Links I found interesting for 19-05-2013

[nwhyte]

• Dear Class of ’13: You’ve been scammed
  The appalling costs of college tuition.
  (tags: education )
• What Is Going on With the Accents in Game of Thrones?
  Indeed.
  (tags: sf )
• Matt Smith and David Tennant Behind the Scenes of the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special
  Whogasm.
  (tags: doctorwho )
• The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton
  Review of the

Comments

[steepholm]

Brett Arends is right, but he's awfully out of date as far as the UK (or rather England) is concerned. My children will have to pay considerably more for tuition than the figures he thinks extortionate in the US - and we don't even have the compensation of great facilities, or indeed astronomical salaries for "diva" academics, who have had real-terms salary cuts every years of this government, even as fees have tripled and the interest rate payable on loans quadrupled.

[nwhyte]

Even Brett's account of Cambridge is a little rose-tinted. Sure, we didn't have to pay tuition fees (he was an undergraduate the year below me) but maintenance grants had already pretty much gone and we were the last cohort before student loans.

The US is very internally varied of course. This article listed the colleges with the worst return on investment (ie the ones where there is the biggest mismatch between tuition fees and future earnings).

[uitlander]

Oh, I didn't notice this was one of Mr Arends attempts - he was always sloppy about checking his facts, which is why he crashed and burned at Oxford (same College as me, IIRC he did not complete his degree, and I also remember him from Cambridge) The actual cost of an UG education at Cambridge is currently ~£16 K/PA IIRC.

There's an internal row going on at the moment about publishing the full figures, but it is not a state secret, it's just a matter of when and how they are put out. In the interim have a look at the international student fees, which are a reasonable guide. The reality is that the University is running at a per capita loss on student fees.

[bookzombie]

Re the piece on accents in Game of Thrones. The accents may be all over the British Isles, but the word choices are entirely American. I noticed specifically in the last episode when Robb asks his wife (sorry, terrible memory for names...) 'who are you writing.' We'd say 'who are you writing to', or if you want to be posh 'to whom are you writing'!

[cairmen]

That's a fascinating article on Game of Thrones - particularly speaking as someone who directed a fantasy film with regional accents a few years ago!

Having said that, I suspect this is something that came up in Game of Thrones direction discussions. My experience is that the ease with which actors can do accents varies wildly actor to actor and accent to accent - choose the wrong accent for an actor and they can have so much trouble with it that it undermines their performance. (I suspect this may explain why Littlefinger was decidedly wooden for the first few episodes. I'm reasonably sure the wierd accent he's doing is entirely deliberate and meant to reflect his background exactly as the article writer theorises - but it probably took a while to get used to doing it.)

Link

[lexlingua]

Hey, glad you found my review of "The Man Who Was Thursday" interesting. Have you read it too? Would like to hear your views!

Re: Link

[nwhyte]

I love it!

[webcowgirl]

Wow ,the Game of Thrones link was really funny. Americans can't distinguish between different UK accents and I assume the people running HBO can't either. But my God the fannishness! Makes me glad I stick to theater instead of that TV stuff.