Jonathan Eisen has been ripping on RateMyProfessors lately with a hashtag, #BoycottRateMyProfessors. Good.

RMP is a terrible source for any kind of evaluation of professors — it’s more of a place where disgruntled students can vent, which is fine. I do pay attention to complaints, since they’re information I can use to improve, but they’re more useful when they’re on an evaluation form rather than on a website I don’t read.

But there are two big problems here. One is that Google algorithms take RMP seriously as a source for information on academics.

Send this message to @Google, which continues to use its algorithms to put RMP high on almost any search for an academic. The embedded racism and sexism of these evaluation systems must be acknowledged and challenged.

— Monica H Green (@monicaMedHist) June 28, 2018

But worst of all…the goddamn chili peppers. You’re supposed to rate your professors on their “hotness”. It’s flamingly sexist.

And before the sniggers come in about me being jealous because my students definitely do not rate me as “hot” — I’d be even more annoyed if they had put one of those stupid red peppers next to my name. Sorry, students, “eye candy” is not and never has been in the job description.

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Here’s a really good summary of the problem from the person who started flaming those peppers.

Student registration went fine — nobody cried! We got everyone into the classes they need!

Everything else in the world sucks, though. So I’m going to go have a burrito and a margarita. It’s the only way to cope.

Oh, this is going to be an interesting conundrum. You see, good ol’ Scienceblogs magically reappeared on the internets a short while ago — you know, the original science blogging network that I was part of for so many years, that was then neglected, then transferred to the control of National Geographic, and then allowed to languish and eventually die. But now, suddenly, all of my old posts there are back again! Along with all those other interesting people who contributed so much over the years. Thanks! Nice to see it still exists, even as a dead, static archive. (But a lot of the comments on my site are still lost forever: NatGeo really botched an update shortly after they bought it out.)

But then to have it owned by the ACSH brings mixed feelings. You see, the ACSH (or American Council on Science and Health) is an astroturf organization, a pro-big-businees propaganda front, backed by the likes of the Koch brothers and other pro-industry capitalist shills, and I’ve said so. I’ve irritated Campbell (president of the ACSH more than a few times.

So that’s the conundrum. He’s now hosting my evil socialist anti-religious rants on his site (oh, and I don’t get a penny from that) — how long will that last? Even more interestingly, he’s now hosting anti-ACSH arguments, like this one from Mark Hoofnagle. Will the ACSH start deleting posts, or worse, editing them, now that they own the code?

It’s not as if I can do anything about it. It’s just remarkably sleazy. Unsurprisingly, since that’s been my opinion of Campbell for years.

It’s another new student registration day, and I get to spend a big chunk of it as an advisor. I hope there are no tears this time, unlike last time.

Yeah, tears. This is an incredibly stressful event for the students. There are two things that promote breakdowns during registration.

• Uncertainty. Some students come in not knowing what to expect, or thinking this is like a greased chute that will give them a job when they slide out of the end. My favorite are the students who are shocked when you tell them they are going to sign up for about 15 credits this term, which is about 4 classes, and they have no frame of reference. Is that a little or a lot? Why am I signing up for chemistry, isn’t there like a pre-med class I can just take and be done with all this? Why do I need to take a history class, I want to be a dentist!

  They don’t quite get that they’re signing on to a voyage of adventure, and they’re going to be completely different people at the end of four years. Or maybe they do. They freak out and are afraid they’ll make a mistake. I just want to tell them that of course they’ll make mistakes, this is a system to help you recover from error — it’s 4 years of dynamic equilibrium in which you learn and adjust. That doesn’t help the ones who want a stable, certain, plodding path.

  (Parents don’t help here. They’re so happy that they’re investing in turning their little girl into a doctor at the end, but she might come out the other end an art historian or statistician, and happier for it. Let ’em find the their true love in the world of the mind!)

• High school. This is the big one. Most of high schools do a fine job, but the number one shock to some students is coming here expecting to emerge with a STEM career, and we discover their schools let them coast and they don’t even have basic algebra mastered. We give incoming students a math placement test, and we know…we know they’re going to flunk out of first year general chemistry if we let them take it (we don’t). We have a remedial path that involves summer school, stuffing their first year with the general education distribution requirements, and a catch-up senior year that’s nothing but solid science courses (can you imagine taking 3 lab course in a semester? I wouldn’t want to), and students are sometimes very upset about that.

  I do wonder what the administrators at those high schools are thinking. At the very least, shouldn’t all their graduates be able to read a novel, write a coherent 5 page essay, know a little bit about their country’s place in the world, and solve a simple algebraic formula? All of their students, not just the ones looking at STEM careers. We’re not asking a lot when we say a high school diploma ought to mean something, but apparently some students and some schools take a laissez fair approach to education, and our Republican overlords like to encourage that.

  I try to let the students know I’m there to help them, and I have a plan that’ll put them right on track, but that’s like criticism, dude, and now it’s panic attack time.

But now I have to put on my positive attitude and brace myself to go in. Let’s hope all the students today are eager and enthusiastic and well-prepared, and that none of the general chemistry lab sections they need to take are not closed. We’ll get through this. I promise I won’t cry, at least not until I get home.

The first underwater film features a staged fight with a shark, and closes with the lifeless body of the innocent animal drifting away.

I’m not too impressed, JE Williamson.

I was reading this article ranking fictional cops, and I was wondering why, because I hadn’t heard of most of them, and then I hit the testimonial to Sam Vimes. Yes, this is why it was worth reading.

Sam Vimes believes that his role is to protect the powerless from the powerful, and to annoy rich people. And he does those things consistently, and works hard to keep the Ankh-Morpork police force more or less in line with that role. He’s not perfect, but we’re not supposed to think he can be, because Terry Pratchett is too awesome for that.

Sam motherfucking Vimes though. When the revolution came, he was on the barricades. Awesomely, through the power of time travel, HE WAS ON THE BARRICADES TWICE. Sam Vimes, fresh-faced young copper, joins an uprising as a young man, SEES THE REVOLUTION FAIL and then, as an older man thrown back into that era through time travel he JOINS THE REVOLUTION A SECOND TIME EVEN THOUGH HE KNOWS IT FAILED AND HELPS TO MAKE SURE IT SUCCEEDS. He BEATS UP A GOVERNMENTAL TORTURER AND BURNS DOWN THE HEADQUARTERS OF THE SECRET POLICE. He once showed up where two armies were squaring off to go to war and ARRESTED BOTH ARMIES FOR CONSPIRACY TO CAUSE A BREACH OF THE PEACE. SAM. VIMES.

Unfortunately, this had to come from a fantasy novel, because a cop who is not a thug in the service of the rich and powerful, and who has a deep moral commitment to protecting the poor and underprivileged, is a creature that can only exist in a world that is flat and resting on the backs of elephants riding a flying turtle.

I thought my email inbox was full of crap, but this is just ridiculous.

how is he a nazi you know jordan b peterson isn’t even right wing right neither is he on the left now i i know in your ideology anyone right of Stalin is a nazi but he’s in this place called the center he despises any side that gets to much leverage and becomes extreme be it the right or left both are despicable once they get to much power the right and left need to be balanced for any real progress to be made both side’s need each other but once one side gets to much power and influence like the left has now he gets a whole host of problems and the divide is so great we can’t even talk to eachother anymore and nothing good could come from that and yes the professors are brainwashing their students i’ve seen way to much evidence to say other wise just look at what happen at evergreen college with bret weinstein for example this shit is going to far now look if you guys keep calling everyone you disagree with a nazi and keep crying wolf your going to make real nazi’s witch is already happen with the alt right a response from your nonsense they don’t even try to hide it all i hear is you saying he’s a lair he’s a white supremacist talking about how he’s misrepresentation the collage campuses while your misrepresentation every word he says and putting words in his mouth while as far as i could see is that you are the lair or are just in complete denial blind to whats really going on

Back in the good old days when we had to carve our words in stone with a chisel, people put a little more care in their compositions.

He hasn’t changed a bit. He’s posting on alt.atheism under a new name, “prophetofrevengerXX”, with “XX” a couple of random digits to help avoid searches. Then how do we know it’s Markuze? Take a look at one example of a post. Classic.

He harassed me for a couple of decades. I’m just mentioning this because, while he’s not pestering me now (I don’t think…but I have so many email filters to block him), his usual pattern is one of rising obsession and increasingly lunatic lashing out at the people he hates.

The University of Minnesota, Morris has received approval from the legislature for a $4.5 million investment in…the humanities.

We’ve also been awarded a $137,000 Mellon grant to strengthen the place and the understanding of … the humanities.

Speaking as a STEM sort of guy, and one who was recently informed in a comment that The hard or natural sciences are mostly safe. Most of the corruption is in the humanities. That’s where most of the danger lies for student radicalization, I’m going to say “EXCELLENT!” We need more education in the humanities to correct these ninnies who think both that “hard sciences are safe” and “humanities are corrupt”. We need students to learn dangerous ideas, and that’s where the most dangerous ideas are found.