Posts by Kracklite
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"My Ph.D thesis is about Stephen King's influence on Shakespeare"?
Bah! Everyone knows that Shakespeare based The Tempest on Forbidden Planet.
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he appears to have no knowledge of scientific method
Matthew Arnold called economics "the dismal science" because of its materialistic reductionism, but I feel that the label is more appropriate because the scientific methodology is dismal.
From what I gather, Clydesdale is not unique in his ineptitude and airy dismissal of inconvenient academic standards. His comments that he tailors his writing for his audience of businessmen (and therefore "socialogoists" have no right to critique his sociological tracts), does nothing to alter the common perception that economists are all too often intellectual prostitutes who get paid to say what their clients want to hear.
A joke told about cosmologists is that they put the error bars on the exponents - but I'd say that at least they know that they have to.
It could well indeed be satire - the humour is endless. "Er, that needs more research" and so on. Ringo played chess and therefore teams should be monocultural, Bach has too many notes...
And the Bach... which Bach was it? P.D.Q.?
Some of it's not funny at all - "team fit" is a euphemism for "Irish need not apply". It does converge too well with the rhetoric of contemporary neofascists who aren't of course, oh no not at all, not in the least bit racists, but know, well it's been scientifically proven, that foreigners find it hard to integrate and don't work efficiently with people who don't share common values and approaches...
Racists seldom think of themselves as racists (unless they are openly fascist), usually they cloak their thinking, even from themselves, in euphemisms and evasions: look, its just obvious innit, like there's this study; someone has to say it/speak up and no-one else (except for the thousands of foaming talkback callers); it's nothing to do with race - it just happens to be characteristic of one group who happen to be brown/yellow/lavendar with green spots - there're these statistics; I mean some of them are good - one or two - I've known them, friends of mine, exemplary chaps - why can't the rest of you be like them?; now you're calling me a racist so I'm a victim now; it's time for you lot to stop being victims and take responsibility... I'm not a racist, because... because... because I'm not!
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Does he do work for AUS?
No, the AUS have their own employment lawyer, but it's always reassuring to have a Plan B just in case. I have a former colleague who said that he never really understood Dilbert until he started working for Massey. That sort of thing is funny to read, but not in the least bit funny to live. Considering what does pass for research from favoured cronies in that environment, the case of Clydesdale surprises me not at all.
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meh. julia is what, "pop-classical"?
Popsical?
Sweet and syrupy, but leaves you feeling cold and sticky afterwards?
faux academic?
Given the way that McMassey treats its real academics (ask Peter Cullen or the AUS), I'm not surprised that parasites who go through the motions and promote themselves first can do just as well or better than the real thing.
Bitter, moi? Yes.
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I'm quite fascinated by how short the leap is for some from a Marxist worldview to the far end of the ideological scale.
In extremis, "left" and "right" are arbitrary terms - both are fundamentalist, all-encompassing constructs which supposedly account for every phenomenon within the same intellectual system and whose advocates are quite incapable of dealing with uncertainty or ambiguity.
I can't be arsed looking up the reference right now, but I remember some research coming out recently purporting that "conservative" and "liberal" leanings were genetically determined. Looking at the details, what it suggested actually that some people, the "liberals", are capable of dealing with ambiguity and uncertainty and the ones labelled "conservative" are not and demand absolutes and create absolutist ideological systems. You'll find those people in either political basket, and when they become disenchanted with the contradictions and inadequacies of one, they flip over into the other without actually changing anything in their nature or cognitive processes whatsoever.
Rather in the manner of Craig's frequent comment about people who see politics as a form of religion. Funny thing is that I often find myself in agreement with him on some basic points while placing myself in an entirely different political realm.
Must get around to reading John Gray's Black Mass some time soon... I gather he classifies a number of seemingly starkly different political and ideological systems under the banner of apocalyptic religion.
Oh, and then there's one thing the usually very annoying Larry Niven once said "There is no cause so noble that you will not find damned fools following it." Or words to that effect.
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... which reminds me of a quip I often deliver to friends: Inspector Morse was a hopelessly unrealistic police series as the homicide rate in a university would never be so low.
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There's no chance you could defame any senior University academic
Well, actually it has more to do with the terms of my departure from that institution and agreements attached to that. I tell you, it was a gruelling experience - I cried all the way to the bank (I didn't get as much as Buchanan - but not that much less...).
(The institution in question is not Victoria - I rather like my current job there)
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Indeed. Parlour psychoanalysis often provides delicious case studies in projection and various forms of confirmation bias.
And with that berg of salt, allow me...
I've sometimes thought that Brash appears to display (please note the weasel words there) the external behaviours (and a couple more) of psychopathy.
Leaving aside the stereotypes that run from Lecter to Moriaty, genuine psychopaths are more like HAL 9000, or would be if they weren't really like the Pointy-Haired Boss. Most are in fact, simply incompetent because they're incapable of reading the contextual/political/social signs at all accurately and cannot think in terms of details or the long term.
I was struck by various points in the PCL-R list - manipulativeness, glibness, lack of remorse, shallowness, lack of empathy, relationship problems etc. OK, that's mean, but in line with a recent doc, The Corporation arguing that corporations, considered as individuals are psychopathic and stirring in a bit of Orwell's essay, 'Shooting an Elephant', which contains the marvellous line, "He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it", I can't help but think that the whole political packaging process is (ooh, another reference) a bed of Procrustes that forces people to act in such ways.
Anyway, some time back I did have a Pro Vice Chancellor who fitted the profile perfectly (for obvious legal reasons, I won't name him). The man was a genial, colourless idiot with a permanent air of self-congratulation which is pretty much expected of anyway who is supposed to embody the amorphous qualities of the executive.
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D'you reckon, what with the Bailey Kurariki beat-up, that "luxury" is this year's word?
I feel the Four Yorkshiremen sketch coming on. It would suit perfectly the posturing fatuity of those exemplars of frugality and clear-sighted common sense, APN.
In any case, I must admit that I'd be prone to side with the "bureaucrats" purely out of the principle of solidarity alone as the word "academic" gets the same almost exclusively pejorative use from demagogues looking for cheap headlines.
There's a cure for cancer?
Sort of. There are treatments so that you go into remission long enough to die of something else.
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Hoodies are like great big hugs that last all day. People who see them as intimidating markers of youth delinquency should be stood out on the beach in a wellington winter for five minutes then given a big thick one. Then they will understand.
Never worn a hoodie myself, but I noticed quite jarringly as a symptom of a usually quite dapper friend's peaking mental illness, a tendency to wear hoodies and dark glasses. Now, not to suggest that hoodies per se are symptomatic of depression and anxiety disorder (been there myself, no T-shirt, but I do have the little red pills still), they may be ameliorative - cutting out the increasing ambient blare and chatter of the world with a day-long hug... which may say something about the corners youth are finding themselves painted into. True, they are (allegedly, as a class) addicted to cellphones, multitasking, tagging and suchlike, but that's controlled semiology.
A former colleague commented unsympathetically once on the "numbing" behaviours characteristic of her students and I wonder if the hoodie is one such.
That sullenness attributed to hooded youth might be something much sadder.