annaphillips.bsky.social
Physics education researcher
Once a high school student accidentally called me Ms. Physics.
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(I am tired and apparently cannot do grammar right now)
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Me, a few years ago, to someone trying to develop an EdTech tool: Sounds cool, but how will you make it FERPA compliant?
Them: What does FERPA complaint mean
🫠
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"Temu Trump" stuck as a label. The aussies love a good alliterative dunk.
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That was the response to the question "Should papers be in the active voice?"
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Which is more clear, 'If this paper is written in the passive voice, ass will be kicked' or 'If you do not write this paper in the active voice, I will kick your ass.' In the first, we are left to wonder who is writing and whose ass is being kicked by whom. In the second, there is no such ambiguity.
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And now with CRISPR and artificial gene drive we're much, much closer to a wide range of dystopian literature!
We wanted flying cars and no disease. Instead we've got... this.
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(I think the DOE has been holding out for fusion energy production. Godspeed, fusion folks. When I was a baby physicist people joked fusion had been 25 years away for 50 years. It is still "25 years away," and I am no longer a baby physicist. I did not last long in plasma physics.)
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And DOE (energy, not education). Particle physics is hugely funded by the DOE, along with several other areas of physics.
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Columbia is the prime example of "fold and you will be crushed."
This is the better option. It's actually the conservative play.
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I assume the several days this took were about them weighing the overall risks to the university.
I will never underestimate Harvard's conservatism. They want the status quo. I think the board believes this is the way to get closest to the status quo.
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I've talked to a fair number of other Americans abroad about the grief.
We miss home. We maybe thought about going back, at some point. We've raised or are raising third culture kids. We've always wanted those kids to experience US national parks. We feel lucky to be elsewhere, and yet we grieve.
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Some highly specific history class, perhaps?
I had a windshield and bug question in my first year physics which sent me on a (brief) tangent about the global collapse of insect populations. Fewer bugs hit windshields now.
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Yeah, I get that.
After that image of a dumpster on top of a house in Florida from a Helene-triggered tornado rounded the internet, I answered a lot of questions of "but how does that happen??" with "A pretty standard American tornado can pick up a dumpster."
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I grew up with earthquakes (CA born and raised), and encountered my first tornado as an adult.
Will take an earthquake over a tornado every time.
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My sense as an American abroad is that because tornadoes--particularly strong EF4/EF5 tornadoes--are so rare outside the US that people have no reason to understand them elsewhere.
It's something like 75% of all tornadoes and 95% of EF4+ happen within the US.
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“In a moment of weakness I agreed to do a number of things and now I have to do those things”: a play of academic breakdown in 5 parts. Starring: competent women everywhere. 😩
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I am hoping this is another moment in which we can encourage virtual and hybrid conferences more. I know they're not the same. I miss getting meals and drinks with friends. But they're more equitable, better for the climate, and better for people's health.
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I wish I only got 1% of papers that fail this test. Perhaps that is field dependent...
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But my standard deviation of reviewing time is high. I review a fair number of papers that fail the "Can the methods possibly answer the research questions?" test. Those I write short reviews, offering ideas for what questions their data can answer, or how to design a study to answer their questions
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The fear of job loss is real and I understand it. But by gutting the CDC, and going after the NSF and NIH, they’ve made it clear that no one is safe, so fighting back—and maybe helping someone else—isn’t that much riskier than silence.
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My mom TA-ed for con law when she was in law school, and about 6 months ago said "I don't know how anyone teaches con law anymore because it doesn't exist anymore." Given her feelings as someone who TA-ed con law for only two semesters 50 years ago, I can only imagine trying to teach it now. 😬
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Please check handles! I am not the author of this.
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NOAA makes targeted warnings possible. And while NOAA collects a tremendous amount of data itself (particularly via satellites), it's also dependent on data from other countries. If the US turns off the flow of data to others, it's likely others turn off the flow of data in reverse.