Yay! Andrey Zaliznyak receives the State Prize of Russia

The State Prize this year was awarded to - among others - Alisa Freindlich, Jacques Chirac, Andrey Zaliznyak, and an unnamed physicist.

It seems to be one of the rare occasions where a linguist's contribution has been acknowledged, with the balance always being tilted towards hardcore science. Now the balance is promising to be restored, although hopefully not reversed.

Another issue here is that person whose identity could not be revealed because he works at some top secret institution or on top secret projects, or more likely - both.

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Procrastinating

You Should Get a PhD in Liberal Arts (like political science, literature, or philosophy)

You're a great thinker and a true philosopher. You'd make a talented professor or writer.

What Advanced Degree Should You Get?

Your Brain is 60% Female, 40% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

What Gender Is Your Brain?

WTF, or My Take on Pop Sci

I had an appointment with my supervisor today. Someone who has no idea about the research I'm writing about and a way too strong attraction to lay person-like vague statements, like "Oh, they Germans are so punctual, it's just in their mentality to love order and neatness".

Virtually all the literature I am using I found myself; to be fair, she did recommend a book to me once. She said it would suffice for the theoretical part...

Now the papers I have found, based on sound qualitative and quantitative methods with straightforward statistical measurements and conclusions, - now she basically wants me to give it all up. Well, don't give the details of the experiments - just include the results.

But isn't it the methods, the nuances in the set-up what research is pretty much all about?

No, this way it looks like pop sci, she said. It is not the proper scholarly way to write.

I am failing to see how providing details about the studies one is citing makes the paper less scholarly. For me it's just the other way round: it's not the details but lack thereof which turns a paper into endless looping philosophizing.

Как?

Как объяснить человеку, что нет "американского" подхода, нет "американской" науки. Есть просто и коротко - наука. Вивиан Эванс не американец, Фоконье, судя по всему, тоже. Как и множество их аспирантов. Или, может быть, американец Майкл Томазелло? Во всяком случае, эти люди работают в Европе. А публикуются - да, на английском, как все цивилизованные люди своего времени (хорошо это или плохо, мне нет никакой разницы).

А где бы они были, если бы при написании своих статей думали, как бы сбалансировать источники в списке литературы? "Выровнять уклон"? Допускаю, что они могли быть в приятных местах. Но не в Беркли, не в Институте Макса Планка, не в Стэнфорде... Не там, где они сейчас.

Человек, мыслящий сегодня национальными категориями в науке, обречен выдавать опусы со "сбалансированными" списками литературы. В которые входит - первым номером (имеющий счастье начинаться на "А") - Аристотель, например.