![](/boards/images/icons/default/book.gif) Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
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Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 3,569
connoisseur
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connoisseur
Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 3,569 |
The really good professors in my experience use their own textbooks that they have published no matter what year, along with the use custom courseware. You are right that professors seem to stray away from textbooks at higher level courses but that is because undergrad is more theory based and years 4 or 5 + is more applied and research (no textbooks for that) oriented. Textbooks are usually replaced with custom course material put together by the prof.
You’re point about the nature of text books and custom course material sounds basically the same as what I was trying to make. That textbooks are written in a more constrained form since the theories they present (sometimes multiple theories if none is dominant) are generally more accepted, where as most higher level courses I took were as you say “more applied and research” but I would also add often more theoretically eclectic. In the most advance courses I took most of the study was outside of and often inconsistent with the dominant paradigms. I always understood and accepted professors sourcing their own material especially when referencing papers they’ve written since they’re teaching theses courses in conjunction with their own research. However, that didn’t stop it from bothering me when a professor required a book he wrote for the course only to use say 2 small sections out of it that could easily have been copied out (royalties paid) and put in the course reader. But I guess professors need to make a living and have egos too.
3M80 2M22 6QS8 2M2 1EP500 Sony BDP-S590 Panny-7000 Onkyo-3007 Carada-134 Xbox Buttkicker AS-EQ1
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![](/boards/images/icons/default/book.gif) Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
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Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 1,333
connoisseur
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OP
connoisseur
Joined: Nov 2006
Posts: 1,333 |
However, that didn’t stop it from bothering me when a professor required a book he wrote for the course only to use say 2 small sections out of it that could easily have been copied out (royalties paid) and put in the course reader. But I guess professors need to make a living and have egos too. That's what my wife refers to as "publish or perish". We have both had professors that somehow got their work accepted as the course text only to find out most of the time it was pure cr@p. If one made the fatal mistake of pointing out errors, even typos, a 15 minute lecture would begin pointing out the various differences between the professor and the (obviously stupid) student. Scott
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![](/boards/images/icons/default/book.gif) Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
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Joined: Sep 2008
Posts: 4,116
connoisseur
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connoisseur
Joined: Sep 2008
Posts: 4,116 |
Egos are a real big problem at the college and university level.
I’m armed and I’m drinking. You don’t want to listen to advice from me, amigo.
-Max Payne
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![](/boards/images/icons/default/book.gif) Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
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Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 3,569
connoisseur
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connoisseur
Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 3,569 |
I had a real bad case of a lecturer, not a professor, for entry level classical social theory lecture (I couldn’t opt out of for a higher level course since it was the foundation for everything else) foisting her agenda on the class. Were we supposed to be studying the likes of Marx, Durkheim and Weber but there were no Dead White European Males to be seen. Instead a collection of feminist and third world social theorists. Interesting stuff but not what the course was supposed to be about.
I went to the Dean of the department and showed her the syllabus from that lecture and the ones on file for the previous years and how they didn’t compare at all. I then showed her the course descriptions and syllabi for the courses for which this was a prerequisite and asked her how this lecture was going to prepare me for those. She pulled out a syllabus from a couple years prior when she had to teach that lecture and told me I didn’t have to attend because she would be handling “my” course. The next semester the lecturer was gone.
3M80 2M22 6QS8 2M2 1EP500 Sony BDP-S590 Panny-7000 Onkyo-3007 Carada-134 Xbox Buttkicker AS-EQ1
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![](/boards/images/icons/default/book.gif) Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
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Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 12,077 Likes: 7
Founder, Axiom Upgrade Club shareholder in the making
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Founder, Axiom Upgrade Club shareholder in the making
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 12,077 Likes: 7 |
I keep thinking of getting involved in the discussion and then not committing because I'll just come across as a dumbass next to Dean and others.
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![](/boards/images/icons/default/book.gif) Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
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Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 12,077 Likes: 7
Founder, Axiom Upgrade Club shareholder in the making
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Founder, Axiom Upgrade Club shareholder in the making
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 12,077 Likes: 7 |
I went to the Dean of the department and showed her That's some good Dean-on-Dean action. Come on, you knew someone was going to say it. There, that's my contribution to the discussion.
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![](/boards/images/icons/default/book.gif) Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
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Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 8,488 Likes: 1
axiomite
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axiomite
Joined: Jun 2003
Posts: 8,488 Likes: 1 |
bibere usque ad hilaritatem
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![](/boards/images/icons/default/book.gif) Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
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Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 6,471
axiomite
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axiomite
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 6,471 |
You are?
:runs away laughing:
Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica.
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![](/boards/images/icons/default/book.gif) Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
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Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 586
aficionado
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aficionado
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 586 |
I apologize for lacking the time to read everything like I used to be able to do, but in case it hasn't been said already: The humor we find in global warming skeptics using the snow to ridicule alarmists lies in the knowledge of how mass media has used isolated weather events to stoke warming hysteria in the past. I don't care who you are that right there is funny. ![laugh \:D](/boards/images/graemlins/default/laugh.gif)
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![](/boards/images/icons/default/book.gif) Re: Maybe Al Gore is onto something...
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Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 7,786
axiomite
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axiomite
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 7,786 |
My goodness this thing has been active.
I'll throw in my $.02
1. Yes Dean, the idea that man is not part of nature is a bit of an artificial construct used to shift the framing of the 'problem'. However, consider that a man, whether his head has been bashed in by a rock (nature) or splattered by a bullet (man made) matters little since it makes him equally dead.
2. Population biology. J-curve. Many organisms naturally go through boom and bust cycles. The bust, though natural, ain't pretty. Take a look at the human population growth curve over the last 200k years and tell me it doesn't look like a J-curve.
3. The truth. In reality is what you believe. Convince enough people to see it your way and you have a universal truth. Well, until the next universal truth comes along anyway.
4. Why do those dammed left wing lunatics use every weather event as proof that their theories are right? The same reason that those right wing fundamentalists use every weather event as proof that AWG is a left wing conspiracy. Its a war. In war you shoot first and ask questions lat... well, you don't ask questions.
5. Short term species, long term problem. As a species that has lived hand to mouth for the last 200K years (if you believe evolution is a truth) it is a real challenge for us to grasp a problem for which cause and effect are more than two weeks apart. By the time we find the 'smoking gun' in this debate, the bullet will have splattered our collective brains all about. Man made or natural, does it matter?
Right, carry on...
Fred
------- Blujays1: Spending Fred's money one bottle at a time, no two... Oh crap!
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