I know, I know, don't succumb to the panic... but if anyone's already over there, I'm 'strangecreature' on Greatestjournal too now. :-P Call it my official Plan B.
Heh. I hadn't actually disappeared; I was still lurked occasionally. But you know how it can get in academia... way too much work and not enough time.
I hope this thing blows over without too much trouble, but there seem to be some speculation floating around that yesterday's deletions were just the start of something that might snowball. Hopefully that's just paranoia.
The law, I think, tends to be a bit of a blunt instrument for issues as nuanced as freedom of expression. But I'm going to go with JS Mill on this one, and say that no one, governing body or otherwise, should reserve the right to force somebody to shut up. Regardless of how preposterous or heinous what they're saying is. So for me the issue is not all that complicated. That being said, LJ does reserve the right to decide what is and isn't hosted on their servers. It's the way they went about exercising that right yesterday that doesn't sit very well with me. I followed some links yesterday, and I even came across a comment by a user that claims her journal was deleted because she was a survivor of rape and for some reason she had listed that in her interests. Blunt instrument indeed. Not to mention the less-than-noble motivation for the deletions. WfI threatens six-apart to go to their (six-apart's) advertisers if they don't comply with their (WfI's) demands, and six-apart caves. Then they spout off to the media about how it's all about 'the type of community they want LJ to be'. Hmmm.
And now, that they've seen the backlash of what they did yesterday (it was even on slashdot), LJ has decided that maybe they made a mistake. They now claim the journals they deleted were only suspended. Which I'm 99% sure is a crock. Of course there's no way to prove this as they really only have to go through their backup tapes to restore the deleted journals which they deem worthy of restoring. But whatevs. I say it serves them right to have to do the frantic extra work now. Not that I think that they're evil or something, or even that what they did was evil, but it was at the very least weak and annoying (and rash).
LOL. And thus ends my rant. Sorry 'bout that. Edmonton huh? You know, I've only been to Edmonton briefly and I didn't like it, but I know people that have spent a fair bit of time there who say it's their favourite city in Canada. Who knows? Maybe it's a hidden gem. Does U of A have a good law program? And if you start there, can you transfer to a different law school later?
Life's been ok. I applied for a research grant for the summer but I didn't get it, so I'm just taking a couple of classes and working part-time instead. Still doing math, and starting to think about grad schools. Realistically I still have a couple of years of undergrad, but it doesn't hurt to start poking around early. Other than that, I'm just chillin...
I say we petition for an extra day in the week. That'd free up some time!
It's starting to ebb from the looks of it, but just because of the amount of people who got a scare with this one and the immediacy of the action taken, I think people are going to be sore for a while.
Yes! I might be a biased Mill-junkie on some occasions, but... yes! *g* Your brain is shiny and good.
In the TOS, it does mention that they don't want to have to host obscenity, but I almost want to say that a blog, just of its own merit, has some artistic value and so doesn't fit the definition of obscenity, you know? On the flip side, if someone was using a blog to lure in kids for some nefarious purpose or another, I say take 'em out. There's a big fat difference between words and words used to spur action. Yelling 'fire' in a theatre or writing 'Hey, little kid, send me some pictures...' on a website is a heck of a lot different than fiction written on the subject. The one that shocked me was the deletion of a book comm discussing 'Lolita'. O_o Talk about a big old step backwards.
HA! Yeah, I lived in a small town near Edmonton for ten years when I was little, and I'm definitely more thrilled about moving out than I am about where I'm moving to! Law program's decent, but doesn't necessarily have some of the prestige of the Eastern schools. That said, I've been assured that it's ridiculously easy to transfer between law schools for your second year as long as your grades don't entirely suck. :-) Exciting stuff!
Definitely doesn't hurt to start looking! It's all just networking, really. Did you have some in mind already? (I have no idea which schools are best for the sciences!) Sorry to hear about the grant... What kind of research had you been thinking of?
Extra day a week, huh? I like it. Who the heck said there should only be seven, anyway?
Woot! Mill junkies unite! Reading 'Utilitarianism' and 'On Liberty' was definitely my favorite part of ethics class.
Yup, there's a huge difference between yelling "Fire!" in a theatre and going around saying "Yelling 'fire!' in theatres is cool." The first should not be tolerated, and the second must be (at least I think so). But consider this: Law enforcement agencies go to great lengths to track online predators in order to catch them in the act and bring them to justice. If there were such predators on LJ and LJ had a way of detecting them then deleting their journals makes no sense whatsoever. It just chases them out into the vastness of cyberspace where they then have to be tracked down all over again if they are to ever be 'brought to justice'. So the actions that WfI demanded and that LJ subsequently took did nothing to take down any predators; it actually gave them a heads-up. Analogously, the people who got punished are the ones saying "Yelling 'fire!' in theatres is cool." while the people who actually yelled "Fire!" are already in a different theatre. Kind of a bass-ackwards way of doing things, considering WfI's mission statement.
Hey, if transferring between law school is that easy I'd be tempted to go to a different one every year *g* ...if I was going to law school that is.
Hmmm. Picking a grad school for math is more about finding the right supervisor and project than it is about the school. That said, Waterloo has about the best reputation (as far as math is concerned) in Canada. I was trying to get the NSERC undergrad research grant for math, which is basically a grant to work with a professor on some project of his or her choosing over the summer. Usually it's proving something that hasn't been proven yet that happens to coincide with a bigger project that the prof is working on, or just something that he/she thinks is cool. Only 3 undergrads got the math grants at UBC so I don't feel so bad. There's always next year.
I hope this thing blows over without too much trouble, but there seem to be some speculation floating around that yesterday's deletions were just the start of something that might snowball. Hopefully that's just paranoia.
The law, I think, tends to be a bit of a blunt instrument for issues as nuanced as freedom of expression. But I'm going to go with JS Mill on this one, and say that no one, governing body or otherwise, should reserve the right to force somebody to shut up. Regardless of how preposterous or heinous what they're saying is. So for me the issue is not all that complicated. That being said, LJ does reserve the right to decide what is and isn't hosted on their servers. It's the way they went about exercising that right yesterday that doesn't sit very well with me. I followed some links yesterday, and I even came across a comment by a user that claims her journal was deleted because she was a survivor of rape and for some reason she had listed that in her interests. Blunt instrument indeed. Not to mention the less-than-noble motivation for the deletions. WfI threatens six-apart to go to their (six-apart's) advertisers if they don't comply with their (WfI's) demands, and six-apart caves. Then they spout off to the media about how it's all about 'the type of community they want LJ to be'. Hmmm.
And now, that they've seen the backlash of what they did yesterday (it was even on slashdot), LJ has decided that maybe they made a mistake. They now claim the journals they deleted were only suspended. Which I'm 99% sure is a crock. Of course there's no way to prove this as they really only have to go through their backup tapes to restore the deleted journals which they deem worthy of restoring. But whatevs. I say it serves them right to have to do the frantic extra work now. Not that I think that they're evil or something, or even that what they did was evil, but it was at the very least weak and annoying (and rash).
LOL. And thus ends my rant. Sorry 'bout that. Edmonton huh? You know, I've only been to Edmonton briefly and I didn't like it, but I know people that have spent a fair bit of time there who say it's their favourite city in Canada. Who knows? Maybe it's a hidden gem. Does U of A have a good law program? And if you start there, can you transfer to a different law school later?
Life's been ok. I applied for a research grant for the summer but I didn't get it, so I'm just taking a couple of classes and working part-time instead. Still doing math, and starting to think about grad schools. Realistically I still have a couple of years of undergrad, but it doesn't hurt to start poking around early. Other than that, I'm just chillin...
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It's starting to ebb from the looks of it, but just because of the amount of people who got a scare with this one and the immediacy of the action taken, I think people are going to be sore for a while.
Yes! I might be a biased Mill-junkie on some occasions, but... yes! *g* Your brain is shiny and good.
In the TOS, it does mention that they don't want to have to host obscenity, but I almost want to say that a blog, just of its own merit, has some artistic value and so doesn't fit the definition of obscenity, you know? On the flip side, if someone was using a blog to lure in kids for some nefarious purpose or another, I say take 'em out. There's a big fat difference between words and words used to spur action. Yelling 'fire' in a theatre or writing 'Hey, little kid, send me some pictures...' on a website is a heck of a lot different than fiction written on the subject. The one that shocked me was the deletion of a book comm discussing 'Lolita'. O_o Talk about a big old step backwards.
HA! Yeah, I lived in a small town near Edmonton for ten years when I was little, and I'm definitely more thrilled about moving out than I am about where I'm moving to! Law program's decent, but doesn't necessarily have some of the prestige of the Eastern schools. That said, I've been assured that it's ridiculously easy to transfer between law schools for your second year as long as your grades don't entirely suck. :-) Exciting stuff!
Definitely doesn't hurt to start looking! It's all just networking, really. Did you have some in mind already? (I have no idea which schools are best for the sciences!) Sorry to hear about the grant... What kind of research had you been thinking of?
Reply
Woot! Mill junkies unite! Reading 'Utilitarianism' and 'On Liberty' was definitely my favorite part of ethics class.
Yup, there's a huge difference between yelling "Fire!" in a theatre and going around saying "Yelling 'fire!' in theatres is cool." The first should not be tolerated, and the second must be (at least I think so). But consider this: Law enforcement agencies go to great lengths to track online predators in order to catch them in the act and bring them to justice. If there were such predators on LJ and LJ had a way of detecting them then deleting their journals makes no sense whatsoever. It just chases them out into the vastness of cyberspace where they then have to be tracked down all over again if they are to ever be 'brought to justice'. So the actions that WfI demanded and that LJ subsequently took did nothing to take down any predators; it actually gave them a heads-up. Analogously, the people who got punished are the ones saying "Yelling 'fire!' in theatres is cool." while the people who actually yelled "Fire!" are already in a different theatre. Kind of a bass-ackwards way of doing things, considering WfI's mission statement.
Hey, if transferring between law school is that easy I'd be tempted to go to a different one every year *g* ...if I was going to law school that is.
Hmmm. Picking a grad school for math is more about finding the right supervisor and project than it is about the school. That said, Waterloo has about the best reputation (as far as math is concerned) in Canada. I was trying to get the NSERC undergrad research grant for math, which is basically a grant to work with a professor on some project of his or her choosing over the summer. Usually it's proving something that hasn't been proven yet that happens to coincide with a bigger project that the prof is working on, or just something that he/she thinks is cool. Only 3 undergrads got the math grants at UBC so I don't feel so bad. There's always next year.
Reply
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