Pun Salad

I can relate:

xkcd: Physics Insight:

Mouseover: "When Galileo dropped two weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, they put him in the history books. But when I do it, I get 'detained by security' for 'injuring several tourists.'"

I also proved that electrical charge was quantized by measuring the terminal velocity of microscopic charged oil drops in an electric field, but the Nobel Committee was unimpressed.

Also of note:

• More good Nobel news. And it's in economics, as explained by Jon Murphy at Econlib. 2025 Nobel: Growth Through Technology and Culture.

  One of the big mysteries of human history is the so-called “hockey-stick of prosperity.” That is, the fact that, for much of human history, standards of living were virtually unchanged. Very little separated the Roman citizen in 1AD from the British citizen in 1700. But, starting in the 1700s, standards of living skyrocketed.

  From 1AD to 1700AD, few changes happened: sails and animal-powered transport dominated, medical science hadn’t advanced much, and machinery was unknown. From 1700 to 1800, changes were beginning: mechanical engines were introduced and the Industrial Revolution began. Between 1800 to 1900, the world went from horse and buggy to steam engines. Between 1900 and 1960, humanity went from automobiles to planes to landing on the moon.² Diseases were eradicated, lives were improved. Real poverty fell from around 90% of the global population to less than 10%. Nothing like this had happened before, and it kept happening. Even the most optimistic economists at the time had trouble explaining it.

  Enter Mokyr, Aghion, and Howitt. Collectively, their work helped explain why this growth happened, why it happened where it did, and how it is sustainable.

  

  I recently read a (very long) book titled Capitalism and its Critics; if you missed it, my report is here, Amazon link at your right. Executive summary: even though the author displays an obligatory "hockey-stick" graph, most of the book focuses on the "critics" doing their best to ignore and obstruct the forces involved in pulling billions out of poverty and its associated miseries.

• They gotta protect their phoney-baloney jobs, so… I'm pessimistic about this query posed by Greg Lukianoff, Samuel J. Abrams, and Adam Goldstein: Is Higher Education even interested in reform? They, in their roles at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), are no friends to the various governmental efforts to push institutions of higher ed around.

  But we’ve also been pretty clear, from 25 years of advocacy, that higher education badly needs improvement. And we’ve seen some positive signs. A number of university presidents seem to understand that the moment demands reform: on free speech, institutional neutrality, intellectual pluralism, and transparency.

  Indeed, we’ve been told more times than we can count that a “vibe shift” happened last fall, and that reform is essentially already a done deal. But we think those with the biggest vested interest in campus — professors and administrators — often don’t seem to have gotten the memo. At the faculty level, particularly in the humanities, the reflex too often remains obstructive.

  No institution better embodies that reflex than the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Under its current leadership — President Todd Wolfson, who frames criticism of academia as part of “right-wing forces… striving to dismantle our institutions” — the AAUP has responded to legitimate calls for reform with a mix of denial and deflection. “Professors are not the enemy,” Wolfson recently declared. “Fascists are.”

  Performing an Orwellian translation on Wolfson's declaration: "Professors are not the enemy. Undesirables are."

  I've noticed that the leftiest faculty members are the ones who tend to gravitate toward unions. Others tend to just want to do their jobs.

• But on the other side… There's good, bad, and ugly in the Trump Administration, and Neal McCluskey finds it in the latest: Higher Ed Compact Is More of the Same, Worse. Skipping to the ugly:

  The compact’s core threat to institutional freedom is the intellectual diversity component, which gets right to what is supposed to be the heart of the academic enterprise: the pursuit of truth. While the ivory tower leans far to the left, the idea of federal authorities being the arbiters of “correct” balance is frightening. Not only could an administration be biased in its judgment of balance, but the evidence in a given field might simply support left-leaning conclusions. If so, balance should not be imposed on it.

  Of course, politics is not a simple left-right binary or even a diamond. For instance, we have numerous flavors of conservatism: neocon, paleocon, and natcon. Should Washington ensure that they are all found in the classroom proportionate to their share of the general population? And what if people hold positions that would put them in different camps on different issues, like a libertarian who favors tight borders or a progressive who defends gun rights? Which pile of beans do they go into during intellectual diversity counting?

  Leave pigeonholing to the Ornithology Department. If you have one.

• AyJay for the win. Alan Jacobs (at Baylor U) was apparently asked to show some solidarity in anti-Compact activism. He says he has one condition.

  Dear Colleague,

  I understand that you wish me to participate in your protests against the Trump administration’s proposed “compact” with American universities. I will do so on one condition: that you openly acknowledge (a) that you were completely comfortable with the Obama and Biden administrations’ use of “Dear Colleague” letters — e.g. — to strongarm universities into supporting their and your preferred political outcomes, and (b) that a chief purpose of your current protests is to ensure that people with my social, religious, and aesthetic views remain unemployable in your universities. 

  Sincerely,

  Your Colleague

  I hope his colleagues are suitably abashed.