Friday links: how to make a billion dollars from student evaluations, faculty vs. baby Yoda, and more

Happy New Year!

From Jeremy:

Computer scientist Sethuraman Panchanathan is in line to become the next US NSF Director.

Blogs are dying; long live the remaining blogs.

Rich Lenski looks back on the first six years of his blog. Includes a very kind shout-out to Dynamic Ecology.

Old fogey that I am, I am skeptical that we’re anywhere close to online virtual conferences that can replace that the interaction, networking, and social functions of physical conferences. But I also think experimentation is good, so kudos to the organizers of virtual conferences for trying new things.

Fact check: true. Well, true for me, anyway.

And finally, THE BEST STARTUP IDEA SINCE GOOGLE:

I'm starting a business where I will take your student evals and pick out only the good ones then read them to you while you sit in a bubble bath eating chocolate by candlelight.

— James Tierney (@James_Tierney) December 29, 2019