Pointless arguing February 21, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in older son, societal commentary.Tags: pointless arguments, politics, Rush Limbaugh
7 comments
I will occasionally read conservative blogs. I think it’s because either I’m a glutton for punishment or because I need someone to spit venom at. Either way, I will seldom comment on them. Instead, I’ll have my older boy pull up a chair, and we’ll discuss what we’re reading.
“You really ought to say something, tell them why they’re wrong.”
“No, it’s a waste of time.”
“Why is that a waste of time?”
“They don’t care it’s wrong, and anything I say is actually just going to reinforce their view.”
I would like to believe that people, when presented with evidence that they have a misconception, will take a serious look at it. Unfortunately, as I was about to rethink this stance, I had something happen to reinforce that particular view.
I’ve been mutually following someone on Twitter for quite a while. He’s a funny guy, and we’re both Star Trek fans. In fact, he was one of the first people I started following.
I posted a link to a graphic from the New York Times detailing several measures of various country’s well-being. He responded that the graphic said more about the NYT than the countries, and that they chose those particular countries so that the US would show up last. I suggested he ask a question at the column about how the countries were chosen, but he said that would be a waste of his time.
I thought about it and wondered if there might be some truth to his statement. However, after I looked into it (and discovered the answer was on the top line of the graphic), it turned out that the countries chosen were the ones that the International Monetary Fund lists as having “advanced economies”. So no, the NYT didn’t cherry pick the countries they wanted to include in the graphic specifically so that the US would show up last on those measures: the countries were chosen according to someone else’s hopefully more objective criteria. Maybe they did practice some type of exclusivity on the criteria they chose, but I won’t get into that because, frankly, I don’t know.
I let the Twitter friend know where the list of countries came from. He responded, “Okay.” Then he unfollowed me.
Harsh. We’d had a disagreement. I don’t hate the guy.
I used to spend a lot of time arguing with people, expecting that if I showed them data explaining why their viewpoint, if not wrong, may at least be questionable. This was always the response I would get. Or they’d try to convince me that their experiences trump statistical studies. Or worse yet, they’d pull out data from some place that I would consider far from objective (*ahem* Heritage Foundation *ahem*).
At some point, I realized I was just having these discussions over and over, and it really didn’t matter what I said. I don’t mind discussing opinions that differ from my own, but I also like justification for those opinions…and the internet is too full of people who prefer the Rush Limbaugh method of “discussion”. So frustrating. So pointless.
I also blog at Engineer Blogs, home away from home to some of the best engineering blogs.
The Brain Drain March 22, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in education, Fargo, grad school, research, science, societal commentary.Tags: fargo, higher education, north dakota, politics, universities
3 comments
Yesterday, I was getting into my car when I noticed something on my windshield.
My neighbor had seen the article about me in yesterday’s paper and left me a message about it. In fact, it hit three of major newspapers in the state. (If you care to read it, one copy is located here.)
When I was asked by the public relations person at NDSU if she could feature my research as part of an effort to promote the supercomputing facilities on campus, I was certainly glad to do so. First, from a simply pragmatic point of view, it’s not a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you. (Although, to be honest, they have a lot of other projects they could’ve featured.) Second, and more important in my mind, is that this type of thing counters some of the negative attitude about the state universities in the western part of the state.
People from out of state (probably the 4 of my 5 readers) are probably not aware that there is a bit of a divide in state politics, and it can be roughly framed by drawing a vertical line down the center of the state. The eastern part of the state has the major universities and sees the benefits of having them. The western part of the state thinks the universities are sucking all of their hard-earned money, and worse yet – children, away from them.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s all I heard about was the ‘brain drain’ that the state was suffering: all of those bright, hard-working, born-in-North-Dakota kids were being educated at a low cost and then leaving the state. The people in the western part of the state seemed to think we just ought not to spend so much money educating them. I don’t think they understood that the likely result of that would not be to prevent brain drain but to accelerate it as those students would end up leaving for colleges out of state. On the other hand, the eastern part of the state was asking for more and more money to fund already seriously underfunded universities which were teaching a lot more kids than they could realistically accommodate. And we won’t even talk about research. The universities are supposed to be there to serve the students from the state…what does research have to do with anything?
I was one of those kids that left straight out to go to college, and I really had no intention of returning. I wanted to do research, and I knew that coming out of high school. I knew that because I’d gotten involved in research through a state-sponsored program at NDSU as a high school student, and I also knew that I likely couldn’t do what I wanted here. And why should I, when I could go someplace better?
If you fast forward to about 2000 (when I came back to return to school), there were some significant changes happening. Great Plains software was bought out by Microsoft, making it the second largest Microsoft campus in the world. There were companies in town doing engineering. There was a way to stay in North Dakota with a technical degree. And about that same time, NDSU started to make some aggressive moves to increase the size and reputation of its campus.
In the past ten years (even before the oil boom in the western part of the state), this significantly slowed the population loss the state was suffering. However, the western part of the state was still shrinking, and this was probably aggravating the divide. The eastern part of the state is right, though, IMO. If you want to keep people from leaving, you need to find a way to create jobs, and not just any jobs: they have to be jobs that bright, educated people will want to do. Universities are very often centers of creativity and entrepreneurship, and so bringing in more money to the universities will likely do a lot to create jobs and businesses. Bright, educated people will start businesses to hire those that may not necessarily have the advanced degrees but are still hard workers. The state is finally starting to see that, and they’re also using some of the money from the oil and gas taxes to create incentives for businesses to operate here.
Going back to the article, I was excited to do this as I see this as a way to communicate to the skeptics that the universities are good for the state. Here is a project that I would likely have to do somewhere else if it weren’t for the fact that we have the facilities here and they are easily accessible. Part of the reason I think my research was featured is not only the coolness factor, but the fact that I’m a native of the state and one of the people who, ostensibly, you don’t want leaving for a better job elsewhere. So yes, the universities are doing something to keep people here, even if not in the western part of the state. (On the other hand, it sounds like they have more people there now than they really know what to do with, which is another story altogether.)
My only disappointment in all this is that my hometown paper, the Bismarck Tribune, didn’t run the story. I can’t help but wonder if that is a result of the fact that the divide still obviously exists.