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[Xantalos]

Really? Because Prometheus and AMoM don't really have the same plot at all. AMoM is more similar to the Thing or Alien than Prometheus.

Mountains features an alien precursor and their colony being explored by human researchers who discover during the course of their search that said precursor are responsible for the creation of mankind, as shown by an engraving in the city relating to the Elder Things' genetic experiments and creations. Mountains also has alien slime monsters.

Prometheus, likewise, features alien precursors, with "perfect match" of DNA with humans, as well as alien geometries and slime-based monsters.

To the average sci-fi scrub, Mountains could be seen as a stupid rip-off of Prometheus, "because Prometheus obviously came first, derp."

Huh. I was mistaken.

[freeformschooler]

 

Sweet Lord.

I just discovered the whole GDI/Greek schism. This shit doesn't even exist in community college. Considering I'm transferring to a full state university, the possibly that I'd be concentrating on schoolwork while surrounding by this idiotic civil war wearing a paper thin disguise over its true "Liberal vs. Conservative" face is... disconcerting.

People, how do you avoid this crap? Are most universities like this? Am I gonna have to walk around campus fully prepared to have a keg of beer and jagged ice cubes poured over my head during a quiet conversation with my friends?

[kaijyuu]

How bout quitting pretending that these stupid groups actually represent people and aren't just arbitrary labels people stick on each other (and themselves) to make schisms in the first place?

Don't put yourself under any of these stupid labels and tell anyone who whines about them to bugger off.


(I am assuming Urban Dictionary is accurately educating me about this)

[Rose]

Ordered a DVD drive/burner, and it turns out that it doesn't have the same connector that my motherboard uses.


Also, Windows decided to rearrange several icons on my desktop for no reason. Randomly making every folder think it's a music folder is bad enough.

EDIT: I suppose there isn't anything like a SATA-to-USB converter or anything like that?

EDITBEFOREEDIT: Apparently there is, and it costs just as much as the drive did.

Uh.... either your new DVD drive is dirt cheap, or you're doing it wrong, because around here USB to SATA converters go for around $10

[FearfulJesuit]

Rage: Sociology is not real. Why it's on the official college entrance exam down here, I'll never know. Oh, right. Feels.

[nenjin]

People, how do you avoid this crap? Are most universities like this? Am I gonna have to walk around campus fully prepared to have a keg of beer and jagged ice cubes poured over my head during a quiet conversation with my friends?

No, that's all hype. Yes, you'll probably deal with occasional campus preacher, the sit-in, the guy on a microphone yelling to crowds out front of the Student Union. Unless you're going to an exceptionally small college though, people generally leave you to your own thing. Unless you choose to engage them.

Rage: Sociology is not real. Why it's on the official college entrance exam down here, I'll never know. Oh, right. Feels.

What professors and TAs love: new students telling them their discipline is bunk. You'll do great in college.

[Frumple]

Rage: Sociology is not real.

... what?

I mean, don't get me wrong, sociology's still pretty young. But if it's not real, neither is psychology, and going down that path is starting a long damn trip going through the "hard" sciences that ends up back at philosophy and philosophy promptly shrugging its shoulders and going, "Nah, sorry dude, we're all unreal here, too."

Sociology's done some pretty good academic and practical work, so far. Still got some "figuring out what the hell we're doing" jitters, but it's no anthropology (I jest, partially, though anthropo's even younger and more confused as to wtf it's doing) and it's got some solid things going for it.

[FearfulJesuit]

It isn't the concept I dislike. It's the methodology. It needs the sort of rigor found in the natural sciences.

[freeformschooler]

People, how do you avoid this crap? Are most universities like this? Am I gonna have to walk around campus fully prepared to have a keg of beer and jagged ice cubes poured over my head during a quiet conversation with my friends?

No, that's all hype. Yes, you'll probably deal with occasional campus preacher, the sit-in, the guy on a microphone yelling to crowds out front of the Student Union. Unless you're going to an exceptionally small college though, people generally leave you to your own thing. Unless you choose to engage them.

Great to hear, in that case. I like as few nuisances in my life as possible.

[Flying Dice]

People, how do you avoid this crap? Are most universities like this? Am I gonna have to walk around campus fully prepared to have a keg of beer and jagged ice cubes poured over my head during a quiet conversation with my friends?

No, that's all hype. Yes, you'll probably deal with occasional campus preacher, the sit-in, the guy on a microphone yelling to crowds out front of the Student Union. Unless you're going to an exceptionally small college though, people generally leave you to your own thing. Unless you choose to engage them.

Great to hear, in that case. I like as few nuisances in my life as possible.

The simplest solution is to walk at twice the speed of everyone around you, bulky headphones on, loud music going, vacant thousand-yard stare on your face. It's always worked for me, anyways. If someone offers you a free bible, either accept it with a smile and a "Hail Satan!" or awkwardly sign it while muttering that you don't normally do this for fans.

[Frumple]

It isn't the concept I dislike. It's the methodology. It needs the sort of rigor found in the natural sciences.

The better parts of it have that rigor. Some parts don't (they're steadily getting replaced by the parts that do), but again, look at early psych, or early natural sciences. Sociology as a developed field is still incomplete and quite young, but it's come a long way and it's getting further by the day.

I'm not in the field, but I've been through a few (mandatory, for the schools in question) classes and talked with folks both in and in communication with people in the field, and... the actual methodology that sociological experimentation is supposed to be using is least as rigorous as psychology (The fields are pretty well connected and often work together. Something like half of the major experimental tools sociology uses is literally identical to psychological experimentation. Same methodology, same experimental procedures.). From what I've seen, a good chunk of the folks pioneering the field in the academic world are pretty on the ball.

So... maybe the experiences here are different, but t'me you seem to be talking about something that's not actually sociological study

The simplest solution is to walk at twice the speed of everyone around you, bulky headphones on, loud music going, vacant thousand-yard stare on your face. It's always worked for me, anyways. If someone offers you a free bible, either accept it with a smile and a "Hail Satan!" or awkwardly sign it while muttering that you don't normally do this for fans.

... I think the most I've been accosted on a campus was the time or two folks inquired about my walking stick. Note: No innuendo. My walking stick is just kinda' awesome and draws adulation and inquiry.

[FearfulJesuit]

It isn't the concept I dislike. It's the methodology. It needs the sort of rigor found in the natural sciences.

The better parts of it have that rigor. Some parts don't (they're steadily getting replaced by the parts that do), but again, look at early psych, or early natural sciences. Sociology as a developed field is still incomplete and quite young, but it's come a long way and it's getting further by the day.

I'm not in the field, but I've been through a few (mandatory, for the schools in question) classes and talked with folks both in and in communication with people in the field, and... the actual methodology that sociological experimentation is supposed to be using is least as rigorous as psychology (The fields are pretty well connected and often work together. Something like half of the major experimental tools sociology uses is literally identical to psychological experimentation. Same methodology, same experimental procedures.). From what I've seen, a good chunk of the folks pioneering the field in the academic world are pretty on the ball.

So... maybe the experiences here are different, but t'me you seem to be talking about something that's not actually sociological study

I think so, yeah. The Brazilian intellectual climate tends to be very far-left, and what I'm seeing has an uncomfortable resemblance to certain corners of Tumblr.

[kaijyuu]

You're implying you can go too far left?

Pish posh! Gay marriage for everyone! Especially straight people!

[MetalSlimeHunt]

People, how do you avoid this crap? Are most universities like this? Am I gonna have to walk around campus fully prepared to have a keg of beer and jagged ice cubes poured over my head during a quiet conversation with my friends?

At least at App I haven't heard much of that. I didn't even know about the term GDI until now. To be fair, the fraternities at App are more concerned about fighting the school to get re-registered every year than fighting for recruits.

[nenjin]

The problem with Sociology as I see it is it requires a lot of inference on what the data means. And if the sample was too small, if the data wasn't gathered correctly....it's also frequently used as a weapon by the Left, and occasionally by the Right as well when the data fits their assumptions, and that puts any science in an awkward position because everyone has been robbed of their credibility, even researchers who never set out to make a political point in the first place. That said, there is an element of social justice in a lot of what Sociology studies, so when you're doing a study on the life expectancy of middle-aged black women living in poverty, or homeless street kids, your work ends up political regardless.

I actually worked for a Sociological Research outfit for a few years in college. I helped design and code the methodology for one study about memory, listened to probably 500? hours of recorded sociological interviews, a couple hundred pages of transcripts and coded a lot of the data.

And there's two distinct kinds of work done. One is very informal, and very personal, where a sociologist talks to as many people as they can and asks them all the same questions but lets them answer very freely. Studies based off data like that are highly interpretive and usually rely on samples that don't meet statistical muster. The other kind are hard data studies, surveys done by the thousands. Those do contain the kind of rigorous science and statistical analysis that actually supports conclusions.

So yeah, I was neck deep in Sociology for three years, and while I very much understand and agree with the "Feel" part of it, there is a lot of bonafide science being done. And the free response interviews aren't useless either, they provide a critical angle that large anonymous studies do not. It's just very slow data to work through and yes, it does lead to an emotional investment in the topic, because the researchers are actually talking to these people in person, sometimes for 20 hours or more over several sessions. It's the kind of data that you spend a life time collecting and building on. (And it's usually almost always supported with hard data as well.)