Quotulatiousness

July 3, 2012

Ontario government considering “streamlining” universities, reducing from four-year to three-year degree programs

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

I rarely find anything interesting in Heather Mallick’s Toronto Star writings, but her Sunday article on possible Ontario government changes to the university system raises some valid concerns:

The Ontario government has run a hasty educational reform plan up a flagpole and is hoping you’ll salute it. Don’t.

The discussion paper, titled “Strengthening Ontario’s Centres of Creativity, Innovation and Knowledge,” is as mystifying as the gentlewomen’s pompous, verbose porn novel Fifty Shades of Grey, which reads to me as if it were written by a small weird girl-child, or perhaps Conrad Black.

Without Star education reporter Kristin Rushowy to translate the jargon — which curses the education sector more than any other — I would not have known that basically the McGuinty government wants to cut four-year university degrees to three and “support flexible degree structures that provide new learning options made possible by advancements in technology,” which means online degrees.

[. . .]

This report heralds bad things for Ontario students.

I opposed ending Grade 13 and was proved right, universities frantically offering catch-up courses for students who couldn’t spell or add. I opposed the “30% Off Ontario Tuition Grant for students from middle-income families” that the report boasts of, because the $160,000 cut-off is far too high. I opposed turning colleges into universities because a diploma is just as valuable as a degree, but they are not interchangeable.

And I oppose cutting degrees to three years, not just because other provinces and countries won’t accept this, but because fourth year is when you come into your own intellectually. The report refers repeatedly to the unfortunately titled Bologna Declaration aimed at harmonizing EU higher education — trans. “Yurp does it so we can too” — although I note that there has been talk in Britain of “accelerated” two-year degrees, at which point I despair.

H/T to the Phantom Observer for the link, who twittered:

https://twitter.com/PhantomObserver/statuses/220178327166648321

Details of British army cuts leaked

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:19

The Guardian has some details on the upcoming cuts to the British army, which will include the elimination of several battalions of infantry and the merging of some armoured regiments:

The acrimony and chaos surrounding plans to cut 20,000 troops from the army have been laid bare after details of the battalions to be scrapped were leaked before a ministerial statement on Thursday.

The proposals, whose publication has been delayed by Downing Street because of their sensitivity, show historic units to be axed include the third battalion of the Yorkshire regiment and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, the fifth battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. One battalion will be lost from the Royal Welsh, the Mercians and the Royal Fusiliers.

[. . .]

Official letters to army commanders were sent out on Tuesday, ready for the announcement in parliament by the defence secretary, Philip Hammond. The hope had been that soldiers would hear about the cuts from senior officers, but this has been dashed by the leak in Tuesday’s Sun.

[. . .]

The army is losing a fifth of its overall strength because of budget cuts and restructuring set out in the much criticised 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review.

A subsequent MoD re-evaluation — last year’s so-called “three-month exercise” — more than doubled the number of troops to be lost to 20,000.

[. . .]

The battalions to be saved include the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, the Queen’s Dragoon Guards and the Royal Dragoon Guards. The Parachute Regiment’s three battalions will be spared.

Under the proposals, the Queen’s Royal Lancers will be merged with the 9th/12th Lancers, and the 1st Royal Tank Regiment with the 2nd Royal Tank Regiment.

US Army’s UCP camouflage pattern “makes soldiers more visible, not less”

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

As I mentioned briefly last week, the US Army is abandoning their most recent camouflage patterned combat uniforms:

The United States military is abandoning its recently-adopted pixelated camouflage uniforms, according to articles this week in The Daily as well as Stars and Stripes.

The drab grey digital pattern, known as the Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP), will be discarded after only eight years following mounting evidence that the colour scheme makes soldiers more visible, not less.

The articles pull few punches in their appraisal of the move to adopt the pattern in 2004.

“Army brass interfered in the selection process, choosing looks and politics over science,” reports Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper of the United States armed forces.

And while the Pentagon spent $5 Billion on the much-heralded uniforms, some of the earliest attempts to conceal soldiers on the battlefield were considerably less expensive.

The This is War blog has a discussion of the development of camouflage over the last century and a half.

“The longer the euro area’s debt crisis drags on, the more it resembles an instrument of economic torture”

Filed under: Economics, Europe — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:47

The Economist on the long-drawn-out European financial mess:

THE longer the euro area’s debt crisis drags on, the more it resembles an instrument of economic torture. Like the medieval rack, every turn of the crisis tears Europe further apart. This week Cyprus announced it would seek a bail-out. Spain formally asked for money to recapitalise its banks. The Greek limb is close to being ripped off. How long can the Italian one hold?

Monetary union was meant to be a blessing. The euro’s founders dreamed that it would end chronic and divisive currency crises, promote growth and multiply Europe’s economic power. After the creation of the single market, the euro was the next step toward political union.

[. . .]

Now, after first blaming speculators, then profligate states, then, more broadly Europe’s lack of competitiveness, the cardinals of monetary union have belatedly come to understand that the main problem is the euro itself. A new report by a group of prominent economists — sponsored by Jacques Delors, the former president of the European Commission, and Helmut Schmidt, the former German chancellor — describes in telling detail how the euro is destroying itself.

Start with the European Central Bank’s “one size fits all” interest rate, which the report’s leading author, Henrik Enderlein of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, relabels a “one size fits none” rate. Differences in inflation are magnified: in countries with higher-than-average inflation (eg, Italy), the real interest is too low, fuelling more inflation; the opposite is true in countries where inflation is low (eg, Germany). Another problem is that the single market is far from complete, so that competition does not even out price differences across the EU. The market in services, which represents the biggest share of economic output, is still fragmented. Moreover, European workers are less likely to move in search of jobs than, say, American ones. A further curse is that countries of the euro zone do not independently control their own money. Because each lacks its own central bank to act as a lender of last resort, troubled countries can more easily be pushed into default as markets panic. Lastly, cross-border financial integration has spread far enough to channel contagion from one country to another, but not so far as to break the cycle of weak banks and weak sovereigns bringing each other down.

Bad news (for panicmongers, anyway)

Filed under: Economics, Environment — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:32

In the Guardian, George Monbiot (known to his detractors as “The Great Moonbat”) admits the terrible truth. He was wrong, again:

The facts have changed, now we must change too. For the past 10 years an unlikely coalition of geologists, oil drillers, bankers, military strategists and environmentalists has been warning that peak oil — the decline of global supplies — is just around the corner. We had some strong reasons for doing so: production had slowed, the price had risen sharply, depletion was widespread and appeared to be escalating. The first of the great resource crunches seemed about to strike.

Among environmentalists it was never clear, even to ourselves, whether or not we wanted it to happen. It had the potential both to shock the world into economic transformation, averting future catastrophes, and to generate catastrophes of its own, including a shift into even more damaging technologies, such as biofuels and petrol made from coal. Even so, peak oil was a powerful lever. Governments, businesses and voters who seemed impervious to the moral case for cutting the use of fossil fuels might, we hoped, respond to the economic case.

[. . .]

Peak oil hasn’t happened, and it’s unlikely to happen for a very long time.

A report by the oil executive Leonardo Maugeri, published by Harvard University, provides compelling evidence that a new oil boom has begun. The constraints on oil supply over the past 10 years appear to have had more to do with money than geology. The low prices before 2003 had discouraged investors from developing difficult fields. The high prices of the past few years have changed that.

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