Monday, August 25, 2014

Links, Auuat 25, 2014

 NY Review of Books The Hi-Tech Mess of Higher EducationI doubt whether there is one university system to fit all, possibly different systems where a student can choose one or a comination will come about.
The usual problems with institutionalization "“Getting funding is a game. To play the game you need to have a good track record of publications and to do that you need to publish pretty safe stuff that isn’t controversial,” says Professor Graves.
Dr Fahrer agrees. “The people you’re dealing with are extremely bright and their careers depend on it so of course they’ll game it.
“A hundred years ago, you only published if you had something spectacular. Now, most of the research is incremental. Instead of publishing one huge story, you slice it up and publish it in bits. Obviously each bit isn’t as interesting as the whole story put together.”
It’s a practice known as breaking one’s research into the ‘‘lowest publishable unit’’. To counter it, research bodies evaluate performance in part by the number of times papers are cited in other journal articles, but this too can be gamed, says Professor Clark.
“If you’re in a big [research] institute, you can pee in each other’s pockets. You can have an arrangement whereby you cite each other in each other’s research publications.”
In recent years, both the NHMRC and the ARC have moved away from assessing researchers based on publication volume. But incentives to churn out low impact papers remain in the system." from 'Publish or Perish' diminishing scientific returns in Sydney Mornibg Harold
Lesbians know the secret of best orgasms from an American survey.  Abstract of the paper on which the article is based. I could not find a similar survey about India but a book review from 2006 says 'In India there is virtually no lesbian theorisin'
Richard Attenborough obituary from BBC News "His greatest achievement was his 1982 epic Gandhi, starring Ben Kingsley as the outsider hero whose moral courage and sense of purpose enabled him to change the world.....Gandhi won eight Oscars, including best actor and best director. But it took Attenborough 20 years to raise the money to make it.
He mortgaged his house, sold possessions and took roles in films he described as "terrible crap" to help pay for what became an obsession."Possibly from those twenty years, he makes a brief appearence in 'The 'Cent per Cent' Gandhian' by Sheila Dhar (in Raga'n Josh).

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