Congratulations to Ronin Institute Research Scholar Michele Battle-Fisher, who will be a co-producer on News2Share’s upcoming film Transhumanism: A Documentary. Here’s the concept trailer: The project is currently raising funds on indiegogo. Check out the project page to learn more: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/transhuman-a-documentary-news-film#/ On a related note:
Ronin Institute Research Scholar Soumya Banerjee has posted a preprint of an analysis of scientific collaboration networks, focusing on patterns of collaboration within and among different nations. He writes that Our latest article looks at a scientific collaboration network and finds novel patterns and clusters in the data that may reflect past foreign policies and contemporary geopolitics. Our model …
Read more “Banerjee on International Scientific Collaboration”
Congratulations to Research Scholar Ruth Duerr, who accepted the 2016 International Data Rescue Award in the Geosciences on behalf of a team of researchers from multiple institutions. From an article on the award in Eos: This year’s winning project, “Revealing Our Melting Past: Rescuing Historical Snow and Ice Data,” is an effort to digitize the Roger …
Read more “Ruth Duerr and Colleagues Win International Data Rescue Award”
Research Scholar Diane Kelly and her collaborators at Mount Holyoke College are raising money right now to fund CT scans of dolphin genitalia. From the project description at Experiment: Our goal is to assess the depth of penile penetration during copulation and to explore which anatomical landmarks are in contact and where. The penises of …
Following up on the previous posts on bullshit and tenure, Research Scholar Ralph Haygood drew my attention to this passage from a 2014 article by David Graeber in the Journal of Ethnographic Theory. Universities are—or, better said, until recently have been— among the only institutions that survived more or less intact from the High Middle Ages. …
In a short post Paul Graham (computer scientist, venture capitalist, and opinion haver) notes that biographies of famous scientists tend to focus on the subset of their ideas that panned out, neglecting their failures. Biographies of Newton, for example, understandably focus more on physics than alchemy or theology. The impression we get is that his …
Missouri State Representative Rick Brattin has introduced a bill that would eliminate tenure at public universities in the state. The text of the bill can be found here. This follows on the heels of a similar bill that has been introduced in Iowa. The Missouri bill would also require universities to provide information about the …
Here’s something that should probably be worked into every college curriculum in the country: a course developed by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West of the University of Washington — Calling Bullshit. Note, this is not an official course at the moment, although they plan to submit it to the University for approval. But right now, …
Ronin Institute Research Scholar Brent Ranalli has had two articles published recently in the Thoreau Society Bulletin. Both also appear on the Society’s blog. The first, co-authored with naturalist Cherrie Corey, seeks to identify the mystery mushroom that Henry David Thoreau describes in his journals as resembling a traditional New England “election cake.” The second …
I was putting together a letter to send out to the community of Research Scholars here at the Ronin Institute. When it was done, though, it seemed like it might be relevant to other academic communities, as well. So, I thought I would share it here: Greetings Ronin! On Tuesday, Donald Trump became the president-elect …
Read more “Open Letter on the Election, our Values, and our Community”
