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Monday, June 29, 2015

College major advice

My latest at Research magazine: "Which College Majors Are Solid Investments?" With some ideas relevant to the target readership (financial advisors) and others, including journalists and the occasional Secretary of Defense. Excerpt:

What was your major in college? Ask that question and you’re likely to find out something interesting about a person—regarding their areas of interest, habits of thought, and past or present ambitions. 
Often a major matters greatly in determining a career path, and not necessarily in a predictable way. Consider Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter. He has written of how, as a Yale undergrad, he took a double major in the disconnected subjects of physics and medieval history. Their appeal lay in being so different. Moreover, in his words: 
“As far as course choice was concerned, I had no interest in between the extremes of medieval history (history, language, philosophy) on the one hand, and science (physics, chemistry, mathematics) on the other…. I have taken exactly zero social science courses in my entire life. My arrogant view at the time was that life would eventually teach me political science, sociology, psychology, and even economics, but it would never teach me linear algebra or Latin. It seemed best to get my tuition's worth from the other topics and get my social science for free!”
Whole thing here.

My own majors at NYU were economics and history, which both have served me reasonably well and been frequent subjects of my writing. Still, if I were doing things over, I would have a different mix with significantly more math and science than I was willing to try back then.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Supersymmetry novel

Current reading: an advance copy of Supersymmetry, a sci-fi novel by engineer David Walton, which is about what it's like to fend off a quantum mechanical creature even while you yourself have split into multiple people because of a quantum superposition. I'm finding it quite interesting.

Saturday, June 20, 2015

The feds vs Reason

I've written for Reason magazine, and had my disagreements with Reason magazine. I retain considerable sympathy for the magazine's philosophy, but even if I didn't, I would be appalled by the federal government's actions in response to some obnoxious comments by readers at the magazine's website. Read the story by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch: "How Government Stifled Reason's Free Speech."

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Review: How to Raise a Wild Child

In Scientific American Mind, I review How to Raise a Wild Child: The Art and Science of Falling in Love with Nature, by Scott Sampson. My review is here. Excerpt:

Many preschoolers and their parents know paleontologist Sampson as “Dr. Scott” on the television program Dinosaur Train, where he adds science commentary to the show's animated dino tales and closes each episode with this exhortation: “Get outside, get into nature and make your own discoveries.” 
In How to Raise a Wild Child, Sampson provides a persuasive book-length exposition of that tagline. He makes a cogent case for the importance of cultivating a “nature connection” in children and offers thoughtful guidance on how to do so amid today's pressures of hectic, high-tech, increasingly urbanized life.




Side note: It so happens Dr. Scott was nice enough to respond to an email we sent a few years ago clarifying the pronunciation of parasaurolophus (it's done both ways; he prefers para-sore-all-o-fus).

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Diversify

Excellent advice from Matt Lewis (click to enlarge):


From: "Conservative journalists should get out of the ghetto."

By the way, I'll have some advice of my own for aspiring journalists (regardless of ideology) in an upcoming column.

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Shifting tides on starboard side

In 2008, when this blog was young, I expressed skepticism about a suggestion from Arnold Kling that libertarians should engage in civil disobedience against regulations they don't like. Lately, I've become aware that the same basic idea now appears in book form, in Charles Murray's By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission, which I have not read. What I suspect has changed since 2008 is that the "extremism is no vice" strain of libertarianism/conservatism is less prominent now. As one data point on that score, here's none other than Arnold Kling expressing some doubt about such civil disobedience; excerpt from Kling:
How will the other side respond? I could see progressives engaging in civil disobedience, also. In fact, if conservatives were to win in 2016, I expect to see the emergence of a very large, and possibly violent, protest movement. If conservatives/libertarians were to set a precedent of disobeying laws, then I think this would encourage progressives to disobey laws. For example, they might decide that laws protecting property rights are unjust, and proceed to “liberate” the possessions and homes of the one percent.
Me: I doubt much will come of (what's now) Murray's idea. If we do see large numbers of people lying in the streets to protest OSHA or EPA regulations, I would wonder whether there's that much grassroots interest--or if someone is paying for the protestors to show up. As another data point about the moderating tenor of the right, I note these polling results, and especially (click to enlarge):