The Times has an interesting article summarizing a variety of research projects that use data from Facebook, and I’m predicting this will easily make their most emailed articles list by the end of the day — partly because of growing concern about privacy and Facebook, and partly because Nicholas Christakis, pictured in the article, resembles […]
Entries Tagged 'Academia' ↓
Scholars mining your Facebook data
December 17th, 2007 — Academia
Do reviewers always know everything?
October 8th, 2007 — Academia, Research in Turkey
I just received a packet of mail forwarded by my department secretary that contained anonymous reviewer forms for a fellowship I didn’t win last winter. I thought the first reviewer was very positive and fair, but the second one, clearly the regional “expert,” made me say, “Huh?”
The line that stands out is this:
“Referees of the […]
Shortening time to Ph.D. completion
October 4th, 2007 — Graduate School, Academia
I’m not sure why, but the New York Times report on shortening the time to a Ph.D. is currently the most e-mailed article on their site. My hunch is that thousands of MBA grads are getting high on schadenfreude right now.
If it’s the grad students, or future grad students, passing this article around, I can […]
Ask the readers: Which word processor and bibliography software do you use?
July 28th, 2007 — Academia, Reader polls
I opened Endnote 9 on my Mac the other day and realized why I hardly ever use it. I want to add another column to the main display so I can have more information on the screen, but that feature is only available in version 10, and it will cost me $100 to upgrade. I’ve […]
As Seen On TV: What not to write in your introduction
June 6th, 2007 — Academia
Yesterday I encountered the literary equivalent of a late-night infomercial — an author making claims about his book that even Ron Popeil would find excessive. Here’s the pitch from the intro:
“The style of English used in this book is simple, clear, and emphatic. Any reader will be happy to continue reading the book, chapter after […]
Catch 23
April 30th, 2007 — Graduate School, Academia
In homage to Jeremy’s posts on opening sentences and paragraphs that convince you to keep reading, here’s the intro to a chapter I stumbled across today that almost guarantees I’ll finish the whole thing:
Yossarian looked at the professor soberly and tried another approach. “Does Orr have a theory?”
“He sure does,” Prof. Daneeka responded.
“Then can you […]
If Billy Collins gave up poetry to write auto-reply “out of the office” messages
April 3rd, 2007 — Academia, Humor
I sent an email to a well-known sociologist last night and got a fascinating auto-reply vacation message:
“This is a vacation message to tell you that I will not look at what you’ve written for days and days. You might be jealous that you are working and I am off at the tropical island paradise of […]