To some extent, you're right. However, going into a debate with someone with the notion that you have the "right" definition will prevent you from understanding what the other one is trying to say. I've found it far more helpful to first find out how what the other one is saying fits into my own definitions. I can then argue far more effectively, and be a lot more convincing. Regardless of whether the other person used a wrong definition to begin with.;)
Funny thing is that this latest development so incensed Rogan that he quit the group's board. That should tell you something about how ludicrous this thing is.
I guess my main beef with wanting just materials to be presented is that everything we say is biased. At some point, we make a choice regarding what we present, and quite frequently, this is based on something other than a completely rational decision. As such, it is too easy to claim "bias". I find it easier to just identify the bias, filter it out, then move on. But yes, I'll be happy to agree to disagree.
Specifically, I consider promoting a concept to be the opposite of pressure to reduce.
Only if you consider these two concepts to be the only possibilities. I'd rather think that there are more options than just promote or dismiss objective material. I believe that we both agree on this.:)
If tenure cannot stand up to an "I don't like this professor" list, then it needs a serious overhaul.
This might be true if this would be just an "I don't like this professor list". As I mentioned elsewhere though, I strongly suspect that this is much more than just such a list. Considering some of the bills discussed by state legislatures, I think that the purpose of this is the collection of evidence to be used when advocating the necessity of laws enforcing political parity in schools.
Straight from the article:
"The Web site of the Bruin Alumni Association also includes a "Dirty Thirty" list of professors considered by the group to be the most extreme left-wing members of the UCLA faculty, as well as profiles on their political activities and writings." That exact name does not appear on the site anymore, but a brief perousing of the site and the profiles makes it quite clear who the target is: professors deemed extreme left-wing by Andrew Jones. It's also quite clear that a professor more in the vein of Michael Savage or Limbaugh would be mentioned with praise as standing up to "an unholy alliance between anti-war professors, radical Muslim students, and a pliant administration".
I sure hope so. I'd much rather make a stink about it before it happens rather than after though. Something about facts on the ground and stuff like that.:)
Last I checked, ID *was* being taught as a science, even if only briefly. The reason it is not taught anymore is because people threw up a stink about it. Remember - "the price of democracy is eternal vigilance".
Get the professors off of the soapboxes and back to teaching.
Yes, because the reason kids don't learn has nothing to do with the attitude that it is uncool to study and be smart. There are far more fundamental problems at work here than professors using their class time as soap boxes.
Are you one of those people who also cried they were going to move to Canada if Bush won the election?
No. I was considering moving to Europe - quite shocking, considering the nuttiness that's going on there. Then I realized that Bush only has three more years to go, and that one of the hallmarks of Democracy is that one person can do little to change how things go. This is different though - this is a large majority of people fucking with my future and the future of my kids.
You don't need to go elsewhere. Just start supporting vouchers.
Good point. Unfortunately, vouchers seem to have stalled, thanks to the teachers union. Woohoo. Shame I can't dismantle the teachers' union on my own.
As for the "blacklist", it's a free country, and they can do what they want.
Very true. But you're forgetting the context in which this is taking place. This stunt is about as transparent as it gets. See the link posted by Doormat in this thread.
It's no surprise the profs are playing the "poor victim" card - why can't they just stand up and being proud of their beliefs?
If you'd read the statements of the professors involved instead of just assuming what they're saying, you might be surprised to find out that that's exactly the stance they're displaying. Most of them know that they're not exactly mainstream, and are quite proud of it.
Just discarding the idea that students are discriminated against because of their political views (which have nothing to do with class) is naive, and reeks of some bias on your side.
You're right, I have not offered any evidence that people are not being discriminated against based on their political beliefs. That's because no one has yet offered any evidence other than "My grades are too low! Bias! Waah!" in support of the discrimination. Do you also expect me to prove the non-existence of white crows before continuing this discussion?
As long as they're fair, and include discrimination from all sides, not just the left, I think it's a good idea.
You seem to not have read the article:
"The Web site of the Bruin Alumni Association also includes a "Dirty Thirty" list of professors considered by the group to be the most extreme left-wing members of the UCLA faculty, as well as profiles on their political activities and writings."
There is no similar "Dirty Thirty" list for extreme right-wing professors.
Thanks for the link - that's exactly what I was referring to. I'd be less worried about the UCLA stunt if it wouldn't be in the context of this bill being discussed.
I know this is not really relevant to the discussion of student literacy, but there's a really simple way to make sure that you'll never get bitten by this: pay your credit card in full every month. I never understood people who think that having a 10000 dollar credit limit means that they have another 10K to spend in a month. And if you need credit cards to pay for emergencies, you have a whole different set of problems that have nothing to do with credit card rates.
I think we're talking political theory versus practical reality here.:) It's amazing how often discussions revolve around figuring out what definitions the other person uses.
I'd hope so. I strongly suspect though that what will folllow will merely be a discussion on how to deal with these "outed" professors. And I also suspect that this discussion will revolve around what laws should passed to protect the poor republicans who were victims of such odious and threatening discrimination.
School is *supposed* to be an unbiased presentation of the material to allow the students to grasp concepts and make up their own minds on what the facts and concepts mean.
No. This is what original sources are for. Schools, and especially universities, are supposed to expose a student to new ideas and give them an environment in which it is possible to explore them. Schools are not merely places where stuff is "presented". Schools are places where you learn - and you're only gonna learn if you see something new. Almost by definition, new stuff will be objectionable to some, and as a result of this, there needs to be some protection for professors so that they can present their new stuff without political interference. This is what tenure is for. And this stunt is exactly designed to remove this protection.
Saying schools are "supposed to" promote "objectionable content" is something entirely different.
You're right. And since I didn't mention anything like it, I don't even understand how this is relevant.
Students have a right to know whether a professor will choose to "color" the presentation of the material with a personal bias.
True. When I went to class, I knew within the first week whether the professor had the habit of coloring material with too much personal bias. I then still had plenty of time to change course. Or are you trying to say that students are too incompetent to determine this on their own? Ah, nevermind...
Conservatives stand for freedom, liberty, individual responsibility, honest prosperity, and peace.
That's news to me. I always thought that conservatives stood for the status quo (hence the interesting qualification of old-school communists in Russia as "conservatives"). There's also conservative as in risk-averse, though I think that this applies to nearly all professional politicians, and is therefore pretty useless in distinguishing them.
While your list of attributes is very commendable, I highly doubt that there is any political group actually follows them. Sorry, I've become a bit of a cynic. What with the corruption, nepotism, fascist tendencies and just plain demagoguery of the current government (executive as well as legislative).
Someone else in this thread made an interesting distinction between capitalism and mercantilism. Capitalism is an economic theory that requires some fairly strict assumptions to work properly. Mercantilism is its middle-age precursor - the pursuit of money without any restriction. It seems to me that the US looks much more like the mercantilistic city states of Italy in the middle ages than the capitalistic society first sketched out by Adam Smith. Too bad though that the powers that be couldn't care less about this - since they are the ones profiting from the current situation.
I don't understand. Do you consider the actions Andrew Jones to be "criticism"? Please explain to me how bounties for outing "radical professors" is constructive criticism, or just plain criticism. Cuz to me, it simply smells of someone not being happy with what someone else told him, and decides to pressure that someone into silence. There is no debate, there is no exchange of ideas, just plain political arm twisting. This is not about furthering academic debate; it's about imposing political beliefs.
Because you do know what this is going for, right? This is trying to establish that there is pervasive left-wing brainwashing going on in schools. Then Jones can look to Congress to rectify this problem by passing a law that forces all classes and professors to not discriminate against other political (i.e., right-wing) views. The end-result will be that everyone with a bad grade in a class will argue that they got that grade due to political discrimination, and professors will be forced to teach in the most inoffensive fashion possible.
Between this and the insistence of people to teach ID as though it is a science, the future looks grim for US education. If I ever have kids, I can guarantee you that they won't go to school in the US. Because I refuse to sabotage their competitive future in the world just to satisfy some right-wing nutjobs who have no idea what real discrimination (or debate) is.
This is not a critique of professors. This is strictly the creation of a list of shame to pressure schools to micromanage the teachings of professors. Specifically, it is designed to pressure professors to teach the least objectionable content possible - exactly the contrary of what schools are supposed to do.
Don't like your school? Transfer. There is no monopoly on education. But accept that going to a crackpot school just to hear crackpot theories will impact your future earnings.
While I do not disagree with your basic premise, I think that your specific examples are badly chosen. The better survival rate in the Falkland War was most likely due to the significant advances in medical technology that occured between 1965 and 1982.
You obviously do not understand why you get modded down. What you did is called plagiarism, and a very good reason to get a black mark on your record. Now if you would properly reference the post you're quoting, you'd be all good. You might come across as unable to formulate original thoughts, but at least you'd still be honest. Right now, you're nothing but a plagiarizing karma whore.
Open Source software threatens proprietary software by making software in general into a commodity. Since that means that the margins shrink drastically on the product, software companies are deathly afraid of open-source. And the cheapest way to fight it is to make it practically illegal - not by passing actual laws against open-source (I'm sure most countries will consider this some type of free speech impediment), but by creating so many patents and patent-lawsuits that only corporations can afford to create and maintain software.
Most of the time, it's not even something clever. Think one-click checkout patent. This is not new technology leading to better business, this is a business method done with existing software. Another advantage - you can sue people who try a similar business method but with different technology. You might not win, but you can guarantee that it won't get thrown out of court. And against small competitors, this means instant win.
I would agree with you that it's not possible to simply look at someone's writing and tell whether they are brilliant or merely smart. However, the post in question had a fairly telltale combination of eye-brow raising statements (IQ of 190? Sure...) and massive inferiority complex (no one ever listens to me! They don't like me!).
Furthermore, I'm on my third language with English. I've seen the mistakes I make in English, and I've seen the mistakes other people make who don't have English as a first language. The mistakes generally revolve around grammatical constructs and idioms: the end would be undoubtedly English, but with a structure that borrows heavily from the native language, or with idioms that are understandable, but not used (mother tongue, native tongue, native language, etc). The original post has none of that. It has, however, a lot of tired cliches that are associated with IQ: "insatiable desire to read", etc.
All of this leads to me agree with the idea that the examples mentioned are not indicative of someone who has experienced racism, but of someone who has major attitude problems. I know I wouldn't want to work with him. And that's simply judging him on one post.
A simpler, but less convenient, solution is to add a digit to the password, i.e. you start with S3cr3t*0, then go to S3cr3t*1, etc. and after Secret*9 you go back to S*cret*0. If you change all your passwords regularly in a single password change session, then all passwords are always in sync on their last digit, so you only have to remember one common changing digit for all your accounts.
Sounds like a great idea. Except my company's IT department decided that for even more, no more than 3 characters could match between the old and the new password. So now I'm forced to create 8+ character passwords that have less than 4 characters in common with the previous one - which means that they actually reduced the password space! Not only that, but creating good mnemonics is not easy. Letters tend to repeat in those. Which means that I'm currently using the most abysmal password creation system ever - patterns on the keyboard. It's the only way I can guarantee that I can remember my password, make it long enough and have it fit into the password policy.
No. He he made the right choice. The dual-core CPUs smoke the single-core, high-hertz CPUs when it comes to tasks that can be properly threaded or broken into tasks. Like, I don't know, media applications. This guy knew what he was doing, and didn't go for the silly "My Gigahurtz is bigger than your Gigahurtz!"
Slashdot Mirror
Missing tag to my previous post: .
To some extent, you're right. However, going into a debate with someone with the notion that you have the "right" definition will prevent you from understanding what the other one is trying to say. I've found it far more helpful to first find out how what the other one is saying fits into my own definitions. I can then argue far more effectively, and be a lot more convincing. Regardless of whether the other person used a wrong definition to begin with. ;)
Funny thing is that this latest development so incensed Rogan that he quit the group's board. That should tell you something about how ludicrous this thing is.
Specifically, I consider promoting a concept to be the opposite of pressure to reduce.
Only if you consider these two concepts to be the only possibilities. I'd rather think that there are more options than just promote or dismiss objective material. I believe that we both agree on this. :)
If tenure cannot stand up to an "I don't like this professor" list, then it needs a serious overhaul.
This might be true if this would be just an "I don't like this professor list". As I mentioned elsewhere though, I strongly suspect that this is much more than just such a list. Considering some of the bills discussed by state legislatures, I think that the purpose of this is the collection of evidence to be used when advocating the necessity of laws enforcing political parity in schools.
Straight from the article: "The Web site of the Bruin Alumni Association also includes a "Dirty Thirty" list of professors considered by the group to be the most extreme left-wing members of the UCLA faculty, as well as profiles on their political activities and writings." That exact name does not appear on the site anymore, but a brief perousing of the site and the profiles makes it quite clear who the target is: professors deemed extreme left-wing by Andrew Jones. It's also quite clear that a professor more in the vein of Michael Savage or Limbaugh would be mentioned with praise as standing up to "an unholy alliance between anti-war professors, radical Muslim students, and a pliant administration".
Cuz God said so.
I sure hope so. I'd much rather make a stink about it before it happens rather than after though. Something about facts on the ground and stuff like that. :)
Get the professors off of the soapboxes and back to teaching.
Yes, because the reason kids don't learn has nothing to do with the attitude that it is uncool to study and be smart. There are far more fundamental problems at work here than professors using their class time as soap boxes.
Are you one of those people who also cried they were going to move to Canada if Bush won the election?
No. I was considering moving to Europe - quite shocking, considering the nuttiness that's going on there. Then I realized that Bush only has three more years to go, and that one of the hallmarks of Democracy is that one person can do little to change how things go. This is different though - this is a large majority of people fucking with my future and the future of my kids.
Good point. Unfortunately, vouchers seem to have stalled, thanks to the teachers union. Woohoo. Shame I can't dismantle the teachers' union on my own.
As for the "blacklist", it's a free country, and they can do what they want.
Very true. But you're forgetting the context in which this is taking place. This stunt is about as transparent as it gets. See the link posted by Doormat in this thread.
It's no surprise the profs are playing the "poor victim" card - why can't they just stand up and being proud of their beliefs?
If you'd read the statements of the professors involved instead of just assuming what they're saying, you might be surprised to find out that that's exactly the stance they're displaying. Most of them know that they're not exactly mainstream, and are quite proud of it.
Just discarding the idea that students are discriminated against because of their political views (which have nothing to do with class) is naive, and reeks of some bias on your side.
You're right, I have not offered any evidence that people are not being discriminated against based on their political beliefs. That's because no one has yet offered any evidence other than "My grades are too low! Bias! Waah!" in support of the discrimination. Do you also expect me to prove the non-existence of white crows before continuing this discussion?
As long as they're fair, and include discrimination from all sides, not just the left, I think it's a good idea.
You seem to not have read the article: "The Web site of the Bruin Alumni Association also includes a "Dirty Thirty" list of professors considered by the group to be the most extreme left-wing members of the UCLA faculty, as well as profiles on their political activities and writings."
There is no similar "Dirty Thirty" list for extreme right-wing professors.
Thanks for the link - that's exactly what I was referring to. I'd be less worried about the UCLA stunt if it wouldn't be in the context of this bill being discussed.
I know this is not really relevant to the discussion of student literacy, but there's a really simple way to make sure that you'll never get bitten by this: pay your credit card in full every month. I never understood people who think that having a 10000 dollar credit limit means that they have another 10K to spend in a month. And if you need credit cards to pay for emergencies, you have a whole different set of problems that have nothing to do with credit card rates.
I think we're talking political theory versus practical reality here. :) It's amazing how often discussions revolve around figuring out what definitions the other person uses.
I'd hope so. I strongly suspect though that what will folllow will merely be a discussion on how to deal with these "outed" professors. And I also suspect that this discussion will revolve around what laws should passed to protect the poor republicans who were victims of such odious and threatening discrimination.
No. This is what original sources are for. Schools, and especially universities, are supposed to expose a student to new ideas and give them an environment in which it is possible to explore them. Schools are not merely places where stuff is "presented". Schools are places where you learn - and you're only gonna learn if you see something new. Almost by definition, new stuff will be objectionable to some, and as a result of this, there needs to be some protection for professors so that they can present their new stuff without political interference. This is what tenure is for. And this stunt is exactly designed to remove this protection.
Saying schools are "supposed to" promote "objectionable content" is something entirely different.
You're right. And since I didn't mention anything like it, I don't even understand how this is relevant.
Students have a right to know whether a professor will choose to "color" the presentation of the material with a personal bias.
True. When I went to class, I knew within the first week whether the professor had the habit of coloring material with too much personal bias. I then still had plenty of time to change course. Or are you trying to say that students are too incompetent to determine this on their own? Ah, nevermind...
That's news to me. I always thought that conservatives stood for the status quo (hence the interesting qualification of old-school communists in Russia as "conservatives"). There's also conservative as in risk-averse, though I think that this applies to nearly all professional politicians, and is therefore pretty useless in distinguishing them.
While your list of attributes is very commendable, I highly doubt that there is any political group actually follows them. Sorry, I've become a bit of a cynic. What with the corruption, nepotism, fascist tendencies and just plain demagoguery of the current government (executive as well as legislative).
Someone else in this thread made an interesting distinction between capitalism and mercantilism. Capitalism is an economic theory that requires some fairly strict assumptions to work properly. Mercantilism is its middle-age precursor - the pursuit of money without any restriction. It seems to me that the US looks much more like the mercantilistic city states of Italy in the middle ages than the capitalistic society first sketched out by Adam Smith. Too bad though that the powers that be couldn't care less about this - since they are the ones profiting from the current situation.
I don't understand. Do you consider the actions Andrew Jones to be "criticism"? Please explain to me how bounties for outing "radical professors" is constructive criticism, or just plain criticism. Cuz to me, it simply smells of someone not being happy with what someone else told him, and decides to pressure that someone into silence. There is no debate, there is no exchange of ideas, just plain political arm twisting. This is not about furthering academic debate; it's about imposing political beliefs.
Because you do know what this is going for, right? This is trying to establish that there is pervasive left-wing brainwashing going on in schools. Then Jones can look to Congress to rectify this problem by passing a law that forces all classes and professors to not discriminate against other political (i.e., right-wing) views. The end-result will be that everyone with a bad grade in a class will argue that they got that grade due to political discrimination, and professors will be forced to teach in the most inoffensive fashion possible.
Between this and the insistence of people to teach ID as though it is a science, the future looks grim for US education. If I ever have kids, I can guarantee you that they won't go to school in the US. Because I refuse to sabotage their competitive future in the world just to satisfy some right-wing nutjobs who have no idea what real discrimination (or debate) is.
This is not a critique of professors. This is strictly the creation of a list of shame to pressure schools to micromanage the teachings of professors. Specifically, it is designed to pressure professors to teach the least objectionable content possible - exactly the contrary of what schools are supposed to do.
Don't like your school? Transfer. There is no monopoly on education. But accept that going to a crackpot school just to hear crackpot theories will impact your future earnings.
While I do not disagree with your basic premise, I think that your specific examples are badly chosen. The better survival rate in the Falkland War was most likely due to the significant advances in medical technology that occured between 1965 and 1982.
You obviously do not understand why you get modded down. What you did is called plagiarism, and a very good reason to get a black mark on your record. Now if you would properly reference the post you're quoting, you'd be all good. You might come across as unable to formulate original thoughts, but at least you'd still be honest. Right now, you're nothing but a plagiarizing karma whore.
Open Source software threatens proprietary software by making software in general into a commodity. Since that means that the margins shrink drastically on the product, software companies are deathly afraid of open-source. And the cheapest way to fight it is to make it practically illegal - not by passing actual laws against open-source (I'm sure most countries will consider this some type of free speech impediment), but by creating so many patents and patent-lawsuits that only corporations can afford to create and maintain software.
Most of the time, it's not even something clever. Think one-click checkout patent. This is not new technology leading to better business, this is a business method done with existing software. Another advantage - you can sue people who try a similar business method but with different technology. You might not win, but you can guarantee that it won't get thrown out of court. And against small competitors, this means instant win.
I would agree with you that it's not possible to simply look at someone's writing and tell whether they are brilliant or merely smart. However, the post in question had a fairly telltale combination of eye-brow raising statements (IQ of 190? Sure...) and massive inferiority complex (no one ever listens to me! They don't like me!).
Furthermore, I'm on my third language with English. I've seen the mistakes I make in English, and I've seen the mistakes other people make who don't have English as a first language. The mistakes generally revolve around grammatical constructs and idioms: the end would be undoubtedly English, but with a structure that borrows heavily from the native language, or with idioms that are understandable, but not used (mother tongue, native tongue, native language, etc). The original post has none of that. It has, however, a lot of tired cliches that are associated with IQ: "insatiable desire to read", etc.
All of this leads to me agree with the idea that the examples mentioned are not indicative of someone who has experienced racism, but of someone who has major attitude problems. I know I wouldn't want to work with him. And that's simply judging him on one post.
Sounds like a great idea. Except my company's IT department decided that for even more, no more than 3 characters could match between the old and the new password. So now I'm forced to create 8+ character passwords that have less than 4 characters in common with the previous one - which means that they actually reduced the password space! Not only that, but creating good mnemonics is not easy. Letters tend to repeat in those. Which means that I'm currently using the most abysmal password creation system ever - patterns on the keyboard. It's the only way I can guarantee that I can remember my password, make it long enough and have it fit into the password policy.
No. He he made the right choice. The dual-core CPUs smoke the single-core, high-hertz CPUs when it comes to tasks that can be properly threaded or broken into tasks. Like, I don't know, media applications. This guy knew what he was doing, and didn't go for the silly "My Gigahurtz is bigger than your Gigahurtz!"