Jet-induced star formation: Good news from big, bad black holes

Lisp: Good News, Bad News, How to Win Big

Lisp has done quite well over the last ten years: becoming nearly standardized, forming the basis of a commercial sector, achieving excellent performance, having good environments, able to deliver applications. Yet the Lisp community has failed to do as well as it could have. In this paper I look at the successes, the failures, and what to do next. The Lisp world is in great shape: Ten years ag...

Star Formation near Supermassive Black Holes

Supermassive black hole accretion and star formation appear intimately connected. I review the observational and theoretical evidence for this statement. I then discuss how focussed studies of two systems, our Galactic Center and the nucleus of M87, can help to improve our understanding of these processes.

hiv/aids good news and bad news

The Good News and the Bad News

There is much that is attractive about Michael Burawoy’s examination of the critical turn to a public sociology. I find plausible his account of the academic nature of 1970s radical sociology especially that mobilized notions such as Althusser’s “theoretical practice.” I also was cheered to read the account of the positive developments currently in train in the USA and especially with how socia...

Consistent Good News and Inconsistent Bad News

Good news is more persuasive when it is more consistent, and bad news is less damaging when it is less consistent. We show when Bayesian updating supports this intuition so that a biased sender prefers more or less variance in the news depending on whether the mean of the news exceeds expectations, and we apply the result to selective news distortion by a manager of multiple projects. If news f...