I currently feel like this squirrel looks: pancaked by, yet ready to flee from a semester that refuses to end, and so rather than talk much here, I’ll simply wish American readers a happy Memorial Day holiday, and everyone a good weekend. (Spare a minute, though for the students in Quebec!)

On to this weekend’s links!

• Kate Clancy draws on that evergreen scientific resource, Justin Bieber’s hair, to teach good poster design: For the last few years, one of the running jokes in my lab has involved a striking physical (or rather, follicular) similarity between biological anthropology researcher Dana Ahern (now a University of Illinois graduate!) and multi-platinum pop superstar Justin Bieber. I thought this observed correlation would make an…

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I hope this post finds everyone as well can be expected at the end of, not just the semester, but the academic year, when Everything has to be done within the same three weeks. My own timing has been screwy all semester, because our academic calendar has changed a bit to help students compete for jobs–the one good thing about it, of course, is that everything now ends a bit sooner than expected! Lots to do, but a light at the end of the tunnel.

In that spirit, on quickly to this week’s links:

• Want to write an article this summer? Research as a Second Language issues “The 40-Hour Challenge”: Since an article consists of about forty 40 paragraphs and you should be able to write a paragraph about something you know in about 30 minutes, you should be able to draft a journal article in around 20 hours. This insight is the basis of the 40-Hour Challenge. (via @silviastraka) For a…

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Last May, I wrote about the launch for the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, a meta-organization of higher education groups that, among many other goals, seeks to promote the views of faculty members about higher education. Part of the Campaign’s work is a virtual think tank, The Center for the Future of Higher Education, which this week published its first policy report: Gary Rhoades’s Closing the Door, Increasing the Gap: Who’s not going to (community) college? (both the executive summary and full report are available as PDFs).

What’s helpful about Rhoades’s analysis is that it systematically takes on the completion agenda as part and parcel of public disinvestment in higher education, documenting the ways in which higher costs at four-year schools appear to be crowding out many possible students, as well as how community colleges are being forced by that disinvestment…

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