This new flag is even better than you think

This November, there are a lot of very consequential elections and referenda in the United States. Most of them I won’t comment on here (although it wouldn’t be hard to infer my thoughts about the highest-stakes one). But one referendum, in one state, is – perhaps surprisingly – right up Scientist Sees Squirrel’s alley.  The people of the state of Mississippi will vote, I hope, to approve the new state flag pictured above.

The proposed flag won a design competition and will be on the ballot for approval in November.  It will replace an older flag that included an inset Confederate battle emblem, and I hope everyone knows why its time is (more than) up.*

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Student responsibility for online learning, the prescriptive battles the descriptive

Like most of my colleagues, I spent dozens upon dozens of hours this summer converting my university courses to an online format.  I showed you the result, for my 3^rd year Entomology course, in last week’s post – and to be honest, I think the result is pretty good.*  Of course, what I think about it doesn’t really matter – what matters is what my students think about it.  Or maybe that’s what matters.  I’m not sure, and a seemingly minor decision puts the question in sharp relief for me: one long video, or a bunch of short ones?

My university made an early decision to go online for fall (both going online, and calling it early, were very good decisions).  That meant that our Centre for Enhanced Teaching and Learning had time to put on a course in online pedagogy and logistics, and I had time to take it. (Well, by “had time”, I mean “made time”; anyone who thinks that the move to online made professors’ jobs easier is, shall we say politely, incompletely informed.)  One recommendation got a lot of stress in that course: for the presentation of content, chunking material into short videos.  Five minutes! Four minutes! Three minutes!

This was a bit startling.  Three minute videos?

What my online Entomology course look like

Warning: this got kind of long.  If you’re not interested in the online course delivery – here’s an unrelated but much shorter post instead. It’s kind of fun.

Like most university instructors, I’m teaching online this fall – 3^rd year general Entomology, in my case.  Also like most university instructors, I had (before this summer) no training in pedagogy for online teaching, limited experience with the necessary technology, and a certain amount of skepticism that I could teach entomology – with a lab – without ever seeing my students in person.  But needs must, as they say; and here we are. Today, for those who are interested: a glimpse at my course.  I poured an enormous amount of work into this, and I’m hopeful that the product is pretty good. (In some ways, it may be better than the face-to-face version.) But, since it started just last week, you’re seeing an attempt of uncertain merit, or if you prefer, an experiment in progress.

A year of books (5): where did the summer go?

Time now for the fifth instalment of #AYearInBooks, in which I track the non-academic reading I do.  Here’s why I’m doing this. This strange pandemic summer went by in a blur.  Thank goodness for the books along the way. 

Rotherweird (Andrew Caldecott, 2017). What a marvellously indescribable book – urban fantasy, I suppose.  It’s the story of a strange town, in but not part of England, populated by eccentrics both evil and good (it takes a while to figure out which are which).  There’s a portal to another world, a mysterious threat to that world and to the town, and a generous helping of other oddnesses (for instance, a scientist who pole-vaults across the town’s rooftops at night). There’s a strong flavour of Ghormenghast, somehow leavened with a little Ankh–Morpork, and… well, I did say indescribable, right?  But hugely enjoyable, and the two sequels are absolutely on my reading list.

The perfect margarita and the perfect scientific paper

Everyone needs a summer project (or sixteen), and among mine was mixing the perfect margarita.  In pursuit of the perfect margarita, I read a lot of recipes, and a lot of opinions.  I finally made progress when I realized something important: the way to make a perfect margarita is to ignore everything anyone else has ever said about what makes a perfect margarita.  That realization, and a little fiddling, and there it was in my hand: my (not “the”) perfect margarita.

That last little tweak of the wording is key. My perfect margarita might horrify a margarita purist – no, never mind “might”, it’s sure to.  But because I’m mixing a margarita for me, it makes absolutely no difference what anybody else thinks.  It’s my perfect margarita.*

I have not yet written the perfect scientific paper. It turns out that’s harder.