Education, Media Criticism

Teaching Students How To Write

3 Comments

Some thoughts. I found this comment interesting, and it wouldn’t surprise me:

You guys have not read many manuscripts from academic writers, have you? As a long-time academic editor, I read hundreds–hundreds that were submitted for publication, no less.

Academics do not write well at all–most quite poorly. The three I knew who were truly gifted writers… to have lunch with them was to begin to study the wall for crack patterns, they were so introverted. Department chairs were absolutely incoherent, but there was substance there–they were simply quite used to having secretaries and copy editors do the hard work of making it readable for them. The legions of humanities and social science assistant and associate profs… one wanders across the tundra of their boggy prose delighted for even the tiniest patch of semi-solid jargon-free verbiage.

In my experience, good workman-like writing at any education level is quite rare.

I’ve often suspected that this is true of many “journalists” as well, and was one of the reasons that there was so much initial resistance to blogging — a lot of them really do need “layers of fact checkers and editors” to create their “product.”

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Higher Education Bubble

24 Comments

When will it pop?

He makes a point that doesn’t get made enough — that what kind of degree you get matters, but a lot of these children (and particularly the ones who are shifting back and forth between occupying Wall Street and occupying their parents’ basements) don’t get that. Nor does the student loan program.

[Update a while later]

In defense of classical studies.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Propellant Depots

35 Comments

Over at Aviation Week, Frank Morring says the NASA studies continue:

Michael Gazarik, NASA’s space technology program director, says that CPST and the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket currently under development are complementary technologies. “To explore deep space we need a heavy-lift vehicle — SLS — and we need this technology. We need to be able to demonstrate how to handle cryogenic fluids in space.”

He has to say that. It’s literally politically incorrect to say anything else, and will be until SLS dies. But the reality is that propellant storage on orbit is essential to spacefaring. Heavy lift is not.

[Update a while later]

And…the empire strikes back. A piece defending SLS/BMR by Mike Griffin and Scott Pace, over at Space News. Will I have a response? You bet. Stay tuned.

[Update a while later]

Here is one point (though there are others) that I will really pound on:

The challenge for fuel depots is simply that the marginal specific cost of payload to orbit is generally lower for larger launch vehicles. There may be exceptions, but the trend is clear.

There are at least two avenues of attack. What mine will be is left as an exercise to the students. Oh, and initial link fixed. Sorry.

[Late evening update]

Clark Lindsey has started to rebut, and it’s a good start. But there are a lot more fish in that barrel…

Economics, Education, Political Commentary

An Open Letter To Greg Mankiw

27 Comments

In which oversized children at Harvard demand that they be mistaught economics. I love the comment from “Karl Marx.”

[Update a few minutes later]

The Crimson‘s response is brutal:

…the students’ attempt to connect their classroom protestations to the Occupy movement illustrates the disjointed and often unfocused nature of the movement. Indeed, it seems ironic that students in an introductory economics course at Harvard feel that by walking out of their completely optional lecture taught by a famous economist on the theme of income inequality feel that their actions ought to be considered a sign of solidarity with the Occupy movement. Such protests don’t show solidarity, they show ignorance and a lack of self-awareness.

There’s a lot of that going around at #OWS.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!