When I taught at an unaccredited legitimate school seeking accreditation, my students were adults, and acted like it. I seldom had to say “Quiet”, or otherwise instill discipline. I respect the teachers in the public schools, that must, in addition to actually teach something, also try to keep order. When the school I taught at […] … learn more→

Virtual reality promises to someday transport humans into other worlds, scents and all. Here’s how the technology of virtual smells work, and what such odiferous “VR smells” could mean for our noses and the future. When you watch a movie, you may not always be thinking “wow, I wish I could smell this.” That’s because […] … learn more→

The ugly side of peer review was on full display last week when a scientific paper was rejected for reasons that smacked of sexism. Two female authors had submitted a paper to a journal that is part of the open-access PLOS family. A negative decision was made based on a single review stating, “It would […] … learn more→

On the same day in mid-March, the ABC news service in Australia (which is, as far as I know not affiliated with ABC network in the U.S.) published these two brief stories The first item concerns an unexpected twist to “Book Week” at a British school: “Book Week, where children dress up as their favourite […] … learn more→

It’s fun to mock academic conferences. They are quite mockable, because academics are nerds. At our best, because we all know that we are nerds, we work hard but don’t take ourselves or our rituals too seriously. And yet I was concerned when Christy Wampole, an assistant professor of French and Italian at Princeton, asked, […] … learn more→

The American dream of equal opportunity, based on the conviction that intelligence, hard work and character are the keys to success, may be on life support. These days children raised at the top or bottom fifths of the income pyramid tend to stay there, even as adults. Higher education is considered a major contributor to […] … learn more→

I thought I’d said all I was going to say about vaccination, but a question keeps nagging me. First, some hypothetical questions: Q: Which lumberjack will have heavier muscles, the guy who cuts down trees with a chain saw, or the guy who uses an axe? The answer’s obvious, right? The guy using the axe […] … learn more→

In New York City, supporters of public libraries say that respect for — and repair of — the libraries is long, well, overdue. A new campaign, Invest in Libraries, puts forth that in the past 10 years, the city government has reduced funding for public libraries by nearly 20 percent and 1,000 workers or so […] … learn more→

In response to the “cartoon contest” in Garland, Texas, that provoked an attack by two “Muslim extremists,” the news media has not been able to avoid making parallels to the much more devastating attack on the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Most of those commentators have felt uneasy enough with the comparison that […] … learn more→

In the weeks and months leading up to the submission of my PhD, I found myself imagining what life would be like on the ’other side’. As a means of forcing myself over the final hurdle, I visualised how amazing it would be to be free of the thesis, to once again recover my weekends […] … learn more→