Posts by James Green
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hmm. As I was reading the post, the first thought that came to mind was 'What Would Bollard Do?', and then I really liked Stephen's thoughts, and the person that suggested it could make a t-shirt.
And then I got to thinking, actually an entire series of Bollard t-shirts would be awesome. We could have publicaddresstees.net and David could typeset them in LaTeX. Who doesn't want Rofflenui on a t-shirt afterall?
And somewhere along the way, I was like omfg, I know Bob's mum. NZ really is a village.
-
I used to give a lecture on nyu zullund inglush.
Referencing, of course Harry Orsman.
Varsity, first used in Dunedin in 1890, at which time it was an English import, but it's not longer in use there.
Uni was first used, I think, in the phrase 'Sydney uni', and was first spotted on these fair shores in 1984 in Auckland. Incidentally, thinking of under-appreciated publishings, I have one out there on NZ's adoption of americanisms, and it seems that Auckland is also the gateway for those (at least relative to Dunedin).
And just to round it out, Scarfie is a thoroughly Dunedin word that has spread.
-
@webweaver. uh, slightly off topic, but I'd dabbled a bit in web design many moons ago (just for myself mind, nothing too exciting), and I always thought the gathering website was very nifty and elegantly executed. just reading a bit of your bio, & now i see why.
-
Do you ever read your old work and have a strange feeling you are reading something written by another person?
I was recently revising a paper that I attempted to publish in perhaps 2002/3, and was pleasantly surprised by how much I didn't hate it...
-
Not that I did that very much or anything. Or searched Google Scholar for any citations.
Or you could start worrying about the size of your h-index...
-
@Chris W -- I think O'Hare is using "why do we do research?" in a much more generic sense. He's all about aviation decision-making.
You might not see it this way, but I see the binary nothing or all approach as a journalistic construct. In my experience, journalists glaze over the if you try to construct a more nuanced argument (and often won't publish it). Once, I was quoted along with another person in the field, and the surrounding text made it sound like we had a trenchant disagreement. Then I re-read the quotes from each of us and realised that we agreed. I think Gluckman is (at least at this stage) lucky that people are listening to him when he's being reasonable (long may that continue and spread). So in that sense I don't disagree with you, I'm just not sure that we agree on the cause. Again, in my experience, if you're joking round with the reporter before or after the 'interview' and say something a bit more clear cut, that'll be the headline. (see recent Media 7 on 'nothing is off the record').
we're getting an achievable first step on the way to a wider ban in some years, and in the meantime, surely formal ban on texting (send/receiving) and overall reduction in cell-phone use - surely progress?
Texting sure. I still worry that hand-held might be counter-productive in terms of increasing hands-free use. If this sends the message that hands-free is safer, and people pick up on it, it has the real potential to increase the amount of time people are talking and driving. Politicians like bans. It shows decisiveness and action. However, they often times have unintended consequences, sometimes serious.
-
Maths with stats. I looked at that with disdain, and thought, why bother with approximation, when you can study something where you can get a real answer.
If I'd seemed a bit less flakey at course advising in first year, I would probably have been made to do statistics, but mercifully I didn't, and then someone in philosophy suggested that I might find critical thinking a bit dull, and why don't you try formal logic.
Flick to second year. Studying Gödel's completeness theorem (the incompleteness theorem's dull kid brother) on the top floor of the Burns building in the late afternoon with the sun streaming in. Stifling hot, in a room with only one girl, and a bunch of boys who could probably have done with a lesson in hygiene and/or deodorant use, and the lecture not the most riveting.
So I dropped out of philosophy and picked up anthropology. I was having to do statistics in second year, having not escaped that time. I would have had to take a higher point load, but by a fluke, the formal logic ended up being a get out of jail card for that. By that time I was cocky enough not bother with actually going to statistics. I read the textbook in October, and apparently overstudied.
The following year I'd been on Mt Cargill watching the Leonid meteor shower and was driving back down when I hit a duck, breaking my grill. That afternoon I got offered a project to do statistics with ducks.
Fast forward to now. And despite that rather strange introduction, statistics really is my thing somehow. The most useful lesson I learnt from philosophy was that arguments=boring. Nobody ever really argues over arguments, the interesting bit is the truth value of the propositions, for which philosophy is fuck all use.
I don't even like univariate statistics. I like really really really multivariate statistics. I briefly had a job where I was working on an experiment with only two dependent variables and a couple of factors. It was dull. I'm only really happy when I have more DVs and IVs than I really can handle, and have to come up with a model that's on the edge of my comfort zones.
I've built some great models this week. Hopefully that means in a couple of years you might see me talking about them in the media.
-
I don't doubt that, in cars, hands-free is safer than not
One of the reasons why psychology research often gets bagged for testing the apparently obvious, is that it's surprisingly how often the 'obvious' is not true. I gave some instances of why this might not be true above (and also why banning hand-held could even be counter-productive in terms of endorsing hands-free use).
-
After about five years in the workforce, who cares what your degree was?
God, I wish that someone was giving this as career advice in high school. And university. I'm so very tired of the bizarre idea that the topic you study at university should somehow be related to an intended career. It's been the death of the humanities.
I almost took first year chemistry, but realised their weren't going to be many explosions, so I took NZ Lit and german language instead, and then stumbled into anthropology (although to be fair, my intended major stayed intact).
-
he's asking that he and his research determine the policy and law, much more than inform it
Umm, I'm pretty sure I didn't say it was his research, and I don't think he claimed it was his either. And I'm sure the journalist played no role in leading you to your interpretation that he wants to determine the law, bound as they are to report in a non-sensationalist fashion.
Looking at it a bit further, while you are right that it is much easier to ban something that you can see, whether it's actually useful might be more debatable.
Why do people have hands-free sets? Is it because they spend more time talking on their phones while driving? Will a ban of hand-held phones reinforce their sense that they made a good choice to use a hands-free set because it makes them safer? Will they consider that this ban endorses their practice of talking and driving as safe? Will people who currently don't think have hand-free sets buy them, and then thinking that they're being safe now, increase the amount they talk and drive?