Unlike the US, tax returns in Canada are due by the end of April, but because of the Heartbleed bug, Revenue Canada had to take down electronic filing for a while, so the deadline has been extended a bit. It seems I may need the extra days as life is keeping me extraordinarily busy. Saturday morning is usually my blogging time, but this weekend I had to look after my kids (my wife Sara was performing Beethoven 9th with the Peterborough Symphony) and today my oldest daughter turned seven, filling the day with Zoo visits and birthday cakes.
So in order to not completely abandon this blog, a couple of links to other outstanding science musing are in order. To that end I would like to highlight some posts of Sabine Hossenfelder, a blogging physicist professor of theoretical physics currently teaching in Sweden. Her most recent post discusses some of the structural problems in Academia, which in reality is nothing like the commonly held notion of a utopian ivory tower (rather, the tower stands and becomes ever more compartmentalized, but there is nothing utopian about it).
Her post on the Problem of Now makes a nice primer for a long-planned future post of mine on Julian Barbour’s End of Time, because arguably he took “Einstein’s Blunder” and ran with it as far as one can take it. The man’s biography also ties back to the dilemma of academia, as it really doesn’t allow much space for such deep, and out of the mainstream, research programs.
Last but not least, I really enjoyed this rant.
And I probably should mention that Sabine also knows how to sing. It obviously takes a physicist to really muster the emotional impact of the agonizing ongoing demise of SUSY.
Hi Hennning: Thanks for your latest blog. Quite a potpourri of subjects that you managed to cover! Since I’m a classical music nut, I’m simply curious whether your wife is a vocalist or an instrumentalist? Thanks.
Double bass 🙂
Bought her the instrument about 15 years ago while we lived in Germany directly from the maker. It was an interesting experience. She played several of his instruments, and although she liked the look of some of the others better (she thought hers was to shiny and flashy), it was almost immediately clear when she found the right one, simply from the sound and ease of play.
It produces the most lovely, deep and rich cadences when she plays it.
I have also read and shared Sabine’s post about academia – as I can relate to every point. It sums pretty much up why I left academia. For me the key points were forced expected relocation every X years and the feeling to have to beg for taxpayer’s money all the time and jump through these hoops (… writing those silly far-fetched “impact on society” parts of grant applications…) – compared to working on more mundane stuff that somebody really needs right now.
Sometimes I feel I dodged a bullet by not pursuing an academic career. It seems to me the risk to reward ratio only works out if you are almost single-mindedly committed to your research. The vaunted academic freedom you only get to enjoy very late in the game, and only if you manage to land a job as tenured professor.
There are worse. RDB* Index: 19 and rising!
(* Recovered Dead Bankers)
http://www.silverdoctors.com/banker-suicides-continue-27-yo-bank-manager-washes-ashore-in-hoboken-harbor/
http://www.silverdoctors.com/tag/banker-suicides/