doldrums."
Yes, I was going to make the same point that Sawyer is Canadian.
And as an American SF writer, I'd like to point out that these generalities are incorrect or in bad taste. Science fiction is a case of small number statistics. If you think all "American" science fiction is bad, but like some of the British stuff, you've probably not read widely enough. There are differences in flavor, but it isn't a case of "good" vs. "bad."
I'll give my fellow British writers credit for spearheading the renaissance of space opera and the "new weird." My own work is more often compared to Reynolds, Stross, Banks, etc., than most current American writers.
My biggest concern was moderation. I mean, you don't want to let the wackos use it to promote their wacky theories that can't pass peer review. You also want to make sure that ther is some check if one scientist with a grudge is spamming unfair criticism at another's papers. But yes, it does seem to be a viable way of having a real discussion and updating of results.
"To damage the creationists in the eyes of others, you need to trap them in a contradiction or otherwise make them look like the BS artists that they are. Unfortunately, this takes work."
But does it even work? I mean, there are creationist slashdotters I've come across who don't really understand what evolution means, but are SURE that they do. You catch them in a contradiction or error (and I have) and they pitch a fit because they think they've caught YOU. The most common example is confusion origin of life theories with evolution -- there is no overlap -- but they've combined a very difficult problem with a very obvious phenomenons with a clear solution to bolster their position that there is a problem with the whole thing.
I call them idiots because it is easy, and perhaps the obvious scorn of the term will cause consideration in any fence-sitters watching. Admittedly, some may feel sympathy and move the wrong way, but if they can't follow reason they have other things to learn first.
I teach big bang cosmology to non-majors, so the issue will come up for me (and surprisingly, thankfully, has not in teaching the class three times already). Feel free to take this to private email in the future if you have insights. At the moment I view it as a minor, annoying issue, but I feel it has grown larger in recent years rather than smaller as it should.
I'm a scientist. I don't buy into the "equal treatment" doctrine when creationist nonsense has an unfair influence. They never give science equal treatment, as you suggest. I suppose ultimately I'm too hard line for politics. I believe in compromise and reaching win-win solutions, but there are lines I cannot cross. They can call me an idiot if I weigh in on how many angels can dance on a pinhead, as long as I can call them idiots for weighing in on the age of the universe.
Now, this really IS petty. Did you see my ";-)" at the end of the above post? I saw the ":-)" at the end of the one I was responding, too. If you think my reply was being a dick, well, it wasn't intended that way.
But you should consider what your post says about yourself. Do you know how much a writer has wrapped up in a novel? How many months or years of work? The ego involved, the risk of putting it out there for criticism? And you've just rejected all of that from me because of a tongue-in-cheek reply to a tongue-in-cheek comment. It doesn't hurt so much to me since you're an AC, and I've heard this before from someone I got into a misunderstanding with and been hurt more.
I probably would be better off not replying to this, but perhaps if I do I'll spare someone else some unnecessary pain down the line. Remember, when you really want to hurt a writer, about the meanest thing you can do is reject all their hard work and effort over something petty. It works.
Personally, I don't choose what to read based on an author's character, even when you have more to go on than a one-line slashdot comment. Arthur C. Clarke has been accused of pedophilia, Orson Scott Card rails against gays, and Jerry Pournelle has been known to rail about anything and everything under the right prodding. I've still found their work good to great, and been moved by it.
While I agree this particular article/information needs more investigation, ignorant fundamentalists certainly do have some power over what is available to the rest of the country. They stack school boards, for instance, in an effort to push Creationism and have had some successes in recent years. While IMAX folks may be weak here, they've certainly been pushed and there are regions of the country where this sort of influence does carry weight.
And hey, why try to ruin my good buzz of righteous anger?! I get annoying religous types knocking on my door several times a year (most recently last Sunday), and I hate it. We'd be better off with scientists knocking on doors educating people, except I wouldn't want to be so annoying!
Well, as a US astronomer I feel like I should publish in US journals where most of my work has appeared. MNRAS also can be deadly slow, and A&A doesn't have the best reputation for papers in my subfield. If I'd been turned down for page charges from my local sources, then, yes, I'd probably have gone to A&A or MNRAS (and I've refereed for both of these, too).
We'll probably move to something closer to this in the future. With the preprint servers we're essentially there in some fields where this is the acceptable practice (I understand string theory is like this).
I actually came up with an idea back 5-6 years ago for something like slashdot forums for scientists to comment on individual papers in a big archive. People could easily update results, discuss findings, etc., faster and efficiently in a forum rather than the slower process of publication. Referees don't always do a great job. I try to, and I've gotten many thorough reports on my papers, but also some shoddy ones.
You weren't being close-minded, if you'd studied it all and understood it. She's scientifically illiterate and to be educated or pitied, preferably the first. Again, she's scientifically illiterate. Period.
In Astronomy, all the major US journals are author pays. We also have a preprint server that is free that most astronomers post their articles to (except for Nature articles because Nature won't let them). The one problem I have with author pays is that you have to come up with the grant funding, and a lot of the grant funding is project specific, so if you do a side project that isn't funded (something real common when working with students), you've got to get creative and beg, borrow, or steal the funding to pay for it. For instance, I had a 29 page paper as a grad student that didn't fall under my advisor's grants, and had to beg from department sources (finally getting the $4000 I needed from our observatory budget).
Science is not one-sided. It's open to any testable theory from anyone any where. Science also doesn't work by majority vote, because that method fails to get at the truth in a reliable way.
I think what I've said is more productive that just dissing people (minorities or majorities).
Unfortunately the vast majority of movies from Hollywood that have anything remotely to do with science tend to also ignore the sceince. For some examples, check out Bad Astronomy.
Slashdot Mirror
"With regards to students' written work: My field is meteorology. I too used to give students in my survey-level meteorology class opportunities to "express themselves" via short answers (a paragraph or two) on exams. I stopped because it was so hard to grade many of them because they were written so poorly. In addition to that, it is very difficult to grade short answers in a consistent way. For many of the short-answer questions I would usually end up just writing a number down ("Hmm.. this feels like a 3-points-out-of-5 answer") which real doesn't feel right... but what do you do when the concepts are confused, spelling and grammar are terrible but they have expressed some knowledge of the material?"
Very much my experience, too. And my big class is over 100.
The rest of what you say about the upper-level major courses and writing is very important. Communication skills are HUGE in science. If you can't write papers and proposals, and give good talks, your science and your career are going to stall and perhaps even die. This area cannot be neglected and poor verbal skills are something to be conquered, not accepted.
Some weeks I take it easy, around 40 hours. There has been many a week when I've pulled all-nighters, or stayed up until 2AM to make sure my class prep was in order. I teach two classes a year and have a significant research program (two postdocs, multiple students). And many non-professors would be amazed at the amount of time spent on "department activities/politics" which includes a lot of things like advising, admitting new grad students, hiring new faculty, revising cirricula, etc. Seems like the less important it is, the more people want to argue about it.
The Turing Test is a lot more general. This program can presumably do some things, like grade a paper, but it can't play chess, or learn to play chess, or make up stuff about its father, or Michael Jackson. This is an expert system, not anything close to strong AI.
This is a tough issue. At my university, the dean actually loves to see low grades and high evaluations. It's possible to do, but teaching evaluations tends to correlate with grade expectations.
I think what Princeton is doing, capping the maximum percentage of A grades, isn't a very smart solution. That will create unfair situations, and remove flexibility from professors.
Hmm...the NSF grant provisions I recall seeing the last time I submitted one discouraged, or even ruled out, supporting commerical activities. This does sound a bit funny to me, too.
I'd be pissed off, too, but don't let one bad professor sour you on all of us. My base pay is less than $60k a year, but with summer salary from grants I'm in your range. And I work way more than 20 hours a week. Way, way more. But what is this "union" you speak of? I know of no such union (although tenure can provide significant job security).
I used to give short answer/essay questions to my astronomy students the first couple of semesters I taught the big non-major course. It took a tremendous amount of time to grade which was one reason I stopped, but not the primary reason. I'm a novelist, and I know how to write, and there was a consistently high fraction of exams written so badly it was very painful to read. Perhaps I should have kept at it, with the idea that it's good for the students. But a few essays in a science class won't dent the problem that starts in k-12 education.
Actually the primary reason JWST will operate in the near-to-mid IR is NOT to see through the dust in our galaxy (although it will help with that). The primary design principle of JWST is to see the first stars and first galaxies, at large distances, where universal expansion has redshifted the optical and ultraviolet light of these objects into the near and mid infrared.
The ultraviolet spectrograph (COS) originally slated to go onto Hubble during the refurbishment mission would be useless on JWST because its optics are optimized for the IR, and I'm pretty sure the UV is blocked entirely.
I've read one Ian Banks book, The Player of Games, and would strongly second the suggestion. Good stuff.
I was eligible to nominate both for the Hugo and Nebula this year...but I only nominated a few stories from the preliminary Nebula ballot because I've been too busy to read much of the newer work. The Hugo and Nebula award periods are not exactly the same cycle. Here are the current Nebula best novel finalists:
Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Eos, Oct 2003)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow (Tor, Feb 2003)
Omega, by Jack McDevitt (Ace, Nov 2003)
Cloud Atlas: A Novel, by David Mitchell (Sceptre, Jan 2004)
Perfect Circle, by Sean Stewart (link to Private Edition) (Small Beer Press, Jun 2004)
The Knight, by Gene Wolfe (Tor, Jan 2004)
PALADIN OF SOULS won last year's Hugo, for instance.
SFWA also has a committee whose job is to read "less popular" books that may be great but overlooked and add one such book to the ballot. You don't get that with Hugos. I'm not sure such an added book has ever won, however, but I imagine it might helps sales a bit.
The basic design is a rocketship, but the details change from year to year. Different artists, materials, and different designs, so each year is unique.
Robert Sawyer's HOMINIDS was nominated and won the Hugo when Worldcon was in Toronto (Sawyer is Canadia). Worldcon members nominate the Hugos, and there are a lot from the UK this year since the next Worldcon is in Scotland. There are many fine British writers, and probably all the novels nominated here deserve their nominations, but it doesn't mean British SF is better than American SF right now necessarily (a whole thread above). It means a few hundred people, with more UK people compared to Americans than usual, like these 5 books best. From what I've read of and about these authors, you can't go wrong here. If the next Worldcon was in the US, I'd expect several of these books to make it, but perhaps a few American books on the list -- somewhat a matter of different tastes and somewhat a matter of different distributions.
Read my novel then, please -- it's old-fashioned in some ways, but also on the forefront in other ways. It's free on line, and it was published in both the US and the UK. Hugo nominations are made by the past worldcon attendees and members of the new worldcon...in Glasgow, Scottland. There's going to be a pro-Brit bias in the nominations this year.
And I like many of the newer Brit writers, but I would not call American Sf in the "doldrums."
Yes, I was going to make the same point that Sawyer is Canadian.
And as an American SF writer, I'd like to point out that these generalities are incorrect or in bad taste. Science fiction is a case of small number statistics. If you think all "American" science fiction is bad, but like some of the British stuff, you've probably not read widely enough. There are differences in flavor, but it isn't a case of "good" vs. "bad."
I'll give my fellow British writers credit for spearheading the renaissance of space opera and the "new weird." My own work is more often compared to Reynolds, Stross, Banks, etc., than most current American writers.
My biggest concern was moderation. I mean, you don't want to let the wackos use it to promote their wacky theories that can't pass peer review. You also want to make sure that ther is some check if one scientist with a grudge is spamming unfair criticism at another's papers. But yes, it does seem to be a viable way of having a real discussion and updating of results.
"To damage the creationists in the eyes of others, you need to trap them in a contradiction or otherwise make them look like the BS artists that they are. Unfortunately, this takes work."
But does it even work? I mean, there are creationist slashdotters I've come across who don't really understand what evolution means, but are SURE that they do. You catch them in a contradiction or error (and I have) and they pitch a fit because they think they've caught YOU. The most common example is confusion origin of life theories with evolution -- there is no overlap -- but they've combined a very difficult problem with a very obvious phenomenons with a clear solution to bolster their position that there is a problem with the whole thing.
I call them idiots because it is easy, and perhaps the obvious scorn of the term will cause consideration in any fence-sitters watching. Admittedly, some may feel sympathy and move the wrong way, but if they can't follow reason they have other things to learn first.
I teach big bang cosmology to non-majors, so the issue will come up for me (and surprisingly, thankfully, has not in teaching the class three times already). Feel free to take this to private email in the future if you have insights. At the moment I view it as a minor, annoying issue, but I feel it has grown larger in recent years rather than smaller as it should.
P.S. Love your handle.
I'm a scientist. I don't buy into the "equal treatment" doctrine when creationist nonsense has an unfair influence. They never give science equal treatment, as you suggest. I suppose ultimately I'm too hard line for politics. I believe in compromise and reaching win-win solutions, but there are lines I cannot cross. They can call me an idiot if I weigh in on how many angels can dance on a pinhead, as long as I can call them idiots for weighing in on the age of the universe.
Now, this really IS petty. Did you see my ";-)" at the end of the above post? I saw the ":-)" at the end of the one I was responding, too. If you think my reply was being a dick, well, it wasn't intended that way.
But you should consider what your post says about yourself. Do you know how much a writer has wrapped up in a novel? How many months or years of work? The ego involved, the risk of putting it out there for criticism? And you've just rejected all of that from me because of a tongue-in-cheek reply to a tongue-in-cheek comment. It doesn't hurt so much to me since you're an AC, and I've heard this before from someone I got into a misunderstanding with and been hurt more.
I probably would be better off not replying to this, but perhaps if I do I'll spare someone else some unnecessary pain down the line. Remember, when you really want to hurt a writer, about the meanest thing you can do is reject all their hard work and effort over something petty. It works.
Personally, I don't choose what to read based on an author's character, even when you have more to go on than a one-line slashdot comment. Arthur C. Clarke has been accused of pedophilia, Orson Scott Card rails against gays, and Jerry Pournelle has been known to rail about anything and everything under the right prodding. I've still found their work good to great, and been moved by it.
While I agree this particular article/information needs more investigation, ignorant fundamentalists certainly do have some power over what is available to the rest of the country. They stack school boards, for instance, in an effort to push Creationism and have had some successes in recent years. While IMAX folks may be weak here, they've certainly been pushed and there are regions of the country where this sort of influence does carry weight.
And hey, why try to ruin my good buzz of righteous anger?! I get annoying religous types knocking on my door several times a year (most recently last Sunday), and I hate it. We'd be better off with scientists knocking on doors educating people, except I wouldn't want to be so annoying!
Well, as a US astronomer I feel like I should publish in US journals where most of my work has appeared. MNRAS also can be deadly slow, and A&A doesn't have the best reputation for papers in my subfield. If I'd been turned down for page charges from my local sources, then, yes, I'd probably have gone to A&A or MNRAS (and I've refereed for both of these, too).
We'll probably move to something closer to this in the future. With the preprint servers we're essentially there in some fields where this is the acceptable practice (I understand string theory is like this).
I actually came up with an idea back 5-6 years ago for something like slashdot forums for scientists to comment on individual papers in a big archive. People could easily update results, discuss findings, etc., faster and efficiently in a forum rather than the slower process of publication. Referees don't always do a great job. I try to, and I've gotten many thorough reports on my papers, but also some shoddy ones.
You weren't being close-minded, if you'd studied it all and understood it. She's scientifically illiterate and to be educated or pitied, preferably the first. Again, she's scientifically illiterate. Period.
In Astronomy, all the major US journals are author pays. We also have a preprint server that is free that most astronomers post their articles to (except for Nature articles because Nature won't let them). The one problem I have with author pays is that you have to come up with the grant funding, and a lot of the grant funding is project specific, so if you do a side project that isn't funded (something real common when working with students), you've got to get creative and beg, borrow, or steal the funding to pay for it. For instance, I had a 29 page paper as a grad student that didn't fall under my advisor's grants, and had to beg from department sources (finally getting the $4000 I needed from our observatory budget).
Science is not one-sided. It's open to any testable theory from anyone any where. Science also doesn't work by majority vote, because that method fails to get at the truth in a reliable way.
I think what I've said is more productive that just dissing people (minorities or majorities).
I'll probably wait until I get tenure first!
Unfortunately the vast majority of movies from Hollywood that have anything remotely to do with science tend to also ignore the sceince. For some examples, check out Bad Astronomy.