I think that those of us who are in academia know that we’ve chosen this career because we simultaneously possess and/or don’t possess certain qualities. I’m blessed that I am able to process lots of information and find ways to organize that information. I’m also blessed that I find thinking about abstract matters to be…
Read More A more serious reflection: the cost of academiaThanksgiving normally brings turkey, shopping discounts, and every other year, a new version of Chessbase. When it comes to shopping for computer software upgrades, there’s always the question of “is the upgrade worth the money?” So, since I can be (somewhat easily) bribed by the 25% discount that’s normally available twice per year, I went…
Read More Chessbase 17… how will the updates help the average patzer?To members of administration and others: there are actually interesting academic discussions that take place on Facebook. A few days ago, I learned about one of them: tapered scoring in debate tournaments — particularly British Parliamentary Debate tournaments. In a nutshell, here’s the basic argument: all rounds don’t count equally when it comes to deciding…
Read More So I learned something (academically) new on Facebook: Tapered ScoringIn other words, the epistemology of “the top competitors at a given tournament.” When we tiebreak a final, we’re asking how to determine the top 6 (or so) speakers at a particular speech tournament, or ways of distinguishing between several teams that may have the same debate record. But how do we know who those…
Read More Another nerdy tab post: What’s the point of speaker points in forensics?So the following actually happened at a Vocal Viking tournament. One debater apparently couldn’t debate during round 3[1]Why? I still don’t know., so the debater’s partner debated “maverick” (in other words, by themself). Speechwire requires that each speaker receives at least 1 speaker point (that way, the program knows you didn’t accidentally forget to enter…
Read More Nerdy tab post: when is a team’s seeding not right?“My office adds closed captions and alt text to our social media because we know that inclusivity and accessibility bring folks closer to, not further from, the governing process. Accessibility is never a hinderance nor burden—it makes our democracy stronger, actually.” Original tweet here: https://twitter.com/Bob_Casey/status/1580239625699794948
Read More Sen. Bob Casey has it right when it comes to accessibility…When you subscribe to various productivity lists, you start seeing some of the same applications pop up over and over. For example, quite a few productivity sites are into personal knowledge management apps such as Obsidian and Craft. I still don’t see how those apps will help me do my work, so I haven’t given…
Read More The Arc browser: Why add another browser?I suppose one of the reasons that it’s easy to have a full inbox is because there might just be that good article that’s worth saving for a class or another reason. So what do I do when finding such articles? My new answer: save them to DevonThink and my database for that class. Just…
Read More Teaching Workflow Example: Email to DevonThinkAKA Letters to a new Director of Forensics This is the first of a (I don’t know how many part) series of articles of articles that I’d encourage anyone still involved in forensics (not just new directors) to reexamine. I’ll start off with the man affectionately referred to as the “Godfather of Forensics,” Professor Larry…
Read More Forensics Articles Still Worth Reading (Part 1)As I mention elsewhere on this site, I’ve been slowly trying to get electronic copies of all my articles since not all of my journals were able to make the trip from Minnesota to Georgia. And let’s just say that some of the predictions came true a little earlier than intended, and some of the…
Read More How well do old journal articles hold up?