West of the Moon

academic

friday housecleaning.

Closing tabs, as they say. I’ve seen a lot of people linking to this article from National Defense Weekly, about SIGMA, a group of science fiction writers who are offering their services to the US government in an advisory capacity. News of this group has been around for a while–the idea being, presumably, that people [...]

Tags: academic trainwreck, hugo, sigma

Is history a science?

Yesterday, in my lecture class (Science in the United States), we ended up having a bit of a class discussion about the borders and boundaries of science. I love this type of question, and I think that we learn a lot about our own assumptions and categories when we try and work through possible answers. [...]

Tags: boundaries, history, science, teaching

playing the numbers.

Within the community of people who make their living paying attention to science–science writers, historians of science, science ethics and policy experts, among others–there are a few recurring concerns. One is the lack of scientific literacy in the general public, which is usually seen as being related to a “soundbite culture”. Popular media sources need [...]

Tags: health, science, science literacy, statistics

hitting the ground running. or not.

There’s something singularly irritating about coming in to campus on a rainy Saturday, hoping to get some work done, only to discover that you no longer have after-hours key-card access to your building. We’ve sorted it out, finally–it looks like my building access was accidentally listed as expiring at the end of fall semester, even [...]

Tags: comedy of errors, flu, teaching

constructive criticism.

I’ve had a string of days full of tiny irritations–each little thing is insignificant on its own, but as they accumulate I start to feel like I’m being nibbled to death by cats. I’ve locked myself out of my campus office five times in two days, locked myself out of the house once, and even [...]

Tags: berkeley, comedy of errors, powerpoint, teaching, teaching evaluations

two weekends.

Matt told me the other day that it’s frustrating when I say, at the end of a day, that I didn’t really feel like I got anything done. “You’re always working,” he said. “You’ve always done a lot more than you think you have.” And I laughed, because he’s right, but still. “But there really [...]

Tags: hss, river, weekend

doing a job.

If you’ve missed the recent, er, “bright gumdrop unicorns” academic-blog fuss-up, you’re a luckier person than me. That said, I’m going to drag you into it. Short version: sometimes academics with tenure-track positions apply for other tenure-track positions. Some academics, presumably ones with tenured positions, think that these people are selfish and immature gits. The [...]

Tags: academic craziness, job market, teaching

housekeeping.

The semester has started well, if busily. More posting in the next few days, maybe, but in the meantime, some links I want to get out there before my computer loses all of these lovely open browser windows I’ve mentally tagged “of possible use in weblog”. Mostly academic-related, although not entirely. New Kid on the [...]

Tags: academic job market, academics, feminism, history, miscellany

Fall 2007 Courses

I’ve mentioned my courses already, but in case anyone’s interested, the course websites are up and running. History 30A: The History of Premodern Science History 103S/103D: Science and Fiction in Twentieth Century America If any Berkeley students are reading and are interested in taking either of these classes, welcome! History 30A is currently full, but [...]

Tags: berkeley, teaching

upcoming courses.

Somehow, it’s August already, and the start of the semester is rushing towards us. I have two courses at Berkeley this fall: a lecture course on the history of premodern science (the same course from last fall) and an undergraduate seminar. The seminar should be interesting–last fall, I taught a seminar on Darwin and social [...]

Tags: berkeley, teaching