Link Dump 2015-04-15

2015-04-15

How much do directors need to know about acting? It's strange to me that a class on directing is filled with acting exercises (although to be fair, they also practice other things like blocking). I can't imagine a class on school administration being focused on how to teach, so why is directing different?
By chance, I first read about how the internet is still making us lonely, then immediately afterwards how climbing is becoming a mainstream sport (if only in the spectator sense). There's a connection here - maybe in the way we emphasize the proxies of online accounts and star athletes instead of going out and actually experiencing things ourselves?
I don't always agree with Roger Schank's view on education, but he is right about the need to let students learn what they want.. Sort of. I still think people need to learn algebra, but teachers need to put that in the context of what students want to do. After all, if we claim that algebra is necessary for whatever they do, we damn well better be able to prove it.
A surprisingly comprehensive presentation on gender diversity issues in computer science... by an undergraduate.
It turns out that being a professor involved with research is a lot like being a manager. I've been thinking about how I should be relating to the students that are helping me with research, and the three prongs of support, coordinate, and direct really resonated with me.
I don't quite understand the thesis that "feminist porn" is not feminist. The article freely mixes the harms done to individual performers as desperate individuals with the harms done to society as a whole (via mimicking the unsafe sex practices/fake violence in pornography). The latter is an interesting point and something worth discussing, but I don't agree with the former. I particularly dislike the question of "is anyone really entitled to buy someone else's body for sex" - I mean, is anyone entitled to prohibit someone selling their body for sex? There seems to transition from consent to censorship between the two questions.
Turns out lots of powerful men wear the same outfit every day, as a way to reduce their daily cognitive load. I don't buy the "this raises awareness of how we judge women by their outfits" purpose - at least, if that was the goal, there would be a movement to get more people wearing the same outfit every day.
This is old news for many, but David Foster Wallace's speech for Kenyon College's 2005 commencement suggests that the point of philosophy and education is so students learn to recognize life's questions the way fish should learn to recognize water.
Being more "rational"/logical doesn't make you happy. But if you want to be happy, being "rational"/logical does make you happier - it's not about what you want to achieve, but how well and how quickly you achieve it.
Lego may officially release a 4000 piece model of the Titanic.
I was mostly off Reddit on April's Fools, and I finally learned what The Button is.
A new psychology study from Cornell found that most faculty prefer 2:1 hiring women over men for STEM positions (all things being equal). We're still in a bad place, but this means that the slope is now positive (at least in academia).
Related: humble-bragging may be contributing to imposter's syndrome.