Nat Fortune

Most Americans now say the government should do more to solve problems

Huge opportunity for a political party that believes government can do good things. Public opinion is finally shifting after 50 years of right wing anti-government propaganda. This isn't the time for cowering and throat clearing www.cnn.com/2025/06/01/p...

The newest budget numbers out of NSF are... not good. We're looking at worse than worst case scenarios for U.S. research universities. That's in addition to all the other attacks. Every person w/ a word processer and an hour of time should be penning an op-ed to their local papers this weekend.

Panel One: A scientist is giving a lecture. she stands at a lecturn. The current slide shows a list of the five kingdoms of living things: Animalia, Plantae, Fungi, Protista and Monera. She says "Most people assume that fungi are plants. Whereas in fact, they form a kingdom of their own." Panbel Two: Caption : After the lecture The scientist now appears to be in a subterranean cave, before her stand two very large mushrooms guarding a larger, beardedmushroom who sits in athrone wearing a crown. One of the mushrooms says "His majesty is very pleased with the work you are doing."

A recent @newscientist.com cartoon #fungi

It’s good that your apartment has a purpose in life!

@alexfortune.bsky.social do you have a trailer for your movie?

Snowshoeing in Whately

OMG. We’ve elected a real estate developer in search of water front properties for casinos, condos, and golf courses as President.

It’s the start of a beautiful review

At least one has come true already!

Quantum Milestones, 1905: Einstein and the Photoelectric Effect In one of his annus mirabilis papers, Einstein explained the photoelectric effect by considering light as a stream of energy quanta—which were later called photons.

This year is the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. To celebrate, we are republishing stories on the history of quantum physics from our archives.

The zombies have been paralyzed by an inch of non melting snow and ice in Tallahassee- no data!

Today, Pres. Trump gave a sweeping legal reprieve to nearly 1,600 defendants who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, including those convicted of violent crimes & seditious conspiracy.

More than 150 police officers were assaulted during that attack. Some eventually died.

Another typical January “vacation” in academia:

Week 1: grading/ take a hike
Week 2: department meetings writing our external review self study.
Week 3: work hard on experiment at a national lab, become a zombie
Week 4, try easier experiment as a zombie
Week 5 : what, classes again already?

Got it. Sorry! I use Check your understanding assignments. Look like in class group problems. Standards needed are listed. Trying not to require them-just incentivize- unless they don’t do them before first test and then need a redo test. Then they become tickets for redo. Just after time teaching?

Yes, sorry missed that when I only read post 1 of 3 before responding!

Yes, I use ‘Check your understanding’ CYU exercises instead of graded HW. Based on Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics. 1 per class. You get feedback instead of a grade but CYU have all standards identified, so students use as in-class Q follow up, practice exam, and ticket for exam redo.

Highly Recommend the book “Grading for Growth.” Outlines your options, provides examples from
Many fields, includes a detailed guide for getting started . I chose standards based grading model. Requires feedback and redos. Students responded well. (Physics/Math)

I switched to Zotero from Papers years back because it made it easier to collaborate with coauthors using a shared bibliographic database, students can afford it (free) and my library supports it. Also love the magic wand function: just enter DOI and go! My knowledge of Papers perhaps out of date.

It’s difficult to shave with an electric toothbrush. But that’s what my brain handed me this morning!

Hello moon

www.whately.org

Hello world

I hear the governor’s already carrying a lot of political baggage. Will he continue to carry on?

An early computer graphic showing the sector maps produced by Gellet et al.

Happy birthday to Margaret Geller!

In my opinion, contributions that Geller and collaborators made to our understanding of the large-scale, 3D structure of the Universe are comparable in importance to Hubble expansion and cosmic acceleration. (11/11)

Image: Geller / SAO

Useful tool

Winter spinach harvest

What python package is that?

I can see clearly now the rain is gone….look all around, nothing but blue sky