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It was really pleasant, although not as spooky as I'd expected. It was very much tongue in cheek. But anyway, I was asked a quizz question which I answered badly. I was gutted: the answer was Ian Fleming.
Interesting. What was the question?
A pretty simple adage is that politics is made by those who show up. And one of the problems of the Landgemeinde system where everyone comes together in a big square to vote on things is that not everyone can go to that thing, but people with extreme positions usually do. So do you want to address that or is everyone just ok with that? That’s why we came up with representative democracy. Not everything in a nation can be debated and decided on a day and not everyone can be around all the time. So we send people to do that for us.
Who wrote the James Bond books?
"There are James Bond books?" - A female co-worker back in 2012. Still one of the most cretinous things anyone has ever said to me.
Did you tell her there was as many as seven?
Pierce Brosnan can't be wrong.
And those politicians have their own interests at heart, not those of the ones they represent. On the contrary, when they find eachother - which they do to forge aliances- the incentives are even stronger to be beneficiary to themselves and their peers (no matter the party) and less so to those whom elected them. With direct democracy, the majority will always be of the moderate kind. The smaller the 'community of power', the more radical, with the epitomy in a dictator who by defenition becomes extreme, as he has no checks and balances.
I was half paying attention when she asked as the questions were quite out there. It was who saved the king or duke of somewhere (Bohemia?) in 1939. I thought I heard 1919 so my answer was way off.
Ah, that's quite a tricky one. I know that Fleming personally oversaw the evacuation of people from France to Britain when it was clear it was about to fall to the Germans in 1940. One of the people he helped evacuate was King Zog of Albania.
I'm especially unfond of those who keep complaining that the EU hasn't changed this because of a supposed poll that only the freak critics knew about (I, for one, didn't until it was over) and cared about, as is the usual case with referendums etc. I understand that the enormous number of about 4 million EU citizens (less than one percent of them all) even responded, 80 per cent of which were German hypochondriacs. Nobody else anywhere seemed to have a sizable problem. And why should they, when a short "jet lag" comes with every holiday flight into a different time zone.
I am with you on this, mate. Pointless and needless complaining, when our priorities should be lying somewhere else.
The days get shorter (and the evenings longer) in the fall, and you can sit out as long as you like, regardless of what the clocks say!
I'm not a frequent vocal complainer about having to switch the clocks around for daylight savings time, but it does need to end.
Science prides itself on its transparency and open-access attitude towards anyone interested in its endeavours. Articles that can teach us new things should never, no matter how costly the preceding research was, be paid for. This practice shows that the worst side of human nature has invaded one of its proudest achievements. I hate it when ScienceDirect and other websites demand a lot of money for what should essentially be free for all. It's disgusting even.
Researchers normally do get paid for their work. And I agree, people would complain if more tax money were spent on science. That, in itself, is problematic too. It is still the best thing to invest in. But I'm biased, I know. ;-)
I'll talk to you next year when the little one has just found a good rithm for waking up/sleeping that fits your day-scheme, only for it to be reset an hour for... what? half an hour of more 'light' in the evening that loses its value after three days because you have to go to work and back in the dark anyway? On average there's nothing to enjoy anyway as winters are rainy and dark by definition.
For me, this is a problem of the past (having retired), but that's what has mainly shaped my opinion on this. I never experienced summer/daylight savings time until my exchange year in the US (48 years ago), and never missed having it, but ever since it was introduced in the EU about 1980, I have enjoyed it. And today, I'm disappointed that after a wonderful, much-too-warm autumn day the sun was essentially gone at 3 p.m., and it was dark around five.
I'm thoroughly looking forward to the last weekend of March 2023.
So, what you're basically saying is that you don't want to change your rithm of the day compared to the working day, so that young children have to adjust their rithm twice a year. Indeed, they don't follow the clock, they follow their rithm, so when the world around them changes the clock, suddenly they neet to change their rithm and for some (and their parents) that is quite difficult. Even though our 4y/o is used to travelling, changing his rithm is always quite difficult. He can stay up late/wake up early for one day, but will return to his normal rithm the next day. So, the coming few days, maybe even weeks, he's going to get up at 5, not 6 am, and will need to go to bed at 6 pm instead of 7. Keeping him awake until 7 will just exhaust him and make it far more difficult to get him to go to bed, as he'll start jumping around when he's too tired to sleep...
I'm not trying to blame here, just stating the situation. For (most) grown-ups it's not too difficult to change, for kids it's a completely different story.
Agreed, science and education. And of course, I'd hope researchers get paid for their work, but surely the sale of these academic papers generates some of that money that goes to researchers? Perhaps I'm naively living in an idealistic world.
Wrong...in the sense that I am changing the rhythm of my day, but in a pleasant way (until it goes back at the end of October). But we've had this change for 40-plus years, although not during the first 35-or-so years of my life. I never knew what I missed until then, but once it came up, I enjoyed it.
And I must admit that while there have always been reports of farmers having trouble with their cows because they had always been milked at 6 a.m. standard time (why don't the dairies adjust their pick-up times by an hour if that's a problem?), the complaint of people having trouble with their babies is new to me. Probably more relevant, but not present for the last forty years of the discussion. Sorry.
Yes, that was the question: who helped King Zog of Albania escape. I heard 1919 instead of 1939, so of course never thought of Fleming.
Ah, I see. Thought it might've been that. I remember reading about it in Pearson's biography of Fleming.
That's sadly not really how it goes. Although I work in a research insitution, I have never really understood the journal market, but I know that you are much more likely to have to pay to get your findings published rather than getting payed for it. Or at least not by the publisher of these journals. Writing and publishing is part of your job that you are hopefully paid for by an institution, but you are generally not directly paid for articles written or issues of journals sold.
As far as I know - but this is a semi-educated guess at best - these ridiculous prizes happen, because the main customer for these publishers are university libraries and with time that has created a kind of cartel, parly because the vast majority of end-customers are connected to some library that has a broadband deal with the major publishers and they get free access. So it's the teachers and other people who want to keep informed or do research outside the universities and institutes that are left out in the cold.
How this is still a thing is beyond me, especially given that most of the editing work is also done by scientists for free (well, for exposure and career advancement but not for direct money payment). Scientists write the article, they review the articles, they put together the issues and special issues, remind their collueagues of deadlines and such and none of that is paid, AFAIK. All the publisher does is putting this stuff in a printable format and then printing and distribution, or more commonly today, digital distribution. Although I suspect their systems to keep people from reading without paying are more expensive than the actual distribution.
And I also am not aware that scientific publishers do any kind of payment to the institutions that employ the researchers. Again, it's more that the research institution will pay the publisher to get access to the work of their own researchers.
There has for a long time been an open academia and open access movement that is trying to break this. But if a publisher puts on an open access journal (so no payment or other barriers on the side of the reader), they usually charge people wanting to publish in those a four-figure sum. My small research institute can budget for stuff like that. If you are outside the official system or have bad funding, you can't.
As a workaround for @DarthDimi, most researchers I know are quite happy to send you a manuscript version of their paper for free if you ask them for it directly or just have it for free on their website. Of course that is a further step that shouldn't be needed, but if there's someone who's work you are really interested in, shoot them an e-mail. Or you could check if any university library around you has a guest reader programme. That often gives access to a lot of online stuff for free or for a small fee.
This is a very useful post, @ImpertinentGoon. Thank you.