Slashdot Mirror

The irony of people on Slashdot using the word "cult" to describe people who question academic science is that the graduate programs themselves have been compared to a cult by an academic whistleblower named Jeff Schmidt:

"So, I looked into the techniques that totalitarian organizations use to get people to play a politically subordinate role, and I found that professional training programs use the same techniques.

These include, for example ...

- recruitment through big promises

- social isolation

- milieu control [control over one's social environment]

- setting up teachers as unquestioned authority

- undermining true self confidence

- and gross exaggeration of the importance of the work to the world

And after seeing that similarity to cult indoctrination, I thought, well, how can this be resisted?

That's when I discovered this Army manual called Prisoner of War Resistance, in which the Army trained its people how to resist indoctrination if they are captured and made prisoners of war.

And I found that these techniques apply very well to graduate school and the workplace and any hierarchical, repressive situation. So, I wrote in my book that the United States Army issued a survival manual for graduate school ...

(laughter)

... without knowing it, and ... In fact, in a crucial way, the military manual is better than civilian advice books, which are written specifically for students. The civilian books help you conform to the demands of the institution. You get your credential, but you lose your identity in the process.

However, the Army manual shows you how to survive the training programs and keep control over your identity. The military even has a name for it; they call it

"HONORABLE SURVIVAL".

Here is a partial transcript of an audio interview of Jeff Schmidt, a former editor of Physics Today for 19 years. He received his PhD in physics from UC Irvine, and he is the author of a critique of the graduate programs, Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look At Salaried Professionals And The Soul Battering System That Shapes Their Lives. In both the book and this interview, Jeff likened professional training - you know, the graduate programs - to a cult.

So, I looked into the techniques that totalitarian organizations use to get people to play a politically subordinate role, and I found that professional training programs use the same techniques.

These include, for example ...

- recruitment through big promises
- social isolation
- milieu control [control over one's social environment]
- setting up teachers as unquestioned authority
- undermining true self confidence
- and gross exaggeration of the importance of the work to the world

And after seeing that similarity to cult indoctrination, I thought, well, how can this be resisted?

That's when I discovered this Army manual called Prisoner of War Resistance, in which the Army trained its people how to resist indoctrination if they are captured and made prisoners of war.

And I found that these techniques apply very well to graduate school and the workplace and any hierarchical, repressive situation. So, I wrote in my book that the United States Army issued a survival manual for graduate school ...

[laughter]

... without knowing it, and ... In fact, in a crucial way, the military manual is better than civilian advice books, which are written specifically for students. The civilian books help you conform to the demands of the institution. You get your credential, but you lose your identity in the process.

However, the Army manual shows you how to survive the training programs and keep control over your identity. The military even has a name for it; they call it

"HONORABLE SURVIVAL".

The People's Power Hour, WIDR
Kalamazoo, MI, recorded 2005

David Noble on the automation of education. (Realaudio lecture.)

Talk by John Taylor Gatto on why today's education is so bad.

But if you want to know what Indymedia is, its an underground network of journalists. You can check it out and judge for yourself

Here are the sites

Radio4All
Live Radio
Wikipedia IndyMedia

Radio4all.net has grass roots radio programming.

Also, try getting some podcasts.

Between the two, you should find anything you want.

Thanks for responding. I understand your dilemma even if I don't share it. I happened to come across this speech by Ralph Nader where he asks the question I asked (not that he got it from me, I probably got it from him years ago or from some other Progressive). Put aside that this is meant to encourage you to vote for Nader/Camejo. I'd encourage you (and every other /. reader) to listen with an ear to the message of how duopoly power works to oppress. Much of what he says here could work just as well to talk about other political parties and independents you don't often hear from.

If you have time, I'd like to get an answer to the question I closed with: what is your breaking point? I ask the question in all sincerity. Different people will legitimately answer with different times. I'm perfectly comfortable with that. What I fear is that there is no breaking point for anyone who opposes the Corporatists.

http://webjay.org - Calls itself "Listener Created Radio", and it aggregates quite a bit of radio and non-radio MP3, Real and windows content. You can create playlists of audio/video content already hosted someplace. When you click "play" on a playlist, it generates a playlist for your player. Worth checking out.

http://www.radio-locator.com/ - They track radio stations and list their stream links too

http://www.radio4all.net/ - Anybody can submit radio content to them, it's sort of a precursor to PRX but a lot less middle-of-the-road.

Radio4all and Indymedia have been providing space to upload radio programs for years. And they don't even charge stations to download the shows.

I would estimate the yearly expenses of those projects to be an order of magnititude less than $1.5m. Oneworld Radio also offers upload space for programs and is networked internationally. I would guess their costs are a bit less than $1.5m but in a similar ballpark.

Hard-left radio stations have been using the A-Infos Radio Project and the IMC Radio Project for some time to distribute content. The quality of the productions range from excellent to useless, much like anything else. The productions are almost all politically-oriented, so not having read the article (a grand Slashdot tradition), I don't know if PRX also carries a larger proportion of music and PSAs.

And then, in the virtually ignored fourth corner, we have the stuff that isn't totally assraped by big (or not so big, in Real's case) corporations. MP3. Ogg. Freaking gzipped .AU for all I care. AND NO ONE USES ANY OF THIS STUFF.

Some sectons of the "alternative" media have caught on and are using "alternative" formats. Democracy Now! is one of the best examples--they provide RealMedia, MP3, and OGG versions of their show--and the A-infos Radio Project offers its content in MP3.

But it's still hard to avoid RealMedia. Of the sites I frequent, BBC's excellent On This Day site uses it, MIT's Technology and Culture Forum and UCBerkely's webcast site use it, and the ABC (public broadcaster) here in Australia uses it almost exclusively for their online audio/video content. Thank god for Real Alternative.

For some of that subculture checkout radio4all.net. Its a site for swapping shows in mp3 format.

almost everyone is able to connect to the Internet for at least some period of time now you want to do a broadcast great webcasting

"Almost everyone" excludes the poor, microradio has the potential to be a tool for them. Don't get me wrong, I think webcasting is great. One of its exciting applications is in forming microradio networks, whereby a microradio transmitter rebroadcasts a web stream or archived mp3 show. Traditional networks of content providers (Pacifica, CBS, etc) use proprietary communications networks to syndicate content (satellite or fiber). Its very exciting that the Internet is being used to network grassroots media outlets (witness the problems with Pacifica), see microradio.net and radio4all for more info on webcasting and microradio networks.

i found these two links from the A-Infos Radio Project:

this is an MP3 interview with the Professor

and this is his essay on Nanosocialism

basically he talks about the social aspects of nanotechnology, building on some of the promise resident in the molecular and massively mirco scale.

i found these two links from the A-Infos Radio Project:

this is an MP3 interview with the Professor

and this is his essay on Nanosocialism

basically he talks about the social aspects of nanotechnology, building on some of the promise resident in the molecular and massively mirco scale.