For tenure and evaluation purposes, a lot of universities are, uh, somewhat hostile to anything resembling self-publication. Hell, they're hostile to non-academic publishing at all sometimes; there was a prospective hire eval at the university I'm at where the guy got shredded for publishing a children's book on the side.
Add to that a lot of the faculty who are going to be in a decision to Decide Your Career are still going to be the type that assume "online source = intrinsically bad" for the forseeable future, and the idea of starting one's own journal is a no-starter unless they pull off something legendary to pre-fill it with prestige first.
Course numbers vary wildly by school; the introductory courses at the school I'm at now are given two digit numbers, while the intro courses at the school I did my BA at were either 100 or 201 depending on the department. (My school's also kind of weird as the students talk about their courses strictly by number most of the time. I'm taking "507," not "Museum Studies;" I'm TAing "185," not "Ancient and Medieval Warfare.") They often change too, as a school tries to align its standards more with other ones or someone in the administration gets a creativity storm.
"Foobar 101" is basically a generic term for "introduction to foobar," these days. Everyone recognizes the number as such, even though a lot of universities don't use that system at all anymore. Higher numbers generally mean more advanced classes. Some schools number their lower-level courses with 100s and upper-level ones with 200s; some just change the first number each year to the point where you find doctoral courses starting with 8s and 9s.
Ahhh, so you're assuming that money spent on science is ipso facto not being spent on trying to solve the world's problems. That's at least as broken a line of reasoning.
This is probably a stupid question on my part no doubt, but why would we want cars to be made of harder materials than they are already?
Wouldn't a safer car be one that's so soft that even if it hits you it's like a pillow hitting you? Meaning the least hard possible is preferable?
You can afford to sacrifice strength in the skin of a car, but you can't so much when you're dealing with something like its engine which is less forgiving with that sort of thing. A car with all the give of Tupperware would be fine if that was the part that hit you, but that does make it easier for you to get force-fed a carburator, which would be somewhat inconvenient.
Liberty is expensive, but it's cheaper than ever. There are many reasons to criticize the Iraq war, but the number of casualties is not one of them.
Unless you care enough to count the Iraqi casualties (though, of course, I am given to understand that they're terrorists, every one of 'em, and had it coming anyway).
Or, you know, the 29,000 reported American wounded. I'm sure they'd also love being referred to more or less as currency.
Please do not confuse scientists with historians. The major difference is that in history, anyone can come up with a new thesis, and go select evidence that supports that thesis. In science, any person can come along, perform one experiment, and completely disprove a major scientific theory. Let me repeat that for the slow readers. Historians select evidence to fit their thesis and scientists attempt to explain all available evidence.
I think you're conflating those postmodernist, pseudointellectual bullshit-handwaving "historians" with the ones who actually do research. There's a little more to the discipline than the dolts who uncritically drank Foucault's kool-aid.
But that's alright. Everyone knows that these kinds of discussions only work when there's a steady supply of straw men to draw from, and it's not like disagreeing with claims like that are going to make people believe they're wrong.
Believe me, even though I don't watch all that much TV (I have been obsessing over BBC America's Kitchen Nightmares and Last Restaurant Standing) it has been fucking hell for me.
A writer's strike being "fucking hell" for you is indicative of problems with something other than the medium.
The real question I have is when al'Qaeda will discover that the US Army is handing them training material...
Considering the US Army has handing them training material in the form of the US Army for a few years, I assume they'd probably find it rather redundant.
They are not looking for passwords to nuclear reactor equipment - the clowns at the border probably wouldn't recognize such lists unless they were marked "passwords to nuclear reactor equipment." They're not even looking for bootlegged movies because they'd be detaining damn near everyone with a laptop.
No, they are pretty much just looking for naughty pix of little kids - that's it. And much as someone might find that offensive, sorry it just aint "dangerous."
Another thing it ain't is "gonna accomplish much of anything."
Anyone who really thinks some bored customs/security folks are going to be able to competently identify the contents of, say, a 500GB drive with two hundred thousand files on it is smoking something. What're they going to do? Haul the laptops off someplace and spend an afternoon checking every directory and making sure the files are really what they're named? People like the one in TFA aside, they're not likely to find much doing this unless they're willing to take their sweet time holding someone while they fine-tooth-comb their computer to do so. For anything resembling a reasonable-length search at customs, any contraband's either going to be glaringly obvious to a non-expert who's going through the motions, or it won't show up at all.
As one of the comments in the article says, this is just more fishing in the dark, like no-fly-lists or people demanding I explain why I'm wearing boots every time I fly in the winter.
I'm fairly convinced I lucked out with my local paper; it is mostly feed stuff, but the front page - hell, the bulk of the first section, there usually being five or six per paper - is usually local or provincial stuff, and generally well-done.
In any case, there's at least the option of that sort of thing happening at that level, which is something.
And, well, we've got Bruce Mackinnon doing our editorial cartoons a lot of the time. The rest could be Fox News: The Magazine and it'd still even out on that account.;)
In Nova Scotia there's annual protests about tuition rates that, as you said, take on the atmosphere of a social event rather than a political one. Every year, months and months in advance, the universities in Halifax schedule a march on the provincial legislature to Demand They Change Things Right Now Rarr Rarr Rarr, etc.
Thing is? They deliberately schedule it for a time when the legislature is not in session. Every year since at least 2000 that they've marched, they've made sure they marched on an empty legislature, on a building full of little more than cleaning staff and certainly not anyone in a position to affect any change.
It's a very conscious thing; I'd talked to the organizers about it when I noticed the timing. (I went one year and figured folks just botched it; the next year I found out they scheduled that way on purpose.) Obviously I got mixed messages from them. One whispered that it was to avoid nastiness, because if the government was in session then the students would "obviously" riot or something in order to claim police brutality on Indymedia. A few others said that it didn't matter whether the building was occupied or not, because they were Raising Awareness About Important Issues by clogging up the downtown core on a weekday afternoon. (In other words, the usual "but but but just because!" bullshit.)
What got me? One went on about how it's actually better to march on a site where nobody with any authority will be listening. See, if they marched on an empty legislature, that turns the protest into a Symbolic Gesture Of Our Government Not Listening To Us! If they go there and nobody's home, then that means that nobody's listening to them, which affirms and reinforces their righteous outrage. And, as we all know, symbols are much more important than actually doing anything.
Stuff like that, coupled with the "we must represent every cause at once" atmosphere regarding recent protests, has long since led me to believe that demonstrations, at least on this side of the pond, are completely broken, meant as nothing more than fun, or both. The fact that a good chunk of those protestors can't even name their representative, never mind writing to or voting for them, just reinforces that.
(Postscript to the tuition protests: of course the government failed to give one half a damn about the whole thing, and hiked fees by 5-10% annually anyway. In the year I graduated, they changed the amount of the hike, reducing it by about 0.25%. The protest organizers screamed their triumph to the skies about how the power of the people yadda yadda, and actually claimed they'd lowered tuition instead of raising it by a few hundred bucks. The change, which had nothing to do with them, would have cut six dollars off my fee hike had I gone back to school in the fall. Way to go, you mighty warriors for equality.)
I'm not sure I buy into the idea that "single" is a "viewpoint," at least to the point where it (as you seem to imply; feel free to correct me) makes their work suspect or flawed.
If you start pulling out enough attributes to describe any career that involves more specialization than, say, entry-level retail, you're likely to find out they "disagree" with an enormous chunk of the population anyway. After a certain point it's kind of appropriate to say "yes, and so what?" If you gave one of those other 98% the same job (and, assuming, a similar set of technical and theoretical skills), I'd be surprised if the same type of reporting, or at least one which rhymed with it, didn't result. (I'd draw parallels with bloggers or something, but my thrown-object insurance has expired.)
The guy in TFA implies - well, less that than states - that at least at the level of the big networks there's some explicit pressure to produce that kind of reporting, either because it's safe politically or because it's entertaining or because it attracts advertisement viewing units or whatnot. Have you encountered that at all at the level you're at? If not, do you think it's because it's not there, or because there might be less pressure to do so, given smaller/more secure/etc audiences at regional or local levels?
I have generally noticed that the local newspapers tend to make me considerably less stabby than national newspapers, news television, etc., even taking into account the chunk of them that comes off the major newswires. Then again, I might have simply gotten lucky where I'm at; I dunno.
We need to accept that there is no solution to the african problem and let them deal with it.
I dunno, I'd rather people deal with the fact that there is no "the" African problem in the first place, but I suppose it probably is pretty comforting to treat an entire continent as a monoculture.
I know the AC here was posting in jest, but stuff like this has to annoy the hell out of the "gamers are bad!" crowd. Nothing like taking someone's neat little worldview and, to use an inappropriate metaphor given the subject, shooting it in both kneecaps; I can hear the cries of "this doesn't count!" from here. I kind of wonder if the low coverage this sort of thing gets is because people simply don't know about it, or because it would add uncomfortable nuance to the coverage of the whole video game issue.
That probably goes double for Gabe and Tycho. Didn't they butt heads with Thompson sometime in the last year already? I seem to recall them donating $10,000 to some charity in his name because he refused to...
Slashdot Mirror
For tenure and evaluation purposes, a lot of universities are, uh, somewhat hostile to anything resembling self-publication. Hell, they're hostile to non-academic publishing at all sometimes; there was a prospective hire eval at the university I'm at where the guy got shredded for publishing a children's book on the side.
Add to that a lot of the faculty who are going to be in a decision to Decide Your Career are still going to be the type that assume "online source = intrinsically bad" for the forseeable future, and the idea of starting one's own journal is a no-starter unless they pull off something legendary to pre-fill it with prestige first.
Course numbers vary wildly by school; the introductory courses at the school I'm at now are given two digit numbers, while the intro courses at the school I did my BA at were either 100 or 201 depending on the department. (My school's also kind of weird as the students talk about their courses strictly by number most of the time. I'm taking "507," not "Museum Studies;" I'm TAing "185," not "Ancient and Medieval Warfare.") They often change too, as a school tries to align its standards more with other ones or someone in the administration gets a creativity storm.
"Foobar 101" is basically a generic term for "introduction to foobar," these days. Everyone recognizes the number as such, even though a lot of universities don't use that system at all anymore. Higher numbers generally mean more advanced classes. Some schools number their lower-level courses with 100s and upper-level ones with 200s; some just change the first number each year to the point where you find doctoral courses starting with 8s and 9s.
Ahhh, so you're assuming that money spent on science is ipso facto not being spent on trying to solve the world's problems. That's at least as broken a line of reasoning.
This is probably a stupid question on my part no doubt, but why would we want cars to be made of harder materials than they are already?
Wouldn't a safer car be one that's so soft that even if it hits you it's like a pillow hitting you? Meaning the least hard possible is preferable?
You can afford to sacrifice strength in the skin of a car, but you can't so much when you're dealing with something like its engine which is less forgiving with that sort of thing. A car with all the give of Tupperware would be fine if that was the part that hit you, but that does make it easier for you to get force-fed a carburator, which would be somewhat inconvenient.
Because "science" is a monolithic bloc that can't walk and chew gum at the same time, right?
(Really, this sounds like people who were complaining about Pluto's demotion because "all those scientists should have been curing cancer instead.")
I certainly worry more about the effectiveness of the latter these days.
They certainly seemed obsessed enough with making me afraid of every other thing...
Show me some real live policies and I'll believe it; if that's what constitutes an alliance than Canada's clearly alone in the world.
Liberty is expensive, but it's cheaper than ever. There are many reasons to criticize the Iraq war, but the number of casualties is not one of them.
Unless you care enough to count the Iraqi casualties (though, of course, I am given to understand that they're terrorists, every one of 'em, and had it coming anyway).
Or, you know, the 29,000 reported American wounded. I'm sure they'd also love being referred to more or less as currency.
"Strong allies?" We're willing to engage in commerce with Cuba; that's a little different from treating them like a NATO member or something.
What does Tor get out of giving away free books? Are they planning to introduce a pay subscription or a store of some sort?
Mention on the front page of Slashdot and a bunch more attention/potential customers than they had two days ago?
Please do not confuse scientists with historians. The major difference is that in history, anyone can come up with a new thesis, and go select evidence that supports that thesis. In science, any person can come along, perform one experiment, and completely disprove a major scientific theory. Let me repeat that for the slow readers. Historians select evidence to fit their thesis and scientists attempt to explain all available evidence.
I think you're conflating those postmodernist, pseudointellectual bullshit-handwaving "historians" with the ones who actually do research. There's a little more to the discipline than the dolts who uncritically drank Foucault's kool-aid.
But that's alright. Everyone knows that these kinds of discussions only work when there's a steady supply of straw men to draw from, and it's not like disagreeing with claims like that are going to make people believe they're wrong.
Believe me, even though I don't watch all that much TV (I have been obsessing over BBC America's Kitchen Nightmares and Last Restaurant Standing) it has been fucking hell for me.
A writer's strike being "fucking hell" for you is indicative of problems with something other than the medium.
Has been handing them. Me English am much big good yes. :P
The real question I have is when al'Qaeda will discover that the US Army is handing them training material...
Considering the US Army has handing them training material in the form of the US Army for a few years, I assume they'd probably find it rather redundant.
They are not looking for passwords to nuclear reactor equipment - the clowns at the border probably wouldn't recognize such lists unless they were marked "passwords to nuclear reactor equipment." They're not even looking for bootlegged movies because they'd be detaining damn near everyone with a laptop.
No, they are pretty much just looking for naughty pix of little kids - that's it. And much as someone might find that offensive, sorry it just aint "dangerous."
Another thing it ain't is "gonna accomplish much of anything."
Anyone who really thinks some bored customs/security folks are going to be able to competently identify the contents of, say, a 500GB drive with two hundred thousand files on it is smoking something. What're they going to do? Haul the laptops off someplace and spend an afternoon checking every directory and making sure the files are really what they're named? People like the one in TFA aside, they're not likely to find much doing this unless they're willing to take their sweet time holding someone while they fine-tooth-comb their computer to do so. For anything resembling a reasonable-length search at customs, any contraband's either going to be glaringly obvious to a non-expert who's going through the motions, or it won't show up at all.
As one of the comments in the article says, this is just more fishing in the dark, like no-fly-lists or people demanding I explain why I'm wearing boots every time I fly in the winter.
Clearly that means that the telescope is actually meant to destroy the Earth in order to get it out of the way to fulfill its nefarious mission.
At which point the state gets to beat you about the head and shoulders with the "frivolous use of 911" hatchet.
Awesome!
I'm fairly convinced I lucked out with my local paper; it is mostly feed stuff, but the front page - hell, the bulk of the first section, there usually being five or six per paper - is usually local or provincial stuff, and generally well-done.
;)
In any case, there's at least the option of that sort of thing happening at that level, which is something.
And, well, we've got Bruce Mackinnon doing our editorial cartoons a lot of the time. The rest could be Fox News: The Magazine and it'd still even out on that account.
In Nova Scotia there's annual protests about tuition rates that, as you said, take on the atmosphere of a social event rather than a political one. Every year, months and months in advance, the universities in Halifax schedule a march on the provincial legislature to Demand They Change Things Right Now Rarr Rarr Rarr, etc.
Thing is? They deliberately schedule it for a time when the legislature is not in session. Every year since at least 2000 that they've marched, they've made sure they marched on an empty legislature, on a building full of little more than cleaning staff and certainly not anyone in a position to affect any change.
It's a very conscious thing; I'd talked to the organizers about it when I noticed the timing. (I went one year and figured folks just botched it; the next year I found out they scheduled that way on purpose.) Obviously I got mixed messages from them. One whispered that it was to avoid nastiness, because if the government was in session then the students would "obviously" riot or something in order to claim police brutality on Indymedia. A few others said that it didn't matter whether the building was occupied or not, because they were Raising Awareness About Important Issues by clogging up the downtown core on a weekday afternoon. (In other words, the usual "but but but just because!" bullshit.)
What got me? One went on about how it's actually better to march on a site where nobody with any authority will be listening. See, if they marched on an empty legislature, that turns the protest into a Symbolic Gesture Of Our Government Not Listening To Us! If they go there and nobody's home, then that means that nobody's listening to them, which affirms and reinforces their righteous outrage. And, as we all know, symbols are much more important than actually doing anything.
Stuff like that, coupled with the "we must represent every cause at once" atmosphere regarding recent protests, has long since led me to believe that demonstrations, at least on this side of the pond, are completely broken, meant as nothing more than fun, or both. The fact that a good chunk of those protestors can't even name their representative, never mind writing to or voting for them, just reinforces that.
(Postscript to the tuition protests: of course the government failed to give one half a damn about the whole thing, and hiked fees by 5-10% annually anyway. In the year I graduated, they changed the amount of the hike, reducing it by about 0.25%. The protest organizers screamed their triumph to the skies about how the power of the people yadda yadda, and actually claimed they'd lowered tuition instead of raising it by a few hundred bucks. The change, which had nothing to do with them, would have cut six dollars off my fee hike had I gone back to school in the fall. Way to go, you mighty warriors for equality.)
I'm not sure I buy into the idea that "single" is a "viewpoint," at least to the point where it (as you seem to imply; feel free to correct me) makes their work suspect or flawed.
If you start pulling out enough attributes to describe any career that involves more specialization than, say, entry-level retail, you're likely to find out they "disagree" with an enormous chunk of the population anyway. After a certain point it's kind of appropriate to say "yes, and so what?" If you gave one of those other 98% the same job (and, assuming, a similar set of technical and theoretical skills), I'd be surprised if the same type of reporting, or at least one which rhymed with it, didn't result. (I'd draw parallels with bloggers or something, but my thrown-object insurance has expired.)
The guy in TFA implies - well, less that than states - that at least at the level of the big networks there's some explicit pressure to produce that kind of reporting, either because it's safe politically or because it's entertaining or because it attracts advertisement viewing units or whatnot. Have you encountered that at all at the level you're at? If not, do you think it's because it's not there, or because there might be less pressure to do so, given smaller/more secure/etc audiences at regional or local levels?
I have generally noticed that the local newspapers tend to make me considerably less stabby than national newspapers, news television, etc., even taking into account the chunk of them that comes off the major newswires. Then again, I might have simply gotten lucky where I'm at; I dunno.
We need to accept that there is no solution to the african problem and let them deal with it.
I dunno, I'd rather people deal with the fact that there is no "the" African problem in the first place, but I suppose it probably is pretty comforting to treat an entire continent as a monoculture.
I know the AC here was posting in jest, but stuff like this has to annoy the hell out of the "gamers are bad!" crowd. Nothing like taking someone's neat little worldview and, to use an inappropriate metaphor given the subject, shooting it in both kneecaps; I can hear the cries of "this doesn't count!" from here. I kind of wonder if the low coverage this sort of thing gets is because people simply don't know about it, or because it would add uncomfortable nuance to the coverage of the whole video game issue.
That probably goes double for Gabe and Tycho. Didn't they butt heads with Thompson sometime in the last year already? I seem to recall them donating $10,000 to some charity in his name because he refused to...
I suppose no one is very good at following their own religion, eh?
:P
WWJD? JWRTFM.