A Semi-rational creature confronts a universe of ever expanding fuckedupness
Sunday, February 19, 2012
APA Session Rule #8
Even if the speaker is your student, colleague, or sweetheart, you are not permitted to provide from the floor your own answers to the questions he/she is asked.
What if the question is terrible, but your student isn't comfortable telling the tenured professor asking it that it's terrible, and so the tenured professor keeps pushing it?
I had something like this happen to me recently. I gave a paper and was, after some time, asked a question that was totally irrelevant to the thrust of the paper and grounded in issues I just don't care about. The guy who asked was much more established than I was, though, so I tried to humor him, bring it back to the issues I was talking about, and still somehow deal with his question (which involved possible worlds, naturally). I finally gave in and - in what may have been an unwise moment - said, "yeah, I just couldn't care less about trans-world identity."
Suggestion for another Rule: speakers and commentators who race to talk faster than one another so by the end of the main presentation it sounds as if you're watching Alvin Plantinga and the Chipmunks.
Observations from an old cranky jerk who happens to be a professional philosopher. Occasionally philosophical, most often just vulgar. Sometimes focused on sober points of logic and issues in political theory, but more frequently fixed on nonsense. Bad metal bands, crappy guitarists, stupid lyrics, celebrities, pop "culture," telemarketers, irrationality, and other annoyances. Always misanthropic. Anti-religious. Not particularly amusing, either. Some might say insulting. Strange mail. Kook magnet. Doom. Comments from other cranky jerks, young and old.
8 comments:
What if the speaker is all three?
it's clearly an inclusive disjunction
What happened to prompt this rule? I'm dying to know.
What if the question is terrible, but your student isn't comfortable telling the tenured professor asking it that it's terrible, and so the tenured professor keeps pushing it?
I had something like this happen to me recently. I gave a paper and was, after some time, asked a question that was totally irrelevant to the thrust of the paper and grounded in issues I just don't care about. The guy who asked was much more established than I was, though, so I tried to humor him, bring it back to the issues I was talking about, and still somehow deal with his question (which involved possible worlds, naturally). I finally gave in and - in what may have been an unwise moment - said, "yeah, I just couldn't care less about trans-world identity."
The more I attend conferences, the more I wonder how many programs give no advice to their grad students.
Then I see faculty behaving badly, and I have my answer.
I finally gave in and - in what may have been an unwise moment - said, "yeah, I just couldn't care less about trans-world identity."
10:54 FTW!!!
Not unwise at all! I hope you've set a precedent so that I don't have deal with this. Thank you.
wv: I honestly cannot read what the fuck this says.
Anon 8:30--thanks for a new paradox to analyze!!
Suggestion for another Rule: speakers and commentators who race to talk faster than one another so by the end of the main presentation it sounds as if you're watching Alvin Plantinga and the Chipmunks.
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