Slashdot Mirror
Longest Physics Lecture in History?
gfrege writes "Perhaps you remember some long physics lectures from your days at school. But as part of a general strike of students at the Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin concerning cuts in funding for the city's universities, some physicists are in the middle of what could be the longest physics lecture in history. It started at noon on Monday, and is planned to run to noon on Thursday. Check out the topics, and if you're in Berlin, come on down. The Babelfish translations of the lecture titles make for some fun reading, too, if you can't make it there yourself."
...by a single professor, rather than a series of lectures on different topics by different people. Or am I missing something?
Plus, there is a reason society should pay for students to go to school. Over the long run, the country will get back more money in taxes than they paid for the tuition. Think about it, if government paid $8000 a year for tuition and another $5000 for room and board, heck make it a cool $15,000 a year for the student, then that would be $60,000 for the 4 years. Now a college graduate will probably make at least $20,000 a year more than a non-college graduate on avarage, and probably much more later in life as they advance in their careers. If government taxed 20% of this extra $20,000 a year, then government would get $140,000 back over the next 35 years. And those are lowball estimates. Consider the extra money would probably push the person into a higher tax bracket (more than 20% taxes, probably closer to 40%), and they will probably be making $50,000/year more than non-graduates after 10 or 15 years of work.
I do not understand why country's do not offer free college education for all.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
1.) Here in Germany, higher education comes mostly for free, including attending University. This is paid for by state taxes, mostly.
Now, yes, but plans are to introduce fees for studying. IIRC, 1000 Euro per semester. There are higher fees in the US, for example, but the two systems are quite different so the fees are not comparable. Whether the fee is a good thing or a bad thing is debatable.
2.) There is a huge financial crunch in local communities and the states
Berlin has to save money. True. And again the debate is whether cutting down the financing of universities is smart. Consider that human capital (knowledge) is basically the only ressource Germany has. And universities are generally not well funded. The point "everyone has to save money, so it's fair that universitites have to, too" is certainly valid.
3.) Berlin has three full universities
Each has, AFAIK, a different emphasis. And colleges (Fachhochschulen) are inherently different from universities.
I agree that events like these raise the awareness of the problem. But given the current political climate, I doubt anything will change. BTW, it's not just Berlin. The cuts affect all universities in Germany.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
I believe what you're referring to must be Schachtelsatze, or "nested sentences", which indeed is a (quite obsolete) rhetorical style in german.
It's not used much, and if it is, it's generally in literature. Probably 95% of its useage is simply to show off, I'd assume.
It works basically more or less like this: you start a sentence, and at some word, where you'd like to add additional information about it, you start a subclause. In that one, you can do the same again. Effectively, you're embedding sentences within sentences. Since in German, the verb often comes at the end, once you're through, you must clean up by adding all the verbs at the end. So it's a bit like pushing and popping indeed.
An artificial, exaggerated example was taken from here:
german:
Schon immer mal wollte ich einen Satz, der zwar grammatikalisch richtig gebildet, jedoch durch die Anfugung von Nebensatzen, die durch ein Komma, welches das Verb bzw. das Hilfsverb, das dieserart jeweils erst nach dem Schachtelsatz, der eigentlich den Zusammenhang, der ebenfalls im Nebensatz, der kurz vor dem Verb, welches das Satzende, das das Verb bzw. das Hilfsverb, das durch das bereits genannte Komma, das ja die Nebensatze, die eingeschachtelt worden sind, abschachtelt, ineinander verschachtelt wurde, endlich bringt, wieder entschachtelt, verschachtelt worden ist, erklart wird, erklaren sollte, genannt wird, somit einschachtelt, getrennt werden, verschachtelt wird, ist, formulieren.
english, (almost) german word order:
I always wanted a sentence, which however gramatically corrently formed, but through the addition of subclauses, that are with a comma, which the verb or the auxiliary verb, which in this way each time only after the nested clause, that actually the context, that also in the subclause, that shortly before the verb, which the end of sentence, which the verb or the auxiliary verb, which through the previously mentioned comma, which now the the subclauses, which have been nested, nests in, has been nested in each other, finally mentions, de-nests again, has been nested in, is explained, should explain, is mentioned, therefore nests in, are separated, is nested in, is, to formulate.
english, understandable (sort-of):
I always wanted to formulate a sentence, that is formed gramatically correct, but that is nested in through the addition of subclauses. These subclauses are separated by a comma, which nests in the verb or auxiliary verb, which then gets only mentioned after the nested clause. The nested clause should explain the context, which also is explained in the subclause that has been nested in shortly before the verb, which de-nests (the sentence) again before the end of the sentence. The subclause thus relates to the verb or auxiliary verb.
The verb nests sentences through the use of a comma, which marks the nesting of the subclauses that were nested in.
Hope that helps or at least doesn't confuse more than before...
Indeed. In fact, the US public education system was designed to keep people uneducated and docile.