What is it about the "process of collection" that "makes it far more likely that the average person will remain in awe, fear and subservience to the state"? Are people in India generally in awe/fear/subservience of the state? My impression when I visited on two occcasions is that many people are happy to question their political leaders and are happy to exert their political rights in many cases.
My experience of India though is limited so if you can provide examples and references I'd be happy to be educated.
Also, what do you mean by "the average person" in India? thanks.
"...- Kipling. Reading him gives a lot of insight into military life, and incidentally a little insight into politics. Of course, it helps to actually LIVE what he writes about, to fully appreciate it."
Not sure it would be possible to live the life of a nineteenth century British Infantryman in the colonies right now (or fighting colonial wars). Not many infantry squares to join and spend your time shooting "pore benighted 'eathen(s)" in Sudan, or belting and flaying Indian water carriers, I think soldiers these days aren't too happy at drinking malaria infested water and probably want more than a shilling a day now. But I get what you say about being in the poor bloody infantry.
With all due respect I think you're either naive, a troll, or working for The Guardian. Every paper has their bias. People just choose to read papers (and other media sources) that are closest to their biases. Newspapers make summaries of the news in the world therefore they make choices about what to present therefore a bias will be present as it is people, not some fantastic purely objective machine, making those selections. There are no objective selections.
A wiser approach is to understand that all news is biased and take into account the specific bias of the resource you're using, perhaps triangulate with other resources (i.e. read a couple of different papers).
The scientists "PR departments" will probably be called "Communications Departments" in universities, probably the same in private industry as well. The majority of grants from funding bodies come with an obligation for scientists to promote the outcome of their work, and scientists are encouraged to generally. People look pretty poorly on scientists who want money but won't tell people what they've been doing with that funding.
Generally scientists are encouraged to promote their work by attending conferences etc. They are encouraged to keep their university's Communications Department informed of major achievements, as the Communications Departments' jobs are to promote their university (and hence get funding at the cost of other universities). Scientists are increasingly encouraged to attend courses to learn how to best present and promote their work so if the opportunity does appear (like the local media needing an expert to talk about a topical issue) they can do a fair job of presenting the story in a media friendly way (precise clear summaries, avoid complex jargon, etc).
If you want to becaome a "PR agent for a scientist" probably you need to phone up some communications and promotional people at universities and in the private sectors and ask them. I'd imagine qualifications in journalism, literature, media studies etc might help.
In the UK folk will just drive to a cash point machine (ATM) if they need more money out for small amounts. ATMs are pretty well in every settlement. People plan ahead if going out to the islands or somewhere really remote camping. Internet is pretty well everywhere here so with non-time critical transfers that's usually an option ("when I get back to my friend's house tonight I'll get on their computer and send over the money into your account"). Credit cards are popular for non-trusted payments as credit card companies here insure all purchases over about $80 - you get scammed by somebody and they'll pay you back everything over the initial 80 or so. Government and public service advice is to pay for online purchases with credit cards as you're insured against scamming (and I guess there's a trail they can work with).
cheers for info on what "wiring money" means -over here in the UK we don't use the expression, it is USA-English, at most people use it colloquially just to mean transferring money via technology somehow.
I must admit I am still not sure what it means, how it is different from doing an internet bank transfer sitting on my home computer and logging in to my bank account and transfering £100 to my friend's account or the electricity company's account or whatever? Is "wiring" money going into a bank and asking them at the counter to set up the transfer and send it through their system?
You mean if you want to give your friend $50 for something you owe him/gas money/share of the house bills etc it costs you $25 to transfer the money from your account to his? Or the same if you want to move money from one bank account to another account (held in a different bank) ?
If this is the case, wow. To be fair I don't know your banking system and maybe where I am (the UK) the bankers make their money some other way but if the above is true, that's brutal. Most people here just transfer money around through internet banking. I think "Wire transfers" are the same as this but maybe they are an older, guaranteed form of transfer, perhaps you can explain?
Lots of folk here would freak out if internet transfers cost money, it's how they move money around. I lived in a rented house a couple of years ago and the old fashioned landlord insisted on cheques. We had to show a new 25 year old housemate how to write a cheque as he'd never done one before in his life...
Speaking as a UK citizen who has lived in England and Scotland I can tell you the legal systems are different and Scots law doesn't bow to English law. English politics doesn't influence Scots law to any great extent to my understanding.
A good example was the Lockerbie bomber trial where the Libyan suspect was tried under Scots law and not English law, and there was general agreement that the legal system and judges came up with a different result than may have been found in the English system.
I am not a lawyer and would happily be educated by somebody with a greater knowledge of how the legal systems are negotiated when it comes to drawing up new Acts of Parliament, but have lived in both countries and dealt with both legal systems.
I am interested to hear where you draw your expertise from: are you somebody who studies the legal practices of the UK?
I understand your viewpoint though: may I ask your opinion on the West Lothian Question?
Actually there are some quite significant differences between the legal systems. Scots law draws more on Roman law, English law more on Norman law. English courts judge you guilty or not guilty, Scots courts guilty, not guilty, or not proven. A spoken word is legally binding in Scotland, not so in England.
Much, much more than merely semantics.
The different legal systems across the UK have always been evolving and changing and I don't think this in itself will change the relationships between the countries or the future of the Act of Union.
Give me some referenced evidence for your assertions. "Half a century" - you mean when Conservative were voted in in Oct. 1959 or other? You mean Macmillan's "You've never had it so good" government?
Interested to know what town you live in and how you've come to these conclusions.
Not quite sure what you mean by "a people" - we're one of the most mixed nations there's ever been, always been immigration and always will be. Our definition is always fluid and changing. Black folk lived in England before the English, after all (records of African soldiers serving in Roman armies on Hadrians Wall, e.g. Burgh-by-Sands). Angles didn't invade from Denmark and Germany for a couple of hundred years after that....
Voting for the BNP is not a "protest vote" - this is not a warm and cuddly hippy protest option like voting for the Monster Raving Loony Party.
Voting for the BNP is voting for an extremist party, a party that grew out of the National Front (look all these up on wikipedia) and until they were forced to change by European law this year had as part of their constitution a ban on people that weren't "white" from joining the party membership.
To my mind that's quite an extreme position for a party to take if it declares its goal to be getting political power, ruling over people of a variety of different ethnic groups. I think voting for the BNP is a dangerous way of expressing your protest at the current political system. The BNP is serious about some of its extreme politics, and is likely to get some seats and have real influence in UK politics if people start voting for them in the misguided belief that they are just offering up a protest to the system.
So a brief summary of the article would appear to be: affluent Westerners living in air conditioned, well educated, health insured cosmopolitan urban areas think that slums with no sewage facilities, running water, health care or protection against corruption or physical violence are a great way of housing migrant, poor populations. Said poor will have more opportunities in life if they live in urban slums than rural poverty. Rich authors of articles do not offer to move out of their million dollar homes to move into the slums, despite singing their praises.
We had George Bush telling us that he saw the world in terms of 1950s American cowboy films. Clearly he wasn't alone. This is why we're frightened of some Americans having so much power.
If you see your moral and ethical guidance regards something as brutal, immense and destructive as war in terms of fantasy cowboy films, the world needs to live in fear and terror of you.
Britain has been multicultural way longer than three generations. There's documented evidence of African troops from the Roman Empire serving on Hadrians Wall. There were black folk here before the country was even called England. So the extreme right wing politicians need to be a bit careful when they go on about "immigrants";-) (you dumb fools, where do you think your ancestors came from? well, it was overseas....).
Aussies, please keep Pauline Hanson, we don't want her. Such a shame we can't refuse her entry. As the parent says, the only positive side of this is her head's going to explode when she realises the UK is as multicultural if not more so than Australia...
£39.95 sounds a lot for sure - I wouldn't pay it - but then to put it into context, iPhone monthly contracts are 30-40 a month so I guess they are positioning themselves there. If people will pay out 40/month to have a handheld computer, why not the same for a laptop with tech support?
But do they actually improve teaching and learning? Fair call that slashdot posters are chiefly concerned with technologies, but in terms of learning and teaching you've got to ask if there are pedagogical improvements brought about by introducing the technology. Otherwise it's just a waste of money.
The problem is often that the use of technology in education is technology led rather than pedagogy led. Education needs to be led by thinking about how we can best teach our children and help them to learn (whatever your philosophy on what this entails), and use whatever technologies are appropriate. In too many cases it's tempting to start from a technology perspective of trying to force education to fit round a technology just because it's available and people think it's cool. Technologies offer affordances but they have to be understood as only part of a wider socio-technical system.
...and that's why a lot of us are glad US law doesn't quite rule the whole world just yet.... sueing somebody else for emotional damage because you posted on the public internet that you're not at home, because this causes you "a great deal of emotional unrest". Presumably the same people will be sueing Google and every other search engine that's archiving these posts as they scrape the internet?
Grow up, take responsibility for your own actions. If having the world knowing that you're not at home causes you "emotional unrest", well then don't tell the world. Seems to me that some folk are incredibly child-like, unable to take responsibility for their own actions. Not sure who to blame for this. But I sure hope these people don't have any influence or authority in the wider world, seems like they should be kept in some sort of kindergarten.
Depends on who put them there perhaps? Many nations just dumped left over explosives after wars at sea, the Irish Sea is full of ships that were loaded with explosives, grenades, etc, just towed out and sunk. Have a read of "Munitions Dumped at Sea: A Literature Review" for example.
So happy to hear that I'll be "gently deflected flipping me up and over your roof". You make it sound like a positive experience I'll be wanting to have every week.
A ton of metal is still a ton of metal and I think this still means that I'll go from walking across the road to be hit by a ton of metal moving at 28mph. Your car might be nice and gentle to me but I think this means I am now moving at high speed, 2 or 3 metres about the ground, with my unprotected skull about to impact either the tarmac road, a car moving at 28mph in the opposite direction, or some steel street furniture at high speed.
I'm really happy to hear the metal foam might mean my injuries in this situation would be reduced, as you rightly say pedestrian safety standards on cars are really helping reduce injuries, this is indeed a good thing. But road user education is definitely required (pedestrians, car users, bike users and all) to reduce collisions in the first place.
So the stupid driver who was texting on their mobile phone or eating a burger is fine, great. What about the ten year old old they've just thumped into with their SUV? Does it help them at all?
Hopefully a foam bumper will help minimise the damage to the kid who has just been torn off their bike by a stupid auto driver, though my suspicion is that the laws of physics will say getting hit by a ton of metal moving at 28mph is still going to damage somebody really badly. I'd be interested to hear about the benefits the foam offers to people being hit by the car, as well as the person inside and already wearing a seat belt, with crumple zones and air bags.
Agreed with the other post which includes the quote about spikes in the middle of steering wheels being more likely to encourage careful driving than technological improvements which mean you can be a total idiot and smash into anyone or anything and walk away, because you're all right Jack and you don't care who you hit.
The US military is something like ten times larger than the next country's military spend for goodness sake. How about easing off on the military spend and using the money for peaceful exploration of space.
Slashdot Mirror
What is it about the "process of collection" that "makes it far more likely that the average person will remain in awe, fear and subservience to the state"? Are people in India generally in awe/fear/subservience of the state? My impression when I visited on two occcasions is that many people are happy to question their political leaders and are happy to exert their political rights in many cases.
My experience of India though is limited so if you can provide examples and references I'd be happy to be educated.
Also, what do you mean by "the average person" in India? thanks.
Would you prefer that you (or your five year old daughter, or grandmother, etc) would be dead after being hit by a car, or merely injured?
"...- Kipling. Reading him gives a lot of insight into military life, and incidentally a little insight into politics. Of course, it helps to actually LIVE what he writes about, to fully appreciate it."
Not sure it would be possible to live the life of a nineteenth century British Infantryman in the colonies right now (or fighting colonial wars). Not many infantry squares to join and spend your time shooting "pore benighted 'eathen(s)" in Sudan, or belting and flaying Indian water carriers, I think soldiers these days aren't too happy at drinking malaria infested water and probably want more than a shilling a day now. But I get what you say about being in the poor bloody infantry.
With all due respect I think you're either naive, a troll, or working for The Guardian. Every paper has their bias. People just choose to read papers (and other media sources) that are closest to their biases. Newspapers make summaries of the news in the world therefore they make choices about what to present therefore a bias will be present as it is people, not some fantastic purely objective machine, making those selections. There are no objective selections.
A wiser approach is to understand that all news is biased and take into account the specific bias of the resource you're using, perhaps triangulate with other resources (i.e. read a couple of different papers).
The scientists "PR departments" will probably be called "Communications Departments" in universities, probably the same in private industry as well. The majority of grants from funding bodies come with an obligation for scientists to promote the outcome of their work, and scientists are encouraged to generally. People look pretty poorly on scientists who want money but won't tell people what they've been doing with that funding.
Generally scientists are encouraged to promote their work by attending conferences etc. They are encouraged to keep their university's Communications Department informed of major achievements, as the Communications Departments' jobs are to promote their university (and hence get funding at the cost of other universities). Scientists are increasingly encouraged to attend courses to learn how to best present and promote their work so if the opportunity does appear (like the local media needing an expert to talk about a topical issue) they can do a fair job of presenting the story in a media friendly way (precise clear summaries, avoid complex jargon, etc).
If you want to becaome a "PR agent for a scientist" probably you need to phone up some communications and promotional people at universities and in the private sectors and ask them. I'd imagine qualifications in journalism, literature, media studies etc might help.
In the UK folk will just drive to a cash point machine (ATM) if they need more money out for small amounts. ATMs are pretty well in every settlement. People plan ahead if going out to the islands or somewhere really remote camping. Internet is pretty well everywhere here so with non-time critical transfers that's usually an option ("when I get back to my friend's house tonight I'll get on their computer and send over the money into your account"). Credit cards are popular for non-trusted payments as credit card companies here insure all purchases over about $80 - you get scammed by somebody and they'll pay you back everything over the initial 80 or so. Government and public service advice is to pay for online purchases with credit cards as you're insured against scamming (and I guess there's a trail they can work with).
cheers for info on what "wiring money" means -over here in the UK we don't use the expression, it is USA-English, at most people use it colloquially just to mean transferring money via technology somehow.
I must admit I am still not sure what it means, how it is different from doing an internet bank transfer sitting on my home computer and logging in to my bank account and transfering £100 to my friend's account or the electricity company's account or whatever? Is "wiring" money going into a bank and asking them at the counter to set up the transfer and send it through their system?
You mean if you want to give your friend $50 for something you owe him/gas money/share of the house bills etc it costs you $25 to transfer the money from your account to his? Or the same if you want to move money from one bank account to another account (held in a different bank) ?
If this is the case, wow. To be fair I don't know your banking system and maybe where I am (the UK) the bankers make their money some other way but if the above is true, that's brutal. Most people here just transfer money around through internet banking. I think "Wire transfers" are the same as this but maybe they are an older, guaranteed form of transfer, perhaps you can explain?
Lots of folk here would freak out if internet transfers cost money, it's how they move money around. I lived in a rented house a couple of years ago and the old fashioned landlord insisted on cheques. We had to show a new 25 year old housemate how to write a cheque as he'd never done one before in his life...
Speaking as a UK citizen who has lived in England and Scotland I can tell you the legal systems are different and Scots law doesn't bow to English law. English politics doesn't influence Scots law to any great extent to my understanding.
A good example was the Lockerbie bomber trial where the Libyan suspect was tried under Scots law and not English law, and there was general agreement that the legal system and judges came up with a different result than may have been found in the English system.
I am not a lawyer and would happily be educated by somebody with a greater knowledge of how the legal systems are negotiated when it comes to drawing up new Acts of Parliament, but have lived in both countries and dealt with both legal systems.
I am interested to hear where you draw your expertise from: are you somebody who studies the legal practices of the UK?
I understand your viewpoint though: may I ask your opinion on the West Lothian Question?
Actually there are some quite significant differences between the legal systems. Scots law draws more on Roman law, English law more on Norman law. English courts judge you guilty or not guilty, Scots courts guilty, not guilty, or not proven. A spoken word is legally binding in Scotland, not so in England.
Much, much more than merely semantics.
The different legal systems across the UK have always been evolving and changing and I don't think this in itself will change the relationships between the countries or the future of the Act of Union.
Give me some referenced evidence for your assertions. "Half a century" - you mean when Conservative were voted in in Oct. 1959 or other? You mean Macmillan's "You've never had it so good" government?
Interested to know what town you live in and how you've come to these conclusions.
Not quite sure what you mean by "a people" - we're one of the most mixed nations there's ever been, always been immigration and always will be. Our definition is always fluid and changing. Black folk lived in England before the English, after all (records of African soldiers serving in Roman armies on Hadrians Wall, e.g. Burgh-by-Sands). Angles didn't invade from Denmark and Germany for a couple of hundred years after that....
Voting for the BNP is not a "protest vote" - this is not a warm and cuddly hippy protest option like voting for the Monster Raving Loony Party.
Voting for the BNP is voting for an extremist party, a party that grew out of the National Front (look all these up on wikipedia) and until they were forced to change by European law this year had as part of their constitution a ban on people that weren't "white" from joining the party membership.
To my mind that's quite an extreme position for a party to take if it declares its goal to be getting political power, ruling over people of a variety of different ethnic groups. I think voting for the BNP is a dangerous way of expressing your protest at the current political system. The BNP is serious about some of its extreme politics, and is likely to get some seats and have real influence in UK politics if people start voting for them in the misguided belief that they are just offering up a protest to the system.
"So, at this point we're just haggling over price."
I'm guessing you've not lost any close relatives (say your mother or father) through a painful illness.
To quote you from one of your previous postings, "There's a saying, better to be thought of as stupid than open your mouth and confirm it.".
There's no such thing as "British law". There's English law, Scots law, and Northern Ireland law. Fail.
So a brief summary of the article would appear to be: affluent Westerners living in air conditioned, well educated, health insured cosmopolitan urban areas think that slums with no sewage facilities, running water, health care or protection against corruption or physical violence are a great way of housing migrant, poor populations. Said poor will have more opportunities in life if they live in urban slums than rural poverty. Rich authors of articles do not offer to move out of their million dollar homes to move into the slums, despite singing their praises.
We had George Bush telling us that he saw the world in terms of 1950s American cowboy films. Clearly he wasn't alone. This is why we're frightened of some Americans having so much power.
If you see your moral and ethical guidance regards something as brutal, immense and destructive as war in terms of fantasy cowboy films, the world needs to live in fear and terror of you.
Tell us your experience of war.
Britain has been multicultural way longer than three generations. There's documented evidence of African troops from the Roman Empire serving on Hadrians Wall. There were black folk here before the country was even called England. So the extreme right wing politicians need to be a bit careful when they go on about "immigrants" ;-) (you dumb fools, where do you think your ancestors came from? well, it was overseas....).
Aussies, please keep Pauline Hanson, we don't want her. Such a shame we can't refuse her entry. As the parent says, the only positive side of this is her head's going to explode when she realises the UK is as multicultural if not more so than Australia...
£39.95 sounds a lot for sure - I wouldn't pay it - but then to put it into context, iPhone monthly contracts are 30-40 a month so I guess they are positioning themselves there. If people will pay out 40/month to have a handheld computer, why not the same for a laptop with tech support?
But do they actually improve teaching and learning? Fair call that slashdot posters are chiefly concerned with technologies, but in terms of learning and teaching you've got to ask if there are pedagogical improvements brought about by introducing the technology. Otherwise it's just a waste of money.
The problem is often that the use of technology in education is technology led rather than pedagogy led. Education needs to be led by thinking about how we can best teach our children and help them to learn (whatever your philosophy on what this entails), and use whatever technologies are appropriate. In too many cases it's tempting to start from a technology perspective of trying to force education to fit round a technology just because it's available and people think it's cool. Technologies offer affordances but they have to be understood as only part of a wider socio-technical system.
...and that's why a lot of us are glad US law doesn't quite rule the whole world just yet.... sueing somebody else for emotional damage because you posted on the public internet that you're not at home, because this causes you "a great deal of emotional unrest". Presumably the same people will be sueing Google and every other search engine that's archiving these posts as they scrape the internet?
Grow up, take responsibility for your own actions. If having the world knowing that you're not at home causes you "emotional unrest", well then don't tell the world. Seems to me that some folk are incredibly child-like, unable to take responsibility for their own actions. Not sure who to blame for this. But I sure hope these people don't have any influence or authority in the wider world, seems like they should be kept in some sort of kindergarten.
Depends on who put them there perhaps? Many nations just dumped left over explosives after wars at sea, the Irish Sea is full of ships that were loaded with explosives, grenades, etc, just towed out and sunk. Have a read of "Munitions Dumped at Sea: A Literature Review" for example.
So happy to hear that I'll be "gently deflected flipping me up and over your roof". You make it sound like a positive experience I'll be wanting to have every week.
A ton of metal is still a ton of metal and I think this still means that I'll go from walking across the road to be hit by a ton of metal moving at 28mph. Your car might be nice and gentle to me but I think this means I am now moving at high speed, 2 or 3 metres about the ground, with my unprotected skull about to impact either the tarmac road, a car moving at 28mph in the opposite direction, or some steel street furniture at high speed.
I'm really happy to hear the metal foam might mean my injuries in this situation would be reduced, as you rightly say pedestrian safety standards on cars are really helping reduce injuries, this is indeed a good thing. But road user education is definitely required (pedestrians, car users, bike users and all) to reduce collisions in the first place.
So the stupid driver who was texting on their mobile phone or eating a burger is fine, great. What about the ten year old old they've just thumped into with their SUV? Does it help them at all?
Hopefully a foam bumper will help minimise the damage to the kid who has just been torn off their bike by a stupid auto driver, though my suspicion is that the laws of physics will say getting hit by a ton of metal moving at 28mph is still going to damage somebody really badly. I'd be interested to hear about the benefits the foam offers to people being hit by the car, as well as the person inside and already wearing a seat belt, with crumple zones and air bags.
Agreed with the other post which includes the quote about spikes in the middle of steering wheels being more likely to encourage careful driving than technological improvements which mean you can be a total idiot and smash into anyone or anything and walk away, because you're all right Jack and you don't care who you hit.
The US military is something like ten times larger than the next country's military spend for goodness sake. How about easing off on the military spend and using the money for peaceful exploration of space.
Do you really need a military budget that big?