slightly touched

Has everyone heard of the latest kurfluffle, SurveyFail? I just spent a while catching up on it through various links to blogs, posts on lj & dw....what utter asses those so-called researchers are. My favorite is this post:

http://www.roughtheory.org/content/wearing-the-juice-a-case-study-in-research-implosion/#comment-182110

I ADORE this:

Kruger and Dunning are interested in whether, below a certain level basic competence, it becomes very difficult for people to improve their skills - because they are, in fact, too incompetent to be able to tell the difference between competence and incompetence in the first place.

OMG---words can't express the love I have for that. Love, utter, utter, love. *love*

here's some more linkage:

http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/74276.html

http://mackle.wordpress.com/2009/09/03/the-curious-case-of-the-game-show-neuroscientists-or-how-not-to-research-an-online-community/

http://linkspam.dreamwidth.org/


Plenty of individual people have wonderful posts on their journals/blogs, you'll have to find them by following links :-)

Yet Another English Lesson.

"Drug" is a noun meaning a substance used as a medicine. It can also be a verb meaning to proscribe and administer said medicines: to drug.

It is NOT, however, the past participle of "drag": I drag the dead body today, I drug the dead body yesterday.

No. Just...no. I'd like to drag the dead writers that use this somewhere remote.

Dragged, people. Look what the cat dragged in! That cat sure didn't "drug" in something.

Here endeth the /English rant of the day.

I'm going to shoot for "logical argument" here, (even tho just 'shoot' is more my instinct LOL.)

I'm reading an otherwise well-written ST reboot story and find myself clenching teeth because of (once again) a Kirk characterization that I've seen in numerous stories being written: that young Captain Kirk is horribly ham-fisted when it comes to diplomacy, and in dire need of having his (much more able) crew to coach him, remind him, and when that doesn't work, haul his and the shore leave party's asses out of the danger that he put them in by refusing to adhere to any sensible behavior or to listen and learn from his crew's coaching.

Question: where, oh *where* are the authors getting this stoopid-Captain characterization from? In point of fact, during the period he actually *was* in command on Enterprise, he showed keen insight as to how actions effect outcomes, and was seen in conference with his command crew to solicit input about how to achieve his goals. When confronting Nero at the end of the movie, he offered aid; when Spock questioned his offer, he explained how such offer would be helpful when dealing with the Romulan command in the future (which was of course inevitable sometime down the line.)  *SPOCK* was the one who admitted the desire to not offer that aid, but instead to have Nero die.

Such a bizarre characterization of young Captain Kirk not only falls way short of the mark for him, but does huge disservice to any credibility of Starfleet in general. While it certainly has been known for people to get promoted who don't really deserve it or have the full capacity to perform their jobs in any reality,  fiction or not, in this particular instance, with the spotlight of the entire Federation on Kirk and Starfleet, with the unusualness of such a junior officer being deep-selected for promotion, his qualifications would have been dissected with a fine-tooth comb, every weakness highlighted and examined and put to rest within the whole picture before they would have simply *handed* Kirk their newest constellation class flagship. ESPECIALLY given that their fleet was just decimated and down by 7 starships.

Come on, people, *think*. Crackfic is *great*...but lazy, shallow writing is a whole other ballgame. Like Pike, I challenge you to do better.