Snacks4theBrain!

Howdy, ya’ll,

Longtime “nohear.” Yeah, I know, we’ve been hard at work on the new School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt and with end-of-the-year things at my “day job” as Lower School Technology Coordinator at University School of Nashville. Not to mention Spring Break! That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

That said, I hope you’ll enjoy S4theB! episode 55, a quick but very listenable concoction whose main ingredient is my reading of an article by Dr. Alan I. Leshner, Chief Executive Officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Executive Publisher of Science. Back in January of this year Dr. L. published a moving plea for our institutions of higher education to make outreach to K12 schools (you know those public school systems everyone is always saying are failing our youth?) with science outreach as a mandatory element in the review process for both tenure and promotion. Wow.

I emailed Dr. Leshner for permission to use the article in this podcast and his administrative assistant got back to me with a query about just how I would do so. I replied, well, I’d read it aloud, hopefully sharing it with a portion of the educated citizenry who might not have seen it in Science. She consulted with him and voila, here ’tis.

Dr. Leshner’s piece is framed by some new and very well performed and produced independent music from a husband and wife acoustic duo who reside in Fabriano, Italy. My first Italian independent music! I sincerely hope you’ll like that, and that you’ll visit for a shopping extravaganza to support their efforts to bring talented artists’ music to the public. While you’re there, check out the skimmy on Magnatune. It’s quite a story…

There’s also a TechTipTidbit (courtesy of Worldstart.com via Dr. T. at completelyfreesoftware.com) all about RAM and Virtual Memory in your PC. Don’t know what I’m talkin’ about? You might after giving S4theB! 55 a listen! Listen up, right hear (sic)!