Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Well, sports organizations are conglomerates of the teams that play the sport, and while individual teams may want to cheat they don't want anyone else to be able to cheat them, so the rise of a competent regulatory agency is the natural solution.

The same doesn't really apply to for-profit businesses, as they sell products rather than performance.

[Euld]

Minnesota bans free online classes because they might not be worth people's time.  In all fairness, they're trying to crack down on diploma mill online schools that offer fake degrees, but still, they're banning free classes as well.

[GlyphGryph]

Argh, this is like the taxi situation but 10x worse, because no one is even being charged for anything. -_-

[JoshuaFH]

Minnesota bans free online classes because they might not be worth people's time.  In all fairness, they're trying to crack down on diploma mill online schools that offer fake degrees, but still, they're banning free classes as well.

Just a thought: Is there a lobbying effort by large colleges to perhaps reduce sources of free education so that students might not be able to breeze through as quickly, and thus pay higher tuition fees?

Just seems like something that I might expect in this day and age.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Actually, its colleges that are supporting the free online education. MIT is offering free online courses at the moment, as I recall. Colleges are generally more ideological than profit-based.

[GlyphGryph]

Note that Minnesota DOES let actual fraudulent universities offer online courses. (Exactly the people they claim this law is supposed to protect from)

Maybe this is just them trying to squash their competition? Those guys most definitely care about nothing but profit.

[Bauglir]

Actually, its colleges that are supporting the free online education. MIT is offering free online courses at the moment, as I recall. Colleges are generally more ideological than profit-based.

Not sure about that. A lot of the free online education I see is coming from Ivy League and other well-known universities. These are the ones who can actually afford it, because it's amazing publicity and their degrees are worth as much or more than the education they provide when it comes to getting a job, so they're not undercutting themselves significantly. Not that I'm complaining, free education is pretty much great.

[Scelly9]

Let me just say, MIT's online chemistry is bloody amazing.

[sluissa]

Just was linked to this: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/opinion/global/chinas-leftover-women.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&


Couple of nice quotes: "Pretty girls don't need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family, but girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult. These kinds of girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't realize that as women age, they are worth less and less, so by the time they get their M.A. or Ph.D., they are already old, like yellowed pearls."

"When you find out that he is having an affair, you may be in a towering rage, but you must know that if you make a fuss, you are denying the man “face” ... No man is capable of spending a lifetime being loyal to an outmoded wife who never changes ... Try changing your hairstyle or your fashion. Women must constantly change for the better."

Those come from China’s state feminist agency, the "All-China Women’s Federation."

[kaijyuu]

........

The fuck is wrong with China?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

A traditionalist society with defined anti-egalitarian gender and social roles that have existed for millennium and survived decades of communist dictatorship.

[Solifuge]

Just was linked to this: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/opinion/global/chinas-leftover-women.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&


Couple of nice quotes: "Pretty girls don't need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family, but girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult. These kinds of girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't realize that as women age, they are worth less and less, so by the time they get their M.A. or Ph.D., they are already old, like yellowed pearls."

"When you find out that he is having an affair, you may be in a towering rage, but you must know that if you make a fuss, you are denying the man “face” ... No man is capable of spending a lifetime being loyal to an outmoded wife who never changes ... Try changing your hairstyle or your fashion. Women must constantly change for the better."

Those come from China’s state feminist agency, the "All-China Women’s Federation."

I'm all for cultural relativism, and trying to understand why societies develop the roles and values they do from as unbiased a perspective as I can muster... but this shit pisses me off.

[ChairmanPoo]

There's a difference between "cultural relativism" and accepting any sort of values. At least as far as I'm concerned, that is. I don't believe my morals are superior to, say, the taliban's, because of some higher power or natural law. There is nothing objetivelly making them "superior", except the fact that I and others regard them as such. Which... makes it all the more important to defend them. (AKA: for me moral relativism is not some kind of postmodernist nihilism, but simply an assessment of the standing realities)

[scriver]

What Castillian Monkey Jesus said.

[Reelya]

You left out the best quote:

Many highly educated “leftover women” are very progressive in their thinking and enjoy going to nightclubs to search for a one-night stand, or they become the mistress of a high official or rich man. It is only when they have lost their youth and are kicked out by the man, that they decide to look for a life partner. Therefore, most “leftover women” do not deserve our sympathy.