I'm out the Cave!

Good posting, all.
I particularly 'agree' with the last.
I have often thought of God as an 'objective hinge' to hang human thoughts from.

Najmelliw, I understood you mean that it's a shame we do not spend more time exploring in more depth the intellectual and artistic issues of interest. Our consumerism pulls us from one brief distraction to another.

I remember once a lecture by the visiting anthropologist, Margaret Mead, in which she complained that the faculty of most universities were producing superficiality by being required to publish too many relatively shallow, merely technical, works rather than publishing fewer but more conceptually significant contributions. She said that in her day at Columbia University faculty were permitted to spend years on a single project, something that would lose contemporay faculty any chance of gaining tenure (this was in the mid-seventies). As I recall her talk--with its emphasis on quality over quantity--was well received by most untenured faculty.

That's interesting JL.
I suppose there's a lot of pressure to make your department appear 'active' within it's field.
Do you think there's more 'competition' between universities now than there was?

For god's sake. Why am I now unable to post anything without putting at least two words in inverted commas?

Don't you mean 'inverted commas'?

It's because you have very little confidence in us being able to get your meaning without them. It's a bit like shouting.

And they are not "inverted commas". They are "bunny rabbit's ears".

Yes, I suppose they are.
Well, I shall try at stop it at any rate.
It's Fresco's fault, you know.

You should take him in hand Queenie. He's in need of some discipline.

I have the feeling it will be to the greater good.

Fascinatin' thread, Darlin' . . . thanks . . .

In my time, there was pressure to do the work that was described in the grant application, and then, maybe or maybe not, depending on date and time, to beat out the guy with the labs across the hall or down the hall, but, underlying all that, given you were actually interested in your premise, to read day and night about anything going on that might relate to the research. I don't remember any of our research people caring a whit about the department. unless the building would catch on fire. I do remember (seventies) some personal competitions re scientists elsewhere in the world.