The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on April 22, 2024, 08:16:01 PMBeen doing some creative writing and I keep getting newspaper assignments.

But I am posting this here so I will make myself do it: tomorrow I will open up that revise-and-resubmit and readers' comments and make a plan.

Good on me.  I began making preliminary revisions to the manuscript. 

Part of the issue is that one reader's report was so generalized it is hard to know where to start, just the sense that this 'paper is really good' but 'more needs to be done'; and the second reader's report was so overwritten and over-saturated with critiques, going off on tangents and suggestions from far left-field that had nothing to do with the argument, that it was worthless----probably someone doing their very first peer-review and getting too excited about it (I may mention that when I send this back).

But at least I got the ball rolling.

How do we know who exactly qualifies as a 'Hamas soldier'?   Do these men wear uniforms and carry official id?  Do they have Hamas-issued serial numbers and ranks, to be offered to Israelis who catch them?

Anyone see 'Civil War' yet?   Worth seeing?

Did you know that the plural of "therapy" is "therapy's"?  According to a lot of my students, it is.

The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on April 23, 2024, 09:18:09 AMT1 and refereeing today. Got a new referee request this morning, too, from a top subfield journal which specifically noted my 'general expertise', which is nice.

Good progress on T1 (I wish I didn't keep finding errors!), and read the new paper. No writing, though. Alas.

Quote from: spork on April 23, 2024, 04:35:13 PMAs for the U.S. media, I haven't seen a single story that subtracts off an estimated number of dead Hamas soldiers from the total number of Gazans killed (which itself is a figure originating from Hamas).

Everyone has treated the Health Ministry's numbers as credible in the past, including Israel and the US government. That said, it's (1) clearly under-counting (because it's only counting those it can absolutely confirm), and (2) the infrastructure is now so degraded that keeping a reliable total tally is increasingly impossible.

That said, as of last month the estimate was 30k dead (~13k children), 70k injured, and ~10k missing (the death tally is now past 34k). At about the same time, Israel was claiming ~12k Hamas dead, while Hamas claimed and denied 6k. (Israel has provided no evidence for its numbers, however, and given what we know of its targeting practices--viz., 'male = Hamas' and 'bomb them in their homes at night', it's virtually guaranteed to be a vast over-count).

I can't speak to US media, of course (apart from print media, where these figures are definitely mentioned--but I don't haunt the big publications), but this is readily available and often cited (i.e. daily!) information in Canada and on the BBC. Hamas casualties are frequently, but not always, mentioned. I don't know that it really is appropriate not to count them as casualties, however; after all, we (rightly!) count IDF casualties from the October 7th attack, as well as the subsequent war (though it's worth pointing out that Israel has not been forthcoming about its casualty numbers). To subtract them sounds, to me, like an effort to sanitize the indiscriminate killing that is taking place.

And even if you buy the IDF's numbers--which you shouldn't--the ratio of one dead child to one dead Hamas fighter isn't exactly a great look.

Quote from: dismalist on April 23, 2024, 03:45:45 PMAgitprop.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

As for the U.S. media, I haven't seen a single story that subtracts off an estimated number of dead Hamas soldiers from the total number of Gazans killed (which itself is a figure originating from Hamas).

We had something similar happen a few months ago.  A community service group from out of town booked our library community room for a series of Monday afternoons to offer their services.  We saw from their social media that they were promoting the sessions as taking place on Monday mornings.  So we had lots of people coming in during the mornings and having to be told to come back in the afternoon. 

We repeatedly contacted the agency in question to confirm the actual times and get the misleading announcements corrected.  It took a week or two before they finally got things changed.  Not sure how people at that agency are keeping their jobs either.  The whole thing made it very awkward for our staff, not to mention the patrons who showed up at the wrong times because they had been misinformed.

Agitprop.