Okay, I’m a bigger nerd than I thought. The latest book that I’m dying to get when it comes out on Monday… “The State of Working America from the Economic Policy Institute. 350+ pages of analysis on wages, health care, wealth and productivity in America. How can you resist. If that doesn’t sound appealing, at least read the executive summary. It’s only 14 pages, it’s online, and it’s free.

Since we’re on the subject of water (again), had yet another fun experience. Earlier this week, K noticed a couple of inches of water in the pan under our hot water heater. Yep, it seems to be leaking. This is the water heater that I installed one year ago. It was a replacement for a water heater installed 4 years before by the previous owner. The tendency of our appliances to rust, particularly the water heaters led me to test the pH. Ideally, it should be between 7.0 and 8.0 (or just neutral to slightly basic). Ours was around 5.5 or somewhat acidic. This is a reasonably common problem for people with well water and it causes all of the symptoms we’ve seen (including the degredation of all brass plumbing fittings). ...

We had a batch of thunder showers come through last night. We got about 2, maybe 3, inches here. Sometime during the evening, K and I ask each other, “what’s that noise? Turns out we had a leak in the roof that was dripping down (and through) the second story wall, onto one of the logs making up the first story and into the breakfast room. From there it was splashing onto the door to the deck and making the noise we heard. ...

Matt Yglesias sees the recent Washington Post article describing the fall in SAT scores after the most recent test changes and asks what’s the big deal. On the face of it, Matt makes some good points. Scores are only down 7 points (5 in reading and 2 in math) and for any given student, that really isn’t a big deal. The Washington Post article, while suggesting that there may be some underlying causes (e.g. the test changes or students not learning enough) also notes that it could be a one year blip. ...

An article today in the New York Times titled “Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity takes a look at how wages have risen, or more to the point failed to rise, during the most recent economic expansion. At a time when productivity (the monetary value of an hour of labor) has risen dramatically, increasing corporate profits, employee wages are basically falling. If you include benefits such as health insurance, they are rising – but nowhere near as fast as productivity. ...

Last week there was a minor uproar in the academic world when the government presented the list of majors that qualified for money under the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) Grant program. The problem was that evolutionary biology was left off of the list. The feds claim that this was an oversight and on Friday added evolutionary biology back to the list of qualifying majors. So, even I am not so paranoid as to think that this was a conspiracy to keep students from studying evolution. But at the same time, I am not so dumb as to think this was accidental. The list of majors comes straight from the Classification of Instructional Programs codes. In the biology section, there are ten biology related programs. Of those ten, only one was missing – evolutionary biology. ...

The Dallas Morning News recently published an editorial by Thomas Hibbs entitled “ College Kids Get Brain, No Soul. In the editorial, Hibbs references the exceedingly disturbing article in Rolling Stone called “ Sex & Scandal at Duke. The Rolling Stone article discusses the social scene at Duke where “work hard, play hard has always been a motto. According to the article, in recent years, the “work hard portion has morphed into an obsessive desire to please faculty, working to produce high quality papers which will be accepted by professors in order to get good grades, graduate with honors and get a good job. The “play hard portion of the motto has turned into an obsession with alcohol and casual sex, bleeding back into “working hard to maintain the perfect body, social connections, etc. ...

In reference to my previous comments on the plagiarism scandal in the school of engineering at Ohio Universtity, yesterday the university announced a set of “ comprehensive strategies to address academic honesty. Among the steps being taken is to examine 55 theses for signs of plagiarism. From these, they have found 35 incidents that will require a hearing. Punishments handed out could include the revocation of the former student’s degree. Furthermore, the two professors whom have been implicated have been relieved of their advising duties. ...

There’s nothing I love more than a good book, unless it’s a free good book. Last week I was sent “The Body Hunters by Sonia Shah. I’ve been sent free books based on my job before (either as a research professor or as security officer), but I’ve never been sent a book on the ethics of the pharmacutical industry before. It took me a bit to figure out, then I realized that I’m presenting at a Human Subjects conference. I’m sure they sent the book to all of the presenters. ...

Back when I was a grad student and just about to finish up, the school of engineering turned a class of 60 freshman over to me to teach intro to numerical methods for engineers. I tried to liven things up by emailing the occassional engineering funny to my students who even reciprocated. The following is a brief excerpt from an engineer identification test that was sent to me by a student. ...