The Decanal Discussion, Day 4
Posted on April 18th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 18 Comments »
John Huth. Berkeley Ph.D. fascinated by the experimental origins of electroweak symmetry. Yes, you heard it right. Electroweak symmetry. (Like you don’t know what that is.)
Discuss.
18 Responses
4/18/2007 10:16 am
Richard,
You don t really believe that John H is more of a candidate than Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, do you?
When are you going to have a discussion about her strengths for the job?
4/18/2007 10:30 am
Hey goof,
Electroweak symmetry would be easy to look up. All the four elemental forces of nature — gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force — are thought to complement each other in symmetrical fashion.
I will now spend NO MORE THAN 40 seconds on Wikipedia….
Okay, that took seven seconds.
“In particle physics, the electroweak interaction is the unified description of two of the four fundamental interactions of nature: electromagnetism and the weak interaction. Although these two forces appear very different at everyday low energies, the theory models them as two different aspects of the same force. Above the unification energy, on the order of 102 GeV, they would merge into a single electroweak force. Thus if it is hot enough (Big Bang hot, for example) then electromagnetic force and weak force will merge into electroweak.”
Seven seconds. We learn something every day, don’t we! The beauty of blogging. (Not meant to be sarcastic, that bit, just a little dig in the chops.)
Still can’t log in,
Standing Eagle
4/18/2007 11:09 am
Hey Standing Eagle,
It was a joke. Just a little bit of humor to brighten your day.
Failed, apparently.
RB
4/18/2007 2:25 pm
hey standing eagle
anyone with an internet connection can acquire information - it is applying it that matters.
remember the old saying…” i can explain it to you but i can’t understand it for you” it applies!
can you explain what you just read or can you just read?
4/18/2007 6:32 pm
When are we going to discuss John Huth?
4/18/2007 6:34 pm
Why don’t you start the ball rolling?
4/18/2007 6:54 pm
I don’t really know him and was hoping that others would say something about him.
4/18/2007 8:11 pm
John is a great guy. I would love to have him as dean. But it would be miserable for him — he actually cares about people and about what he does. He doesn’t have the relentless ambition necessary to survive as dean. See TS for what I mean by relentless ambition. Not meant to be negative about her, just stating the obvious. The level of focus and discipline necessary to succed in this job is extraordinary, very few have it. TS probably does, God save us all.
4/18/2007 10:45 pm
2:25: My first paragraph was my own knowledge. I thought that it provided plenty of context for any attentive reader to make sense of the quote that followed.
How shall I prove to you that I have (some) understanding of the quotation unless you (make some effort to) have some understanding yourself to serve as a yardstick?
The quotation is in pretty clear English. How much clear English can an attentive person read without learning something? Read it again and tell us what you get out of it, and we’ll tell you how you did — how’s that sound? Show a little tenacity if it’s not crystal-clear on first go-round.
Or, if you’d rather not learn something, just say so. That would be more honest than this sour-grapes I-resent-the-curious-people-and- their-ability-to-parse-sentences act that you’re putting on with your comment.
Standing Eagle
4/19/2007 12:56 am
To leap-frog over SE and his umbrage, 8:11 puts it exactly on the issue of this post (decanal discussion). Huth is obviously a good guy, and some think Skocpol is too, but H. is perceived as mainly good guy but maybe not having the drive to pull off the required deaning, arduous by consent of all. Skocpol is perceived as having the drive (or is that a male term, ambition being female?) to pull it off, but is thought to be less of a good guy, again by some.
I know it is not a choice between Huth and Skocpol, but if this is a reasonable characterization I would prefer to have a beer with Huth, and maybe have him rather than her as my chair, DGS or DUS, but to have Skocpol as my dean.
4/19/2007 7:15 am
Leapfrogging most welcome.
SE
4/19/2007 7:49 am
TS is vigorously campaigning for the position of Dean. Her article in the Crimson on curriculum reform is a niece piece. Maybe this helps to set aside the vision question.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=518335
4/19/2007 7:54 am
Wouldn t it be helpful if all Deans at Harvard (not just at FAS) were required to articulate a vision for their plans for change along the lines of what TS has just done regarding curriculum reform?
How many of those Deans appointed by LHS were capable of doing this? or would this had been too threatening to the boss?
4/19/2007 11:41 am
If TS’s op ed in the Crimson counts as vision, then the standard is lower than most of us thought. Not a single visionary idea there- just lots of rhetoric about the need for “creative” “new” “fresh” approaches, without a single example beyond what others have proposed.
4/19/2007 12:50 pm
The Task Force on Teaching and Faculty Development (or whatever) was a committee of faculty that developed a long report documenting issues and proposing interrelated solutions. TS, as Chair of this Task Force, is now helping to connect that analysis to the curriculum reforms that are being (messily) discussed at a series of FAS faculty meetings. TS as dean might actually follow through on some of these ideas. Is that why hit and run drivers have tried unsuccessfully to turn her into “road kill”?
4/19/2007 1:18 pm
And we are back to TS….isn’t this supposed to be about John Huth…..stay on topic folks
4/19/2007 9:48 pm
se
grow up
4/21/2007 11:24 am
Is it a good thing or bad thing when none of us can find a thing to say about Huth?