Mercurial » Academia

Grad student means coffee and cakes

Camilo — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:47:02 +0000

As Honey B. says, and Angela confirms, grad school is a parade of books an articles made bearable by the continuous supply of caffeine and sugar. Nothing prepares you to the insane rhythm of grad school and the relentless pursuit of excellence amid the demands and tugs of war of various departments, professors, assistantships, students and financial aid offices.

It starts easy, with a little small cup of coffee with skim milk and honey, the kind that you saw your Granma sip when sitting at the porch on warm Spring mornings, waiting for the days to go by in their sweet languor, no more running, calm in the smile and the appearance.

Things escalate, though, when papers are due, and that little thimble of coffee becomes twenty ounces of liquid syrupy dark caffeine, accompanied y scones, muffins and brownies with enough caloric content to heat your house for the next two weeks. It turns out, though, that the sugar is necessary to power the brain, poor overtaxed brain having to come up with ten thousand words of reasons why social media is a good idea and people, please, have you seen that facebook has 600 million users is that not enough answer?

As it turns out, the fact that facebook has more users than pagers the local library is not relevant: I have yet to prove the importance, relevance and viability of social media in a business environment.

So, in order to avoid dreaming in tweets and upvoting my friends (the ones I see once every week, if lucky) I have to consume coffee, if only because the frantic speech patterns and the rapid eye twitching makes me more like a real academic and less likely to be confused with one of the lesser life-forms, the undergrad.

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Happy Pi Day

Camilo — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:37:50 +0000

And today we all celebrate our Happy Pi Day! But I learned that MArch 14 is actually National Pi Day, approved by Congress and all.

Pi shows everywhere, and not just for being trascendent, but because it might even be normal.

Who wants cheesecake with their digits?

via mathblog

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Gender and imagery in science

Camilo — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:07:27 +0000

It is interesting to note how our own cultural biases change and sometimes impede the scientific research. That is the case in fertilization, as Emily Martin studied:

In fact, biologists could have figured out a hundred years ago that sperm are weak forward-propulsion units, but it’s hard for men to accept the idea that sperm are best at escaping. The imagery you employ guides you to ask certain questions and to not ask certain others.

Similar cognitive biases arise in other sciences, as can be seen with economists trying to explain everything through a rational agents, and politicians defending its offshoot, the perfect market forces. This bias obscures that which is obvious, and more dangerous, helps create a story, a myth of science, which then is used by our modern civilization to navigate: our current policies are modeled through these myths, and these are informed through our collective ideation of reality – even though it is flawed.

Via Shut up sit down.

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Digital library

Camilo — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 11:08:23 +0000

I would have thought that UCali would be the first in the Google panopticon, but at least they are there in their partnership now.

“The academic enterprise is fundamentally about discovery,” said John Oakley, chair of UC’s systemwide Academic Senate and a UC Davis law professor.

Wonder how much this inexorable trend towards difussion of knowledge will work with the old deffenders of copyright, the modern representative of the medieval guilds.
However, I remember the main character in the latest Vernon Vinge novel, Rainbows End, complaining about digital books, simple streams that inhibit discovery by eliminating that random chance that occurs when you are opening a book in the wrong page, or happen to pick a book next to other, in a completely random subject.
I tend to agree. I love serendipity, and the clear and unmistakable feeling of a book solidly in my hands, the accidental discovery of more material in the bookcases in front of it, and the ability to read it even after pouring my coffee all over it.
On the other hand, let’s go checking books on complexity!
Technorati: google, technology, copyright.

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Open CMS

Camilo — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:50:44 +0000

A few projects have come up in which I will be deciding over a CMS, and naturally, open source is the way to go. I like the clear and concise path that Seth Gottlieb indicates for choosing a CMS, including this:

Open-source content management software presents an attractive option for companies looking for a straightforward solution to a common problem…
To get your bearings, focus on the business problem and look to see what other companies have used to solve similar problems. Once you do narrow down to a set of viable options, the openness of open source will allow you to learn more about the software than you ever could learn in the commercial world. If you leverage these benefits, open source can reduce the risk of your initiative and provide a solution that can grow with your company.

In particular, I like the possibilities that an Open Source CMS, such as Joomla, can create in a slightly unorthodox environment, where various hierarchies and groups coexist, there are some financial limitations, and also an incredible wealth of creative talent. In a case like that, an Open Source CMS simply allows everybody to experiment, implement and take ownership of the software, in effect developing in-house knowledge, and projecting the use of the software into other activities.
Let’s try Joomla.

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Rain in NJ

Camilo — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 10:26:57 +0000

It turns out that old New Jersey is at danger because of rising sea levels,

The Princeton University researchers also projected that as much as 9 percent of the state’s low-lying land could be hit by periodic coastal flooding in a trend that would devastate property, disrupt wildlife, erode beaches, and salinate drinking water in populated areas.

When I read Forty Signs of Rain the affected city, the one that finally made Washington wake up to the fact that there is global warming and pollution and all that, was the DC itself. Now that Princeton concludes that they indeed may be facing a significant disruption, and by that I mean 9 percent of their total area, are perhaps we going to see some action designed to minimize the anthropic effect on said climate change?

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