Interesting Articles: Nov 15th-21st 2005

Education:
* Tenure, Turnover and the Quality of Teaching (New York Times). An enlightening summary of a study examining these things.
* Why the United States Should Look to Japan for Better Schools (New York Times). I agree. I still don't understand why we don't generally use "best practices" for teaching.

Online Life:
* Online Dating? Thin and Rich Works Here, Too (New York Times). Includes a few neat statistics on how various features effect the amount of interest one gets.
* E-Mail Is So Five Minutes Ago (BusinessWeek). So true. There are better alternatives to e-mail for some tasks.

Science:
* Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera (Stanford University Computer Science Tech Report). They've invented a new camera and appropriate algorithms that, given a single exposure, can reconstruct the image with whatever focal length or depth of field you want. Neat. (Infinitely more useful than, say, crummy camera phones.)
* Defense Mechanism: Circumcision averts some HIV infections (Science News). A strikingly strong effect.
* Timid Mice Made Daring by Removing One Gene (New York Times). Every month or two it feels like I post another article demonstrating a simple single-gene control of a complex behavior...
* The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored Bubbles (Popular Science). A cool story.
* Study Identifies Heart Patient's Best Friend (New York Times). Not surprising if you think about it -- pets (including dogs) make people relaxed and more comfortable, and that tends to make people healthier.

Language Oddities: (can you believe this gets its own category this week?)
* "Deferred Success" is new term for failure? Cute but strange uses of language.
* 'Literary' texts no more? (CNN). Classic works compressed into text messages, for learning and humor. :)
* One Well-Read Home Has Some New Pets: 1,082 Penguins (New York Times). The goal is laudable: reading every Penguin Classic.