[geeks] Re: [rescue] It's official, the U.S. is screwed for

[velociraptor]

On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 17:50:04 -0500, Dave Fischer <dave at cca.org> wrote:
> brian.dunbar at plexus.com writes:
> 
> >On Nov 9, 2004, at 10:43 AM, velociraptor wrote:
> >>
> >> Not trying to argue for one side of the morality fence or the other,
> >> just noting that a discussion of morals is pointless without a
> >> contextual framework--i.e. what's the situation--to my way of
> >> thinking.
> 
> >I think that's why I prefer working on the technical side of things -
> >software isn't contextual, it either works or it doesn't, and there is
> >always a reason why.
> 
> James Clark had a nice quote about academia versus business along
> those lines. Something about only having to impress real people
> who buy hardware...

Perhaps in some respects, but in my experience, working in academia,
even IT is far more political than you might imagine.  The wrangle
in/with Nature over the "global warming" data is proof that even the
"hard sciences" suffer from politicization of arguments/conclusions. 
The biggest problem I had with liberal arts was that the work was not
challenging enough.  And I mean "not challenging" in terms of
intellectual issues, not politics--politics in liberal arts is very
difficult to deal with.  To make matters worse, plenty of people tried
to obfuscate their work to make it *seem* more challenging.

=Nadine=