The Gamer's Quarter

[dhex]

so hey my first class yesterday was Theories of Persuasion and not only is the instructor a rhetoric-obsessed dude with a pinky ring, but he's friendly with stephen pinker and wrote a book about public policy and human nature. it is going to be excellent, as we're starting with plato and the final assignment is a 20 minute persuasive speech and essay (only 12 pages no less). only downside is that while the class is almost 50% international students - which is great for mixing things up - three of them have virtually no english skills, which is unfortunate. especially in light of the 20 minute persuasive speech thing.

but fuck, there's a bonus essay on nietzche and the influence of neo-platonism and christianity.

hoo-ray!

tonight's corporate media relations, which is probably going to be far less excellent.
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[Swimmy]

Most of my classes kind of suck thus far. For the one class that can't not be interesting--law and economics--the professor (that would be the illustrious Alex Tabarrok) didn't even show. Hopefully he'll, uh, be there today.

College!
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[Mr. Mechanical]

I've been back in school for over a week now, almost two. It's been good. All community college classes though, which are all right for making up the credits I need to transfer to a real university somewhere but only one of which is really that intellectually stimulating. That class being Cultural Geography, headed by Mr. Gordon who was my Government instructor from last semester. Well, that's a lie, sort of, American Lit. I is kind of stimulating but we're still covering the colonial period and that shit's kind of stiff and dry. It'll pick up when we get to the Revoluationary and Romantic periods, I'm sure.

My art class is just a basic art class, but it's good for getting myself back into the game and working on my technique. Plus there's a few cute girls in there so it's all good. My only really almost uninteresting class, (which also happens to be the one that produces the most homework assignments imagine that!) is macroeconomics. Though yesterday we did a group exercise that was kind of fun, if a bit simple and kind of stupid. I think the class could be more engaging if the instructor wasn't a bit of a befuddled old man who comes off as slightly out of touch, but he's a nice guy so I won't hold it against him.

But yeah, I'm really enjoying my cultural geography class. Very stimulating. I now understand what people mean when they refer to "McWorld". I feel so sophisticated. I almost slept in and didn't go today but a friend in that class called me up on my cell to remind me to show up today, because I ended up sleeping in Tuesday. Which I'm glad he did because if he hadn't I wouldn't have learned about the differences between folk and pop culture, how other nations in the world detest America because they view pop culture as being an American thing that infects their local cultures (which sounds reasonable, but there's an argument there against it which I won't go into just yet), the "placelessness" of America and the corporate socialism of suburbia that contributes to it, why my instructor doesn't really like the effects Wal-Mart has had on America in the last fifty years, and the spread of Blues and Jazz music along the Mississippi river. All that in one fifty minute class period!

[dhex]

i had a professor two semesters ago who hated wal-mart so much that she managed to work it into every class. i won several rounds of beers betting on whether or not she'd mention wal-mart before the break. (the 2 1/2 hour class was about crisis communication and often had nothing to do with wal-mart, even remotely)

it was entertaining, especially since i am not paying for this degree. otherwise i'd probably be super pissed.

edit: i'd like to take this opportunity to post a link to the essay which made me decide to subscribe to reason magazine
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[OtakupunkX]

I'm still in High School. Thankfully, this is my senior year, so all I do is sleep. I like it. Calculus is kicking my ass though because I'm unnaturally bad at math.

[ApM]

Here I thought this was a thread about the Spectrum game.

[helicopterp]

I've also been at it for the past couple of weeks. I have a course on Faulkner that is challenging, engaging, full of bright students, and complete with a no-bullshit professor who is seventy-something years old and says things like "I have a cattle prod in my office and I will electrocute you" and "I know that the Big Bopper was the least talented man on that airplane, but I liked him and am sorry that he died." I also have a Chaucer class taught by a Marxist, a crash-course in Old Church Slavic, and an upper-level Russian course taught by a charming eighty-year old woman who can't remember my name even though I have had her before and there are only eight people in this class. So I'd say everything is just peachy so far. Plus, football season starts this Saturday. Go Dawgs!
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Like you thought you'd seen copter perverts before. They were nothing compared to this one.

[dhex]

i called this thread school daze cause i could not think of anything more clever.

one thing that really has been driven home for me by attending CUNY is just how utterly fucked we actually are.

(dhex on another forum talking about how to argue about milk subsidies)

[Swimmy]

It sounds like I would be driven completely insane at everyone else's schools.

On the subject of that reason article, I haven't had Tyler Cowen yet, but I'm sure Mr. Mech's professor would hate him.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[J.Goodwin]

I think there is an argument to be made about the regulation of products that are sold in pharmacies, imply medical efficacy (even though they have to show a disclaimer), and look like medications though.

Oh look: cigarettes have more nicotine in them now than they did in 1998!

http://www.mass.gov/dph/mtcp/wn_mtcp.htm
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Gamertag - FalcomAdol -- Don't Click Here 触手
Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

[wourme]

[dhex]

swimmy: where do you go to school? is tyler cowen cool? he seems like a fun dude.

goodwin's law: there are plenty of arguments to be made about supplements and direct medical marketing, pro and con. but repeating "BUT BUT THEY'RE NOT REGULATED BY THE GOVERNMENT!" is not one of them. which is really the problem with this program, and with CUNY in general - they take too many people who were good at taking tests in undergrad but clearly not very into nuance. i may come across as a boilerplate wrapped in a bag thuggish stupidity but even when i'm convinced i'm right - such as my final project for last semester - i try to make sure that i work on persuading others rather than repeating axioms. maybe this is from long years of practice because nearly no one shares my axioms or perhaps i'm simply insecure in a public setting (there i go again). and let's face it, outside of the sort of upper middle class marxists my wife hangs out with and the hilarious black bloc hosers my friend used to screw - and maybe the occasional religious nutbag and/or anti-immigration asshole - it's really not that much fun to fuck with peoples' fundamental beliefs. it makes them sad.

(and due to being an emotional paternalist, i cannot bring it in my heart to make women frown that often. horribly sexist, i know, but you are stuck with the tools you are given. i can only hope for compassion, and that i will return compassion in greater measure. amen.)

but the issue is not that my classmates are statist bootlickers - though some of them clearly are, especially when contemplating hillary clinton's boot forever stamping - it's that statist bootlicking is the beginning and end of all discussions. if i can't get a woman in new york city - who votes democrat, no less - to recognize that even in the age of bushitlermchaliburton9/11wasaninsidejob to even *consider and even begin to address the argument* that perhaps leaving fundamental reproductive choices (especially the morning after pill and the hpv vaccine) in the hands of the people they supposedly despise and fear may not preferable to letting people make mistakes, then we are officially fucked. with a capital UCKED.

(oddly enough, i had this discussion with some of my classmates. another woman took to opportunity to say "oh yeah i know! right? boy do we need more school funding." to which i could only smile weakly and drink more beer as quickly as possible, trying to forget that we have always been at war with oceania. i went home, knelt before my bed and said "are you there, menchen? it's me, mike...")

this persuasion class is going to be fun, however; the nature v. nurture argument was tossed around a bit (a false dichotomy, yes, but it's a ground floor for this sort of thing) and the prof made a hilarious point score when he asked what sort of socialization pressures make women choose public relations as a field more often compared to men. (the class is 19 people, two men and seventeen women, which is extreme even for this program. on the plus side, everyone likes to gossip, yippee!)

another unrelated point: colleges allowing foreign students who clearly do not have language skills that are up to the task to attend programs and charging them tuition is bullshit. it's bullshit for the attendee - especially in a liberal arts program, or a class on rhetoric for zog's sake - and it's bullshit for the rest of the program as well.
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[Swimmy]

I'm a GMU student, infamous for its ridiculously libertarian econ department. (We're even home to many Austrian economists in this day and age, can you imagine?) I've yet to meet Cowen, but from his work/blog he's probably the most interesting guy we have. (Aside from the two Nobel laureates, of course.) The profs here have too many blogs to list. They're all hip like that.
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"Ayn Rand fans are the old school version of Xenogears fanboys."
-seryogin

[J.Goodwin]

TOEFL passing =/= proficiency, but most schools at least require that.

Still, it's probably worth noting that I was born, raised, and live in Massachusetts (though I've lived other places), and I'm damn proud of what our state has accomplished as pretty much the most liberal state/commonwealth in the US.

As a commonwealth, we're thinner, smoke less, smarter, have less heart disease, and look better than the vast majority of the states in this union. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

<disclaimer>Surgeon General's Warning: Citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts may not be smarter or better-looking than citizens from other US states or commonwealths</disclaimer>
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Gamertag - FalcomAdol -- Don't Click Here 触手
Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Dracko]

I'm still on holiday, because my academic year ends later than most I've noticed abroad. I've been spending my Summer writing concordances and transcripts for the cash, and fighting my way through the insufferable uni bureaucracy because even though my courses start in a couple of weeks, I still don't know what my classes are and they've sorely affected my chances at getting an accommodation on campus, albeit the fact I should be prioritised on account of being in my final year.

I'm honestly wondering why I decided to study English and French literature. I've learnt altogether very little, save, thank God, for my semester in absurdist theatre, which brought on details on all sorts of interesting things that had been touched upon in high school, like absurdism, of course, surrealism, exile literature, because the 20th century is far more awesome than most will give it credit for. Unfortunately, most of the rest of my last two years have been literary theory obscurantism and creative writing classes shared with that one girl who wants to write about her dog when she goes shopping, the other girl talking about surreptitious blowjobs in taxis after nights swinging, the emo kid in a beanie with a hard on for Radiohead and writes about his docile, faceless girlfriend resting on his arm because, jee golly, traffic is tough shit and the rest trying to rip off the faux-clever and clinically stupifying style of The Matrix or the clueless and turgid passion plays in soap operas. You know, the filth you find on most plain-view book racks these days.

Hell, I'm not even supposed to be in my final year yet. The only reason I'm there now is on account of one of my school's fuck-ups and inability to understand the fact that, yes, I'm a native French speaker, so I don't need to take French classes and I'm more than capable of teaching English to French Canadians.

Yeah, this is pretty much a rant, and at least uni means spare time for doing personal research and self-education. It's been an irritating mess the past few months.

And that article is pretty neat.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[ryan]

I'm stuck taking two foundation courses for my MBA program. Economics is being taught by my History of Economic Thought professor - swoon - and Accounting by some guy who hates his job. Accounting is one Saturday a month, but all that includes is us going over notes we took throughout the previous weeks from watching a CD-Rom, where someone else teaches us what he's supposed to. He made us buy the CDs, case studies at $6.50 each, and more random books, which made for an awesome way to spend an additional $180-200.

Next semester!
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Come to me, Mordel. We shall depart.

[Scratchmonkey]

Linguistics is fun. Make sure you go to the right school though.

[Mr. Mechanical]

I'm considering linguistics as a major actually. After seeing a guy I knew in high school a few months ago and hearing him talk about it got me interested, and come to find out he's going to the school I'm planning on transfering to and he says there are a lot of cool professors down there.

[Scratchmonkey]

Which school?

(Warning: I am a bit of a linguistics snot. Make sure it's not one of those programs that steer around Syntax. Those programs are BS.)

[Dracko]

On a related note: one of the surprising things about my past years is how truly interesting translation was. It was part and parcel of my degree, and I didn't expect much, but it's helped me in all facets of my courses. It's been helpful in creative writing, simple book reading, whatever. I'm feeling it's practically a literary necessity, and it's the one thing I'm grateful to get out of all of this. It's the sort of eye-opening education I expect from a university, because otherwise, well, I'm left with things that have already been covered in depth back in my lycée.

(Though I've learnt that expecting a competent organisation, considering the money going into all of this, shows that in the ways of business, I'm still damn naive.)

Linguistics is good times, and I'll probably have to set my sights on it more, and translation itself deserves far more credit.
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"This is the most fun I've ever had without being drenched in the blood of my enemies!"

[GSL]

I've still got another three weeks before classes start, mainly because the public schools in this state exist in a vortex completely out of time with... well, just about everywhere else in the nation, it seems.

Since everyone's talking about linguistics, it made me remember that I signed up for an upper-division linguistics course this fall as well; I'm actually really excited about it. I'm looking to take a minor in Japanese (assuming I can jump through all the hoops to get the credit I need) and try to weasel some sort of Japanese->English translation emphasis into my school's fairly flexible English program. A good grasp on the underlying mechanics and origins of one's native language just seems absolutely imperative if one wishes to make a professional career out of translating others.

[J.Goodwin]

Be careful with the language minor.

I intended to take a French minor in college, but when the prof bumped me from the intro classes (damn my middle school and high school french classes!) into intermediate, suddely I had no way to get enough credits without either going outside the school or creating classes on the spot.

I gave up on it instead. I'm long past the level where I can easily think in French (actually, if I'm tired, occasionally I'll slip into that mode), and what I need now to complete my education is a couple months of immersion. Preferably not in Canada. Canadian French is like ... Deep South English.

No offense intended to the Canadian francophones present.

You know, thinking about it now, I probably could have taken some CLEP credits...damn it.
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Gamertag - FalcomAdol -- Don't Click Here 触手
Playing - Ninety-Nine Nights - Xbox 360

[dhex]

[J.Goodwin]

[dhex]

i'm totally serial fer reals. scratchmonkey can back me up on this one.

hey, dead prez's "they schools" just came on!

i'm trying to imagine what getting a phd in rhetoric must be like. i will eventually have to get off this pot and shit or whatever, but at least i can narrow it down to rhetoric, semiotics, media studies or some sort of anthro thing.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

[J.Goodwin]

[Mr. Mechanical]

[helicopterp]

[dhex]

yeah, though i totally agree with the chorus (with one or two exceptions) i'm glad they are musicians and not "a doctor or a dentist."
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[Scratchmonkey]

Sounds like OU does a lot of work with Native American languages. I've never done any myself (only with Native Mexican languages), so that sounds interesting.

Make sure that you take as many Syntax classes as possible. Unless you hate it. Then don't.

[J.Goodwin]