GOGSoc goes forth

Yeah but he's not even being ironic.

He basically goes 'As to the question of whether life evolved on other planets ...' (that's not even the question. Not that he'd know. He didn't write the essay title on his work) '... The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tells us that there is no life in the universe... [lengthy explanation of why this is]'.

And that's it. That is his argument. Not as a comic aside to some science. That's it.

Actually, young men are banned from driving some cars, as they can't get insurance. A new driver will find no-one to insure them to drive a Porsche 911, for example. The same is true for many smokers getting health and life insurance. Or me for example - I'm pretty sure I'd have no chance of getting comprehensive life insurance if I didn't already have it. Though these are extreme examples, they do exist.

Charging someone a higher rate because of a feature they have that makes them higher risk is discrimination. If I had a shop and charged black people twice the price of white people, that's not exclusion, but it's still discrimination. To me, the issue of whether it's ok or not is whether it's justified. Charging any ethnic or gender group of people more for some chocolate would seem to be unjustified, to me (though charging girls more may be an example of semi-efficient price discrimination...), as who buys it doesn't affect the seller. This isn't true for insurance or event booking though - some groups are higher risk than others, and thus charging them the same rate would be unfair to the sellers and to the lower-risk groups. I really like your idea of higher risk groups having to provide a higher deposit, as this solves the problem without excluding anyone, however it would be illegal in this case - you can't charge one ethnic group a higher rate than another group. You also can't exclude them for that reason, but it's much easier to find an excuse to cancel than to charge a higher rate.

Given that venues are cancelling when they find out, even at the last minute, thus they're unlikely to get another booking, they must believe the risk to be substantial given how much money they're losing cancelling. With an incentive that strong, laws against it will make them find ways around it - saying it's for other reasons, etc. I think it's far better in situations like this where one group is higher risk to allow higher deposits or higher charges, which remove the incentive to simply not offer the product to them.

It sucks for low-risk members of a high-risk group to be charged a high-risk price, but there's little other option. Using deposits or excess to signal that the individual believes themselves to be higher or lower risk than would be expected lessens this suckiness, though it doesn't get rid of it. Banning discrimination based on which group people fall into leads to a whole host of bad solutions though.

Sounds as though you really should fail him, to be honest. Or at least give him a mark in the 30s or something. I mean, even undergraduates wouldn't be allowed to cite a sci-fi novel as their only source in an essay...

To be fair, at least he's referencing that idea...

Oh wow. That passage is there to illustrate how silly you can be with logic and words, I can't believe someone would actually use that unironically. That's epic faildom.

Sounds like an arse. If he didn't answer the question, didn't cite anything properly and quotes inappropriate sources then he hasn't really done anything worthy of a mark above zero, unless there is a mark scheme which gives credit for 'writing English words, sometimes in sentences'.

I want to fail him. I should fail him. I just feel really un-kosher about doing it. Have emailed the course leader for advice.

What's up?

Had my fourth rejection...

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I have one! If you/people like coconut that is. It's my grandma's recipe - officially called fudge, but really a chocolate tray bake. You ice it while hot, so it looks impressive too...

The worrying thing is you can still get a 3rd I believe for 'one or two relevant points'. And he does make one or two relevant points. The problem is that although my own personal mark scheme that I wrote and gave to my tutees contains notes on citation and bibliography (So I could say I warned them when I started handing out 2iis) the official department one doesn't, because it's designed for exams when you're not expected to cite properly. So there's no benchmark.

I want to fail him. I should fail him. I just feel really un-kosher about doing it. Have emailed the course leader for advice.

Just do it and let the department pick up the pieces if they feel it needs to be moderated.

The worrying thing is you can still get a 3rd I believe for 'one or two relevant points'. And he does make one or two relevant points. The problem is that although my own personal mark scheme that I wrote and gave to my tutees contains notes on citation and bibliography (So I could say I warned them when I started handing out 2iis) the official department one doesn't, because it's designed for exams when you're not expected to cite properly. So there's no benchmark.

I want to fail him. I should fail him. I just feel really un-kosher about doing it. Have emailed the course leader for advice.

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