h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*chuckles as the joke was on matina - FG prefers the chocolate cake, while SE prefers the coconut*

opp look has post 42 napped by LTP again

*Ogles shiny orange button*

> She is so accomplished at this that she seems to have received the award before it was received, and thanked us very nicely, too.

I've inspected the award, and found it to be made of tachyons. Which explains a bit. It's traveling backward in time while we're going forward. I expect it'll disappear from my bathroom shelf in about three hours... But while I've got it, I'll enjoy it!

I used to get tonsillitis all the time as a child, but I guess the bits grew in that stopped that from happening.

I've discovered another thing to do with leather - crowns. Perfect for Scarborough Faire, and with all the pieces of leather I have, frugal too. Now all I need is enough leather to create a crown of thorns.

Yum... I'll take a slice of coconut cake!

Happy Birthday, FG! Inside you'll find a shiny orange button. I'm not sure what it does...

*Surreptiously hides gaping hole in arm of recliner*

Happy Birthday, FG

*presents birthday girl with containing pair of concert tickets which will get you the best seat in the house at any concert within a 250 mile radious of your home - as often as you like, over the next year

Happy Birthday FG!

Great snag on post LTP there LTP!

*nothing happens (apparently) when Mr. D accidentally hits the orange button*

Something I completely forgot to include when I wrote up Ben's notes was at least a mention of her phone photography. That was very remiss of me. Take some more photos, Ben, so we can refer to them at the outset of the next conversation.

And is anyone willing to be the next scribe?

*thought he hear a rumbling from the linen closet, though quickly disregards that*

A new conversation!

*Leaves a calling card and goes back to finish the old*

[tartaronne ] - still with snow.

[GDZ]

(SS)

I was lost, waylaid, distracted, elsewhere. Oh, I don't know. New conversation, very exciting, although to me the last conversation was a new conversation, so that was exciting too. hmm.

FG. Happy Birthday Still not great at this gift buying, but, they are crackers, their flavour adapts to best suit the topping.

I've been thinking about Amy

Amy - so you're the fifth person they've tried. Where do they find these people? Where did they find you? Is there some massive bank of people with the expertise and desire to teach this?

Maybe she wants to control things because she doesn't actually have any control.

How much do you need this? Maybe the game should go the other way, let it go to a disciplinary and bring up the fact that this has happened before, and again, the only person not on your side is her? High risk of course.

Managers like that are draconian, yet somehow distant... They tend to be micro-managers, yet don't really have a clue about what the priorities are.

I had a supervisor like that and we just DID NOT get along. She was (still is) the sort of person who's good at looking busy, but didn't actually do anything. When we were really busy, she'd find part of a task to perform that would be easy and take a long time, milk it for all it was worth, then pass it on to the night shift (me) when it was time for her to go home. These would be the really hot projects that had to be out that night.

Ack! 3rd page!

One of these days I'll figure out a way to rig the start time of the next conversation at Lil's...then I'll get one of those mugs! Muhuhuhahahahaha!

What you need Affy is some luck potion.

Hmmm....luck potion....

*she too hears a faint rumble from the linen cupboard*

Hmmm, I think I'll just attempt a quick inventory check of my infinity capacity pockets.

Beautiful, sunny frosty morning here by the way. But I wouldn't have objected to a little of the snow that ooop narth are experiencing.

Happy birthday, FG.

It's the weekend.

We had a little bit of snow yesterday but it isn't nice snow. It's thin, powdery stuff and it froze hard onto all available surfaces as soon as it got dark. The walk down to the stop in town was quite treacherous even for someone with six legs. The high heels didn't help.

The history of how I ended up being invited to do the job I'm doing is quite hard to explain without running up against the libel laws. Other incumbents have generally been staff employed on other projects and co-opted - a proper solution has never been an option due to financial constraints. It does, however, show the value of a research and teaching *group* - a group of one isn't viable because you need the checks and balances afforded by vigorous debate.

Hanging over everything is the legacy of some financial mismanagement a few years ago. The first question to be asked is never about learning and teaching but "What is this going to cost?" In these circumstances I think it is quite common for those with controlling personalities to rise upwards and for those with creative personalities to hunker down or to run away.

The use of part-time, temporary staff is a symptom of this kind of financial situation but many Higher Education establishments have now realised that it has unfortunate consequences in terms of staff satisfaction and turnover and are backing away from the 'bought in staff' solution. The mismatch between ability and status is a big problem. There is a belief in some quarters that part-timers must be intectually inferior, especially because they tend to be *teaching* staff in an environment where *research* is king and students are seen to be a necessary evil.

I'm still undecided about what to do next. Picking up on something Phil said in a previous post, it isn't quite a matter of being asked to teach something that is 'wrong' - I'm working in the soft sciences where shades of grey have always been the order of the day. However, if for the sake of argument we stick with the right/wrong model, I believe that my students will get better marks if I teach 'wrong' content because the person marking the assignments thinks that the content she is insisting I teach is 'right.' It comes down to my word against hers. I'm seen as dangerous; she's in favour with the controllers and seen as safe. Her view of the world will prevail unless an external party is brought in to adjudicate.

For the purposes of the Salon, it raises some interesting points about how we know things and how the Internet has affected what we know in the soft sciences. Sociology and the cognitive sciences rarely throw up predictive theories from which hypotheses can be derived and tested by Kuhnian scientific experimental methods. Instead, knowledge in these areas has developed through collaborative construction as a result of dialogues. In the past, someone's 'bright idea' would be discussed via personal letters, academic papers and at conferences and slowly a consensus would emerge. The jointly constructed knowledge would then probably appear as a chapter in a specialist book and a few of those ideas would go on to make it into the standard text books for that subject. Only at that point would the material be put on syllabuses and taught to students.

But now we have the Internet and everything changes. Ideas are disseminated very rapidly and it is easy to be swayed by the sudden popularity of an idea. Emerging knowledge no longer has to stand the test of time before reaching the students - they can find stuff for themselves on Google for a start - and knowledge developed over twenty years can seem dull compared to the 'latest thing.' As teachers - as as students - we now need to exercise some judgement about the provenance of ideas. Some of you may remember MR expressing concern about having a pecking order of publications in the academic world - there is a A-list and a B-list of peer-reviewed journals much like that for celebs. This is not entirely desirable but it is clear that some journals will allow any old rubbish to be published and some, as in the case of commercial reports, are positively biased.

So by 'wrong' content I don't mean material that is provably untrue but theories and methodologies that I consider to have weak provenance, are unlikely to stand the test of time and therefore shouldn't be presented to students as accepted knowledge within our community of practice. I would prefer to set this new knowledge within a balanced presentation of the alternatives currently available and I don't think students should be penalised if they review the options critically and choose an alternative methodology.

Disuss.

Help can anybody hear me. It's all orange in here.