entertainment?

I was talking today to my son, about teaching college students in the US . He was told that he should be a little entertaining.
I also saw that Prof Tandon is in the news (ICM)
Some people believe that your lecture (on a scientific subject) must be entertaining --why entertaining?
Some years ago, I used to volunteer for this organisation that has a summer school in science for 9th class kids, and I heard Prof Tandon give a talk to 14 year olds on prime numbers. He was really interesting.. he held the kids (and me) spell-bound.
I think there is a great difference between entertaining and interesting.
If my students want to be entertained, they should switch on their TV, but if they want my lectures to be interesting, that's a reasonable demand. ( though some parts of my syllabus are impossible)
However, for a lecture to be interesting, one has to have some interest to begin with. Given that as a starting point, it is the duty of the teacher to make it interesting. But entertaining? No!

Though Prof Tandon's talk was like a story-telling session, I would not call it entertaining. I would call it interesting, very interesting.

I find these videos where they teach Chemistry with "you be sodium and let Jimmy here be chlorine" very silly.....you are not three years old when you are taught ionic bond - so why this role play?
I don't believe the children (12 to 14 year olds) learn ionic bond any better by this than by more conventional methods. In fact, there is a serious problem in this particular example.
Once I asked my class " If an ionic bond is formed by giving of electron directly by one atom of sodium to one atom of chlorine thus forming sodium chloride, what about the sodium chloride formed when I neutralise sodium hydroxide with hydrochloric acid and then crystallise the product? is that an ionic bond?"
The students were confused by this---- and they are in college.
I don't blame the students.
You should see the diagram the 9th class AP state school textbook has for a polarised atom...enough to confuse any child.

"So, do blogs like this give us a more accurate impression of the tenure-track life or do they amplify the negative, leading some people to conclude that pre-tenure suffering is de rigueur?"
This question can be asked about any aspect of life.
Whether it is tenure-track in a US university or teaching in a college or being a student in India, a working mother or a retired person, many people use their blogs to vent their daily disappointments, post their rants and criticisms. Some blogs are downright obnoxious.
Of course there are exceptions --- and ---
How many of us blog about "I am happy today!" ?
"I finished all my corrections and returned all my students' records Yay!"-- (I just did that today)
So blogs are disproportionately pessimistic.
If one were to obtain ones world-view from blogs, one would be depressed totally.

degrees to foreign nationals.

Do we never award degrees to non-Indians? We have so many foreign students in all our universities. Even NDA and IMA, our defence academies regularly train and award degrees to foreign nationals.
What is the funda about not giving a degree to Viswanathan Anand even if he was a foreigner who forgot the fact and played for India.

The problem with activists who campaign for preserving forests/tigers, for those against dams etc, is they focus on the tiger or the forest. The majority of the electorate is either rural, but non forest-dwelling or urban. In either case, preserving the tiger or the forests is of no interest to anyone.
"Hum to tiger zoo me dekh sakte hain"
What they should concentrate instead is to educate people about water resources being depleted if forests are destroyed, of sure destruction of ecosystems if the tiger is decimated, of floods in their cities and villages, of the influx of "undesirable" squatters into their cities if the tribal lands are destroyed...
THEN, the electorate is interested and the politicians inturn will do something. Until the focus is the forests/tigers per se, nothing will happen.

quote from Bittu Sahgal

"I am in Kolkata driving through wetlands that are being destroyed. No one told administrators about climate change & water stress?" on NDTV website
Yes really, has no one heard of the role of forests in maintaining aquifers either?

compensation

A mining company official smugly states on NDTV that they have given compensation of 50,000/- for some and 100,000/- for others displaced due to their mining operations. They are also willing to train and employ the displaced tribals if found suitable.
I am sure all the displaced tribals are now trained and writing software for material management in the company and are paid 3 lakhs per month. Go to the company office and you will see happy Gondis tapping away at their laptops.
Nice! Tomorrow someone may take away my house and say they will settle me in the Dandakaranya forests, employ me as a honey gatherer instead. They will train me to go into the forest and gather honey and if I was proficient in walking for 20 miles a day in the jungle, and braving angry bees and Naxalites, I can be employed in their honey gathering enterprise. If found untrainable, they will give me 50,000/- instead! Good bargain!!

slang

Can you believe it? There is a THESIS on slangs used in IITM.