Swans on Tea

In the era where poor scores mean punishment for the school, there appears to be a new form of cheating: the teachers or administrators changing the answers after the exam has been completed.
Georgia Schools Inquiry Finds Signs of Cheating
The erasure analysis used the same scanners that score tests to count the erasures in which [...]

Report: Exemptions benefit athletes
An Associated Press review of admissions data submitted to the NCAA by most of the 120 schools in college football’s top tier shows that athletes enjoy strikingly better odds of having admission requirements bent on their behalf.
Wow. Really?

(click to biggefy)

Catching up with blogs after Thanksgiving travel. I saw this on Chad’s linked list. Zen Moments: My Favorite Liar
What made Dr. K memorable was a gimmick he employed that began with his introduction at the beginning of his first class:
“Now I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the [...]

Studying the science gender gap at the high school level
Although the study is preliminary, its primary result—girls are not enjoying their science classes—is not terribly surprising. The more important question to answer is why girls aren’t as engaged as boys.

Meep

Family is the number one reason for women leaving academia
Their data, taken from extensive surveys of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers within the University of California system, shows that work-life issues, and particularly decisions about when to get married and when to have children, account for the most significant loss of academic scientists in the [...]

FLOTUS: Elevating the social status of nerds everywhere
Making her 13th visit to a federal agency, Obama joined Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday in a tightly packed, 200-person basement DOE auditorium for a mock quiz of 10 middle schoolers who would compete next year in the National Science Bowl, an outreach effort run by DOE.
I [...]

In the past we’ve been told that there is a shortage of tech workers (or rather , there isn’t because we can import them), and businesses have demanded more visas or suggested other solutions to the problem.
Now they’re saying we have enough, they just are leaving the field for richer professions:
The supply has actually [...]

Paul Graham: What Startups are Really Like
The cofounder is your thesis advisor. There are many points with a pretty decent correlation to life in grad school, at least for physics, and my datum.
I’ve been surprised again and again by just how much more important persistence is than raw intelligence.
Not that physics grad school [...]

Choose to give to Donor’s Choice.
Two physics-y blogs that have set up links are Cosmic Variance and Uncertain Principles
Last year Chad collected more than a monkeydance worth of donations, and he is once again offering various kickbacks for donations exceeding a certain threshold. Cosmic Variance will put your name in lights, if the coin [...]

I don’t generally watch the teen-coming-of-age drama shows, unless forced (as I was on vacation; the episode of Degrassi was a cheap ripoff of Pump Up the Volume without the benefit of a topless shot of Samantha Mathis), but I’m sure this plot has been covered somewhere: Awkward Teen asks the Beautiful Cheerleader [...]