Venezuela

[stui magpie]

Interesting reading on the joint. Collapsing economy based on oil, increasingly authoritarian governments and brain drain.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... os/ve.html

[thesoretoothsayer]

For most of the first half of the 20th century, Venezuela was ruled by generally benevolent military strongmen...

I think "benevolent military strongmen" means they patted kids on the head before executing their parents.

CIA and Factbook are terms that probably shouldn't go together.

[HAL]

I like to learn new words.

[David]

Why?

real world work experience

What makes a building site more 'real' than a university? Just different kinds of work, surely, and each potentially cloistered in their own way.

[HAL]

A little more.

[Pi]

Why?

real world work experience

What makes a building site more 'real' than a university? Just different kinds of work, surely, and each potentially cloistered in their own way.

The difference is on a large international building site you are more likely to encounter and have to work with vast array of people from different social and educational back grounds. From the lead project manager to the crane rigger, its called real diversity not echo chamber collectivism.

[Pies4shaw]

That's just a very ignorant view.

[Pies4shaw]

Why?

real world work experience

What makes a building site more 'real' than a university? Just different kinds of work, surely, and each potentially cloistered in their own way.

The only "real" work is the work that people get when they're right out of life chances.

Just give this "debate" a miss, David - it's just a strange devaluation of the life-experience of people who can read and write and think.

[Pies4shaw]

At the risk of embarrassing people by making this "real", here's a link to an on-line condolence book for the man who took my first tutorial in prehistoric archaeology almost 40 years ago. A life well-lived - a generous man, a fine scholar of international repute and a person most who knew him would say held views very worthy of thoughtful consideration. Don't think he worked on any building sites, though (unless they were in ancient Mesopotamia).

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/a ... ook&page=3

[Pi]

yep, make sure you dont read stuff like this: thats just for the ignorant

http://www.academia.edu/2916251/The_soc ... s._Discuss

or this

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/ne ... 41.article

and definitely not this; i mean why should anyone in social sciences learn maths?

http://discoversociety.org/2014/11/04/f ... l-science/

[Mugwump]

Some truth in rhat, Pi, but the other way a building site is more real than a university is that it exists in a truly competitive market and building workers are exposed to the choices of consumers, whereas universities are state-funded from compulsory taxation, and thus the people who work in them tend to be more complacent and immune from social and economic non-negotiables.

Secondly, i think that the average business or STEM graduate is probably more used to testing their ideas against a hard and prosaic reality. The neo-Marxist cultural revolutionaries tend to come from the Arts and Law faculties, where power, rather than truth, is the natural currency.

[Pi]

[watt price tully]

That's just a very ignorant view.

I would say ill informed & unknowledgeable, wait on...

[Pies4shaw]

yep, make sure you dont read stuff like this: thats just for the ignorant

http://www.academia.edu/2916251/The_soc ... s._Discuss

or this

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/ne ... 41.article

and definitely not this; i mean why should anyone in social sciences learn maths?

http://discoversociety.org/2014/11/04/f ... l-science/

My first degree's in philosophy of mathematics with a double in history (both firsts of course). How's your maths?

[Pi]