I think perhaps this is not a case of either-or, but rather a sliding scale. Mildly affected kids may not need the full range of specialised services provided by schools but may instead only need more patience and understanding from their teachers. In a similar situation, my sister is completely deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other, but she operates just about normally and only sometimes will she need things repeated or said a little louder for her. Invariably, when informed of her minor problem teachers would either ignore her needs or else treat her like she was retarded. She had more than one teacher ask her "DOO... YOOU... UUNDDERRR-STAAAND MEEE?". One school refused to have her as a student at all (because they "couldn't provide disability services") until my parents insisted they meet her face to face and actually find out that she was not, in fact, severely disabled.
Being a former protestant, myself, I can tell you that it's not all protestants (and not just protestants). It's a select group of nutso fundamentalists who interpret the bible literally and which can be of either catholic of protestant stripes. Most Christians I know simply don't care about how life came into being - whatever the mechanism it's "Part of God's plan". Fair enough. The problem is with the people who believe that science is a threat to their faulty faith that cannot withstand intellectual challenge.
While that is true, what about rights such as a right to education? It's a recognised fundamental human right but it's effects are long-term, not immediate; it takes time for the effects of that depredation to manifest. The ramifications of privacy violation can be just as severe: back in the day if you were 'outed' as gay you'd get the shit beaten out of you - it happened to people I know.
This is not just a word used in the furry fandom (although it is, sfaik) - it is also used by mainstream TG people as an alternative to explicitly gendered pronouns (also 'shi'). I think most people, though, are satisfied with the slightly-not-quite-correct-English 'they'.
I dispute that the original Deus Ex lacked a good sound track. The music was created for the game and well reflects the mood the game designers were trying to convey. Also, if you look inside some of the track data there are some subversive narky comments from the composer.
To answer your question, I'd say most people would have modded you down on the use of all capitals rather than content. Capitals are like YELLING and yelling never helps you make your point. Your ranty response also doesn't help matters, though.
Look: Large pharmaceutical companies used monkeys to make vaccines... & DOUBTLESS, some simians that were infected w/ the then called HTLV-III RETROVIRUS (OTHERWISE NOW KNOWN AS HIV)
Try again:
"Pharmaceutical companies used monkeys to make vaccines... and doubtless, some simians that were infected with the then called HTLV-III retrovirus (otherwise known as HIV)"
See? Now it sounds more like part of the considered argument you no doubt intended it to be and less like timecube.
Fascinatingly, this is an excellent example of Wikipedia's power to educate, if people are given access to niche information. My granddad was a mason and never talked about it much - I wanted to know more about something that he spent a great deal of his life working for so I read the wikipedia article on it. I found some interesting stuff about the lodges and links to various other freemason groups like the order of the eastern star and shriners. Guess what some of their biggest projects are? Charity work. Thousands of people around he world doing charitable work over hundreds of years... not notable compared to an upstart webcomic charity that happens to be run by gamers?
Your lack of knowledge about what freemasons do and stand for could be easily rectified by a well-written wiki article.
I'm friends with a designer from the Australian office and I talked with him about the development of Bioshock since it was made public (at least about the bits he could tell me before release). Believe me when I say I wanted this game - I wanted it bad, 'cus it looked cool, I'd followed it since the beginning and I wanted to support my friend's hard work.
However, the moment I heard it had activation/Securerom/crap I refused to touch it. it's a matter of principle.
I used to pay for games back in the day when games were interesting and worthwhile. I could just as easily have pirated them, but I chose to do the right thing. Then, games like HL2 started coming out - games that defacto treated loyal customers like criminals. The only people who were punished were those who actually bought the product.
In the interest of fairness, as my designer friend told me, it's not the developers who want DRM and activation (most hate it) it's the publishers. Developers have to listen to their audience to make marketable games; publishers are completely out of touch.
My friends tell me that publishers aren't going to change no matter what I do, so I may as well not fight it. That's bullshit. I vote with my dollars and urge other people to do the same.
So I didn't buy Bioshock and I didn't buy HL2. I waited until my boyfriend finished playing them, then borrowed his copy. I'm not an impulsive teenager anymore - I can wait a few months for the next shiny new thing.
I feel it is important to point out that Albert Einstein was not religious in any way shape or form. Despite numerous theists' attempts to twist the meaning of his words (such as "God does not play dice"), he was adamant throughout his life that he did not believe in any god.
I wonder how much money financial institutions and law enforcement agencies spend following up on people burned by unbelievable scams. All sympathy to people who were swindled by seemingly legitimate superfund schemes, but a fool and his money is soon parted.
The GP said "Normal People" - vegetarianism and veganism are, for most of the world, unusual. I'm not going to enter into the debate as to whether they are desirable modes of living or not.
I think the real question we should be asking wrt to diet is 'How can we make farming and agriculture a green process?'
Oddly, I rather like CAD - it's another of my hobbies next to literature and music.:)
A student who shows that they have already achieved a working level of 'well-roundedness' can have some/most requirements waived and be encouraged to do more engineering/physics/whatever coursework. I think a reasonably fair way of determining what engineering students are ahead of the curve (it seems like you were one of these) and which ones need remediation can be established.
Fair enough in principle, but how would you propose to assess someone's ability to think critically, or work in groups?
Something else...most college students have no idea what is 'necessary for their personal development' maybe you were different, but I had SEVERAL friends in engineering (i was for a time) who needed alot of guidance. They were in the vast majority.
This has not been my experience, but I agree that some students are more in need of personal development than others. Perhaps humanities courses will help these students. Some kind of profiling like you suggested might help these students select courses to strengthen areas in which they are deficient.
I think the greatest advantage a humanities course might bestow upon an engineering student is the ability to write. I have seen far more students and professionals who cannot write than who cannot do the technical aspect of their work.
Thank you for the good discussion; I have enjoyed this debate immensely.
All in all, I'm probably biased:P I've found each of those subjects necessary to master;)
Perhaps, for you, that's not the case:P
I think you're dead-on the money. A lot of this debate seems to stem from one's personal experience acting as a guide to what is 'necessary'. I can say without hestitation that the (yes, it was bullshit) project management course I did has actually been more useful to me than economics because my superiors love gantt charts but retain an IP lawyer and accountant. No two careers will be the same.
The thing to take away from the discussion is that everyone's experience will be different. The question becomes how much guidence (enforced or otherwise) should be given to students to encourage developing non-core skills.
An optional 2 month course would be a valuable resource for interested engineering students, but that strikes me as something a technical or community college (we call it Tafe and CIT over here) should be teaching.
In another thread in this article I describe a 'professional development' elective an engineer might choose to take which would include these sorts of topics. I feel that the three modules (almost half a year!) or study I was mandated to do in accounting, economics, law and project management was too much.
I don't agree that I've changed my argument. I don't agree that you've met my criticisms. Most certainly people do need to be well-rounded and broadly educated; I have not said differently. But university is not necessarily the place for your personal development to happen. I refer you to my opening line: "I dispute the assertion that university study in the hard sciences must include arts components." Whether for future management or personal development, these skills can be acquired by those who want them when they need them. And yes, forcing is the issue here - if you make it a -requirement- for an engineer to do humanities electives then he or she/must/ do them to complete the degree.
A broad technical education has, in my experience, been far more valuable to me.
When it comes to education I am very much pro-choice. Let the student elect what modules he or she believes is necessary for their personal development and then stand or fall on that decision.
I would encourage syllabus designers to include a 'professional development' course geared to engineers which covers the basics of project management, engineering ethics and budgetting and whatnot. I would encourage those who feel it is valuable, or those who feel their professional skills are lacking, to take it.
Also, why is working with your hands (or head) on technical tasks somehow inferior to being on the "next level" (ie. a manager)? Not all engineers want to be a manager - I certainly don't. Enlightened businesses realise that a management track isn't the career path for all of us. I know many senior engineers of great technical skill and respect, with their own office and virtually no management responsibility.
And no, I'm not a CAD monkey. I have a PhD in engineering and a career in robotics research. I design and build my robots with my own hands and I write peer-reviewed research papers. It doesn't feel like a 'shit' job to me, and I didn't need a humanities elective to come to that conclusion.
If I was a manager then I would surmise that I would need skills in accounting for exactly that purpose. As an engineer, my only concern is that the components and processes I specify achieve the required performance within the budgeted figure. Yes, I need to stay within my budget. No, I do not need any formal accounting knowledge to do this.
If I ever decide to break into management then I might use my accounting knowledge, but otherwise it is useless to me. It seems far more sensible to allow students who want to do management to elect to take an engineering management course, and let the rest of us elect to do something we think will be more aligned with our chosen specialty.
My analogies are intentionally extreme - hyperbole, if you will. Don't confuse a sense of humour for rigorous argument.
I don't agree that I need a course in group dynamics to interact with my collegues in a professional environment. Many of the technical staff who do not have university degrees are still able to work together, without the benefit of a humanities education. Do you really believe that people need to be taught how to talk to each other and get along? Humans have been getting along with each other for thousands of years before someone had the bright spark idea of charging for a course in it.
Core life-skills like getting along in groups and being able to write and critique effectively are the kinds of things that one learns (or should learn) in grade school. If you have not learned such critical abilities by university then I'd say perhaps you need more personal development before attending university.
Certainly, let the people who desire to improve such skills in humanities fields do so - I'm all in favour of humanities electives for those who elect to take them. However, I am not in favour of forcing people to take courses unrelated to their field of study.
Slashdot Mirror
I think perhaps this is not a case of either-or, but rather a sliding scale. Mildly affected kids may not need the full range of specialised services provided by schools but may instead only need more patience and understanding from their teachers. In a similar situation, my sister is completely deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other, but she operates just about normally and only sometimes will she need things repeated or said a little louder for her. Invariably, when informed of her minor problem teachers would either ignore her needs or else treat her like she was retarded. She had more than one teacher ask her "DOO... YOOU... UUNDDERRR-STAAAND MEEE?". One school refused to have her as a student at all (because they "couldn't provide disability services") until my parents insisted they meet her face to face and actually find out that she was not, in fact, severely disabled.
Being a former protestant, myself, I can tell you that it's not all protestants (and not just protestants). It's a select group of nutso fundamentalists who interpret the bible literally and which can be of either catholic of protestant stripes. Most Christians I know simply don't care about how life came into being - whatever the mechanism it's "Part of God's plan". Fair enough. The problem is with the people who believe that science is a threat to their faulty faith that cannot withstand intellectual challenge.
Why would anyone elect him or her if they had any doubts as to his or her loyalty?
While that is true, what about rights such as a right to education? It's a recognised fundamental human right but it's effects are long-term, not immediate; it takes time for the effects of that depredation to manifest. The ramifications of privacy violation can be just as severe: back in the day if you were 'outed' as gay you'd get the shit beaten out of you - it happened to people I know.
Are you saying your privacy isn't a human rights issue? I see no distinction between a right to privacy and any other fundamental human right.
This is not just a word used in the furry fandom (although it is, sfaik) - it is also used by mainstream TG people as an alternative to explicitly gendered pronouns (also 'shi'). I think most people, though, are satisfied with the slightly-not-quite-correct-English 'they'.
It's doing science and it's still alive.
So what you're saying is that we have enough XP to level up?
It's not too late/if we're brave/Myanmar/Can still be shaved.
I dispute that the original Deus Ex lacked a good sound track. The music was created for the game and well reflects the mood the game designers were trying to convey. Also, if you look inside some of the track data there are some subversive narky comments from the composer.
Look: Large pharmaceutical companies used monkeys to make vaccines... & DOUBTLESS, some simians that were infected w/ the then called HTLV-III RETROVIRUS (OTHERWISE NOW KNOWN AS HIV)
Try again:
"Pharmaceutical companies used monkeys to make vaccines... and doubtless, some simians that were infected with the then called HTLV-III retrovirus (otherwise known as HIV)"
See? Now it sounds more like part of the considered argument you no doubt intended it to be and less like timecube.
Fascinatingly, this is an excellent example of Wikipedia's power to educate, if people are given access to niche information. My granddad was a mason and never talked about it much - I wanted to know more about something that he spent a great deal of his life working for so I read the wikipedia article on it. I found some interesting stuff about the lodges and links to various other freemason groups like the order of the eastern star and shriners. Guess what some of their biggest projects are? Charity work. Thousands of people around he world doing charitable work over hundreds of years... not notable compared to an upstart webcomic charity that happens to be run by gamers? Your lack of knowledge about what freemasons do and stand for could be easily rectified by a well-written wiki article.
It should play a special fanfare when you flip them onto their backs and attack their weakspots for MASSIVE DAMAGE.
Yes - it's about 12 parsecs from Gitmo, but I have a ship that can get you there in less than that.
I'm friends with a designer from the Australian office and I talked with him about the development of Bioshock since it was made public (at least about the bits he could tell me before release). Believe me when I say I wanted this game - I wanted it bad, 'cus it looked cool, I'd followed it since the beginning and I wanted to support my friend's hard work.
However, the moment I heard it had activation/Securerom/crap I refused to touch it. it's a matter of principle.
I used to pay for games back in the day when games were interesting and worthwhile. I could just as easily have pirated them, but I chose to do the right thing. Then, games like HL2 started coming out - games that defacto treated loyal customers like criminals. The only people who were punished were those who actually bought the product.
In the interest of fairness, as my designer friend told me, it's not the developers who want DRM and activation (most hate it) it's the publishers. Developers have to listen to their audience to make marketable games; publishers are completely out of touch.
My friends tell me that publishers aren't going to change no matter what I do, so I may as well not fight it. That's bullshit. I vote with my dollars and urge other people to do the same.
So I didn't buy Bioshock and I didn't buy HL2. I waited until my boyfriend finished playing them, then borrowed his copy. I'm not an impulsive teenager anymore - I can wait a few months for the next shiny new thing.
I feel it is important to point out that Albert Einstein was not religious in any way shape or form. Despite numerous theists' attempts to twist the meaning of his words (such as "God does not play dice"), he was adamant throughout his life that he did not believe in any god.
I wonder how much money financial institutions and law enforcement agencies spend following up on people burned by unbelievable scams. All sympathy to people who were swindled by seemingly legitimate superfund schemes, but a fool and his money is soon parted.
I think the real question we should be asking wrt to diet is 'How can we make farming and agriculture a green process?'
She kinna' doo it cap'n - it dinna' ha' the powah! At least now Scotty will be with us everywhere, up there, in the atmosphere.
A student who shows that they have already achieved a working level of 'well-roundedness' can have some/most requirements waived and be encouraged to do more engineering/physics/whatever coursework. I think a reasonably fair way of determining what engineering students are ahead of the curve (it seems like you were one of these) and which ones need remediation can be established.
Fair enough in principle, but how would you propose to assess someone's ability to think critically, or work in groups?
Something else...most college students have no idea what is 'necessary for their personal development' maybe you were different, but I had SEVERAL friends in engineering (i was for a time) who needed alot of guidance. They were in the vast majority.
This has not been my experience, but I agree that some students are more in need of personal development than others. Perhaps humanities courses will help these students. Some kind of profiling like you suggested might help these students select courses to strengthen areas in which they are deficient.
I think the greatest advantage a humanities course might bestow upon an engineering student is the ability to write. I have seen far more students and professionals who cannot write than who cannot do the technical aspect of their work.
Thank you for the good discussion; I have enjoyed this debate immensely.
All in all, I'm probably biased :P I've found each of those subjects necessary to master ;)
Perhaps, for you, that's not the case :P
I think you're dead-on the money. A lot of this debate seems to stem from one's personal experience acting as a guide to what is 'necessary'. I can say without hestitation that the (yes, it was bullshit) project management course I did has actually been more useful to me than economics because my superiors love gantt charts but retain an IP lawyer and accountant. No two careers will be the same.
The thing to take away from the discussion is that everyone's experience will be different. The question becomes how much guidence (enforced or otherwise) should be given to students to encourage developing non-core skills.
In another thread in this article I describe a 'professional development' elective an engineer might choose to take which would include these sorts of topics. I feel that the three modules (almost half a year!) or study I was mandated to do in accounting, economics, law and project management was too much.
A broad technical education has, in my experience, been far more valuable to me.
When it comes to education I am very much pro-choice. Let the student elect what modules he or she believes is necessary for their personal development and then stand or fall on that decision.
I would encourage syllabus designers to include a 'professional development' course geared to engineers which covers the basics of project management, engineering ethics and budgetting and whatnot. I would encourage those who feel it is valuable, or those who feel their professional skills are lacking, to take it.
Also, why is working with your hands (or head) on technical tasks somehow inferior to being on the "next level" (ie. a manager)? Not all engineers want to be a manager - I certainly don't. Enlightened businesses realise that a management track isn't the career path for all of us. I know many senior engineers of great technical skill and respect, with their own office and virtually no management responsibility.
And no, I'm not a CAD monkey. I have a PhD in engineering and a career in robotics research. I design and build my robots with my own hands and I write peer-reviewed research papers. It doesn't feel like a 'shit' job to me, and I didn't need a humanities elective to come to that conclusion.
If I ever decide to break into management then I might use my accounting knowledge, but otherwise it is useless to me. It seems far more sensible to allow students who want to do management to elect to take an engineering management course, and let the rest of us elect to do something we think will be more aligned with our chosen specialty.
I don't agree that I need a course in group dynamics to interact with my collegues in a professional environment. Many of the technical staff who do not have university degrees are still able to work together, without the benefit of a humanities education. Do you really believe that people need to be taught how to talk to each other and get along? Humans have been getting along with each other for thousands of years before someone had the bright spark idea of charging for a course in it.
Core life-skills like getting along in groups and being able to write and critique effectively are the kinds of things that one learns (or should learn) in grade school. If you have not learned such critical abilities by university then I'd say perhaps you need more personal development before attending university.
Certainly, let the people who desire to improve such skills in humanities fields do so - I'm all in favour of humanities electives for those who elect to take them. However, I am not in favour of forcing people to take courses unrelated to their field of study.