30 May 2011 later: Brains, skunk butts, Republican economics and more….

Republican Economics
Paul Krugman speaks with such clarity:

Steve Benen watches an entire panel on Meet the Press condemn Democrats for accurately describing the Ryan plan:

I’m at a loss to understand what, exactly, Ruth Marcus, David Brooks, and their cohorts would have Dems do. Congressional Republicans have a plan to end Medicare and replace it with a privatized voucher scheme. The proposal would not only help rewrite the social contract, it would also shift crushing costs onto the backs of seniors, freeing up money for tax breaks for the wealthy. The plan is needlessly cruel, and any serious evaluation of the GOP’s arithmetic shows that the policy is a fraud.

Which part of this description is false? None of it, but apparently, Democrats just aren’t supposed to mention any of this.

I have to admit that even I am surprised by this.

I admit that I am not. Frankly, the Republicans have lowed the bar so far for themselves that they expect a gold star anytime one of them writes up a plan that has a footnote; think of this as the snowflake student who wants an A because their report was typeset and placed in a fancy binder.

Skunk Butts and brains
Jerry Coyne happened to mention that the skunk’s odor defense mechanism (a nozzle near its anus that emits the stinky substance) and the human brain are products of natural selection. No, that doesn’t mean that skunk butts and human brains are similar. But evidently this point (that both resulted from an evolutionary adaptation process) annoyed some.

An unrelated aside: check out the unspeakably cute amphibians that he talks about in this post.

Accountability and Education
You usually see this cycle: some business type (who doesn’t know squat about higher education) comes up with some simple minded scheme to measure “academic production”. The general public sees this and thinks that the top professors are slackers. Faculty protest, and the clueless business types tut-tut that academics are acting like snowflakes by not subjecting ourselves to their notion of accountability when in fact, they really don’t know their heads from their asses about research universities. Here is such an example:

Study: One-fifth of faculty does most of the work
By Daniel de Vise

Twenty percent of faculty at the University of Texas-Austin teach 57 percent of the student credit hours, according to a new study from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity that attempts to build a case for inefficiency and waste in academia.

If the “bottom” 80 percent were as productive as the top 20 percent, the study concludes, the flagship Texas public university could cut its tuition in half. Or, the state could reduce its funding to the university by as much as 75 percent.

The study is likely to provoke outrage among those who suspect that college faculty positions are comparatively cushy, if it gains traction. And it’s likely to irk faculty associations, whose leaders contend that professors are a very hard-working and dedicated group, on the whole.

Look at the faculty list at any department at a major research university and you’ll find that a good number of professors are teaching something well short of a full load of courses. The reason is research: Universities typically grant professors a good amount of freedom — from lighter course loads to paid sabbaticals — to pursue their area of specialty, generating articles in peer-reviewed journals and chasing grant funds.

That research effort is just as important as the quality of their classroom teaching, at least in terms of college rankings and reputation.

But the study suggests that research and teaching can easily coexist. It found that the 20 percent of faculty with the heaviest teaching loads generated 18 percent of UT’s research funding, meaning that they remained competitive in research even as they carried more than their share of teaching duties.

“This suggests that these faculty are not jeopardizing their status as researchers by assuming such a high level of teaching responsibility,” the study states.

The least productive 20 percent of faculty teach just 2 percent of all student credit hours at UT — meaning that students barely see them.

Here is what is missing: student hours is not a full measure. My advisor taught one course per semester, usually a graduate course. BUT he also ran a seminar, advised a half a dozen graduate students, helped make up and grade the topology qualifying exam and put out high quality research; he even solved an 80 year old open problem. Directing graduate research is time consuming. I assure you that he was no slacker!

Sure, every profession carries dead weight and academia is no exception. Unfortunately those who are most qualified to measure these things are those that are closest to it…..you see such a problem with, say, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which regulates nuclear safety.

Memorial Day

I was going to write a Memorial Day post, but this one from the satire blog really said much of what I wanted to say:

http://baptistsforbrown2008.wordpress.com/2011/05/30/thank-a-world-war-ii-vet-for-protecting-your-freedoms/

On this Memorial Day, let’s give thanks to the brave Americans who gave their lives to protect our freedoms. Of course, you’ll have to be fast, as the last American to do that served in WWII.
Ever since then, brave American boys (and some dykes) have died for nothing other than the testosterone of the cowards and con-artists in Washington, D.C.

Now that the dust has settled, we know that Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan were complete wastes of time, lives and money that did nothing for anyone other than reckless politicians and rich defense contractors.

Now, I stand behind our military. It is the only thing I worship that isn’t invisible. But I do not stand behind killing Americans for no reason.

I might dispute the Afghanistan point; after all that is where Al Qeada was. And yes, we should fully fund veterans benefits and take care of those who were wounded (physically and mentally); that is the part of the cost of war.

But I reserve a ton of anger for those who send our service people into harm’s way for no good reason.