Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Author: Dan Reed
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Research, Teaching and Service: Dynamic Balance
The following is a preview of my regular column for Computing Research News (CRN), the newsletter of the Computing Research Association (CRA), which will appear in September 2008. I worry that we are devaluing teaching and service, to the possible detriment of academia in general and computing in particular. I
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NITRD: Come, Let Us Reason Together
On Wednesday, July 31, I testified to the U.S. House Committee on Commerce, Science and Technology in the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill. The full committee hearing, chaired by Rep. Bart Gordon, was on oversight of the Networking, Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program and the 2007 report of the President’s Council of Advisors…
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Showing Up and Two Corollaries
“Eighty to ninety percent of life is showing up.” The line has been variously attributed to Yogi Berra, Woody Allen or even an anonymous wag. At the recent Cetraro meeting on High-Performance Computing and Grids, Miron Livny extended the “show up and see what happens” maxim by offering a corollary, “Show up and avoid doing…
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Elvis, D.B. and the Red Caddy
Imagine my surprise when I looked up from the pump and saw Elvis at the wheel of a candy red ’69 Caddy Coupe DeVille convertible, parked outside the convenience store. He was lookin’ mighty fine, with one arm draped over the car window and the other on the wheel, harmonizing with a gospel station on…
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Rikei Banare and Global Competition
On Saturday, May 17, the New York Times ran a front page story (below the fold) on the dearth of Japanese students entering science and engineering fields. Japanese universities call it rikei banare or “flight from science.”
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Computing Community Consortium (CCC)
The CCC Blog (http://www.cccblog.org) is now up and running. It is intended to be a forum for discussing “longer range, audacious research challenges” in the computing field. The plan, initially, is to have about two articles a month, with each article offering opinions on the future. Several of us will be contributing material.