Posts by Kracklite
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It would have taken 30 seconds to rehash those sentences
Well, a bit longer. It's actually hard work paraphrasing without seeming to be merely reshuffling words and when you're just giving throwaway titbits on air, it's easy to slip into repetition. Storm in a bloody teacup, really, except to the amoebae that have temporarily morphed into bipedal form at t' Harold and the SST who want some drama and daren't risk overstraining their nuclei.
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Funnily enough, I think that "a discussion on octopuses and the Rubik’s cube" is far more interesting and newsworthy because of what it implied about cognition anf the fourth or fifth dethronement (1, Copernicus saying that we're not at the centre of the universe; 2, Darwin saying that we're not at the pinnacle of creation; 3, Freud saying that we're not even masters of our own minds) than any bullshit about the Rugby World Cup or John Key's favourite movie (Mr Bean Drops Acid or whatever).
I would sooo love to see TVNZ News have this headline: "Breaking news - yet more proof has come in that we are indeed only shaved monkeys. We will be spending the next three hours looking at this in depth and won't even hint at referring to creationists to give the fatuous appearance of 'balance'. By the way, there has been another outbreak of simian poo-flinging in parliament this week and reporting on that will be an anthropologist, not Mark Fucking Self-Important Sainsbury."
Does that make me a nerd?
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Whether they really wanted to kill themselves, or to do themselves any real harm, is another matter
"Silliest bottom burp? Rik." </quote> Young Ones fans will get it...
Seriously, I'm not being insensitive, really. I've had students who've tried to top themselves (and I've heard of some who've done more than try) and I won't go into the details, except to say that being a high-functioning alcoholic is wayyy preferable. Young women do seem to be very "brittle" students - they can do well, but if they're very bright and are used to good grades, a bad grade or a persistent bad grade in a writing-skills dependent paper when everything else in other realms is going well - due to dyslexia, for example - can be literally unbearably horrible for them (personal experience of one very talented design student in this case) (ah, she did very well in the end, if anyone's worried).
Knowing people who've tried and some who've succeeded (surely many of us have...), there are some people who do the "cry for help" kind of suicide attempt and use it as a stick to beat other people around them while others are more deeply confused and desperate. I'm afraid in the former case, I've come to despise the selfishness and cruelty of the persons involved after the third or forth staged attempt and seeing their subsequent treatment of those who tried to help them, at great emotional cost to themselves.
On the other hand, consciousness is a much overrated quality. People say and do things believing them utterly at one level while being compelled at a preconscious level by forces and instincts that are not at all rational in the sense that we mean it, but logical according to emotional rules. We seem to be a species that acts according to dramatic impulses and patterns and retrospectively finds "rational" justifications for our actions as a reflex... so perhaps the self-dramatising would-be-suicides deserve more sympathy too - though it's damned hard work when you see why some in truly desperate circumstances have tried and actually pulled themselves back from the brink rather than blaming everyone else around them. No doubt professionals can give a more coherent explanation than I.
Sorry, that's getting rather heavy.
On the plagiarism issue - for students, it's pretty clear cut, but in one case, one of the best essays I ever got was by a guy who included about a tenth or a fifth of his own words and used the rest of his wordcount as quotes - attributed - to make a hilarious and quite incisive and critical mock-interview with his subject.
I may be stereotyping here, but students from Asian cultures are taught to defer/refer to the master in their work, with the fact that they have done so being taken for granted. The bother of formal citation is dispensed with not so much out of a deliberate attempt to deceive so much as the result of a habit engendered in circumstances where it was mutually understood that the known authority was being respected and overt citation was needless pedantry. I find that I have to explain that proper citation does not imply that one would be dishonest in its absence, but that it's just one of those hoops that we silly Westerners want everyone to jump through.
My point, if there is one, is that apparent plagiarism is not necessarily piracy by deliberate malice... and I gather that Generation Y is taking the principle that information wants to be free to heart. That's going to lead to some very interesting legal discussions, as it has already - and some fundamental changes in how society comes to view intellectual property rights as the years pass (current reactions still being largely determined by print media standards). I refuse to make any predictions...
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It's after five somewhere in the world. Actually, I'm between part time contracts so I'm just a boozy PhD student these days.
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... and an incoherent rant. "Their"/They're", "That was a rant". Back to the Scotch to calm down, methinks.
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Sacha, Sofie. Well, I have a former classmate who is now fairly senior in a major Wellington commercial architecture firm and now their doing a lot of work refitting some of the abominations that went up in the eighties. Yes, first lax standards, but there were a lot of greedy developers cutting corners between crappy design and the even crappier construction that resulted. I'm hearing horror stories about how they've been stripping back cladding to find what's underneath: buildings that had to be designed for earthquake standards but which were not actually built and finished competently or adequately to those standards. I suspect that residential developments suffered similarly.
Sofie: breathing. Yes. In fact, we've heard about formaldehyde in particle board flooring and suchlike, but there are plenty of volatiles coming off furniture and finishings and basic building materials that are not healthy. "Smoke inhalation" is given as a cause of death in fires, but it's not as gentle as that implies - burning foam rubber in your sofa is not something you want to be near - it's very nasty stuff.
We have utterly appalling building standards in New Zealand which have only very lately and very slightly been improved and now that Sontaran in a puke-coloured jacket will gut them... I feel a Victor Meldrew coming on...
Sustainable design is also safer, efficient design, but some features will raise costs, and with the populist cause of 'affordable' homes being pushed by the demagogues, I don't hold out a lot of hope for people thinking seriously about homes as being perhaps more expensive to build, but built for multiple generations or the very long term rather than those flimsy boxes that clog all of the "Bellevue Estates" and "Panorama Heights" and whatnot disfiguring the city fringes (and rotting as soon as they're finished).
The good news is that Alex Hills, an architect well experienced specialising in green design, is developing a paper in sustainable architecture that will be an optional paper in 2009 and core from 2010 at Vic's School of Architecture.
Hell, that was I rant. I get worked up on the matter.
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I have a picture of you walking away from the computer only to be mysteriously dragged back to just make a tiny point, honest!
Ever seen or read a(n in)famous play by Jean-Paul Sartre?
I strongly recommend it to anyone participating in a blog thread.
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This ?
Yes. :)
Tell you what, the two reaction shots during that Hyde interview- I don't know what you would call those eyes, but they weren't the look of someone who is used to letting people who annoy him hang around to do so.
Ah, now that's the difference between the corporate and parliamentary worlds that may continue to surprise Mr Key.
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Flanker
That's the NATO codename for the Sukhoi Su-27 family of fighters, in case you're interested.
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Canker?
Clue: starts with George Junior's middle initial.