(Untitled)

[felis_ultharus]

First off, congratulations to Australia, which has its first female Prime Minister today - Julia Gillard. She was chosen by her party like our first Kim Campbell. Unlike Campbell, though, she has a chance of winning her upcoming election. If she does, Australia will have passed up Canada.

Also, The Wild Hunt had its article by a member of the

Comments

[lux_apollo]

I would posit that it was more of a rant than an article. The author simply is bitching about the same issues that we have in just about every academic field in the humanities and social sciences - there are a large number of people dabbling in the water using a bad set of preconceptions and ignorances compared to the people actually fully invested in a particular subfield. It happens more than you'd think in the hard sciences, too (e.g. my advisor, using my MSc thesis to widen his research program from taxonomy into evolutionary ecology, despite his decided lack of expertise in the field).

I think he's writing with blinders on: of *course* this is the shitty situation and the reception history he's going to see, given the cultural context of America, and the West in general. It would be the same as if I went to an academic conference in music history and spun a yarn about elements of feminism in the works of some 17th century French composers (and only one of my examples being a woman composer).

Unfortunately, academics at conferences generally don't want real discussions, they want to hear people agreeing with them and giving them pats on the back, and to be seen so that people know their career hasn't met its demise yet. I have a lot more than this that I could say, but this isn't really the right forum for this kind of a discussion.

[felis_ultharus]

Yeah, I've heard that this is common in the sciences - recently, in fact, as a friend of mine was discussing his experiences working for the anatomy department of his university last week.

I think I always just assumed that scientist were more evolved. My father (who got his physics PhD before changing fields and going into law) always portrayed the hard sciences as a halcyon paradise of objectivity.

Of course, my father also trots out his 34-year-old physics degree (specialized in optics) to back up his position as a global warming denier, so he's probably not the best person to be listening to on this or any other subject.