Richard Feynman on honors

"I don't like honors. I appreciate it for the work that I did, and for people who appreciate it, and I notice that other physicists use my work. I don't need anything else. I don't think there's any sense to anything else. I don't see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize. I've already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it. Those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don't believe in honors. It bothers me; honors bothers me. Honors is epaulettes; honors is uniforms. My poppa brought me up this way. I can't stand it; it hurts me.

When I was in high school, one of the first honors I got was to be a member of the Arista, which is a group of kids who got good grades — hmm? Everybody wanted to be a member of the Arista. And when I got into the Arista, I discovered that what they did in their meetings was to sit around to discuss who else was [in a lofty tone of voice] worthy to join this wonderful group that we are. Okay? So we sat around trying to decide who it was who would get to be allowed into this Arista. This kind of thing bothers me psychologically for one or another reason I don't understand myself. Honors — and from that day to this — always bothered me.

I had trouble when I became a member of the National Academy of Science, and I had ultimately to resign. Because there was another organization, most of whose time was spent in choosing who was illustrious enough to be allowed to join us in our organization. Including such questions as 'We physicists have to stick together, because there's a very good chemist that they're trying to get in, and we haven't got enough room for so-and-so.' What's the matter with chemists? The whole thing was rotten, because the purpose was mostly to decide who could have this honor. Okay? I don't like honors."

From a 1981 BBC interview, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out (my transcription)

[Richard Feynman was a joint-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965.]

Domestic comedy

"Remember when you were all pretzeled-out?"

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AE (academic entitlement)

From an article in yesterday's New York Times on college students' expectations:

Prof. Marshall Grossman has come to expect complaints whenever he returns graded papers in his English classes at the University of Maryland.

"Many students come in with the conviction that they've worked hard and deserve a higher mark," Professor Grossman said. "Some assert that they have never gotten a grade as low as this before."

He attributes those complaints to his students' sense of entitlement.

The Times also quotes Ellen Greenberger, professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California-Irvine, and lead author of "Self-Entitled College Students: Contributions of Personality, Parenting, and Motivational Factors," a study exploring "AE" (academic entitlement), published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence in 2008.

I spent some time this afternoon looking at this study. Surveying 466 undergrads, Greenberger and her co-authors found 66.2% agreeing (i.e., slightly agreeing, agreeing, or strongly agreeing) with this statement: "If I have explained to my professor that I am trying hard, I think he/she should give me some consideration with respect to my course grade." 40.7% agreed that "If I have completed most of the reading for a class, I deserve a B in that course." 34.1% thought that simply attending "most classes for a course" merited that B. And 29.9% agreed that "Professors who won't let me take an exam at a different time because of my personal plans (e.g. a vacation or other trip that is important to me) are too strict." I've chosen these four revealing bits from a list of fifteen AE items that students were asked to evaluate. Another finding: students with a strong sense of AE report parents who give material rewards for good grades and compare their children's achievements with those of other children.

The AE attitudes revealed in this survey are likely to be familiar to anyone in American higher education, and they can make the project of maintaining teacherly integrity quite difficult. Indeed, much of what constitutes a professor's work every semester can be the ongoing effort to undo such attitudes, by asking more of students and by attempting to persuade students that they're capable of more. It doesn't always work. For many students, the ideal prof might be summed up in the word out: one who lets the class out early — always!, and who's ready to "help out" with some, uhh, consideration, as described above.

Think for a moment about the model of learning built into the idea of being "let out early" — as if the classroom were a prison, the professor a stern or genial warden. Your parole has come through! Have a great weekend!

Awkward metaphor of the day

"I'm here to take my medicine": New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, at a press conference this afternoon concerning his steroid use.

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Louie Bellson (1924-2009)

Drummer, bandleader, composer Louie Bellson died on February 14, 2009.

Louis Bellson is the epitome of what Paul Gonsalves means when he says, "He's a beautiful cat, man!" For in spite of his outrageous beauty, Louis Bellson is truly a beautiful person. With never a thought about getting even or getting the better of any man, he has the soul of a saint. There is nothing too good for someone he likes, and I don't know anybody he doesn't like, or anybody who doesn't like him.

Duke Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (New York: Doubleday, 1973), 226

Louie Bellson Dies at 84 (All About Jazz)
Louie Bellson (Official website)
"Skin Deep" (Nat King Cole Show,1957)

Drugs and memories

In the news:

A widely available blood pressure pill could one day help people erase bad memories, perhaps treating some anxiety disorders and phobias, according to a Dutch study published on Sunday. . . .

The findings published in the journal Nature Neuroscience are important because the drug may offer another way to help people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other problems related to bad memories.

Egyptian researchers beat them to it. In Odyssey 4, as Menelaus, Telemachus, and Peisistratus grieve the sorrows of the Trojan War, Helen uses an Egyptian drug to make the men forget their troubles:

She threw a drug into the wine bowl
They were drinking from, a drug
That stilled all pain, quieted all anger
And brought forgetfulness of every ill.
.     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .     
Helen had gotten this potent, cunning drug
From Polydamna, the wife of Thon,
A woman in Egypt, where the land
Proliferates with all sorts of drugs,
Many beneficial, many poisonous.
Men there know more about medicines
Than any other people on earth,
For they are of the race of Paeeon, the Healer.

This moment in the Odyssey is funny, sinister, and unforgettable. Helen must have suspected that it would be helpful to have such a drug handy for thought-control in a sorrow-filled post-war home. In her foresight, she resembles wily Odysseus, who carries strong wine when off to explore the cave of Cyclops Polyphemus. (Odysseus of course gets Polyphemus drunk before blinding him).

The Dutch study is here:

Merel Kindt, Marieke Soeter, and Bram Vervliet, Beyond extinction: erasing human fear responses and preventing the return of fear (Nature Neuroscience)

[Odyssey translation by Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000).]

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all species.

[Photograph by James Kimberlin (valart2008), via Flickr, licensed under a Creative Commons License.]

Montblanc "Yes We Can" pen

A press release announces Montblanc's "Yes We Can" Meisterstück 149 fountain pen. Ugh:

The finest brushstroke of a fountain pen has led to the foundation of our great nation, legacies of great leaders, and has ultimately led to many new chapters in our country's great history. Having been present when historical signatures were needed by royalty and heads of state, Montblanc's Meisterstuck [sic] 149 fountain pen has played a role in this historic journey.

Well, maybe kinda sorta. The fountain pen is a 19th-century invention. The Declaration of Independence was written with a quill. American presidents have traditionally used American-made pens, and I know of no evidence of an American president using a Meisterstück 149. Note that the press release implies such use without claiming it: what "heads of state" are we speaking of? Montblanc's marketing ploy is a bit too much like Moleskine's effort to associate its notebooks with Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso.

Presidential pens have been the stuff of some dedicated sleuthing. Barack Obama has been signing with Cross Townsends, as anyone who's been watching the news (and who knows pens) has seen.

Elaine posted yesterday on another effort to cash in: 'Tis the Gift to Be for Sale?

Abraham Lincoln, getting things done

Browsing last night, I found this passage, in a piece that may date from 1850. Good advice for anyone, lawyer or not, wanting to avoid procrastination and get things done:

Leave nothing for to-morrow, which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done.

From "Notes on the Practice of Law," in The Portable Abraham Lincoln, edited by Andrew Delbanco (New York: Penguin, 2009), 33

Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809.

Charles Darwin has a posse

Born February 12, 1809.

[Image created by Colin Purrington, Associate Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Swarthmore College.]