Cosmic Horizons

As promised, I'm going to put down some thoughts on academic careers. In doing this, I should put my cards on the table and point out that while I am a full-time professor of astrophysics of the University of Sydney, I didn't really plan my career or following the musings given below. The musings come from take a hard look at the modern state of play in modern academia. I am going to be as honest as possible, and surely some of my colleagues will disagree with my musings. Some people have a romantic view of many things, including science, and will trot out the line that science is somewhat distinct from people. That might be the case, but the act of doing science is clearly done my people, and that means all of the issues that govern human interactions come into play. It is important to remember this. Now, there may be some lessons below for how to become a permanent academic, but there is no magic formula. But realising some of these lessons on what is at play may help.

Still struggling with grant writing season, so another post which has resulted in my random musings about the Universe (which actually happens quite a lot). In second semester, I am teaching  electricity and magnetism to our First Year Advanced Class . I really enjoy teaching this class as the kids are on the ball and can ask some deep and meaningful questions. But the course is not ideal. Why? Because we teach from a textbook and the problem is that virtually all modern text books are almost the same. Science is trotted out in an almost historical progression. But it does not have to be taught that way. In fact, it would be great if we could start with  Hamiltonian and Lagrangian  approaches, and derive physics from a top down approach. We're told that it's mathematically too challenging, but it really isn't. In fact, I would start with a book like  The Theoretical Minimum , not some multicoloured compendium of physics. We have to work with what we have! One of