Analogy
John Bear
help people find their next hamburger.
Let us assume that 99% of drive-through hamburgers are purchased at
McDonalds or Burger King.
What if alt.hamburgers.drive-through devoted 99% of its bandwidth to
**Mad Herbert's Gastric-Burger Gazebo in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho where a
crazed chef puts ground up ostrich brains in the meat;
**Ralph's Big White Telephone Drive-Through Burgers and High Colonics
While You Wait in Nashua, New Hampshire where the beef advertised as "U.S.
Prime" was actually made from year-old cow carcasses imported by slow boat
from Pakistan;
**the discovery that the owner of Bluto's Gas and Gulp Burger Disco and
Worm Farm in Anniston, Alabama was discovered to be Jeffrey Dahmer's
former roommate.
and comparable matters.
John Bear, who finds himself
writing more and more private
messages, and deleting more
and more news group items unread
Kevin Stewart
On the other hand, it's 2:30 a.m.
Could you please be realllly clear? Thanks!
Kevin
John Bear wrote in message ...
>Consider a news group called, "alt.hamburgers.drive-through," intended to
>help people find their next hamburger.
snipped
leroykaminski
Your analogy is very clever. I expected to also
find the question you have written about useless
doctorates: "Do you want fries with that?"
Thank you for attempting to clarify
the purpose of this ng.
Perhaps a restatement of the difference between a ng
and a talk channel might help.
Regardless....
Perhaps it is time for a vacation: I hope you will
have an enjoyable time on your New Year's vacation.
All the best,
LeRoy (the redneck reindeer - only in Dec.)
In article <john-20129...@fence27.ppp.lmi.net>,
jo...@ursa.net (John Bear) wrote:
> Consider a news group called, "alt.hamburgers.drive-through," intended
to
> help people find their next hamburger.
>
> Let us assume that 99% of drive-through hamburgers are purchased at
> McDonalds or Burger King.
>
> What if alt.hamburgers.drive-through devoted 99% of its bandwidth to
>
> **Mad Herbert's Gastric-Burger Gazebo in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho where a
> crazed chef puts ground up ostrich brains in the meat;
>
> **Ralph's Big White Telephone Drive-Through Burgers and High Colonics
> While You Wait in Nashua, New Hampshire where the beef advertised as
"U.S.
> Prime" was actually made from year-old cow carcasses imported by slow
boat
> from Pakistan;
>
> **the discovery that the owner of Bluto's Gas and Gulp Burger Disco
and
> Worm Farm in Anniston, Alabama was discovered to be Jeffrey Dahmer's
> former roommate.
>
> and comparable matters.
>
> John Bear, who finds himself
> writing more and more private
> messages, and deleting more
> and more news group items unread
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Kevin Stewart
I'd ask for clarity but I don't know what to astart with!
Kevin
UV B wrote in message <385FBF60...@attglobal.net>...
items unread
snipped
>
>And consider alt.world.perfect
>
>- Please, Dr Bear, after you
>- Thank you, Prof X, but after you
>- You're a gentleman, Dr Bear, but allow me to politely insist
>- ...
>
>In the real world, there are wars, famines, diseases, accidents, bad
people.
>Thanks to God, instead of dying of boredom we generally leave the earth
>cruelly.
>You would be very sad if you already knew that you will peacefully die in
your
>bed at the age of hundred.
>You would not be able to joyfully ask yourself : " How am I going to die ?
>Shall I be the victim of a maniac ? "
>Let us be grateful for this. The world is frghtening but interseting..
>Let us build a worse world and a worse newsgroup.
>By the way, did you know that Larry loves cocktails in which there aren't
>solely fruit juices. The sign that Larry isn't so bad.
>
>Best regards Ulrich
>
>
Larry McQueary
Tom Head
> How many times did you run this through Bablefish?
>
> I'd ask for clarity but I don't know what to astart with!
Made perfect sense to me. *shrug*
Peace,
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Thomas Carwile Head "Being properly distracted for a moment
M.A. Candidate (Nonresident) is child's play. Being rightly
Humanities External Degree distracted for a lifetime is an art."
California State University,
Dominguez Hills -- Douglas Adams
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
E-Mail t...@netdoor.com / http://www2.netdoor.com/~tlh / ICQ 20364804
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Kevin Stewart
with so eclectic a range! <G>
Kevin
Tom Head wrote in message ...
>On Tue, 21 Dec 1999, Kevin Stewart wrote:
>
>> How many times did you run this through Bablefish?
>>
>> I'd ask for clarity but I don't know what to astart with!
>
>Made perfect sense to me. *shrug*
snipped
Bill Dayson
attempt at interpreting and responding to it:
> Consider a news group called,
> "alt.hamburgers.drive-through," intended to
> help people find their next hamburger.
OK, hamburgers are analogous to distance education. But is it true that
the group is intended to merely help people find their next burger? Or
is it intended to discuss burgers in general, like when a burger is good
to eat, how burgers should be eaten, what is good to eat with a burger,
what condiments go good with burgers, and perhaps even how burgers can
be improved?
> Let us assume that 99% of drive-through
> hamburgers are purchased at McDonalds or
> Burger King.
Is that analogous to regional accreditation? Legitimate burgers?
> What if alt.hamburgers.drive-through devoted
> 99% of its bandwidth to...
> **the discovery that the owner of Bluto's Gas
> and Gulp Burger Disco and Worm Farm in
> Anniston, Alabama was discovered to be
> Jeffrey Dahmer's former roommate.
> and comparable matters.
> John Bear, who finds himself
> writing more and more private
> messages, and deleting more
> and more news group items unread
I'd interpret this as saying that we devote too much time to discussing
degree mills.
That's probably inevitable. Since the cost of starting a "university" is
the cost of creating a web page, there has been an explosion of fake
schools. And a person investigating this field for the first time is
going to run into many of them, without knowing how to distinguish them
from legitimate alternatives. So this group fulfills a valuable, even a
crucial, consumer protection function by exposing them. Fraud is
probably as rampant in this field as in any that exists. If that is not
addressed, the whole field of distance education could be discredited in
the eyes of the public.
But while I find degree mills fascinating, and hope that the group does
continue discussing them, I would agree that there is a lot more to
distance education that we could be talking about.
Actually, there *are* lots of threads about valuable things like the
technical details of credit by examination, grade point averages when
most credit is by examination or portfolio, ACE credits, HW exams,
distance law schools, financial aid, all kinds of international
information, info. on a wide variety of individual schools, and lots
more.
Personally, I'd like to see more discussion of philosophical issues,
like what the longer term impact of DE will be on higher education in
general. I suspect that the whole system will be transformed, but don't
know exactly how.
Will many residential schools fold? Will some majors move predominantly
on-line? What will happen to college teaching when canned courseware
hits and teachers are reduced to graders and holders of office hours?
Will the teaching profession be devastated? Or will teaching move into a
more tutorial format, with routine lecturing automated and teachers
freed to give students individual attention? What will the dramatic rise
of cross-border education do to national educational systems? Will there
be a homogenizing effect as all higher education becomes more similar
and more portable?
One thing that turns me off, and makes me skip posts, are all the posts
whose purpose is criticizing another participant's personality. But that
comes with the territory on a newsgroup. And there is a contingent that
seem to post in order to see their posts in print, even though they have
little of interest (to me) to say. But that's inevitable too, I guess.
All in all, I find this a very good group. So perhaps I entirely missed
Dr. Bear's meaning.
Bill Dayson
John Bear
No.
There are many times when we seem to devote a great deal of bandwidth to
things that are relevant for a minuscule number of people.
On the other hand, as my wife points out, there is always a point at which
a cancer is a single cell, about to go crazy.
Or, as my lost brother Slouching always used to say, "A journal of two
steps begins with a single step."
--
John Bear, co-author, Bears' Guide to Earning Degrees
Non-Traditionally
Richard G.
cis...@webtv.net (Bill Dayson) wrote:
> I'd interpret this as saying that we devote too much time to
discussing
> degree mills.
>
> That's probably inevitable. Since the cost of starting a "university"
is
> the cost of creating a web page, there has been an explosion of fake
> schools.
Well, the really bogus ones will basically cost the fees to set up a
webpage as you say. The ones that are more 'savvy' will actually file a
company legally to operate under, and that costs several hundered, up to
a thousdand dollars..
--
" He who tends to Mick Jagger's broken leg shall 'cast the first stone..