tingilinde

acknowledging the acknowledglements

Looking through Ph.D. theses for the acknowledgments.

 

seamless rails

ah, thermite!

public domain day

The first was public domain day. Works from 1929 are now the public's along with sound recordings from 1924.  Some samples.

 

a tip of the hat to Dan

 

a weather book

This might make a nice gift - perhaps to yourself (caveat . Andy is a friend)

snip

...

Jason - In researching all of these fascinating vignettes about our evolving understanding of weather and climate throughout history, what one thing surprised you the most?

Andy - I was most surprised, after more than three decades of reporting on climate and weather, by how much I didn’t know — that the worst wildfire in U.S. history wasn’t in the West, that so many amateur scientists played vital roles in knowledge building, that a woman first documented carbon dioxide’s potential to warm the planet and another invented the windshield wiper, that the jet stream was weaponized in World War II.

Jason - You write a lot about some of the most important people who made critical, groundbreaking discoveries about weather and climate. Is there someone who, in your mind, stands out as being vastly underappreciated for his or her discoveries?

Andy - I loved stumbling on a pioneering insight about the potential for climate to change written by an observant Chinese polymath and government official, Shen Kuo, in 1088 — after he’d seen fossil bamboo in a region with no bamboo.

...

 

 

 

english as she is spoke

Commentary on the remarkably bad phrasebook that Abe Lincoln and Mark Twain enjoyed so much

 

llms, management consultants, how the supreme court works these days ...

 

"Well, Gordon’s great insight was to design a program which allowed you to specify in advance what decision you wished it to reach, and only then to give it all the facts. The program’s task, which it was able to accomplish with consummate ease, was simply to construct a plausible series of logical-sounding steps to connect the premises with the conclusion."
-- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

 

students at elite colleges who can't make it through a full book

A podcast interview with the author of the widely quoted (and paywalled) piece in The Atlantic.  audio and transcript.

snip

...

One of the rites of passage of middle and high school used to be reading books assigned by a teacher. I remember being pleasantly surprised by some of those compulsory reads and absolutely hating some others. Sorry. John Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath really is a brilliant book, but 15 year old me was not quite in that headspace. But in recent years, reading lists at a lot of schools have been cold to the point that it’s possible to earn a high school diploma without ever having made your way through a single full length novel, let alone a handful, each semester. Which means there are students attending some of the very best universities in this country who are not prepared to take on what used to be considered college level reading. From Kera in Dallas, this is Think. I’m Krys Boyd. To be clear, this is not a case of students who lack basic literacy skills and might need some remedial help to catch up to their peers. These are the students whose grades and test scores earned them admission to highly coveted schools, only to report to their professors that they can’t possibly slog through an entire narrative as required by the class. Educators were stunned as they encountered the first students to object to this amount of reading. But now, as my guest has learned, some of them are responding by asking less of students. Rose Horowitch is assistant editor at The Atlantic, which published her article, “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” Rose, welcome to Think

...

 

 

 

 

pro librarian bill passes in new jersey

Some sanity

snip

...

Some state Republicans opposed the "Freedom to Read Act" on the grounds that it will give children access to sexually explicit books and other library materials that have been the target of book bans at New Jersey school districts and around the nation.

The bill (S2421/A3446) establishes requirements for library materials in school districts and public libraries, and aims to safeguard librarians from harassment "brought on by extreme book ban efforts," said its primary sponsors in the Senate, Andrew Zwicker (D-16) and M. Teresa Ruiz (D-29).

Under the bill, school and public library boards would be required to create policies regarding which books should be in school libraries and how books may be removed, as well as prohibit dissenters from suing librarians over the reading options made available in accordance with those policies.

The state Assembly approved this bill 53-20 in June. And after the Senate passed the bill by a 24-15 vote on Monday, it now heads to Gov. Phil Murphy's desk. He will have the final say on whether it will become law.

...

 

 

save your money

For the authors to avoid list (but you probably knew about this one already from earlier work).  A fun review of Gladwell's latest.

a tip of the hat to Bjarne.

the book police