...actually when you think about it - if the market forces argument was all there was to it administrators would be getting paid very little to, there's an abundance of administrators
I think in all these discussions of bean counters, the underlying assumptions non bean counters make is that the bean counters are trying to improve things. That, in my experience, is seldom the case. Mostly the act of bean counting is to create positions for bean counters, and insert themselves into the process. There is no end game in this, they will happily have meetings to discuss processes and improve metrics, because to them, bean counting is all there is. Without bean counting they would be unemployed. Once you let them in, you're screwed, cause they're impossible to get out.
Edit: Why the down vote? Perhaps some argument? (Oh, of course, it was probably a bean counter)
I posted this as a very real comment - once you accept that what you are doing is an item measurable by parties that aren't professionals in your field (bean counters) then any qualitative aspects of the profession are lost. Only the quantifiable is left, and because the bean counter doesn't communicate using the language of the profession - you are forced to learn their language. A language of quantifiables and reduction to line items. The rise of the professional manager who has necessarily no expertise in the field they are managing must of necessity reduce all non quantifiables to a 0 value. Thus you end up in the pickle that educators and physicians find themselves in. In the past administration was performed by members of the profession and so they could communicate using the same language.
That could be possible - though we'd like to believe other wise the human eye isn't well calibrated. After all maps of the canals of mars came about from eye balling - and they never existed.
That can't be right, sounds more like a grab for consultant dollars :-). I've been 25 years a developer, and never been on a failure. Had one small one cancelled - but for business reasons. I have seen one spectacular failure - that was great sport to watch, lots of project plans, and project managers - they decided to write their own control language as part of the project - doomed from that day on. Seen some others that didn't work out as well as they could, but seen many, many go into production successfully.
Australian here, we had a mass shooting in Australia some years ago. As a result of this Assault rifles were banned (Edit: without a demonstrable need), licenses were required for rifles and hand guns. Any guns could be traded in to the govt for money in the cut over period. We haven't had a mass shooting since as far as I can recall. The occasional knifing or someone with a hand gun argument occurs still. Guns are a lot harder to come by here, so if you're a loony who wants to kill everyone for looking at you funny then you're out of luck.
North Korea also has few gun deaths. But I don't see the relevance in either case.
Australia has no freedom of speech for instance, is bringing in (additional) internet censorship, personal data (like telephone records) is given out without warrants to non government departments.
This is often left out of this comparison about restricting one of the freedoms.
Americans believe in freedoms of individuals, under this belief how do some more restrictive gun laws apply, is what this article is asking.
What I have found amazing, is how rare mass shootings are in the United States. There are an overwhelming number of states where it would simply be the matter of $500 and a trip to Walmart/Craigslist for a disgruntled person or a potential terrorist to fully legally equip themselves to go on a murder-suicide spree.
There have been two mass murderers in Switzerland alone in the last 15 years, and it's basically the size of Dallas/Fortworth. Not to mention, y'know, recent events in Paris.
The comparison to Australia is an interesting one. Another interesting comparison is to Mexico, where federal law bans gun ownership for average citizens.
It doesn't seem like they've been able to keep a lid on them in that country though.
Personally, I'm not against new, strict gun control laws. As far as I'm concerned, they could require a twelve year waiting period to buy a water pistol. I don't care.
But, what surprises me is that people believe, after witnessing the US's long term attempt to control drugs, that it would actually be able to control guns.
It just does not seem plausible to me.
What am I missing here? How could stricter gun control laws be successfully enforced in the US? Wouldn't people defy the laws and obtain guns just like they do illegal drugs?
I'm Australian too, and it seems to work pretty well. One thing I hear a lot is that 'then only the bad guys will have guns', but I think our laws and enforcement must drive the black-market prices way up, because they do find illegal guns every now and then when they have a big drug bust and confiscate millions of dollars of drugs and cash, but your regular criminal on the street pretty much never has a gun. The drug gangs mostly only shoot each other, and pretty rarely too, so for the average Australian, the idea of ever witnessing gun violence (or being a victim to it) just feels really far fetched.
I wonder how much of it is cultural though - when the big gun buyback happened after Port Arthur, it was mostly taking guns from farmers - not people who think they could rise up against the Government or that they should be able to personally kill people in self-defense...
It's just not something you really ever hear about anyone doing here, and even when it is required, it's pretty far down the list of things to do. Pretty much the only time you hear about someone killing someone in self defense is a cop killing a knife-weilding person every now and then...
Whereas in the US every now and then you hear about people firing at what they think is an intruder, but it turns out to be a family member and stuff like that. It's just really strange to me that shooting would be the first thing you would do, but from the news we hear, it seems that's what a non-insignificant number of people in the US do.
"We haven't had a mass shooting since as far as I can recall"
Well, no, but there weren't many before Hobart, either. But do take a look at your other crimes' rates since the confiscations, especially home invasion.
Also worth pointing out is Australians still have access to firearms, to many peoples misconception.
Hunting type weapons (bolt actions and shotguns) only require a simple firearm safety test plus the requirement firearms must be kept in a safe. Handguns are available but you must be a regular shooter (6 times a year I believe), plus member of a club and you cant take a handgun home for the first year of your licence/club membership. Semi-autos are available if you have a professional need for them such as a farmer who has problems with feral animals, or a farmer hire you as someone that supports their pest eradication.
None of this difficult if you want a gun, but it seems to do the trick in keeping firearms out of the hands of crazies thus far.
yes, unfortunately that is one interpretation of events, even so I feel more comfortable knowing that people like Martin Bryant can't get guns. I guess we'll just have to wait for more data points
It's never going to work absolutely, though the 4 main factors I see are fairly significant;
1 & 2: Licencing and checks stops people with a violent history purchasing/owning guns legally. If that personality decides they need a firearm to hurt people there is a month+ between their desire to do harm and actually owning a firearm.
3: Compulsory safes (and the police check each owner has an appropriate one) reduce the likelihood of a person accessing anothers firearm.
4: More dangerous firearms like handguns and semi-auto are harder to get yet again thus less prevalent stopping what might be a small shooting from becoming significantly larger. A significant shooting becomes much harder with a double barrel shotgun than an AR-15.
Another benefit I imagine is restrictions would stop police feeling there is a potential firearm around every corner and may help calm down ongoing US cop shootings/mentality too.
>I do respect the humanities, but there's only so much you can do with them.
I believe someone from the humanities would have trouble with this statement. Of what use is all the techno gadgets if we lose what makes us human? I'm a techie, but I've also studied some humanities, and delve into some in my spare time, things like communication, psychology, arts these all make life a lot richer, even if they do have less flashing lights.
Humanities professors on the other hand have had it pretty easy, and that seems to be coming to an end, the same for universities in general. It's something I'm torn about, I always loved my time at university, but the reason I went there was for the knowledge, because that was where it was stored. Now universities are in many ways obsolete - all the knowledge is in the cloud. If you need to ask an expert then just ask online, so we still need experts, just the renumeration model is being disrupted - like everyone elses pretty well.
What we do need is critical thinking, and traditionally this was what was taught in an arts degree. In many ways the academics have done this to themselves, by dumbing down degrees and focusing more on 'business' outcomes they've eliminated what was the defining characteristic of a degree and it is now just a set of check boxes, which of course you don't need a uni for. I blame the MBA's - the cultureless hoards of middle management that suck the life out of everything that's not quantifiable and can be entered on a spread sheet.
I got a degree in the social sciences and most of the stuff they talk about is just made up. As in, psychology studies cannot be replicated, literature criticism is all just opinion, political science insights are just common sense with weasel words. It's fine as a dalliance or avocation, but there's no there there, intellectually. Science and engineering are so much more honest about the truth and what constitutes knowledge than the humanities and social sciences. The latter two nowadays are mostly rhetoric with a political slant, anyways.
And yet at this moment you are engaged in philosophy.
People should grapple with these questions in a sustained, deliberate way, with reference to what's already been said and where arguments are evaluated critically by many eyes. That's what academia is for.
You can engage in philosophy without having to have a humanities department sucking up tonnes of state money. You can prepare yourself for philosophical and critical thinking without some people leading cushy life doing nothing in state funded humanities departments.
He engaging in philosohpy doesn't necessarily justifies the existence of humanties departments in universities. With spread of internet and MOOCs the first even departments that should cease to exist on state money are the humanities departments.
I'd say the exact opposite: if industry requires trained worker bees, it can pay for their training. It is not our collective responsibility to meet workforce needs. State-funded engineering and CS programs are corporate welfare.
Humanities are the only departments that should exist on tax money.
History is interesting otherwise I generally agree that much of the humanities are opinions masquerading as knowledge.
It's not there is no value in opinions, there is, it's just that people have come to expect the rewards of knowledge for having opinions. And reality doesn't work that way.
You do make my point well. What used to be taught in an arts degree is how to structure an argument, e.g. 'psychology studies cannot be replicated' should really be 'some psychology studies cannot be replicated' use of the existential quantifier changes the statement totally. This used to be taught in a first year philosophy subject, but do they even teach philosophy any more?
You're trying to change the topic based on grammatical nitpicking, while being haughty in the process and ignoring the larger point. I spy an academic!
And for anyone who actually cares about this point, there was a well known study of psychological experiment replicability I was alluding to which should be part of the assumed context for anyone discussing such topics. It is also painfully formalistic to attach qualifiers to every statement when that is not the cant of a forum like this. You should know this, but instead you're latching onto a lingusitic formalism as a defense of your point instead of arguing the point head-on.
Sorry humanities people. The science and technology people are way more useful than you and most of them are smarter than you too. There is no intellectual equivalency between the domains despite the perennial protestations of the humanities faculty.
It's not grammatical nitpicking it's teleological nitpicking. You've made some incredibly broad statements without a shred of evidence, this I grant you is the norm for an internet forum, however it is not something that an arts graduate should be involved in. That was one of the points of an arts degree - critical thinking. Thats one of the reasons they called it an ivory tower imho, because instead of indulging in tabloid rants academics argued in logical progression to make their point.
>I blame the MBA's - the cultureless hoards of middle management that suck the life out of everything that's not quantifiable and can be entered on a spread sheet.
Oh please. You were doing fine up to that point. There's always been a tension between theory and practice.
"What we do need is critical thinking, and traditionally this was what was taught in an arts degree. In many ways the academics have done this to themselves, by dumbing down degrees and focusing more on 'business' outcomes they've eliminated what was the defining characteristic of a degree and it is now just a set of check boxes, which of course you don't need a uni for."
What I took away was an assertion that degrees are now about checking off practical checkboxes and that this is the fault of MBAs.
My take is that there has always been a tradeoff between broader education and teaching critical thinking with learning specific skills.
yes I see your point. Mine was degrees have been dumbed down and in many was are glorified vocational courses now, the courses have more people, a greater student to teacher ratio, and stray from theoretical considerations to the more immediate. The driver for this is cost and what can be readily identified as a useful function by the bean counters (said MBA's).
Some thing's are easy to quantify and this is what the focus is on. How do you quantify something like critical thinking, what quantifiable value is there in a knowledge of history - how do these things help little Johnny get a job. Well they don't really. I think of the results of learning these things as emergent properties, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Wouldn't it be more interesting to have a population educated in the humanities? wouldn't a democratic society be better served by a population educated with at least a base in the humanities? A society of people that can make rational arguments and evaluate the political arguments of the day would be a lot different from the one we live in now.
These sort of arguments are for a qualitative change - and I don't see how you can quantify them in a spread sheet. The thinking that drives MBA’s currently drives education from what I can see - keep costs down, standard courses, pack as many into a class as you can, and so on.
perhaps it's less of an issue in delphi (and pascal) since parameters that change in procedures have the var keyword?
In practice it doesn't seem to cause issues since pretty well every thing is a pointer, the only time it causes a problem is if you're using records. The compiler does catch this but, yes, in this case it is sub optimal. It's a trade off I suppose - 95-99.9% of the time your using classes so the '.' is everywhere rather than ->.
Interesting - I've always thought Delphi was easier to use than many other systems, but could never put my finger on why. It seems they thought about it a lot at the beginning in a hundred little ways.
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