Jill Biden's Dissertation

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Discussions' started by chrisjm18, Nov 8, 2020.

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  1. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Yep. I'm with you - and with Steve. Great points, both.
     
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  2. perrymk

    perrymk Member

    I recall when I was in graduate school for chemistry (University of Alabama in early 1990s) that thesis and dissertations had to be submitted to the English department for grammar and spelling and whatever else review. A guy in my research group who finished a year ahead of me was quite proud that he had only 3 corrections. This was considered very good.

    My thesis came back with 0 corrections.

    No I'm not submitting it for your online review even if the diskette from 1993 could still be read.
     
  3. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    I have a computer that could read it! :) My sons call me "the king of old stuff."

    But seriously - I respect your decision, and your accomplishment. I think probably very few doctoral candidates can get to that perfection, especially before the outside proofing, but I have nothing against people who don't quite achieve it. My take: I've never written one, but I know producing a dissertation can be hellish hard work - almost literally so at times and it's my humble view as a spectator that the final effort stands or falls on its content - and the difficult research and other work that went into its creation. It sucks to find typos etc. - sucks worse when others find them - but one or two are not going to destroy the spirit, content or value of the work.
     
  4. Mac Juli

    Mac Juli Well-Known Member

    Be warned - this might probably be not the case. I tried to re-read some stuff I wrote 20 years ago which I wanted to show my daughter, but the 3,5-inch-disk could not be read any more. I did a little recherche, then - the life span of a Floppy Disk is estimated to be between five and 30 years.

    But not endless, as I learned the hard way.
     
  5. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    In case this would interest you, there are data recovery services out there with sophisticated equipment that can read old disks, tapes, etc., that cannot still be read by consumer grade peripherals.
     
  6. Mac Juli

    Mac Juli Well-Known Member

    Thanks! Yes, this *interested* me... until I saw their fees. And then I decided that an old qbasic file I wrote for the science fair 1996 is not sooo important for me (the topic was the most efficient way to compute pi). :)
     
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  7. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Have you considered downloading QB64? It's free and will take all the QBasic/QuickBasic legacy code PLUS new formats, new code and high-res zillion-colours etc. - much new stuff that the old QBASIC couldn't. It's fast and instantly compiled.

    You can use old code on your new big-screen machine - or you can write stuff that runs rings around it. For Windows or Linux. And it doesn't take a page of code to bring up a pic, either. Stuff gets done (if you want) in much fewer lines. Dynamite!

    Here: https://www.qb64.org/portal/
     
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  8. Mac Juli

    Mac Juli Well-Known Member

    Thanks, but EXCEL / VBA does the trick quite well these days (and yes, as I told in another thread: I admit that every programmer who started with BASIC is spoilt for life; to all the pros out there: no need to tell me how shitty BASIC is!)
     
  9. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Indeed I am. Spoilt by BASIC - irredeemably spoilt by various forms of Windows Basic! :)
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2020
  10. Mac Juli

    Mac Juli Well-Known Member

    GWBasic. Considered as the original sin by many technopriests...
     
  11. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Yes, you're entitled to your opinion. And I am as well.

    You weren't around when I went through a ton of crap following my graduation from Union. Posters here and elsewhere felt all to free to criticize my work--almost all of it in an ignorant fashion. No one (save one) from that crowd held a real doctorate, by the way, and their criticisms were either illogical or not based on what I actually researched and wrote. The one persistent critic who did have a real doctorate (from the University of South Carolina) had the exact opinion of my dissertation that I held myself: kinda boring but nothing unusual about its quality.

    So excuse me if I actually get to have my OWN opinion about this topic. Mine: write yours before criticizing others'. (Not you personally, but in general.)

    You can have an opinion about anything. But criticisms from people who have not done it themselves are not from credible sources. Whatever they say will have to stand on its own without the opiner's credibility to back it up. All opinions are not equal.

    I remember when I was 10 and my grandfather took my to my first big league game. I was playing Little League at the time. One of our home team guys struck out and I booed (along with a lot of other Padres fans that first year). My grandfather, who played some ball after high school before WWII got him, grabbed me by the arm and said, "Ricky, that guy was great at every level he played at before making it to the bigs. He was the best in his school and on most of his minor league teams. He's great for even getting here." It taught me a lot. So did standing in the batting cages (as an adult) trying to hit 80mph fastballs--hardly a big league velocity--and getting my bat on only a couple. That taught me just how hard it is to hit a ball at-speed, even with mediocre pace and no movement. I haven't booed a player in any sport since.

    No, you don't have to have done a dissertation to criticize one. But don't be surprised if those that have decide not to listen.
     
  12. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    OK, I won't be. My whole point - they're not sacred. There was some criticism here of Jill Biden's which I opposed. Anyone is free to criticize and/or decide not to listen. And please don't be surprised if I decide not to listen to you, Rich.
     
    Last edited: Nov 16, 2020
  13. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Too bad about all the negative crap you went through after your dissertation - but I had nothing to do with it. You're free to kvetch all these years later if you must, though..
     
  14. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Yeah, they're far from that. I've read some real crap over the years--from people who earned doctorates as a result.

    No, not kvetching. If I wanted to do that, I would have named names and gone into detail. I wanted to use it as an example where people--for motives that had nothing to do with academics--swarmed my dissertation and trashed it (inaccurately, but just as effectively) on the three active boards at that time. One poster purchased it from UMI and then downloaded it 67 times (before I halted online sales). Weird, because it was a PDF that could be copied as many times as one would want, but what the person did was to distribute the 72-hour download code. (Back then, distributing a PDF might have been much harder on dial-up.)
     
  15. chrisjm18

    chrisjm18 Well-Known Member

    My first book review submission to a peer-reviewed journal (Policing & Society) has been accepted without revisions.

    I have an actual article (juvenile justice related) under review by another journal for over a month now. I'm not big of research and publishing but I think publishing will be the way to become a juvenile justice subject matter expert, which is my goal.
     
  16. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Well, somebody's got to pay for all that sophisticated equipment, right? :)
     
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  17. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    It's relatively common for errors to be produced by editing (ironically) of a book by someone other than the person who wrote it. It's possible that the typo was introduced not by Dr. Biden but by someone who edited it for typographic/layout issues after she finished it, and because she was trusting their judgement she didn't go through and review their work.

    This is a particularly charitable view of course, but a thought that entered my mind.
     
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  18. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    Jill Biden is such a class act of a woman.
    She's amazing. She's so integer and you can see what a warm hearted person she is just from her appearence alone already.
    She is going to make such a great first lady.
    I don't get why she has to face so much criticism for a few spelling errors in her dissertation.
    Michele Obama and Jill Biden are truly deserving the title of first lady. They are not women who fully depend on the merits of their husbands. They have real accomplishments that they themselves fought for.
    Can't be said of Melania Trump for example and she never has to face that amount of scrutiny.
    People can be so hypocritical sometimes.
     
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  19. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    That amount? Yes, she has. That kind? No - different entirely.

    From her Wiki: "Knauss was featured in a sexually explicit photo shoot for the January 1996 issue of Max, a now-defunct French men's magazine, with another female model.[39] She also posed nude for the January 2000 UK edition of GQ magazine, appearing on the cover naked except for diamond jewelry, reclining on fur, aboard Trump's custom-fitted Boeing 727 "

    If those pics weren't subject to the most minute scrutiny imaginable, by those who bought the mags -- what ever was? :)

    I'm sure Jill Biden has never been subjected to that kind of scrutiny! And Melania escaped scrutiny of her Dissertation by not writing one. She went to college for precisely one year.
     
  20. TeacherBelgium

    TeacherBelgium Well-Known Member

    My dad lately saw a documentary where it said that Melania and Trump met when she was 16 y.o.
    Is that actually true or is that propaganda to put Trump in a bad daylight?
    Was something I was wondering recently.
     

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