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[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

[maenad_au]

Thanks!
Yeah I didn't think it mattered to me that she's a she, but then I realised she's a local and unmarried and her local electorate staff have tatts and piercings and I realised that actually I could just relate to this person after all. Then it mattered.

She still has to do a few things if the ALP wants my vote back though.

[felis_ultharus]

Still, it is a marker of how far we've come.

A few years ago, a major party I didn't like fielded an openly gay gay candidate for provincial leader. I would never have voted for him because his policies were awful, but it was still cool that we've come so far.

[helenseidolon]

I think I need to contemplate that article for a while. Honsetly, I think I disagree with a lot of what he's saying. I wish I knew his real name, though!

[felis_ultharus]

I'm curious what the issues were for you, specifically...?

[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

[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.