Posted by alexandra_k on May 18, 2018, at 1:49:05
In reply to Re: library books, posted by rjlockhart37 on May 11, 2018, at 22:26:21
Yeah. I'm sad about the loss of science fiction classics from the 1950's and 1960's. Brave new World and so on. Dystopia about future technology. Mostly because a lot of it has come into fruition, in these parts.
We have 3 year degrees and courses come in first year, second year, and third year level. Lecturers start trying to teach students their own research (groom them for doing their stats and working in their labs over summer) from second year. So only one year of proper taught instruction at university, really, before it's deviated really rather a lot from the standard textbooks.
What standard textbooks?
We have international edition textbooks. Sometimes they are just old editions of current US textbooks and othertimes they are editions that have been adapted so that diagrams are on different pages from the narrative explaining them and so on. Lots of irrelevant (headachy) colours and so on. You could spend your life trying to show some people the difference between a good and a bad textbook but they've picked the ones who can't tell to lead the rest...
It's about writing yourself in. Making yourself indispensable. The idea is to (we are marketed into believing) the idea is to learn a rare and valuable skill such that you can't be laid off or paid crap because you will have options.
And the computer engineers got too good at making computers to do things like present informational contents of emails and so on. So now they need to get better at making things not quite noticably worse with each new update so things are obsoleted. Because without being obsoleted (intentionally) well... Theres just the opportunity cost of so very much money we can extort out of people ... Just because we can...
But the less people know.. The more you have 'high tech' labs and so on... The Ford assembly line where each individual worker takes this bit and does that and passes it to the next guy... And thats how space ships and missile launchers are actually built.
And all the kids go to the public universities where they learn to do a bit in the assembly line. With the bit of information or two they picked up from First Year.
And social science... Is post-modernist essay generator. You can have a generations-long discussion about how blue text on a yellow background isn't helping the learning disabled kids learn any better. In fact one might be forgiven for thinking...
I worry about this 'sign in and then you can access' because then you can extort people and hold their login over them as blackmail. Who can? We arene't even sure, are we. What if you wake up one day and one or more of your logins don't work. Who would you go and see to complain about that? Would you find a person who speaks meaningful English? Would you find a person who can do anything about that?
Public libraries were about anybody who wants to being able to access books... Now there's no shortage of computer generated monkeys typing all kinds of crap... Don't get me wrong, I've seen an awful lot of awful in print books. They keep them prominent over here so one might be forgiven from thinking all the printed books are awful crap so you don't mind as they get trucked off to the fires of storage.
I suppose that's how come they need a new hospital. All the rooms that are required for storage and then there's nothing left.
No, it's because the district health boards syphoned a bunch of money off to people who have invested in private hospital infrastructure while simultaneously failing to maintain the public infrastructure. Genius. In a psychopathic and short-sighted way.
Still, you can't give people modern medications when (for example) the people working in the hospitals don't have the cognitive capacity to put stuff back into the fridge.
And who hires that guy?
That's what's criminal.
Who hires the guy who hires that guy?
Where does all the money go?
poster:alexandra_k
thread:1098573
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20180212/msgs/1098745.html