Disqus - Friends of stephenbuckley

Re: FIRE challenges rules at four colleges -- Chicago State, Citrus, Iowa State, Ohio -- and promises more litigation

Gabriel Hanna — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 06:43:02 -0000

I don't share Michael Olivas's dismissive view of the FIRE speech code lawsuits. After all, what was the big deal about Hustler parodying Jerry Falwell--how was Falwell harmed by it, and why are Hustler's rights to print crude and offensive satire important? Yet it was a landmark decision. This is the theme of First Amendment jurisprudence--that "sensible", "moderate" restrictions on speech that offends people are going to lead to more restrictions on more kinds of speech, including speech most of us find more socially redeeming than Hustler's, such as faculty criticisms of university administrators. Universities have gone much too far in regulating speech, and this is why these lawsuits are "low-hanging fruit", as Olivas puts it. You set the precedent with the easy to win cases, and that precedent will make the harder ones easier to win. You'd think a law professor would know that--which makes me suspect that Olivas thinks the speech codes aren't a bad thing.

Re: FIRE challenges rules at four colleges -- Chicago State, Citrus, Iowa State, Ohio -- and promises more litigation

Gabriel Hanna — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 22:20:35 -0000

"Protected speech" means protected from infringement by government. Neither the Constitution nor Federal law has ever prevented people from losing jobs in the private sector for their speech, like when Brendan Eich had to leave Mozilla because he supported Prop. 8.

Consequently, Eich would not have been able to sue Mozilla for infringing his rights, there's no right to not get fired for being against gay marriage.

Re: Get Thee to a 17th-Century Dictionary

Gabriel Hanna — Sat, 01 Nov 2014 00:38:53 -0000

The comments here and at the other post seem not to take into account languages other than English.

German uses the pronoun "sie" to mean she, they, or you (formally).

Has Germany ever been a matriarchy? No.
Have Germans ever been confused about who they were talking about? No more so than anyone else.

Megan's premise that a "gendered" pronoun is confusing or sexist is hereby refuted by the largest close cousin to our language. Megan's further point that "they" cannot be singular without confusion or awkwardness is also refuted.

In German and in French and Spanish, all nouns have an assumed gender and are referred to by the corresponding gendered pronoun. Germans are aware that some cats are male and some dogs are female and that little girls will grow up to be women and not androids.

"He" as evidence of sexism is just the old, empirically discredited, Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language constrains thought in feminist guise.

Re: Get Thee to a 17th-Century Dictionary

Gabriel Hanna — Sat, 01 Nov 2014 00:59:33 -0000

For those confused by my German examples:

"the dog", der Hund, is assumed masculine and a generic dog takes the male pronoun er. A specifically female dog is Huendin.

"the cat", die Katze, is assumed feminine and a generic cat takes the female pronoun sie. A specifically male cat is Kater.

"the girl", das Maedchen, is assumed neuter and takes the neuter pronoun es, though lots of people will use sie to refer to a specific girl.

It is very difficult to invent a feminist explanation for grammatical gender without being ignorant of languages other than English.

Re: Report From an Attendee of the Blacklight Power Demonstration

Gabriel Hanna — Mon, 17 Nov 2014 00:34:19 -0000

Ever since 1989 Mills has been making promises and prototypes, and so far no electricity has been produced. Every time, the breakthrough is just a few months or years away.

It almost doesn't matter if Mills' physics is bogus or not--if it worked, it wouldn't matter--it's that the promises are never met, the electricity is never produced, but more and more money is always going in and the breakthrough is always right around the corner.

The fact that his physics IS bogus is why I am not putting money in it; other people can do what they like. I don't blame him if he believes in what he's doing, but at best this is a con where he has conned himself, and at worst it's the more tiresome sort of con.

Re: Learning About Education the Hard Way

Gabriel Hanna — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 23:15:40 -0000

I don't think there are many academics posting here.

Research is huge because of money. Universities take 50% of a research grant off the top. The rest of the grant funds the actual research. They also do not pay professors for their time spent on research. A research grant also pays for the stipends and tuitions of the graduate students who are doing the research.

In short, research is not an expense for a university. It is a source of income. For every hour spent on research, a university can hire an academic staff to teach that hour and pocket a large profit.

If all you want to do is teach you don't need tenure. You want it, of course, otherwise you have little job security. You only need tenure if you want to advance within the ranks of your discipline and advance within the university.

Re: Learning About Education the Hard Way

Gabriel Hanna — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 01:09:47 -0000

Not many academics here it seems...

Research is a source of income for the university, that is why it is rewarded with tenure.

a) 50% of the grant goes to the university, the rest to the research. Out of the 50% for research, the professor pays all expenses, including salary for the time spent on research, the stipends and tuition of graduate students.

b) For every hour a professor spends on research, the university can afford an hour of academic staff to do the teaching and pocket a large profit.

c) Research raises the profile of the university, attracting more grant money and higher-profile researchers.

Anyone who feels a calling to be a teacher can do that as academic staff; though you won't get tenure (ever, probably). But research is what big universities hire faculty to do, they hire academic staff for the bulk of the teaching--the big introductory courses with the least motivated students that no one wants to teach.

Re: Rolling Stone Fails a Police Fact Check

Gabriel Hanna — Wed, 25 Mar 2015 23:59:42 -0000

O. J. Simpson was found not guilty of murder. Does anyone think that
the murder was a hoax? Was anyone convicted for attempting to frame him?

There
is a huge, huge difference between failing to convict someone for a
crime, and convicting someone else for framing them. ~A does not imply
B.

If there is not enough evidence to convict a genuine rapist,
it is highly unlikely that there will be any sort of evidence indicating
that the victim made the whole thing up.

In this case there is a
great deal of evidence that Jackie made up a number of things--and she
accused no person specifically enough for even a wrongful arrest.

Compare
with the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case: the case collapsed when the
alleged victim's credibility did, but there was enough physical evidence
to indicate that sexual activity had occurred. On the other hand, the
alleged victim had been taped talking about the payoff she was
expecting. She was not charged with anything and even received a $1.5
million settlement.

Neither was the woman charged who accused Al Gore.

So
what empirical evidence is there to support that charging women who
falsely accuse men of rape should not be prosecuted out of fear that
women won't come forward?

The reason women who have been raped do
not want to come forward is because rape is a huge deal when it's
true. A woman who is 100% truthful about having been raped will have
her whole life dug through, including the most humiliating and
terrifying event that's happened to her, and made public record, because
that's what defense attorneys have to do in order to represent their
client and what courts have to do in order to convict. There is no cure
for that.

Failing to prosecute malicious or reckless hoaxers does not fix that.

Re: Great Quote. A Little Too Great.

Gabriel Hanna — Tue, 26 May 2015 11:54:19 -0000

My least favorite fake quote is the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" attributed to John Steinbeck.

Re: Do We Need Shakespeare? - Bloomberg View

Gabriel Hanna — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 18:10:10 -0000

Let's not make anyone learn anything that might be hard and put them off learning it, might not be of any use to them, or that they might not like. That's where this discussion is going.

The thing about knowledge is that you can't know in advance what you might need to know. There are things that you have no idea might be useful to you if you've never been exposed to them.

I'm pretty sure that there is no one-size-fits-all model for education, but in order to be good at anything you first have to exposed to it, and then made to do hard things in it that don't come easily; then after you've achieved mastery you can be creative with it and it becomes fun.

Any educational program that pretends to make anyone good at something is going to have to push students through those three steps.

Re: Do We Need Shakespeare? - Bloomberg View

Gabriel Hanna — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 18:24:11 -0000

Your son is good at math, but no matter how good he is I guarantee that he will one day reach a level at which it becomes hard. If he pushes through that, he will achieve mastery; if he doesn't, he will not have mastered it.

I had the same experience with both math and literature, you see.

Re: Do We Need Shakespeare? - Bloomberg View

Gabriel Hanna — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 18:27:37 -0000

I'm not advocating that everyone be made to master everything. I'm saying that unless you are satisfied with a purely superficial level of understanding, you can't get educated without struggling with something that's hard; mastery will never come by doing things that come easily.

Re: Prepare for Life After the National Raisin Reserve

Gabriel Hanna — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 17:31:09 -0000

"Raisin orchard"?

Re: The Moral of the Greek Story

Gabriel Hanna — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 18:45:34 -0000

Undefined.

Re: Beware of Evidence That You Really, Really Wanted to Find

Gabriel Hanna — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 16:11:27 -0000

Mark Twain refers to "No Irish Need Apply" in Roughing It, Chapter 47, written in 1870:

Slang was the language of Nevada. It was hard to preach a sermon without it, and be understood. Such phrases as "You bet!" "Oh, no, I reckon not!" "No Irish need apply," and a hundred others, became so common as to fall from the lips of a speaker unconsciously--and very often when they did not touch the subject under discussion and consequently failed to mean anything...

"If a thing wanted regulating, he warn't a man to go browsing around after somebody to do it, but he would prance in and regulate it himself. He warn't a Catholic. Scasely. He was down on 'em. His word was, 'No Irish need apply!' But it didn't make no difference about that when it came down to what a man's rights was--and so, when some roughs jumped the Catholic bone-yard and started in to stake out town-lots in it he went for 'em! And he cleaned 'em, too! I was there, pard, and I seen it myself."

So I suppose I don't understand. If the sentiment did not exist, or was not expressed that way, where did Twain get it? Is the argument over whether it appeared specifically in "Help Wanted" signs?

I can see that--it's like how people say their family name was "changed at Ellis Island" when there's no proof that happened either, and it is important to know the difference.

Re: Beware of Evidence That You Really, Really Wanted to Find

Gabriel Hanna — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 16:23:44 -0000

The entire unedited video is available and the context does not excuplate them.

Re: Beware of Evidence That You Really, Really Wanted to Find

Gabriel Hanna — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 17:49:37 -0000

Do you think no one ever said "You bet!" because Mark Twain reported they did? Or that no one ever piloted a steamboat, or fought in the Missouri militia during the Civil War?

Of course the facts of the yarn he is spinning are going to be heavily fictionalized, but that doesn't mean you can't learn anything about 19th century memes from what he wrote.

Why would he use a phrase like "no Irish need apply" without any explanation of what it meant, if he didn't think it would be a widely understood and familiar catchphrase to his large and diverse reading audience?

Re: Beware of Evidence That You Really, Really Wanted to Find

Gabriel Hanna — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 19:17:04 -0000

It is a very odd position, to say that you can't reliably learn about a society from its fiction and satire.

Re: Americans' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly

Gabriel Hanna — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 12:39:32 -0000

You're not accounting for a) entropy change and b) COP of refrigeration systems is generally much higher than the efficiency of heating; a) and b) are not even really separate issues.

Re: Americans' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly

Gabriel Hanna — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 15:26:19 -0000

Average over kW hr equivalents for heating vs cooling, already cited below.

I was stating physical law; you're cherry-picking to make heating look as efficient as possible and AC as bad as possible.

If electric power in your area is largely hydro, as it is in mine, it is impossible to heat your home by burning water, and electric generation is as near 100% efficient as anything gets in this world. So you can't just wave that away and say we'll all use super efficient oil burners for heat and compare it to us all burning fossil fuels for electricity.

Re: Americans' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly

Gabriel Hanna — Thu, 23 Jul 2015 15:34:05 -0000

I have a physics Ph. D., so I've taken some physics courses.

Those negative effects you cite are small; the coefficient of performance is huge. You have to sum it all up, not just note that there are parasitic effects.

Besides, a heat pump is kept normally kept outside, and frequently so is the compressor end of an AC unit--just like how the compressor in a fridge is not kept inside the food storage compartment.

Re: Americans' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly

Gabriel Hanna — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 10:55:51 -0000

You seem to be unaware that coefficient of performance exceeds 100% for refrigeration and AC.

In other words, the heat that a refrigerator/AC unit transfers out is far higher than the energy used to run it. Minimum standard since 2006 is a SEER of 13, which is a seasonal average of coefficient of performance.

So while you lose some efficiency due to line losses and generation, the AC unit removes 13 times more heat than the equivalent you spent on electricity.

So, yes, air conditioning, for the same temperature difference, requires far less energy, all else being equal.

Re: Americans' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly

Gabriel Hanna — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 10:57:15 -0000

Posted again lower down, in case people are missing it:

You seem to be unaware that coefficient of performance exceeds 100% for refrigeration and AC.

So while you lose some efficiency due to line losses and generation, the AC unit removes 13 times more heat than the equivalent you spent on electricity.

So, yes, air conditioning, for the same temperature difference, requires far less energy, all else being equal.

Re: Americans' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly

Gabriel Hanna — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 10:58:04 -0000

Posted again here if people are missing it:

You seem to be unaware that coefficient of performance exceeds 100% for refrigeration and AC.

So while you lose some efficiency due to line losses and generation, the AC unit removes 13 times more heat than the equivalent you spent on electricity.

So, yes, air conditioning, for the same temperature difference, requires far less energy, all else being equal.

Re: Americans' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly

Gabriel Hanna — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 11:23:10 -0000

13 * 0.4 = 5.2.

An air conditioner that only can get 40% of the energy out of fossil fuels is still going to deliver 5.2 times as much energy in cooling was used to generate the electricity. 5.2 > 0.97 you cited for your oil heaters or whatever they were.

You're not failing physics here, you're failing arithmetic.