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Original post by alex_hk90
Misjudged people's opinions on what? I must not be reading this thread carefully enough as I'm lost here. :redface:


I'm probably causing it, since most of my posts have been made at stupid times in the morning and I gave myself 5 hours sleep last night and am feeling rather delicate.

It was my question about what to save from humanity. I assumed that most people would go for the arts, but it appears that lots of people would go for sciences.
Original post by ukebert
I'm probably causing it, since most of my posts have been made at stupid times in the morning and I gave myself 5 hours sleep last night and am feeling rather delicate.

It was my question about what to save from humanity. I assumed that most people would go for the arts, but it appears that lots of people would go for sciences.


Ah I see it now: not sure how I missed both the post and the responses - clearly I need more sleep as well!

I would also take science. Not sure why it just instinctively seems so much more important and beneficial to society as a whole.
Reply 5862
I'm with you, ukebert (except I'd take literature, but you know, same coin).
Original post by Athena

And as a human geneticist, I'm pretty sure I'm dealing with what it means to be human too :wink:

:ditto:
Personally I'm far more moved by science than the Arts. I have to say, ukebert, that only a scientist could suggest that the sciences are some how neutral and free from human particularities and biases. I think they are just as human: they are about grappling with the issues that affect our well being most!
Original post by Melz0r
In an accessy vein, what do you guys think to the idea of some kind of Big Cambridge Finance FAQ/Questions sticky? I mean I know that the situation for finance at Cam is roughly the same as it is at most other places, but people don't actually know that, and it might be nice to have all the bursary-related questions in one place? Things like when and how the bursaries are distributed/deducted can vary a lot between college, and it might be handy to have one place to put all the bursary questions so that that sort of info gets collated. What do you think? I'm happy to help write some of it etc.

I'm not against it, but we do try to keep stickies to a minimum so that people don't just stop seeing them :s-smilie:
Reply 5864
Original post by ukebert
That doesn't make the idea middle class though, no? It just makes the opportunity one for the middle classes only. But that is going to change with better education (I still hold that education is the key to eliminating the class divide). I still think that in theory, an ideal education system would not be geared to churning out professional people, but would be geared to producing people who were developed, knew their potential and could react with understanding to the community around them. And that has to start with the ending of the division between vocational and academic disciplines. And the division between the arts and the sciences for that matter.

If I was only able to take one set of accomplishments from the human race to show what we have achieved, I would take music. Because I think that music is the pinnacle of human achievement. Others might take literature, or poetry, or drama, or dance. I don't think many would take the scientific disciplines. They are achievements, but they are dealing with the world around us, whereas the arts deal with what it means to be human, ultimately. So it puzzles me that music, art, drama, dance, all disciplines involving creativity aren't valued more in our school system. Anyway, Ken Robinson puts it all much better than me, so listen to him :p:


I know you've already heard loads of people's opinions on this, but I actually feel very strongly that the defining feature of humanity, and that which has contributed to human achievement the most, is our imagination and our capacity to dream. That manifests itself within the arts and the sciences. I think it's fallacious to say that science is about 'discovery', while the arts are about 'creation', because the sciences simply harness creativity in a different way to the arts.

I think my opinion is best illustrated by the concept of space travel. One of the pioneers within rocketry and space exploration was a guy called Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskii, who was born in the 19th century and was designing rockets before the Wright Brothers had even made their first flight. He created concepts such as multi-stage rocketry, liquid coolants and all kinds of things (sorry, not sciencey enough to understand it all but I'm assured it's all very good). Many of his inventions are still used in the present day. There is no way that you can say that he wasn't one of the most creative men of his time. This is someone who looked at the stars and said 'you know what, maybe we could go there', and then dedicated his life to designing ways to get there. His work is frankly astounding, and I don't think it could be classed as just a 'discovery'. What he set out to do was unthinkable at the time, and yet 60 years later the Russians were the first into space because of the groundwork that he and other early Russian rocket designers created, seemingly out of thin air. Honestly, I don't think I've ever come across a more impressively creative person. I haven't explained it very eloquently though, so I doubt you'll be convinced :o:

Also, fun fact - NASA made their astronauts' space suits silver because that's the colour astronauts always wore in sci fi films. The Soviets went for a highly offensive orange instead - standard.
Original post by Melz0r
I'm with you, ukebert (except I'd take literature, but you know, same coin).


Which I guess would have to be passed down orally, seeing as we don't have paper or electronic data storage devices. :tongue:
Reply 5866
Original post by Melz0r
In an accessy vein, what do you guys think to the idea of some kind of Big Cambridge Finance FAQ/Questions sticky? I mean I know that the situation for finance at Cam is roughly the same as it is at most other places, but people don't actually know that, and it might be nice to have all the bursary-related questions in one place? Things like when and how the bursaries are distributed/deducted can vary a lot between college, and it might be handy to have one place to put all the bursary questions so that that sort of info gets collated. What do you think? I'm happy to help write some of it etc.


I'd echo Craggy's concern about the proliferation of stickies. I'm considering pruning the stickies anyway (I started keeping tabs on the number of views on each of them last year and then stopped doing it, but I'm going to start up again), and I'm wary of using stickies for major information posts that don't really merit huge amounts of discussion - it seems counter intuitive to have too many 'no discussion' threads populating the top of the forum. We also don't get that many bursary/finance questions in separate threads, otherwise there would already have been a megathread created just by dint of there being lots of them in the forum at once that had all been merged together.

However, I think this would work well as a wiki page (if there isn't one already) that could be linked to from various places. What do you think about that? I don't personally have time to write a lot of content at the moment, but I could find someone to help with formatting the wiki if you wanted to make it a personal project :smile:
Reply 5867
Original post by alex_hk90
Which I guess would have to be passed down orally, seeing as we don't have paper or electronic data storage devices. :tongue:


Oh, very clever :rolleyes: Totally hadn't thought of that...

Zoedotdot
:elefant:

Craghyrax
:elmo:


You're right about sticky proliferation (... ew). I'll investigate the current wiki situation.
Reply 5868
Original post by Melz0r

You're right about sticky proliferation (... ew). I'll investigate the current wiki situation.


Cool :smile: I'd do it myself but The Life of Theodosia of the Caves is just begging me to write an essay on it (incidentally, if we're saving all literature then this one is a must - it teaches you how to make the best bread in the world. You have to bow before the altar three times and then pray, for future reference).
Reply 5869
Original post by Zoedotdot
I'd echo Craggy's concern about the proliferation of stickies. I'm considering pruning the stickies anyway (I started keeping tabs on the number of views on each of them last year and then stopped doing it, but I'm going to start up again), and I'm wary of using stickies for major information posts that don't really merit huge amounts of discussion - it seems counter intuitive to have too many 'no discussion' threads populating the top of the forum. We also don't get that many bursary/finance questions in separate threads, otherwise there would already have been a megathread created just by dint of there being lots of them in the forum at once that had all been merged together.

However, I think this would work well as a wiki page (if there isn't one already) that could be linked to from various places. What do you think about that? I don't personally have time to write a lot of content at the moment, but I could find someone to help with formatting the wiki if you wanted to make it a personal project :smile:


Could we maybe have a combined mega-sticky with various bits of information in rather than five sticky threads covering separate topics? That way we don't have to link people to the wiki and there's less risk of trolling. (i.e. a combined info thread with a post for finance, one for entry requirements, one for how to choose a college, one for how to choose a subject, possibly one for locations of good cake in Cambridge?)

A propos of nothing - has anyone else had trouble with Facebook sharing recently? In the last 24 hours I've discovered Facebook has been sharing both my Independent reading and my Spotify listening, and I'd rather my embarrassing music taste didn't go public...

Also, I have a shiny new John Green book on my desk, so no work will be getting done tonight :smile:
I suppose what I was getting at was that I believe that what is most worth saving is examples of human creativity and I was distinguishing between creativity in discovery and creativity in invention. Albeit rather haphazardly.
Original post by Melz0r
Oh, very clever :rolleyes: Totally hadn't thought of that...

At least we'd still have sarcasm. :wink: :tongue:
Reply 5872
Original post by lp386
Could we maybe have a combined mega-sticky with various bits of information in rather than five sticky threads covering separate topics? That way we don't have to link people to the wiki and there's less risk of trolling. (i.e. a combined info thread with a post for finance, one for entry requirements, one for how to choose a college, one for how to choose a subject, possibly one for locations of good cake in Cambridge?)

A propos of nothing - has anyone else had trouble with Facebook sharing recently? In the last 24 hours I've discovered Facebook has been sharing both my Independent reading and my Spotify listening, and I'd rather my embarrassing music taste didn't go public...

Also, I have a shiny new John Green book on my desk, so no work will be getting done tonight :smile:


Have you seen the info thread called 'Guide to Applying to Cambridge'? This contains a lot of the information you've mentioned and is a pretty excellent example of why we don't have these kinds of info threads. I'm the Cambridge mod, and I haven't read the whole thing - I got bored halfway down because it's too long. Unfortunately, stickies with a LOT of information in are not very good for communicating information. So it wouldn't really work. I agree that we need a more effective manner of getting people to read information, but sticky threads don't work in that respect, largely because they're too long and that kind of lengthy content is more suited to a wiki page than to a thread. The key, I think, is getting people to be more aware that the wiki exists and using it as an information resource. However, the stumbling point will always remain that applicants will continue asking the same questions day in and day out, because everyone thinks that their own situation is different and nobody wants to read generalised information and work out how it applies to them as an individual when they could just ask a question and get a tailored response immediately. I suppose that when it comes down to it the function of the forum is interaction rather than information, and so people use it to ask rather than to research.
Reply 5873
Original post by ukebert
I suppose what I was getting at was that I believe that what is most worth saving is examples of human creativity and I was distinguishing between creativity in discovery and creativity in invention. Albeit rather haphazardly.


In a nutshell, I think that's what I was trying to say, except that I think there is a significant amount of invention in discovery.

So out of all of humanity I would save everything. A good arts student answer I believe, which would probably get a first if I added 'and nothing' to the end of it :p:
Original post by Zoedotdot
In a nutshell, I think that's what I was trying to say, except that I think there is a significant amount of invention in discovery.

So out of all of humanity I would save everything. A good arts student answer I believe, which would probably get a first if I added 'and nothing' to the end of it :p:


I think that there is a significant amount of invention in discovery, you are right, but that I personally value it less. It looks like I'm in a minority there though.
Reply 5876
Original post by lp386
Also, I have a shiny new John Green book on my desk, so no work will be getting done tonight :smile:


PRSOM!! It is SO SO SO good!!! Like AMAZING, I cried so much, and laughed and totally fell in love.

Is yours signed? Mine wasn't :frown: and I pre ordered in August :sad:
Reply 5877


The stages of Luke's grief at reading yet another one of these $%£$"£ing pieces:
1) Exasperated noises
2) Ranting at flatmates
3) Looking up admissions statistics and then gloating
4) Angrily pitching a comment piece to Varsity.

Hopefully acceptance will come soon, but until then I'll stay seething. She's actively worsening the problem that she's complaining about.

Original post by smilepea
PRSOM!! It is SO SO SO good!!! Like AMAZING, I cried so much, and laughed and totally fell in love.

Is yours signed? Mine wasn't :frown: and I pre ordered in August :sad:


Mine is signed, but no hanklerfish for me :frown:
All the reviews I've read have completely raved about it, so I'm quite excited about reading it. Insomnia just got a whole lot less annoying.
According to his blog, there's a way to get special bookplates for it if your copy came unsigned, I think... I assume you bought from Amazon, I think they didn't order enough.
http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com/post/15616995474/hey-is-there-anywhere-we-can-buy-signed-copies-after
Reply 5878
Original post by Athena
You folks might enjoy this screen cap of how Elly "I'm a free thinker and rejected Oxbridge" Nowell's views are probably actually her dad's...


It took me a moment to realise why it wasn't that unlikely that my newsfeed had this appear pretty soon before tsr had it!
Reply 5879
Original post by lp386
Mine is signed, but no hanklerfish for me :frown:
All the reviews I've read have completely raved about it, so I'm quite excited about reading it. Insomnia just got a whole lot less annoying.
According to his blog, there's a way to get special bookplates for it if your copy came unsigned, I think... I assume you bought from Amazon, I think they didn't order enough.
http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com/post/15616995474/hey-is-there-anywhere-we-can-buy-signed-copies-after


You could go Hanklerfishing but I think that might only prove successful if you're in the states. What colour did you get?? I really wanted a yeti, alas!

Have you read his others? I certainly think it's by far the best of them all (but I did love all the others)

Yep done that already :wink: