People tend to discount the seriousness and validity of studies that don't support their beliefs, though.
And if you have beliefs like "government-funded science can't be trusted," "you have to come measure my environment instead of trying to isolate variables in a lab" or "I only react to cell towers for one specific carrier (so research about other cell transmissions must not be applicable)" it's easy to dismiss the validity of any studies that don't reinforce your convictions about electrosensitivity.
Agreed. In cities where off-campus housing is more expensive, I can imagine that living in a dorm might not be such a terrible deal, but it was absurdly expensive at my university.
The fees came out to around $930/month for a double room (utilities included, but no meal plan). Since I had a roommate, the effective rent on that room was $1860. That would cover rent and utilities for a 4-bedroom house here! When I first moved off campus, I got a pretty nice studio apartment for under $400/month that was actually closer to campus than one of the dorms. It was also a lot more convenient during breaks. The dorms were closed over breaks (and you were supposed to be out within 24 hours of your last exam), so if you wanted to work or take winter/summer session classes, you pretty much had to live off campus.
Most of my professors have been careful to keep textbook costs as low as possible. A number of them have mentioned trying to choose books which are affordable and/or available used. One of them wrote the textbook he uses for his intro class, but distributes it for free. Quite a few of my classes in the social sciences didn't require a textbook at all--instead they used articles from academic journals and scanned excerpts from books which were uploaded to course websites. For classes within my majors, I can only think of two occasions when I had to buy textbooks written by the professor and I think that both of those were justified--there weren't any other books available that covered the same topic and the books were reasonably priced.
The exception here seems the foreign language classes--the textbook I used for the first three semesters of French cost about $200 and was written by a faculty member. Additionally, all of the homework was through the publisher's website, so you had to by a $50 access code each semester.
The $100+ custom textbook for a language course I'm currently taking has those tear-out assignments. The worst thing about it is that the worksheet pages usually also have useful content on them (e.g. the book's only explanation of the rules for using a certain verb tense). So in addition to not being able to resell the book, you also can't review anything or use the book as a reference in the future. It's completely absurd.
As an undergraduate sociology student, I'd say it's pretty common for upper-division sociology courses to depend largely (or even exclusively) on articles from the library's journal databases rather than on textbooks.
In my experience, sociology books tend to be either (A) shallow overviews of several schools of thought or (B) narrowly-focused arguments seeking to apply a particular theory to a specific social process. The former are so shallow that they should only be used at the introductory level. However, the second type of book is pretty limited in scope; reading one or two of these wouldn't familiarize students with all the different perspectives they ought to be aware of.
Articles are a good middle ground between these two extremes. Though they have the same limitations as narrowly-focused books, the shorter length of articles means that instructors can assign a number of different pieces, each of which highlights something different. Classes which use articles (or a combination of articles and more narrowly-focused books) encourage critical thinking and analysis, while those which rely on overview books come down to little more than memorizing some over-simplified definitions.
Other reasons I've heard for using articles include: - Textbooks are expensive. Students don't like having to buy them. - Using articles gives instructors more flexibility -- they can pick the best text for each topic they plan to cover instead of using one or two textbooks which may handle some topics poorly. - Overview textbooks are dull and usually make vague generalizations about different schools of thought. Articles which apply those different perspectives provide more concrete examples which and more engaging and help students understand the practical meanings of various theories. - Some courses have objectives like "introducing students to the standards of the discipline." Reading peer-reviewed articles helps students become familiar with the standards of sociological writing and gives them examples of how social research is performed.
It would definitely be possible for someone to write a book which had more depth than the usual overview textbooks and still covered a range of different schools of thought. I suspect that at least part of the reason that no one has is that most sociologists are pretty focused on specific schools of thought and/or subsections of society and/or methodologies -- they might be too specialized (or too devoted to their own preferred theories) to write a more general textbook.
My high school's guidance counselor told us that university admissions departments do consider the difficulty of the classes you've taken as well as your GPA. He also told us that colleges will consider the high school you attended---so that someone who took AP classes and earned a 3.7 from a high school known for its challenging curriculum would be accepted over someone who has 4.0, but took only easy classes at a high school known for grade inflation. Additionally, some schools will use weighted GPAs, where AP classes or university courses taken while in high school are worth more than other classes (5 points for an A, 4 for a B and so on).
So I think the college admissions process does at least attempt to consider course difficulty as well as grades. However, the way in which it does so is entirely subjective and undocumented---we had to take the counselor's word that taking more challenging classes would help our college applications. My experience (and that of other students from my high school, which prided itself on its high rate of acceptances at prestigious universities) generally supports his claims, but I agree that it would be preferable to have a system that takes course difficulty and progress over time into account in a clearer and more consistent way.
The problem with these laws is that they also keep students from carrying vital medications. When I was in middle school, I remember hearing about a kid who died during PE at a nearby high school.
I'm surprised that more haven't, based on my own experiences with PE teachers-- they force students to run even if they have medical documentation stating that they shouldn't and punish them for needing medical care.
IIRC in the USA it is even possible to be cleared of a crime but sucessfully sued for damages resulting from that crime because of the lower standard of evidence in civil court.
That meshes with my understanding of the way the courts work. To pick a high-profile example, OJ Simpson was not convicted for murder in his criminal trial. He was, however, held responsible for the deaths in civil court.
Criminal cases must be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt" and have a unanimous guilty verdict from the jury. Civil courts only require "preponderance of evidence" and 9 of 12 jurors.
Once you get into higher price ranges, getting more expensive instruments doesn't create such a difference.
Sure, my friend's $5000 violin sounds a hell of a lot better than my $1200 one, and I've seen $300 violins that were entirely unplayable. $15 rosin makes a huge difference compared to $2 rosin. Different brands of strings can certainly sound different, and the super-cheap ones are going to sound a lot shittier than higher-end strings. And wood bows are virtually always better than the cheaper fiberglass ones. But there are limits.
When it comes to lower-end violins and accessories, the ultra-cheap invariably blow and the more expensive ones are very noticeably better. But once you get into the higher priced, good instruments, spending tons of money isn't going to get you a proportional (or, for that matter, noticeable) improvement in quality.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been double-blind studies of electrosensitivity ( here are a couple that I came across: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... ).
People tend to discount the seriousness and validity of studies that don't support their beliefs, though.
And if you have beliefs like "government-funded science can't be trusted," "you have to come measure my environment instead of trying to isolate variables in a lab" or "I only react to cell towers for one specific carrier (so research about other cell transmissions must not be applicable)" it's easy to dismiss the validity of any studies that don't reinforce your convictions about electrosensitivity.
I'm not sure about .ca domains, but I've been meaning to register a .ch (Swiss) domain.
I want a .ch domain because I'm Swiss (though I live in America), but no connection with Switzerland is required to register a .ch domain.
Agreed. In cities where off-campus housing is more expensive, I can imagine that living in a dorm might not be such a terrible deal, but it was absurdly expensive at my university.
The fees came out to around $930/month for a double room (utilities included, but no meal plan). Since I had a roommate, the effective rent on that room was $1860. That would cover rent and utilities for a 4-bedroom house here! When I first moved off campus, I got a pretty nice studio apartment for under $400/month that was actually closer to campus than one of the dorms. It was also a lot more convenient during breaks. The dorms were closed over breaks (and you were supposed to be out within 24 hours of your last exam), so if you wanted to work or take winter/summer session classes, you pretty much had to live off campus.
undoing accidental mod
Most of my professors have been careful to keep textbook costs as low as possible. A number of them have mentioned trying to choose books which are affordable and/or available used. One of them wrote the textbook he uses for his intro class, but distributes it for free. Quite a few of my classes in the social sciences didn't require a textbook at all--instead they used articles from academic journals and scanned excerpts from books which were uploaded to course websites. For classes within my majors, I can only think of two occasions when I had to buy textbooks written by the professor and I think that both of those were justified--there weren't any other books available that covered the same topic and the books were reasonably priced.
The exception here seems the foreign language classes--the textbook I used for the first three semesters of French cost about $200 and was written by a faculty member. Additionally, all of the homework was through the publisher's website, so you had to by a $50 access code each semester.
The $100+ custom textbook for a language course I'm currently taking has those tear-out assignments. The worst thing about it is that the worksheet pages usually also have useful content on them (e.g. the book's only explanation of the rules for using a certain verb tense). So in addition to not being able to resell the book, you also can't review anything or use the book as a reference in the future. It's completely absurd.
As an undergraduate sociology student, I'd say it's pretty common for upper-division sociology courses to depend largely (or even exclusively) on articles from the library's journal databases rather than on textbooks.
In my experience, sociology books tend to be either (A) shallow overviews of several schools of thought or (B) narrowly-focused arguments seeking to apply a particular theory to a specific social process. The former are so shallow that they should only be used at the introductory level. However, the second type of book is pretty limited in scope; reading one or two of these wouldn't familiarize students with all the different perspectives they ought to be aware of.
Articles are a good middle ground between these two extremes. Though they have the same limitations as narrowly-focused books, the shorter length of articles means that instructors can assign a number of different pieces, each of which highlights something different. Classes which use articles (or a combination of articles and more narrowly-focused books) encourage critical thinking and analysis, while those which rely on overview books come down to little more than memorizing some over-simplified definitions.
Other reasons I've heard for using articles include:
- Textbooks are expensive. Students don't like having to buy them.
- Using articles gives instructors more flexibility -- they can pick the best text for each topic they plan to cover instead of using one or two textbooks which may handle some topics poorly.
- Overview textbooks are dull and usually make vague generalizations about different schools of thought. Articles which apply those different perspectives provide more concrete examples which and more engaging and help students understand the practical meanings of various theories.
- Some courses have objectives like "introducing students to the standards of the discipline." Reading peer-reviewed articles helps students become familiar with the standards of sociological writing and gives them examples of how social research is performed.
It would definitely be possible for someone to write a book which had more depth than the usual overview textbooks and still covered a range of different schools of thought. I suspect that at least part of the reason that no one has is that most sociologists are pretty focused on specific schools of thought and/or subsections of society and/or methodologies -- they might be too specialized (or too devoted to their own preferred theories) to write a more general textbook.
My high school's guidance counselor told us that university admissions departments do consider the difficulty of the classes you've taken as well as your GPA. He also told us that colleges will consider the high school you attended---so that someone who took AP classes and earned a 3.7 from a high school known for its challenging curriculum would be accepted over someone who has 4.0, but took only easy classes at a high school known for grade inflation. Additionally, some schools will use weighted GPAs, where AP classes or university courses taken while in high school are worth more than other classes (5 points for an A, 4 for a B and so on). So I think the college admissions process does at least attempt to consider course difficulty as well as grades. However, the way in which it does so is entirely subjective and undocumented---we had to take the counselor's word that taking more challenging classes would help our college applications. My experience (and that of other students from my high school, which prided itself on its high rate of acceptances at prestigious universities) generally supports his claims, but I agree that it would be preferable to have a system that takes course difficulty and progress over time into account in a clearer and more consistent way.
The problem with these laws is that they also keep students from carrying vital medications. When I was in middle school, I remember hearing about a kid who died during PE at a nearby high school. I'm surprised that more haven't, based on my own experiences with PE teachers-- they force students to run even if they have medical documentation stating that they shouldn't and punish them for needing medical care.
I used to have COX cable internet, no TV or phone required.
IIRC in the USA it is even possible to be cleared of a crime but sucessfully sued for damages resulting from that crime because of the lower standard of evidence in civil court.
That meshes with my understanding of the way the courts work. To pick a high-profile example, OJ Simpson was not convicted for murder in his criminal trial. He was, however, held responsible for the deaths in civil court. Criminal cases must be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt" and have a unanimous guilty verdict from the jury. Civil courts only require "preponderance of evidence" and 9 of 12 jurors.
Once you get into higher price ranges, getting more expensive instruments doesn't create such a difference.
Sure, my friend's $5000 violin sounds a hell of a lot better than my $1200 one, and I've seen $300 violins that were entirely unplayable. $15 rosin makes a huge difference compared to $2 rosin. Different brands of strings can certainly sound different, and the super-cheap ones are going to sound a lot shittier than higher-end strings. And wood bows are virtually always better than the cheaper fiberglass ones. But there are limits.
When it comes to lower-end violins and accessories, the ultra-cheap invariably blow and the more expensive ones are very noticeably better. But once you get into the higher priced, good instruments, spending tons of money isn't going to get you a proportional (or, for that matter, noticeable) improvement in quality.