From: mcdonald@cs.sfu.ca (Ken Mcdonald)
Subject: Re: Canadian free speech in action
Organization: CSS, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 11:47:05 GMT


OK.  Enough.

I read this newsgroup to get information, opinions, and, so long as they
are reasonably entertaining, even outright lies about careers in
scientific research.  I've got into an occasional "heated debate" with
people on the newsgroup, and have been the origin of a few, as well.
No problem.

But, children, I just don't want to hear anymore in this latest thread.
It's not just that it is juvenile (it is, but then so am I, a lot of the
time), it's not that it is overtly an unnecessarily rude (it is), and
it's not that it is pretentious (though it's that, too.)  The real problem
is that it is almost entirely content free (sci.research.careers.lite?),
and quite frankly, it isn't even worth the time it takes to hit the 'n'
key (which I do for the vast majority of these messages, but one does
make a mistake occasionally, at those speeds . . .).

I don't want to hear M. Godfrey's opinions that the rest of the world
are lunatics.  I don't want to hear other people's opinions that Mr.
Godfrey is a lunatic.  Quite frankly, I just don't care, and I doubt that
anyone except the posters do, either--which kind of defeats the purpose
of public posting.  So why don't y'all carry out your boring little
flame war on e-mail, where it should be, or if you absolutely have to,
create a couple of new newsgroups (I could suggest
alt.everyone.whine.whine.whine and alt.neighbours.bashing, but hey,
they'll be your newsgroups, name 'em whatever you want), and let the rest
of us get back to discussing topics that are at least vaguely related to
scientific research careers (or lack thereof, to be more precise.)

Since ending this article talking about these posts would only invite
flames in retaliation (and PLEASE--restrain yourself.  If you just have
to, e-mail me, I have a nice little file called /dev/null in which I will
store and treasure your reply, but don't clutter up the net any further),
I will attempt a change to a more reasonable topic.  (Clever, hey?).
In his book, "The closing of the American Mind", Dr. Alan Bloom generally
castigates the U.S. (and by extension, the Canadian) university system
for its recent (i.e. from about '65 on) performance.  A paragraph I
particularly liked read (to the best of my memory):

"...[this reporter] had correctly assessed the academic mentality.  Servility,
vanity, and lack of principle are not difficult to discern."

This isn't quite accurate, but it does get the flavour across.  (I posted
the entire paragraph in an earlier article, but I don't think it ever
got off-campus.)

Question:  Do others agree with this?  In my experience, the typical academic
is a very self-centred, selfish, and narrow-minded person, with little
real adherence to any strong code of ethics.  There are, luckily, exceptions,
but I feel that in general, the people (academics) who are effectively
running the universities are amongst the worst suited for the job, because
their overriding self-interest places them only a notch or two above
used-car salesmen, and WAY below the people I feel comfortable with, in
terms of trustworthiness.  Comments?

Ken McDonald
mcdonald@cs.sfu.ca
Xref: sparky soc.culture.british:16012 soc.culture.celtic:7370