Thread 20 - TalkLair: "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness; that is life"

[Kucinghitam]

(Previous Thread 19)

Britain swelters in yet another heatwave.

In the TalkLair, all the curtains are closed against the blazing sun as the denizens lurk like creatures of the night... or maybe we are creatures of the night. But rest assured, despite our scary fangs, the denizens of the lair are a welcoming bunch, always eager for general chit-chat on all manner of topics. We just won’t mention the gnawed bones of our prey over there in the corner of the cave…

I like the fact that Dawkins has weighed in on this and queried whether the examiners actually read the thesis, pointing out that it contains 332 instances of a plural noun incorrectly ending in s' (s-apostrophe), including one in the bloody title!

An exploration of peer-mentoring among student teachers’ to inform reflective practice within the context of action research

I used to translate (Catalan to English) for the University of Girona, or proofread when they decided to do it themselves, and am most proud of the PhD thesis where I pointed out that the statistics on page whatever did not say what the author claimed they did. I am profusely thanked in the Acknowledgements, though she doesn't mention what for! 😆

@moto748e They're not fully GC in my middle-aged grumpy woman sense - they're very clear that humans cannot change sex and that people deserve single-sex spaces and services where required, and that you can have any personality and interests whether you're male or female, but are also fully on board with their (rather numerous, as seems to be the case amongst the ND-spectrum nerdy crowd) multi-pronouned rainbow-gendered friends.

@Gonners DH and I were wondering about this: are PhDs in other fields not examined the way they are in the (actual) sciences?

The procedure in our field is unchanged since long before our time. The PhD supervisor will almost definitely have read the final thesis before submission; although whether they've read the earlier drafts and critiqued the writing is down to how helpful/busy they are.

Then for the viva voce there will be 2 examiners (internal and external) whose job is read the thesis from cover to cover, identifying points to question and usually having a bit of a pre-viva discussion between themselves, and then to grill the candidate in excruciating detail for 3 hours or more.

Then if the candidate passes the viva, they're issued a list of corrections which have to be done, and the corrected thesis resubmitted to the examiners who will confirm if it's been done to their satisfaction. Only after this can the award of the PhD be 100% confirmed.

No idea, @Kucinghitam ... MrG would have known but won't be able to remember.

The only viva I attended was when I was an undergrad and found the victim sobbing outside in the corridor, terrified. I sat within her line of sight, nodding and smiling. It was all very civilised, but her (very well-known) supervisor was really not a woman to be messed with and I'd be surprised if the work needed corrections!

Richard Dawkins wrote an interesting article about Arday’s thesis (and academic bollocks) on UnHerd.

MrBint is in a branch of the humanities, and this is the process in his subject.

Edit: it's virtually unheard of to get through without at least some minor corrections, even it's just a few bits of SPAG.

I has nevver 'ad my speeling or grammer corected ... except once, nearly 50 years ago, by a boss who used the expression "it behoves me" in a letter. I rolled my eyes but duly typed it, only to get the thing back with the word struck out and replaced with "BEHOOVES" in red ink. I had to retype the whole thing In his defense (sic) he was American and knew no better.

Arf!
MrPSB was a Civil Servant for a brief period. His job involved writing reports. His boss would strike out any verb that ended -ing, saying triumphantly ’that’s a gerund’.

I'm all in favour! I think that SPAG matter, and more generally, we should make sure the English language remains precise, in the face of those who would seek to muddy the waters, and I fear that spell-checks have made things worse, not better. If children are taught that SPAG don't matter, how do we communicate effectively?

[edited, natch, for SPAG 😀]

Me too! Back in the 80s and 90s I taught first O level then GCSE English to adult Ed classes, ages ranging from 17 through 70. Many had never had spelling or grammar corrected and genuinely didn’t realise they were making mistakes. By the mid-90s we had spellcheckers and one particularly dyslexic student I had made mistakes with those because he would write a word that was correctly spelled but not the word he meant - I remember he wrote ordinance for audience.

I've had a bit of a "Gaaaahhhh!" morning.

I've been a bit tired, I had a six and a half hour drive home yesterday and slept badly. Our hoover died when I was away; wife and DD abroad on holiday. I also had to collect a parcel from the depot.

I took my passport and on arriving at Currys, found that I'd left my wallet, phone and keys at home, as I'm wearing shorts and cunningly left them in a carrier bag, at home. I also had some food shopping to do.

I got home to find that the dog sitter has taken the key from the key safe... No phone, no way to ask my wife to have it returned...

I went to a little hardware shop round the corner, run mostly by old fellas in brown dustcoats, but they don't pick locks. They recommended a locksmith and I then had to ask them to call him. He arrived quickly, with a £69.95 call out fee and said it might be expensive, if he had to drill the lock.

I said if it came to that, a mate could do it, smelling a potentially expensive rat. Anyway, it took him a good 3 seconds to unlock it. It was a good job I had my passport for the parcel; and guess what? It was collected last bloody week! The dog sitter left the ticket on the kitchen table, so I assumed it needed collecting.

That sounds both exhausting and frustrating @SinnerBoy - sympathies!

Oh that's very annoying, Sinner. I had a similar thing last week - when I got back from a few nights at my mum's, there was a "we missed you" card from Royal Mail. It's a new format with a QR code (which obviously didn't work) but no information about who the parcel was for - there are 4 flats in this house. So I went down to the sorting office and they said oh, actually it was collected a couple of days ago and it was for flat B. GRRRR!

I know I remarked recently about my dislike of QR codes, maybe on another thread. I don't like the idea, and can seldom get them to work anyway. And no, I don't want to flash my mobe at a QR code on the TV, thank you! That's some awful day, Sinner!

Oh gawd, QR codes are the work of the devil and if using them is the only way I can do something, then that something very rarely gets done.

Signed,
A. Dinosaur (Ms)

How infuriating, Sinner.

May I offer an impressive ship, to cheer you up? This was visiting for the Fleadh (pronounced 'flah') and we had a look round it on Sunday. https://www.fundacionnaovictoria.org/el-galeon-andalucia/

There was a viking boat in harbour, as well, compete with a crew of Viking Rus traders. They weren't offering tours though.

No Ivar the Boneless, I suppose?

Not that I saw, but they were all seated so it would have been hard to tell.

Oh I don't know - he'd slump a bit over the oars if he was boneless wouldn't he?

Have people got more stupid since 1999, or just more infantile?
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5565131-solar-eclipse-i-dont-understand-why-we-cant-look

I certainly think people are getting more stupid. The education I got from the State sixty years ago seems vastly better than what's on offer to most kids today. And all that, without computers! Not to mention the dismal standards of basic logic and debate, which has enabled many people to believe twelve ridiculous things before lunch, or whatever the saying was. The gender wars are one demonstration of that, amongst many.

I'm looking forward to trying the colander method, which is a new one for me.

I remember the 1999 total eclipse well, because MrG and I went up the road to Highbury Fields and the whole place went silent for 2 minutes - birds included. It was very peculiar.

DDs are constructing a pinhole viewer, but the star of the show will be DH's brand new telescope. If we can find a decent viewing point, we'll hopefully get some good pictures!

I'll be teaching my boxercise class until 7 and DW and DD will already be away with the car to find a spot by then. Basically I'm just going to watch it on the telly later, but I can still experience the eerie duskening - even if the sun will probably be behind the treeline as seen from the community club.