19 Replies to “R.I.P.”

  1. Yup, brave new world. Processes that stood the test of time from Aristotle to astronauts have no place in a civilization where idiots vote to be ruled by arseholes.

  2. After I quit my teaching job at Armpit College, I continued on the research I did for my Ph. D. Since all I needed was a computer and a lot of scrap paper, I didn’t need a lot of money for it. When I couldn’t get funding from outside sources, I paid for my research myself because I made money from my investment portfolio.

    Imagine that: doing research without a grant, without grovelling and pleading for money or having to jump through the “diversity” and “inclusion” hoops required as part of the application process.

    Just don’t try that at a university, though. It seems that funding one’s own research out of one’s own pocket is forbidden as one has complete control of the funds and one’s department can’t get its cut.

    1. We tend to forget that throughout history pure scientific research has almost always been funded by the government, usually the crown itself or wealthy aristocrats patronizing scientists as a way of showing off. Scientists who were also wealthy enough to fund their own research – like Brahe – were rare. Whether as minor nobility or church scholastics, groveling and pleading for money and jumping through hoops have always been part of pure science.

      2. Where big money funding tended to come from in the past was “prizes” for a viable solution to a particular problem, such as determining longitude at sea.

        In the current year, prizes go to those who study something enough to conclude that further study is required.

        Always conclude your final report by stating there is insufficient information for a definitive conclusion, and more study is required.

        2. Which is why I question further government funding into the science of global warming as, if I understand it right, the science is settled.

      3. Patrons are not “the government.” People like Benjamin Franklin didn’t grovel and managed to do a fair amount of research in his spare time. I dare say a professor could manage to do the same if the corporate “science” racket wasn’t so corrupt.

      4. Wrong, Mr. Dream. Most research had been, up until WWI, financed by individuals and corporate bodies. Not governments.

    2. I had a long conversation over dinner with a retired Yale philosophy professor about the nature of intelligence (I’ve been privately researching AI for over 30 years). Afterwards he remarked that he could never have had that same conversation at Yale. Due to the grants system and “publish or perish”, such a free exchange of ideas cannot occur in the academy.

      1. One thing I found out during my Ph. D. research was that originality is not necessarily advisable. There’s always the risk that the concepts or results won’t be understood or one could get the reputation of being too far away from the accepted consensus.

    3. BADR, it’s now a three ring circus: diversity, inclusion, and sustainability.

  3. Duh.
    Cannot employ speech.
    Smash face in?
    There are ,indeed,ideas so stupid that only an “intellectual” can believe them.
    Strangely the folk lore told such tales, of people so doubtful of their own standards and afraid to buck the “norm” that they all agreed “Their Emperor’s new clothes were beautiful and of the most exquisite fabric..
    Until an “uneducated boor of a child ” pointed out the obvious.”.Dah halfwit is naked..”

    Our academia is naked of any talent or intelligence.
    Which is why they are ignored and mocked..
    By any citizens engaged in productive behavoiur.

    1. Nowadays, one needs to have the brightest and shiniest gear in order to have credibility. Image is very important in that business.

      Putting apparatus together with a piece from here and a bit from there could give the impression that one doesn’t have much money to buy something that’s brand spanking new. The amount of funding one receives is regarded as one measure of one’s reputation and prestige. The bigger the reputation, the more funding one has, or so the thinking goes. If one gets by on a shoestring budget, one could be seen as a tinkerer or a hack, someone who isn’t taking their research seriously. (“They only got how much in funding? They mustn’t be very good, then.”)

      Oh, and the quality of one’s results might be suspect if one doesn’t have the latest dinglehoofer for one’s research, particularly if it doesn’t have a racing stripe or some such trivial feature.

      It’s mainly about image and bragging rights.

  5. And this is the same reason why the churches are not, generally, speaking up in North America. DEI forbid that someone should make an argument that counters the narrative from a pulpit and lose, in Canada, the charitable status originally supplied by the government when the government recognized the positive charitable work that churches did as having value to society. The charitable role has largely been supplanted by the government, and the CRA likes nothing better than to deprive the competition of their existence. So, like the United Church of Canada (which has long since given up), the churches say nothing lest they lose their pastoral staff, their buildings and their programs and become what they were supposed to be all along – God’s servants to humanity, standing as light and salt in the darkness and immorality, valuing the individuals as made in God’s image, and striving to convince them of their infinite worth.

    I feel bad for Gad Saad. He sees the striving for truth being replaced with a dismal narrative of envy and feels helpless to stop it.

  7. This is the same culture that believes sonnets, Canadian Impressionism and men are all bad.

    Dumbing down a culture is almost entirely political.

  8. I tried to organize a series of morning poetry performances called “Sonnets les matines”, but nobody showed up.

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