On academia. I found Tied Knowledge via the daily blogsurf (Liz had it). Seems like good stuff. I bet the average academic hates it. Hits a mite too close to home. If there’s a field of human endeavor less open to criticism, more circle-the-wagons, than academia, I haven’t yet found it. It’s… [Caveat Lector]
ok, so for those that don't know Brian Martin will be in the u.s. at vt sts workshop in march. yes that is virginia tech, blacksburg.

Digital Empowerment Conference?. Here's an e-mail I just sent to my co-workers…does this sound like a good idea to anyone? These are totally… [Full Bleed: Confessions of a Zine Girl]
this is the sort of thing that can make a difference.

The ICSU has launched a discussion forum on Scienc …. The ICSU has launched a discussion forum on Science and Technology in the Information Society. Discussion is welcome on these four topics:

1. Scientific data and information for decision-making and better governance

2. Ensuring universal access to scientific knowledge internationally
3. Scientific data and information as a global public good
4. Using Scientific data and information to improve all levels of education and training

The ICSU hopes that the discussion will help prepare participants for the UN World Summit on the Information Society (Geneva, December 2003, and Tunis, 2005). [FOS News]

You should participate in this, your really should.

Ancient Greece was pro-choice. There's a book available in the UK which examines Abortion in the Ancient World by University of Floriday classics professor Konstantinos Kapparis. There's a UFL review here. [megnut]

interesting enough, not that many people in the u.s. care what the greeks did or did not do…

Indian software exports boom. Foreign demand for India's software and support services shoots up by 28% in the nine months to December. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

yes, this is something to watch on a global scale

Forget Moblogging – Try Cyborglogging!. Cyborg Logs and Collective Stream of (De)Consciousness Capture for Producing Attribution-free Informatic Content Such as Cyborglogs by Steve Mann

This is nifty….

Are doctorates worthwhile?.

asks Brian Martin in his review of Canadian literary scholar Wilfred Cude's The Ph.D. Trap Revisited.

The PhD is the accepted apprenticeship into research and has become a prerequisite for academic jobs in most fields. But is it a good idea? The negative view is that studying for doctorates wastes vast amounts of time and effort, produces narrow-minded scholars and discourages recognition of good teaching. Far from promoting research, according to this critical view the doctorate is a serious brake on intellectual creativity.

I believe that the Ph.D. may globally be an institution that selects against originality, but there might be pockets of oxygen here and there with open minds where one could come up with a fresh approach and survive. However, things can get difficult afterwards, as Ph.D. hiring practices can also be conservative in most places. It's hard to be taken seriously when you stand out too much.

Martin also reviewed Jeff Schmidt's Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes Their Lives. Jeff Schmidt was an editor at Physics Today magazine for 19 years, until he was fired for writing this provocative book. From the review:

Jeff Schmidt argues that training professionals is a process of fostering political and intellectual subordination. On the surface, this is a startling claim, since the often-stated aim of educators is to promote independent thinking. [...]

There are two key ideological processes in professional education, according to Schmidt. One is favoring students who pick up the point of view of their superiors, behavior Schmidt calls “ideological discipline.” The other is favoring students who direct their curiosity as requested by others, a trait Schmidt delightfully dubs “assignable curiosity.”

Hm. If there's one thing I've been sorely lacking all my life, it is indeed assignable curiosity. Guess I'm an amateur professional.

Schmidt also draws an interesting parallel between indoctrination as practiced in cults and professional training. But I think there are cult-like aspects in almost all social structures, not just the professional ones. Perhaps they are more important where there is a lot of power to be gained by working one's way up, though.

Brian Martin's writings on higher education systems are among the most thought-provoking ones that I've come across, by the way.

[Seb's Open Research]

I have always wanted a doctorate, that is the primary reason that I am getting one. I also have found a home in several academic circles, and that is why I will probably use my doctorate, else i probably would just hang it on my wall and go on my way with the rest of my life, but once you are inside the system it becomes increasingly hard to consider leaving, you inhabit a certain set of realities that are perhaps not of this era, but that belong to a previous time, and the mythos that you inhabit is entirely different i think than most others.

I think that there is only 1 reason to get a doctorate, and that is because you want to, you imagine yourself with one because of some reason or another. everything else is secondary. whatever you want to research you can probably research without a doctorate, whatever you want to do, you can probably find a way to do it without a doctorate.

Blog startup advice for newbies. Dave Pollard of How to Save the World offers some advice for blog beginners ported from the world of entrepreneurship. I'll summarize the points here, but you'll have to rack up a hit on his blog to get the full picture:

1. Give the market what it wants.
2. Be patient.
3. Don't copycat.
4. Learn from your successes and failures.
5. Join a club.
6. Network with other blogs and sites. [Radio Free Blogistan]

Here's a tip for #5: visit the TopicExchange… and maybe start a topic.

[Seb's Open Research]

resist the normalization, do what you want, who cares if there is an audience, this is your blog, if you want an audience you should construct it. if you do what other people say about how to do a blog, why are you doing a blog?

academic/disciplinary power struggles. Last year, RIT established a new “College of Computing and Information Sciences,” taking three departments that had previously been part… [mamamusings]

having lived through one previous reorganization, and now living through another one, I find reading what others say on the organization of universities, and the politics involved quite interesting, but there becomes a point in time when the only thing that will make or break a successful reorganization becomes its leadership, and if the leadership isn't committed to the same ideas as the faculty, major problems erupt.

Konfabulator: An open-source programming tool for nonprogrammers lets Mac OS X users create useful ' Widgets'. DIY software… [www.gulker.com