It reminds me of a course chartered by the Tories in Britain in which they cut funding for music because it wasn’t as economically beneficial as the hard sciences. Some had the temerity to point out that Britain was a roaring financial success in the music business for decades. On the other hand being big in weapons of war you do need physics (nuclear bombs) chemistry (sarin, mustard gas) and biology (unspeakable horrors).
This also ahead of the release of Gluckman’s review of science which apparently is with the ministers already. Part of the issue I see is some of the research topics funded appear to be pretty niche, and when it is presented as the topic and the funding amount I can see the visceral reaction from some sectors as being “wasteful spending”. But of course the down fall of having to compete for funding like this is presenting an angle that is either unique or so academic in language that it is hard to understand why it is important ( or it is easy to label as woke and thence needs to be defunded)
academia in general is pretty niche - the humanities have been systemically targeted and attacked as "woke" for the past few years - to the point that a PhD student received death threats for posting about her thesis on the cultural and social significance of smells. It is interesting that whole areas of study are so threatening that they have to be smeared and shut down!
So sad that this is the path taken, confronting content, feel uncomfortable and the only emotion open to them is anger, and on to needing to fix it with terminal violence (real , or imagined and verbalised). I’m going to keep an eye out for that thesis and give it a read! Hang in there Dr Bex!
We have so much to learn from these ‘wild’ ideas. Surely though they have nothing to teach economists, because economists know more about growth than even trees.
🤔Just looked up serendipitous discoveries on the internet - includes Microwave cooking; X-Rays for diagnostics; the heart Pacemaker; Penicillin; Insulin; Teflon; Super glue; Windshield safety glass; Vaseline; and many others benign or otherwise 🤔
Not surprised that the 3-headed-Taniwha are only interested in $$$ 🤢, although how much income could be had for Aotearoa if we developed ANYTHING of this significance out of the now defunded reasearch ⁉️
It reminds me of a course chartered by the Tories in Britain in which they cut funding for music because it wasn’t as economically beneficial as the hard sciences. Some had the temerity to point out that Britain was a roaring financial success in the music business for decades. On the other hand being big in weapons of war you do need physics (nuclear bombs) chemistry (sarin, mustard gas) and biology (unspeakable horrors).
First they came for the social scientists… or was it the disabled, or the gangs or the (fill in any group that we care about)
this govt is certainly defunding all supports for groups they don't like much at great speed
This also ahead of the release of Gluckman’s review of science which apparently is with the ministers already. Part of the issue I see is some of the research topics funded appear to be pretty niche, and when it is presented as the topic and the funding amount I can see the visceral reaction from some sectors as being “wasteful spending”. But of course the down fall of having to compete for funding like this is presenting an angle that is either unique or so academic in language that it is hard to understand why it is important ( or it is easy to label as woke and thence needs to be defunded)
academia in general is pretty niche - the humanities have been systemically targeted and attacked as "woke" for the past few years - to the point that a PhD student received death threats for posting about her thesis on the cultural and social significance of smells. It is interesting that whole areas of study are so threatening that they have to be smeared and shut down!
That sucks, death threats for a phd topic? ( no way the would have actually read the thesis) Seems way over the top to have that sort of reaction.
It’s been wild following the whole thing - it started with this simple post and the hate escalated from there
So sad that this is the path taken, confronting content, feel uncomfortable and the only emotion open to them is anger, and on to needing to fix it with terminal violence (real , or imagined and verbalised). I’m going to keep an eye out for that thesis and give it a read! Hang in there Dr Bex!
We have so much to learn from these ‘wild’ ideas. Surely though they have nothing to teach economists, because economists know more about growth than even trees.
Or do they?
https://open.substack.com/pub/heyslick/p/think-like-a-jaguar-speak-like-a
🤔Just looked up serendipitous discoveries on the internet - includes Microwave cooking; X-Rays for diagnostics; the heart Pacemaker; Penicillin; Insulin; Teflon; Super glue; Windshield safety glass; Vaseline; and many others benign or otherwise 🤔
Not surprised that the 3-headed-Taniwha are only interested in $$$ 🤢, although how much income could be had for Aotearoa if we developed ANYTHING of this significance out of the now defunded reasearch ⁉️