iPad profs prosper; cheaters don't; @ Repub Congress, oil companies prosper—The planet? not so much

The iPad for Professors: Evaluating a Productivity Tool After One Year (Chronicle of Higher Education)

Excerpt:

“I am not an Apple fan by any means. I use Windows and Linux machines. My phone is an Android. I scoff at my wife's Powerbook. Yet I love my iPad. It's become indispensable for my teaching, research, and other scholarly activities….”

Many Cheaters Are Overly Optimistic About Their Academic Ability, Study Finds (Chronicle of Higher Education)

     A new series of studies has found that a majority of students cheat, and that those who do often have inflated expectations of how well they can perform without cheating. In a survey of 40,000 students at public and private high schools, 59.4 percent admitted to cheating on a test, and one in three said they had cheated on a test twice or more in the past year. Another study, by Harvard Business School and Duke University, found that students who were given the opportunity to cheat on a test predicted they would perform just as well on a second test when they weren’t given the opportunity to cheat. Students who received a certificate of recognition for their scores on the first test were even more likely to overestimate their success on the next test. The results of the study suggest that some cheaters set themselves up to fall behind academically after becoming overly confident about their abilities, said John Fremer, president of consulting services at Caveon LLC, a private test-security company.



Physicist Bob Park rants anew:

IGNORANCE: HOUSE COMMITTEE VOTES TO OVERTURN NATURAL LAW. The price of gasoline at the pump is at the highest level ever for this time of year. That’s not all bad; raising the price is the only effective way to reduce consumption, thereby improving the environment and delaying the dreaded Hubbert peak. There are, however, two ways to raise the price to the consumer: increase the profit margin of the oil industry, or levy a large consumption tax. The revenue from a heavy consumption tax would help to pay the crushing costs of the Bush economy. You will not be surprised, however, to learn that the Republican Congress overwhelmingly prefers the first method, which [will be] embodied in the Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, in preparation. But first they had to amend the Clean Air Act to eliminate the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency over greenhouse gases. According to an editorial in last week's Nature, the Republican disdain for climate science was evident in the "anger and distrust directed at scientists and scientific societies." The widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level, is unequivocal evidence of global warming.