The last good British science-fiction show you remember is somehow not Doctor Who, which showed its season premier tonight?
I do think that literary folks need to accept sci-fi, but when it comes to the BBC, we should remember that their flagship program is, in fact, a science-fiction drama about aliens and time-travel.
We read "Oryx and Crake" for a class of mine, and while I wouldn't call it the greatest literary accomplishment of modern SF, it's still a pretty decent book. It's certainly not "old hat", because genetic engineering is the new nuke.
I would just like to note that my Comp. Lit. general-education course this semester is all about science fiction, and has actually gone through a nice variety of the good stuff, from Frankenstein to Asimov to Margaret Atwood (who is, admittedly, a one-trick pony).
As the notion of public morality has gone, people have tried to replace it by reconstructing a sense of public ethics out of doctrines about "rights". Funny, that.
It's worth noting that the Doctor has committed two genocides: the Time Lords and the Daleks, in one go. The Daleks have committed so many genocides, on and off screen, that any "historian" of the Whoniverse would pretty quickly lose count. Genocide is the Daleks' modus freaking operandi.
So I'm kind of OK with the Doctor trying to kill the hell out of them, so long as it doesn't result in deus ex machina and ridiculous threat escalations.
OK, just noting, but Scala is really, really heavily functional. Type inference, parametric polymorphism, existential types (aka Scala wildcards), heavy usage of immutability, algebraic data types (aka case classes), pattern matching... these are all the characteristic features of the functional paradigm, and they all see heavy usage in Scala. I certainly appreciate and enjoy the OOP parts, of course, but I wanted to point out that Scala is much more a functional/object-oriented hybrid than you've given it credit for.
You did notice that this is Carnegie Mellon University, the best school for Computer Science in the United States, right? CMU has not dropped their math requirements, and they've dropped OO because they want to teach structured programming first, followed by functional, followed optionally by OO.
This would be what we in the PL world call "existential types", OOP calls "interfaces", and the rest of the world calls "abstract data types". We can model a stack the following way:
FORALL a. EXISTS x. record Stack {
x internals;
a (*pop)(x insides);
a (*peek)(x insides);
void (*push)(x insides,a element); }
It means that after we "package up" an internal representation and its methods, the type system doesn't allow us to uncover anything about the internal representation, including by down-casting. The syntax also makes "give me your value of X" kind of inconvenient to convey, encouraging the use of existential types mostly for real behavior.
But that would require creating a bunch of engineering jobs and paying them well! We can't have that, so let's just complain about those damn kids and their financial greed.
As much as I'm a fellow progressive and agree with your rewriting, you've forgotten the option that most of these "where have all the engineers and scientists gone?" articles are actually pushing:
4) Graduate school -- Potential payoff? Moderate. Chance of success (in terms of completing a degree)? Relatively good. Chance of success (in terms of achieving a stable career after completing one's education)? Infinitesimal. Ability for individual success to translate into financial success (including middle-class job security)? Jack shit.
I have to say, I kind of fall on the fence about this one. The financial sector, after all, is a fine and dandy thing provided that they don't hold the Sword of Damocles over the government's head to coerce it into socializing private losses and privatizing public profits.
The other thing, though, is what this article and its commenters are ignoring: many, if not most, really hardcore science-engineering-and-math jobs suck. I've gotten assistantship offers from graduate schools where I applied by now, and I've gotten industrial job offers too (CS Bachelors degree). They're not even comparable, not even in the same ballpark at all.
An industrial job, in my field, will make me an extremely comfortable upper-middle-class income at a young age, with benefits, when I don't have children to support yet. In industry, I could live well and save for when I will have to provide for others. The only downside is working on real products that get specified by real clients or target markets. And if they work me too hard, I can leave to find another job (with an actual chance of one existing somewhere). This is, of course, in computing; I'm informed that engineering isn't so cushy.
Graduate schools, on the other hand, literally want me to work academic-style work-weeks (read: 60-90 hours/week) for slightly less money than flipping burgers. Estimating for $10/hour in food-service (where I live) * 40 hours/week * 52 weeks/year (the notion that grad students only work during semesters is a lie) = $20,800/year, a larger salary than any of the academic offers I've gotten so far. The only actual appeal is getting to work on interesting stuff for the benefit of humanity at large, or at least the tiny minority of human academics who care about one's specialty.
Now, if someone comes along with a third option, of working in finance, that requires sacrificing my notions of producing real value but pays way better than either of the aforementioned... I would turn it down, but how many others would? And how could I ever begrudge them?
We have no excuse to say that our society's best and brightest young geeks have betrayed their calling, or humanity, or anything else until we as a society actually make the life of an engineer or a scientist reasonably livable and based on something other than luck and nepotism (looking at you, tenure-track hiring!).
Can we stop the general one-sidedness about this? It sucks that the Right used the Cold War as an opportunity to assault the Left, and it also sucks that large parts of the Left were openly pro-Soviet and pro-Communist, and therefore pro-totalitarian.
It's almost as though there ought be some kind of system of apprenticeships and certifications... so that when someone claims to be an Engineer, you could ask if they're a real Professional Engineer...
Though Garfield's patent does have to do with collectable card games, that is not the claim that earned him the patent. The patent is due to, what was at the time, the novel idea of using a card's orientation to signify it's activation. At the time Garfield devised this method there where no other collectable card games using this method. His claim is unique in all ways.
What kind of sensible intellectual-property system will grant a patent on the idea of turning a card sideways to indicate that it has been used? That's pure triviality!
That has literally nothing to do with the question being asked: when a person is in possession of economic resources, do they have an ethical or moral obligation to give those resources to those closer to them rather than those far away? I have to say, certainly they do. Are Americans "superior" to Indians? No, I fully expect wealthy and middle-class Indians to look after India, just as I expect wealthy and middle-class Americans to look after America.
Slashdot Mirror
The last good British science-fiction show you remember is somehow not Doctor Who, which showed its season premier tonight?
I do think that literary folks need to accept sci-fi, but when it comes to the BBC, we should remember that their flagship program is, in fact, a science-fiction drama about aliens and time-travel.
We read "Oryx and Crake" for a class of mine, and while I wouldn't call it the greatest literary accomplishment of modern SF, it's still a pretty decent book. It's certainly not "old hat", because genetic engineering is the new nuke.
I would just like to note that my Comp. Lit. general-education course this semester is all about science fiction, and has actually gone through a nice variety of the good stuff, from Frankenstein to Asimov to Margaret Atwood (who is, admittedly, a one-trick pony).
Actually, the open-source community is a pretty good working example of a post-scarcity economy, complete with flaws.
Yeah, sure, Google could never get any historical perspective out its young ultra-hot-shots like Rob Pike.
You think the inventors get a lion's share? How naive!
As the notion of public morality has gone, people have tried to replace it by reconstructing a sense of public ethics out of doctrines about "rights". Funny, that.
Since that's the development path which gave us C++, let's not dare go down there again.
It's worth noting that the Doctor has committed two genocides: the Time Lords and the Daleks, in one go. The Daleks have committed so many genocides, on and off screen, that any "historian" of the Whoniverse would pretty quickly lose count. Genocide is the Daleks' modus freaking operandi.
So I'm kind of OK with the Doctor trying to kill the hell out of them, so long as it doesn't result in deus ex machina and ridiculous threat escalations.
My bro is dead, you insensitive clod!
OK, just noting, but Scala is really, really heavily functional. Type inference, parametric polymorphism, existential types (aka Scala wildcards), heavy usage of immutability, algebraic data types (aka case classes), pattern matching... these are all the characteristic features of the functional paradigm, and they all see heavy usage in Scala. I certainly appreciate and enjoy the OOP parts, of course, but I wanted to point out that Scala is much more a functional/object-oriented hybrid than you've given it credit for.
Sorry, language geek who loves me some Scala.
You did notice that this is Carnegie Mellon University, the best school for Computer Science in the United States, right? CMU has not dropped their math requirements, and they've dropped OO because they want to teach structured programming first, followed by functional, followed optionally by OO.
This would be what we in the PL world call "existential types", OOP calls "interfaces", and the rest of the world calls "abstract data types". We can model a stack the following way:
It means that after we "package up" an internal representation and its methods, the type system doesn't allow us to uncover anything about the internal representation, including by down-casting. The syntax also makes "give me your value of X" kind of inconvenient to convey, encouraging the use of existential types mostly for real behavior.
I'm sorry for the loss of your time, but congratulations on writing your own multiple-dispatch system!
But that would require creating a bunch of engineering jobs and paying them well! We can't have that, so let's just complain about those damn kids and their financial greed.
As much as I'm a fellow progressive and agree with your rewriting, you've forgotten the option that most of these "where have all the engineers and scientists gone?" articles are actually pushing:
4) Graduate school -- Potential payoff? Moderate. Chance of success (in terms of completing a degree)? Relatively good. Chance of success (in terms of achieving a stable career after completing one's education)? Infinitesimal. Ability for individual success to translate into financial success (including middle-class job security)? Jack shit.
I have to say, I kind of fall on the fence about this one. The financial sector, after all, is a fine and dandy thing provided that they don't hold the Sword of Damocles over the government's head to coerce it into socializing private losses and privatizing public profits.
The other thing, though, is what this article and its commenters are ignoring: many, if not most, really hardcore science-engineering-and-math jobs suck. I've gotten assistantship offers from graduate schools where I applied by now, and I've gotten industrial job offers too (CS Bachelors degree). They're not even comparable, not even in the same ballpark at all.
An industrial job, in my field, will make me an extremely comfortable upper-middle-class income at a young age, with benefits, when I don't have children to support yet. In industry, I could live well and save for when I will have to provide for others. The only downside is working on real products that get specified by real clients or target markets. And if they work me too hard, I can leave to find another job (with an actual chance of one existing somewhere). This is, of course, in computing; I'm informed that engineering isn't so cushy.
Graduate schools, on the other hand, literally want me to work academic-style work-weeks (read: 60-90 hours/week) for slightly less money than flipping burgers. Estimating for $10/hour in food-service (where I live) * 40 hours/week * 52 weeks/year (the notion that grad students only work during semesters is a lie) = $20,800/year, a larger salary than any of the academic offers I've gotten so far. The only actual appeal is getting to work on interesting stuff for the benefit of humanity at large, or at least the tiny minority of human academics who care about one's specialty.
Now, if someone comes along with a third option, of working in finance, that requires sacrificing my notions of producing real value but pays way better than either of the aforementioned... I would turn it down, but how many others would? And how could I ever begrudge them?
We have no excuse to say that our society's best and brightest young geeks have betrayed their calling, or humanity, or anything else until we as a society actually make the life of an engineer or a scientist reasonably livable and based on something other than luck and nepotism (looking at you, tenure-track hiring!).
Hello, I'm a 21-year-old American. I wouldn't trade places with that irresponsible, insane, antisemitic nut for all the gold and women on this Earth.
Can we stop the general one-sidedness about this? It sucks that the Right used the Cold War as an opportunity to assault the Left, and it also sucks that large parts of the Left were openly pro-Soviet and pro-Communist, and therefore pro-totalitarian.
It's almost as though there ought be some kind of system of apprenticeships and certifications... so that when someone claims to be an Engineer, you could ask if they're a real Professional Engineer...
OH WAIT.
Though Garfield's patent does have to do with collectable card games, that is not the claim that earned him the patent. The patent is due to, what was at the time, the novel idea of using a card's orientation to signify it's activation. At the time Garfield devised this method there where no other collectable card games using this method. His claim is unique in all ways.
What kind of sensible intellectual-property system will grant a patent on the idea of turning a card sideways to indicate that it has been used? That's pure triviality!
That has literally nothing to do with the question being asked: when a person is in possession of economic resources, do they have an ethical or moral obligation to give those resources to those closer to them rather than those far away? I have to say, certainly they do. Are Americans "superior" to Indians? No, I fully expect wealthy and middle-class Indians to look after India, just as I expect wealthy and middle-class Americans to look after America.
If you need proof, just think of the last time you heard a scientist thank jesus for their discovery? Never!
Because the scientists are thanking Adonai Eloheinu ;-).
Problem?
Godwin's FREAKING Law!
Technically "moonbat" refers to crazy left-wingers. You were thinking of "wingnut".
And if you ask that question... well take a look at the other first-world nations.