The Fora: A Higher Education Community

Thanks, ab_grp, but have been getting advisories about flash flooding in my area that would prevent me from getting to the subway station. Subways are also a mess, so I happily called the imaging place and rescheduled my appointment. Woohoo, but I'll have to deal with it next week.

As for the vaccines, I have a full schedule of bird walks and hikes for the next four or so weekends, and also a trip coming up, so I do not want to have to cancel any of these. I'll wait until November when I'll be seeing my PCP and then ask him for his recommendations.

I think my bird walk for tomorrow might be canceled.

Sorry to hear that things are so soggy out that way, Langue_doc, but I'm glad you had a lovely, dry day and a moon view to break it up! Hopefully you will have another lovely day at the end of the rain this weekend.

Good morning!

Got to genius with the pangrams so far.  Yesterday we each got to QBABO.  My last word was pinup.

No luck on LB, so congrats, cathwen, and on another today!

Cathwen, I'm in pretty much the same situation but with the flu shot.  My arm is still a little sore, but I didn't have the fever or overall skin ache weirdness that I have had the last few times, when I got the covid and flu vaccines together.  I am not sure what to attribute that to and whether I should expect the covid vaccine to bring the pain? I have never gotten a flu shot on its own before.  In any case, I definitely hope it bodes well for you this weekend for your flu shot!

And sending you wishes for the best soul crushing appointment and outcomes as possible, Langue_doc! I don't remember which covid vaccines you've had or whether it would be worth considering a different one this time? I know some folks switch, but I don't know if that's recommended or not.  On the call I had with friendly colleagues earlier in the week, two of us are Pfizer loyalists, and one is a Moderna loyalist.  Who knows, just a thought.  Anyway, good luck today, and be sure to take care of yourself after!

Happy solving!

It sounds to me like you're (ironically) offering a rather uncharitable analysis of the "kids these days".

It looks to me like we used to give historical figures who did something important a moral free pass, no matter how much harm they caused. What is happening today is that we're finally presenting a more balanced analysis of these figures. So, for example, we conveniently ignored the fact that John A. Macdonald engineered a famine, because he had the distinction of being our first prime minister and getting the trans-Canada railway built. If we talked about his flaws at all, it was his alcoholism. But really, intentionally starving thousands of people so that you can take their land and build on it is much worse than a mere character flaw. And we're not wrong to condemn him and his contemporaries for doing so, even though they thought Indigenous people were subhumans whose interests didn't matter, because they should have known better. It makes a difference that they didn't do that sort of thing to each other (i.e. white people).

Similarly, we used to give Jefferson a pass because he was one of the original rebels, a key Framer of the Holy Constitution, and a president. But he was a slave owner and rapist. And even though such things were accepted at the time, people like him were in a position to have known better. He talked a good talk about equal creation, after all, and didn't go around raping white women.

I teach ethics to around 300 students a year. They definitely aren't absolutists. In fact, most come in thinking they're relativists, only to realize that that's untenable, and that moral evaluation is more complicated than relativism allows. What most discover is that they have stronger consequentialist or deontological leanings. The challenge is to get them to really understand the shortcomings of those views.

Incidentally, moral relativism is not a particularly coherent view. I wouldn't champion it as something to aspire to.

This kind of reminds me of discussions about how non-unionized car manufacturers paid similar etc to unionized ones.  However, they often set their standards based on their competition, so the effects of unionization can be felt across the board. This is obviously an aside, but interesting none the less.

As for new graduate students, we have a lot of orientation to help them understand how grad school is different etc, but a lot of this does fall on the advisor and a course is an interesting approach.

As for the research being their thesis work or not, that really varies.  Here, the GRA generally does just support them to do their thesis work, so expectations on this are not universal.

Quote from: marshwiggle on Today at 06:13:10 AMPotentially stacking the deck against yourself is an odd choice.

I think the point is, Marshbird, that you have a very particular viewpoint that you believe most everyone else shares, and it is a conservative viewpoint.  As Caracal points out, what would "stack the deck" at one point in time may no longer "stack the deck."  I think tats are one of those things; they are just too ubiquitous to be offensive to most people.  Anyway, people who get Nazi tattoos are not going to be worried about working on Wall Street or in the Ivory Tower----these folks have a different life agenda in mind. 

Good morning!

QBw2LLH to find pinup and my last word, gigging. Today I have both pangrams with three words to go.

LB: I had the "official" wordsmith-hulk. I found a 2fer today also.

I have recovered from the Covid shot and feel fine, apart from a mildly sore arm. Ab_grp, I'm heartened to know that the recovery from the flu shot has been easy for you—perhaps it will be for me, too. I get that one on Sunday.

Happy puzzling!

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on Today at 05:51:18 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on Today at 04:53:59 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on September 28, 2023, 06:58:21 PMPrivately, I think these people are misinformed dolts; publicly and professionally I say nothing whatsoever.

You've expressed it beautifully. People will get impressions of people from how they present themselves, whether they state them publicly or not.

This is why historically people have been "conservative" in how they present themselves. People who choose to wear their politics and preferences either figuratively or literally on their sleeves are extremely naive (or just completely disingenuous) to suggest that the information will have no effect on how they are perceived by others.

Ummm...yeah.  I don't think that is a very controversial statement.

The same can be said of "fundy" clothing, of course, or people who wear crosses on necklaces or "Jesus Saves" T-shirts, or even people who dress "conservatively."

There are plenty of critics of people have been "conservative" in how they present themselves.

I put quotes around "conservative" because my point wasn't about a particular political viewpoint. Perhaps a better word would have been "neutral" or "understated". What I was trying to get at is that it used to be well understood that people get along by not expressing all kinds of views which others may not share but which are totally irrelevant to the task they have to collaborate on. Many people now turn that whole idea on its head, and express all kinds of views, and just expect other people to treat them as irrelevant to the task they have to collaborate on.

It is an extremely optimistic view, especially for anyone who has any knowledge of how much unconscious bias affects all kinds of actions and decisions people make everyday. And unconscious bias is exactly that; it's the bias that exists even when people are trying to be completely fair. Potentially stacking the deck against yourself is an odd choice.

Read before you decide if this is just more "Get off my lawn!"

It used to be that young people felt that their parents were outdated. Indeed, adolescent rebellion was basically a requirement of growing up. The parents' views were outdated because they came from an earlier era. This did not make the parents evil, merely old-fashioned. Historical figures were similarly viewed as products of their time, so it was possible to recognize merit in some domain for a person in the past while noting that the views they held which were common for their age in other domains would not be acceptable today. Again these people were not automatically evil for the views they held which were common in their time.

In the last decade or two, this has changed dramatically. Now young people vilify anyone who does not hold "correct" views. This includes historical figures. Even if someone had "advanced" views in one domain, if they expressed views of their time in another, they cannot be remembered with anything but contempt. It is as though there was an implicit moral law that is universal in time and space that people in other times and places actually knew about but chose to ignore out of malicious intent.

That kind of thinking is essentially religious, even though many young people would consider themselves completely non-religious.

So to rephrase my question, when (and how) did young people completely abandon any sense of moral relativism and replace it with a view of absolutely clear good and evil and moral certainty?

Dianne Feinstein, at 90.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/29/us/politics/dianne-feinstein-dead-senate.html