Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hopefully he can add unicorns in v2.
I'm guessing he has this on the wall of his writing studio.
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So, just how stupid does he think we are?
I don't think that's it. It's not that he thinks we are stupid instead he is just unable to say
"Sorry I fucked up, I never should have done that, you all have my sincerest apologies and the book will immediately be withdrawn."Some folks just can't bring themselves to admit a failure and need to find weasel words to avoid feeling at fault themselves.
The end result is the same, the book is off the shelves and hopefully will make good compost and Prof I. can pretend to himself he has done nothing inherently wrong.
And the U of A can pretend they have standards.
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Caution extreme geekery below (apologies for the threadjack)
Hey Ben, you'd be surprised at the number of wives/girlfriends that really enjoy WoW. Our guild is dominated by women :). I think it's because Blizz focuses on pretty and fun rather than adrenaline. That makes it much more accessible to old slow folks like me and to families and couples. I know lots of folks that play with their kids as well and both parent and child enjoy the game. It's much more about entertainment than number of kills.
Nah you saw me in my battleground gear, that's my ret set helm not my tanking helm. I'm mostly a PVEer and prefer 5/10-mans over anything else, but I'm obsessed with achievements and there are many to get in the BGs. WoW is easier to level now and some things are easier (in mah day...). But there is hard stuff too. Basically Blizz recognised that 12.9 million of their 13 million subscribers just want to have fun with their friends and so the game allows that to happen more now than it used to.
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Where I come from...
Well my parents came over from The Netherlands after the war. It took me a long time flatting to realise that arguing any position (even one you actually disagreed with) was not normal :). That does seem to be rather common amongst that group of immigrants.
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I understand what you're saying Ben. For some folks it becomes a hard to step away from. I know if my wife didn't play as well I would not be playing now because it takes up (too much) time from a relationship. However, now we play together instead of watching TV :). Our iMacs sit side by side :).
The other reason it is viable is that the circle of friends that I have in real life all play online and we play as a guild. It does make for really geeky dinner party conversations and we have great fun horrifying our friends daughters with our massive geekness. If you're interested this is my virtual self.
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As a Tank who plays the same game as Ben I just thought I'd remind Emma something I tell myself every now and then.
"Have you told your healers you love them lately?"
And of course there are healers, probably some of the posters here act as Emma's healers. It about providing the emotional support. And I was trying to find a clever way of saying "any support I can give, I'm happy to give" but I couldn't so I'll just say it.
I like the analogy for the same reasons Ben has described. No element of a team fighting a battle (and lets be serious some of these issues really are battles) is less important. Tanks have to be very focussed, driven and well ... eager to engage. But really good tanks have an awareness of what is happening to all their team even the dps. If your team doesn't want the fight you just picked you are going to have problems.
The other reason the analogy is good is that tanking really is wearying and wearing. Tanks have to find a balance. Sometimes that means taking a different role in the next fight and sometimes it means doing something light and fluffy like loving squirrels.
As for the issue at hand, I find myself unmoved to enter the fray. Hate speech is stupid, freedom of speech is important and there is a grey area in the middle where decisions are difficult.
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Possibly this book is in need of washing in holy water...
I can't help but get a very strong image of seething boiling water followed by by the font itself shattering into thousands (actually 666) of pieces.
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Gschwendtner
It always makes me sad to see the poor people who couldn't afford enough vowels for their names.
Maybe we could start a charity...
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might want to spend a little more lolly on their editors and prioritise the editing
I think it would be surprising if they did. Books don't generally sell based on who the editor was so it's always going to be easy for the accountants to say the editor is less important than the author and hence should be paid less (and of course paid less than the accountant).
Yet they clearly play an enormously important role for many books.
Regarding plagiarism and the difficulty of finding a new way to say the same thing. I write journal papers describing our work. Each of those has an introduction where we say why our field of study is the most important thing to study (spend money on), what is currently known and why we chose to do these experiments. For me it becomes increasingly difficult to find a different way of saying the same thing each time. Even worse when I read someone else's paper and see a sentence that expresses the idea perfectly. How then can I write an inferior sentence simply to avoid repetition. But it must be done. Even more important when you mention someone else's results they must be referenced ... must. Learning to do that is part of learning the profession.
Like Islander I've really enjoyed reading these threads. Jolisa's posts have been an insight into her knowledge and skill and the comments from authors have given me a sense of how hard they work.
But I also have been saddened by this, not because it happened, people make mistakes, make poor choices and they can and should be forgiven. I'm happy to accept that it was more laziness and poor methods of work than maliciousness. My sadness comes from the lack of spine shown by The University and some of The Media. In this case the author made a serious error of judgement, he was very wrong to do what he did. A professor at the university did something wrong and that needs to be made clear and it needs to be clear that there are consequences, not simply excuses.
He probably should not lose his job and he most certainly should write more. But thus far the reaction seems to be one of dismissal, "plagiarism is unimportant ... it wasn't very much". That saddens me.
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Whew David
then you can foucault with the rest of us artsy types
I think she is inviting you to a swingers party