I’ve been somewhat irritated recently, as I’m sure most academics have been, by the increasing interest that our universities have in citations. Citations count in league tables. We – academics – are increasingly told that we must focus more on how to ramp up our own citations. It’s recently been explained to me for example […] … learn more→

One of the effects of the rise of social media and “reality” entertainment is that we are all, in effect, in danger of becoming the topics of tabloid stories. It used to be that you had to be already famous at least to some degree for anyone to be interested in the stupid things that […] … learn more→

Additive manufacturing – or 3D printing – is 30 years old this year. Today, it’s found not just in industry but in households, as the price of 3D printers has fallen below US$1,000. Knowing you can print almost anything, not just marks on paper, opens up unlimited opportunities for us to manufacture toys, household appliances […] … learn more→

A couple of years ago, the BBC published an essay on that staple of British journalism, the terribleness of Americanisms polluting the mother tongue. The Beeb invited readers to send in their own pet peeves and got such a response that it published a list of the 50 that were sent in most often. The […] … learn more→

It\’s that time of year when parents at long last, get to see the report card of their children, after their first semester in college. And they see a bunch of F marks. It\’s no great dishonor to fail college, many, many institutions of higher education have graduation rates of below 10%. It\’s no great […] … learn more→

The UK’s video games industry body Tiga has called for the products to be treated like other creative industries such as television or film, rather than mere “software”. There is a good argument for this. Games have been part of human civilisation for thousands of years. Egyptians played the board game senet 3,000 years ago, […] … learn more→

In January this year, Rachel L. Swarns wrote a piece for The New York Times that scared me so much, it’s taken until now to write about it. ‘Crowded Out of Ivory Tower, Adjuncts See a Life Less Lofty’ follows the employment trajectory of an early-career academic in America, James D. Hoff. Since being awarded […] … learn more→

For 2014 there seems to be no leading candidate for Word (or Phrase) of the Year. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of candidates. Just last week, for example, the news from Washington was generously sprinkled with enhanced interrogation techniques, the disputed CIA practice for obtaining information, and cromnibus, the disputed Congressional practice for […] … learn more→

It is often said that humans have caused the Earth to warm at an unprecedented rate. However researchers have discovered another period, some 55m years ago, when massive volcanic eruptions pumped so much carbon into the atmosphere that the planet warmed at what geologists would think of as breakneck speed. The good news is that […] … learn more→

It really seems worthwhile to talk about the kind of effort UNC is still putting into covering up their “paper classes” scandal, and how accreditation in general operates when confronted with open, overwhelming, systemic, fraud. “One contributor to UNC-CH’s previous monitoring reports for the agency, Bobbi Owen, was identified by Wainstein as an administrator who […] … learn more→