Burk's Intellectual Property in the Context of E-Science in the context of international discourse is straight out of Civ Pro and conflicts of laws classes. When discussing the complexities of scientific data-sharing between nations, he recites the daily business of the average rock band manager, who handles conflicts of laws in the hallways of the world's finest music venues. What's protected in Denmark? The name of the band or the recording of their music that night? The name of the song or the first 18 bars? Does it differ if they play a late show in Holland? Yes it does: and the clash of the aspirational/pragmatic is similar as well.
The visage of Metallica running toward the dais to accept their Grammy AND spout economic truisms to drugged audience members in chains and sparkles reminds me of Burk touting the "communalism and reputational" aspects of the genome project: not titans, in this case, but a new world Clash of the Incentives.
Burk's recitation of Merton's theories are akin to Aesop's fables, his reference to the potential "deviancy" where "normative constraints" are missing is the big bad wolf.
What I learned from Burk is what I learned from Judge Bork: the constitution is flexible, our treaties change with each year, and our laws adjust, making the commerce clause as applicable to the pony express as a bullet train.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Friday, April 9, 2010
academia: the original aggregator
The Maybourn School of Journalism is a schizophrenic place: open one door and the professor lamenting the unfairness of the "death of journalism" promptly prohibits research from any website; walk into a door next to that class and the professor is banning any research from journalism sources.
Some hallway.
The article which inspired our ill-tempered exchange in class last night (when you were asked why our readings were so obtuse I interrupted with "because they are indulgent, self-referential and badly written" and you, in the finest academic tradition, shared with us your intellectual response: "NOT TRUE"). It was another poorly executed example of my failure to describe my disappointment in course names and substance since I entered Maybourn.
That's a personal issue, not an academic one, but I want to make this very clear: while I find your character to be rare and exemplary, your intuitions so decent I marvel at them, your philosophy of education to be nearly poetic, I promise from this date forward to cease any attempt to make sense of your teaching style.
Your response to the young women asking you about the writer was patronizing ("you are reading things by experts in their field, lay people are not expected to understand") and troubling at once: if indeed that is the reason the articles were tough reading, your assignment of them to "laymen" was inappropriate.
There wasn't a single "big word" in any of what you assigned; there were several instances of professional lingo, sometimes defined, sometimes not, but apart from that the writing style in one or two of the pieces was just plain pretentious. Not unusual for average conference fare, where the classic "publish or perish" regime in a tenure-starved academic climate inspires often contrived, redundant "scholarship".
And even if I'm dead wrong, and the concepts being discussed in those several articles WERE so above our heads we shouldn't have been expected to understand, why would you have assigned them to laymen?
In one breath you described how you loved all your students; your demonstration of that regard is to set up a clasroom protocol where we read an article, take a quiz on the article, do a presentation on the article and blog on the article to "prove" to you that we've read it. That kind of affection I would reserve for toddlers about to cross traffic, not young adults who've been writing papers for years, to the individual tunes of professors who each stand by the vanity of their personal protocols as the true "scholarship".
Dr. Moro, I think you've been disrespectful and missed some great learning opportunities for us in your effort to add up points and guide us through writing which "the conferences will lap up". I think you've treated us to "the path I chose to take" rather than share with us the fruit of that path, which is YOUR knowledge, not demonstrations by my classmates of what homework they did or did not do, and in organizing our class around that activity rather than your instruction you have shorted us all.
On that note, I hope to continue a friendship with you once this class if out of our way. In the meantime I will remember your adage that "sometimes what offends you most is most important to learn". I'm aware that in hindsight I might say to myself "ahhhh, that's what he meant": in the meantime I'll just be quiet and will take up no more of the class's time with my frustration, something I'm aware I've done too often already. On to the next post...
Some hallway.
The article which inspired our ill-tempered exchange in class last night (when you were asked why our readings were so obtuse I interrupted with "because they are indulgent, self-referential and badly written" and you, in the finest academic tradition, shared with us your intellectual response: "NOT TRUE"). It was another poorly executed example of my failure to describe my disappointment in course names and substance since I entered Maybourn.
That's a personal issue, not an academic one, but I want to make this very clear: while I find your character to be rare and exemplary, your intuitions so decent I marvel at them, your philosophy of education to be nearly poetic, I promise from this date forward to cease any attempt to make sense of your teaching style.
Your response to the young women asking you about the writer was patronizing ("you are reading things by experts in their field, lay people are not expected to understand") and troubling at once: if indeed that is the reason the articles were tough reading, your assignment of them to "laymen" was inappropriate.
There wasn't a single "big word" in any of what you assigned; there were several instances of professional lingo, sometimes defined, sometimes not, but apart from that the writing style in one or two of the pieces was just plain pretentious. Not unusual for average conference fare, where the classic "publish or perish" regime in a tenure-starved academic climate inspires often contrived, redundant "scholarship".
And even if I'm dead wrong, and the concepts being discussed in those several articles WERE so above our heads we shouldn't have been expected to understand, why would you have assigned them to laymen?
In one breath you described how you loved all your students; your demonstration of that regard is to set up a clasroom protocol where we read an article, take a quiz on the article, do a presentation on the article and blog on the article to "prove" to you that we've read it. That kind of affection I would reserve for toddlers about to cross traffic, not young adults who've been writing papers for years, to the individual tunes of professors who each stand by the vanity of their personal protocols as the true "scholarship".
Dr. Moro, I think you've been disrespectful and missed some great learning opportunities for us in your effort to add up points and guide us through writing which "the conferences will lap up". I think you've treated us to "the path I chose to take" rather than share with us the fruit of that path, which is YOUR knowledge, not demonstrations by my classmates of what homework they did or did not do, and in organizing our class around that activity rather than your instruction you have shorted us all.
On that note, I hope to continue a friendship with you once this class if out of our way. In the meantime I will remember your adage that "sometimes what offends you most is most important to learn". I'm aware that in hindsight I might say to myself "ahhhh, that's what he meant": in the meantime I'll just be quiet and will take up no more of the class's time with my frustration, something I'm aware I've done too often already. On to the next post...
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