Posts by Bart Janssen
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Hard News: When the fast track seems a…, in reply to Russell Brown,
you’ve outlined the problem with the BOI process. Appointments.
If one were really cynical one might suspect the govt had learned from previous mistakes and made sure this time that the panel came up with the answer the govt wanted.
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Hard News: When the fast track seems a…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
What is TV One thinking
TVNZ has long been the major broadcaster of America's cup - essentially is was self advertising disguised as news
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Speaker: Women, science and superheroes, in reply to BenWilson,
Well, you could just as easily say there are too many graduates for the existing science funding.
No. That would be like cutting funding for teachers and closing schools and then saying because there are unemployed teachers we don’t need them.
Wait, that IS what you are saying - that's bizarre.
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Speaker: Women, science and superheroes, in reply to BenWilson,
While society has exactly the same need for pure science
I don’t know how one could even begin to measure such a thing.
Lots of economic studies have done exactly that. Essentially investment in science is one of the weird factors in economics that is non-linear. They came up with a special category to describe the effect of science investment on economic returns.
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Hard News: Masters of Reality, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Why can’t they just make the committee bigger and have wider representation?
Bigger committees don't necessarily get more done. Also it is a security committee so it requires a certain level of adulthood (something rarer than you might hope in parliament).
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Speaker: Women, science and superheroes, in reply to Amy Gale,
barriers to participating at the professional academic level
Also sexism is alive and well in the hallowed halls making some departments unattractive.
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Speaker: Women, science and superheroes, in reply to BenWilson,
demand has been pushed down
Precisely.
In the "pure sciences" (probably what you mean is the science projects without an immediately obvious product) the vast majority of funding comes from the government. This is true in every country, regardless of how you play with definitions to make projects look like they are one thing when they are in fact the other.
Essentially the sole market is society as a whole and the government as their representative.
While society has exactly the same need for pure science - what has happened is the governments (Labour and National) have taken from the science budgets to fund other things (eg tax cuts). Thus in real dollar terms science funding has declined and hence there are not enough jobs for the graduates ... even though society still needs them and their work.
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Speaker: Women, science and superheroes, in reply to BenWilson,
I hate to use an economics word, but pure science does seem oversupplied
Absolutely not true. What has instead happened is that funding in sciences has been steadily cut in order to make room for tax cuts. The value of pure science to the economy (according to economists) has not changed.
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Speaker: Women, science and superheroes, in reply to Amy Gale,
If we frame this in the context of the current discussion: [some of] the sciences where women are participating at or even over a 50-50 ratio have more barriers to participating at the professional academic level
Yup. A particular problem in the life sciences. And the punitive post-doc structure is particularly hard on women both as the scientist themselves or if they are the partner of a scientist, or worse both!
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Hard News: Masters of Reality, in reply to Russell Brown,
I can see the reasoning on the latter part.
I'm not saying I believe the first part to be true just that I suspect a goodly portion of the Labour party are looking for anyone to blame for their failures other than themselves ... the relationship with The Greens is an obvious scapegoat.
either provocative or stupidly clumsy
Agreed. Certainly it's hard to argue that Shearer isn't a good choice.