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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

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Rex says:
Hello,How are you?
Sitaram says:
fine, nice to see you
Rex says:
thank you
Rex says:
and are you busy now?
Sitaram says:
I am writing at some length about annie proulx "The Shipping News" a novel, http://www.annieproulx.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=1777#1777
Sitaram says:
what is your question
Rex says:
you know what I am doint beforehand.
Rex says:
doing
Rex says:
What do you call the teacher supervises your thesis?
Rex says:
supervisor,tutor,or advisor?
Sitaram says:
advisor, i suppose
Sitaram says:
no, supervisor implies some kind of labor, such as manual labor
Sitaram says:
advisor
Rex says:
the same title is employed to the advisor for degree of Bachelor,Master, and Doctor?
Sitaram says:
i suppose.... over here, i dont think they have such.... in high schools and colleges , there are "guidance counsellors"
Rex says:
I mean here every graduate has a specific teacher who is in charge of his thesis.
Rex says:
from the very beginning to the end.
Sitaram says:
hmm.... i knew one man who wrote a phd thesis in clinical psychology... and he had a COMMITTEE... (not sure of spelling)
Sitaram says:
and the committee would hash over each and every paragraph....
Sitaram says:
until it please all committee members
Sitaram says:
but... the purpose of that was so that the UNIVERSITY, as an institution, would not have anything published which did not suit its standards,....
Sitaram says:
but.. you see, this was a very negative thing... because it means that nothing was published except the lowest common denominator to please all committee members
Sitaram says:
so, it had the effect of stiffling the student/candidate
Rex says:
My teacher's job is to help me to pass the oral examination.
Sitaram says:
there is a saying: "A camel is a horse designed by a committee"
Sitaram says:
a horse is beautiful, eligant, a camel is ugly, awkward
Sitaram says:
i would say it is a TUTOR who helps to pass an oral exam
Sitaram says:
and an ADVISOR who assists in writing a paper
Rex says:
And he must read my paper before I hand it in.
Sitaram says:
i would say that the TUTOR asks the student questions, while the student asks the ADVISOR questions
Sitaram says:
he should read your paper WHILE you are writing it, the drafts
Rex says:
And I often discuss my thesis with my teacher,(Advisor?)
Rex says:
And it seems your education system is more complicated than ours.
Sitaram says:
advisor is the term for the person you discuss your paper with
Rex says:
Because you have more teachers helping one student, while we have only one.
Sitaram says:
well... i only know that one example of that one man, in that one psychology department, in that one university...
Sitaram says:
i have no idea if every university is like that
Sitaram says:
but... you see, things are political.... institutions seek control
Sitaram says:
they are so worried about their appearance, in publication
Sitaram says:
so, they do not want to grant the freedom necessary to be bold and daring, which may come up with something new and better
Sitaram says:
wherever there is the corporate activity of many people in an organization, whether in academia, or government, or religion, there is corruption, inefficiency and mediocrity
Rex says:
right
Sitaram says:
that is why there are always renegades, on the fringe of society, loners, who are "coloring outside the lines" (of the coloring book).... and pushing the envelope pushing the boundaries
Sitaram says:
that is an old expression here "you are not supposed to color outside the lines"
Sitaram says:
to, what is your paper on
Sitaram says:
what is your topic
Rex says:
sublimity
Sitaram says:
i think kant wrote something "on the beautiful and sublime"
Rex says:
yes
Rex says:
Critique of Judgment
Rex says:
is specially on the problem of beauty and sublimity
Sitaram says:
and, i am sure there are things in aristotle and plato to be considered
Rex says:
I don't know they have talked about sublimity.
Sitaram says:
Maxwell made an aesthetic judgment about his equations on waves,.... simply because he found a certain symmetry more attractive... and they turned out to be the correct equations
Sitaram says:
so Maxwell's equations are an example where aesthetic taste led to mathematical discovery
Sitaram says:
and Kepler looked for his "music of the spheres"
Sitaram says:
seeing musical meaning in the ratios of planetary orbits
Rex says:
And some aestheticians seek in truth in the object and others seek in the subject's mind.
Rex says:
seek truth
Sitaram says:
there are some who believe that all thirteen books of Euclid's Elements of Geometry are a preparation for his final feat, to inscribe all the perfect solids in a sphere... which has aesthetic value
Rex says:
Last time I asked you about the tense.
Rex says:
of a sentence.
Sitaram says:
people love to look at the chinese characters, such as the word for DISCORD which, i am told, depicts two women under the same roof (i dont know if this is true)
Rex says:
I cannot guess what is the character now.
Rex says:
He was an enthusiastic advocator of aesthetic education, because he noticed that a large part of our taste is due to postnatal acquisition.
Sitaram says:
a google search tells me this is an apocryphal, untrue story
Sitaram says:
There are some about Chinese, especially the writing system.
The notion that Chinese writing is 'idiographic' is probably
better termed a misconception than a myth, but there is the one
that says that the character meaning 'discord' consists of two
women under a roof (ho,ho). There is no such character,
although there are real characters that work in a similarly
misogynistic manner.
Sitaram says:
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/linguist/issues/8/8-39.html
Rex says:
"was-noticed-is"acceptable?
Sitaram says:
oh, i have no idea what each and every phrase means in some of those posts
Sitaram says:
it may be some error
Sitaram says:
what are you looking at
Sitaram says:
oh, you are asking if the phrase "it was noticed" is acceptable
Rex says:
I means in the sentence the two past tenses and one present tense.
Rex says:
Is this kind of use acceptable?
Rex says:
I mean
Sitaram says:
i would need to think and search... too early for me now.... and not much time this morning
Sitaram says:
i will think later
Sitaram says:
and search
Sitaram says:
"it has been observed" is common
Rex says:
Is the question so difficult?
Sitaram says:
i am not magician, to pull answers out of hat, when i am half awake
Rex says:
Kant "held" that the aesthetic judgment is...
Rex says:
held vs. is
Sitaram says:
besides... i do not give answer simply for the sake of saying something, i like to have confidence in the truth and accuracy of it
Rex says:
I mean held in past tense and is in present tense.
Sitaram says:
and soon, i must rush so as not to be late for work
Rex says:
Oh!
Rex says:
I am terriblly sorry.
Sitaram says:
so, my mind is not ready for certain questions...
Sitaram says:
only things which i have thought about years ago... that i easily remember
Rex says:
No question now to bother you.
Rex says:
Thank you and be ready for work.
Sitaram says:
do give me questions now... but wait for my answers
Rex says:
Please.
Sitaram says:
i mean, dont be impatient for an immediate answer
Rex says:
I thought my question is a very easy one,(probably I am wrong.)
Sitaram says:
if it were so easy, you would not need to ask
Sitaram says:
since you need to ask, how can you be certain it is easy
Rex says:
I write the sentence according to the grammatical rules read in books.
Rex says:
But I am not sure whether it is acceptable or often used in daily life.
Sitaram says:
all you need to do is google on any quoted phrase, and you instantly see the frequency of occurence, and whether it is in scholarly posts/articles
Rex says:
Oh, my god.
Sitaram says:
i use google all the time for that purpose
Rex says:
I think you are the authority.
Sitaram says:
in the 1950s we used to say that "AINT aint in the dictionary", but now it IS in the dictionary
Rex says:
Just as I am an authority in the use of Chinese.
Sitaram says:
a cigarette ad, "Winston tastes good LIKE a cigarette should" raised controversy,... but gradually the grammatical usage becomes acceptable
Sitaram says:
strictly, it should say "AS a cigarette should"
Sitaram says:
but it was a song on television... and became popular
Rex says:
Chinese language is much better.
Rex says:
I mean slow in change.
Sitaram says:
is it really better, or worse...
Rex says:
It had not changed for about many thousand years.
Sitaram says:
the change of adaptation in nature means survival
Rex says:
I think it is better, but now worse.
Sitaram says:
if we value antiquity, then change is bad
Sitaram says:
if we value adaptation for survival, then change is good
Rex says:
Oral language is always chaning.
Rex says:
changing.
Rex says:
It is unpreventable.
Sitaram says:
inevitable
Sitaram says:
change is inevitable
Rex says:
But written language can be static, for the preservation of traditional culture.
Rex says:
China had kept its written language for many thousand years.
Sitaram says:
the Qu'ran kept Arabic unified for centuries
Sitaram says:
and the King James Bible had a similar effect on English
Rex says:
It enable me in the 21th century to be able read directly the analects by Confucius.
Sitaram says:
but... stop and consider... that idiogram is very different from phonetic system
Sitaram says:
you can read the writing of anyone in china... but you cannot speak with them
Sitaram says:
writing (idiogram) is same, but pronunciation is different...
Sitaram says:
now if CHAUCER were idiograms, we could understand....
Sitaram says:
but... phonetics have chaned so much, that we need a study guide
Sitaram says:
phonetics have CHANGED
Rex says:
you are right that change is inevitable.
Rex says:
but relatively the change of chinese language is smaller comparing with other languages.
Sitaram says:
but, do you see how the readibility of confucius (because of nature of idiograms) may not be equated to the unreadibility of Chaucer
Sitaram says:
it is "apples and oranges"
Sitaram says:
we can now READ/DECIPHER egyptian hieroglyphics, but we would not be able to speak ancient Egyptian with the Pharoah
Sitaram says:
hieroglypic = idiogram
Sitaram says:
must run now

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