Interesting Links for 14-1-2011

[andrewducker]

• Lecturer gets class to vote on grade for pregnant student.
  (tags: education pregnancy feminism EpicFail)
• Should I work for Free? (A handy flowchart)
  (tags: work business free flowchart)
• Manmohan Singh - The First Sikh Prime Minister Of...Okay, Here's What A Sikh Is
  (tags: 2010 funny journalism sikh india)
• Foxes use the Earth’s magnetic field as a targeting system
  (tags: earth compass fox animals)
• Being sexually unappealing and eating crap food will ensure Pandas fit right in, say Scots
  (tags: panda scotland funny)
• The US used to have as many people in mental institutions that they now have imprisoned.
  (tags: mental_health prison visualization)
• Women less likely than men to apply for jobs where individual competition determines wages
  (tags: competition jobs gender)
• Chatroulette now making money by selling naked men. Smart move!
  (tags: internet funny socialmedia chatroulette)
• A fantastic look at the current monetary problems in Europe, and what our options are for solving them.
  Personally, I think that it's either going to be more fiscal union or several countries leaving the Euro.
  (tags: europe money euro politics)
• Ian Mckellen talks about what was keeping him from signing up for The Hobbit, and how it was sorted.
  (tags: lotr movies thehobbit IanMcKellen)
• What Went Wrong at Borders - comments from employees at the bottom.
  (tags: borders books)
• Even very short breaks from sitting are good for waistlines and hearts. I try to stand up for a minute or two every hour.
  (tags: heart health)
• Room light before bedtime impacts sleep, blood pressure and diabetes risk. Sadly, in Scotland I'd be in the dark a _lot_.
  (tags: light sleep health technology biology)
• People neglect who they really are when predicting their own future happiness
  (tags: people psychology happiness)
• Scientists demonstrate mammalian regeneration through a single gene deletion
  (tags: science genetics biology bioengineering medicine regeneration)

Comments

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

I like the flowchart and mostly rather agree with it beyond the fact that it's funny.

However, I think the main missing question in actually applying this is 'is my work/reputation good enough to be paid for'? This is normally where people fall down, particuarly in the current market. It's an unfortunate fact that sometimes you do need the portfolio/experience/connections.

I'm constantly debating in my head whether I am for or against government supported schemes to give internships/work experience to people who can't find work [in their sector], for companies who couldn't otherwise afford it.

Hmmm.

That was a mostly pointless comment. I'm a bit bored (working at a place where I am getting paid but for no discernible skill at all, itching to get home and do all my unpaid work...)

[andrewducker]

Yeah, short-term internships and work experience is something I can grit my teeth and cope with - particularly if the government is helping out with it. But it should be time limited, so that they aren't taking advantage of the skills you learn.

(And it wasn't pointless at all)

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Did you see the "If you sit down a lot you'll DIE!" study that's been doing the rounds? I think it was in the NYT.

[andrewducker]

I'm fairly sure that that was based on the same study that the link above is referencing. I could be wrong though.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

That light exposure study is people under bright lights late at night ('during usual hours of sleep') so more applicable to people working nightshifts than those of us who live in parts of the world where it goes dark at 3.30pm at mid winter. It would be interesting to see if artifical light between the hours of say 4 and 9 pm when it is dark outside would have the same effect though, especially given Scotland's poor health record.

[andrewducker]

I genuinely would love to know.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

The Sikh article supports my hypothesis that the best onion articles tend to be the ones closes to the truth (perhaps just because they're rarer)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure the vote on grade for pregnant student article really is about feminism. Clearly the professor is showing poor judgement in getting his class to vote on the grade that she gets (although I must say we had something similar happen in one of my classes but it was for everyone), but is it because she's pregnant or because as stated she is unable to attend the appropriate tests? In other words, if she'd been in a car accident would he have sent the same email? If she'd been a he would he have sent the same email? If the answer is yes then it's not about feminism.

[andrewducker]

I totally agree.

What I mostly think about this situation is that the university should have procedures in place for dealing with people who are unable to fulfil the course requirements for reasons which are not their fault. And that the professor should have sorted out a solution with the university, not by asking his students to vote.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Yes I agree with you.

In the case of my course for one module we had to do group presentations, and the lecturers decided that each group would get 50% (or 60%?) of their grade for the presentation assigned to them by another group (I think it was done at random but the group doing the scoring knew who they were).

There were no consequences for whatever you did, so naturally the groups talked to each other and agreed to all give one another maximum marks. This is exactly what you'd expect to happen, and there was no reason to think this wasn't allowed.

After a few weeks the lecturers cottoned on to what was happening and punished all the groups who had scored another group so far by giving them Ds or something.

[andrewducker]

Oh For Fuck's Sake.

Do people not think about the consequences of their actions at all?

If I was one of those groups I'd have been very tempted to get lawyers involved.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Ah... but we were all wide eyed teenagers, and had no thought of things like legal action.

[andrewducker]

About the only positive thing I can see coming out of making people pay for their degrees is that they might feel that the service they get isn't good enough, and demand better, and possibly have a legal right to it.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

As you know I work in an academic institution, and so we get a lot of people from teaching academia come to work with us.

A former lecturer (from a prestigious university) joined a few days ago, and he said the big effect of tuition fees was that students expect you to actually teach them and they expect the teaching to be good now.

I got the impression he (or perhaps his colleagues) weren't very interested in teaching and just wanted to do research, so they saw this as a bit of a bad thing.

He was saying that the issue would become more acute as tuition fees go up to 6-9K.

Interestingly he also said that if the grades fall at all from one year to the next it is viewed as a failure of the lecturer, and that if anyone fails a module it is considered to be a failing of the lecturer (he implied it'd be investigated).

[draconid.livejournal.com]

I remember when I was at university (the year before fees) we had a lecturer who was absolutely rubbish and practically all of us failed his module the one year (so of course they upped the grades of everyone to give us a better average). We'd complained bitterly all through the term to no affect, although I believe they took him off the module the following year. If we'd paid fees we'd have protested more, I'm sure.

The lecturer is still there at the university some 12 years later, because he's got some renown (and useful links) in the worldwide science community. I shudder to think about the education, or lack of it, he's giving to the students.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Perhaps part of the problem is that many academics are good at research but not good at teaching, and they're expected to do both.