The "New Scientist" magazine has published a University of Oregon study that purports to demonstrate that people like to pay taxes. The methodology was curious, however; 19 female university students were given $100 and told either that $45 would go to taxes, or would not. MRI results then "revealed" that pleasure centers lit up when those who "paid taxes" were told about it.
Interesting methodology; one wonders if the "researchers" ever considered whether it might make a difference if the subject was spending their own money, or whether it might make a difference whether the subjects had ever filled out a 1040 form or written a check for property taxes.
Once again, we have cutting edge technology in the service of absurd logic. Evidently, that's a story we're going to be hearing more and more, and having a Ph.D. doesn't seem to indicate that the researchers or reviewers have ever darkened the door of a logic class or opened a book on the subject.
Note to self; scratch the "University of Oregon" from allowable universities for my children.
Podcast #1047: The Roman Caesars’ Guide to Ruling
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The Roman caesars were the rulers of the Roman Empire, beginning in 27 BC
with Julius Caesar’s heir Augustus, from whom subsequent caesars took their
nam...
7 hours ago
6 comments:
...i'm going to prepare for and take either the lsat or the gre, and see what grad/law schools I could get in to. That might be within the next couple years, but I'm starting to research which schools i'd *want* to go to.
1) George Mason
2) ?
...having taken the 'easy way' through college (though the university of florida is no slouch, I could easily have done better, given my grades/scores...*going* to college from my town was a big enough deal, nobody wanted to press me to do more, apparently), I'm not going to pull that same stunt again if I go for post-grad work.
...problem's going to be figuring out which schools are challenging/rewarding/most suited/afford the best opportunities afterward.
What's your degree in now, bro? If you're discontented in architecture, I don't know that more education of the typical modern type is going to help things.
And what does Angel think? Big issue there!
...landscape architecture.
and..."more education of the typical modern type"? Qu'est que c'est?
Angel's all about me finding something that I get more excited about. Of course, all of this either depends on the possibility of my going somewhere, which would mean she'd have to find a job to support us, or we find some other way to work this using outside financing (possibly her dad? ...I kinda doubt he'd want to pay for me to go to school, but ya never know).
The thing is, I *do* enjoy my job...when it's challenging enough. If it's not, I get bored, and start flitting around looking for other things to engage my brain. I'd like to find some way to combine the knowledge/experience I've already got, but graphic/computer/land planning/design skills don't seem readily mixable into economics.
I dunno...I think at some point I'd like to be a teacher/professor...but that'd probably mean a doctorate, so I wouldn't be teaching for a *long* time...and then I've wasted all kinds of time...
...blah blah blah....
Shawn, glad to hear that your "spare rib" supports you in this.
What I'm getting at regarding " typical modern education" is simple; far too many degree programs today are primarily concerned with generating more or less tradesmen; people who are not educated in a real, classical sense, but are highly skilled at performing some small area of law/medicine/engineering/physics/whatever.
If I read you right, you're more interested in becoming an educated man than just another tradesman. Hence, most modern degree programs might drive you nuts.
Take a look at Dorothy Sayers' The Lost Tools of learning--that might draw the picture far better.
http://www.gbt.org/text/sayers.html
There's another flaw to this study, all the participants were of one category. I don't mean this in a derogatory sense but you can't conclude a study with one sex and only 19 people and claim it as a scientific study. Can you imagine Gallup taking a poll of 19 males or females and said that's the trend of the nation?
Actually, what you're getting at is whether the sample is representative. I could take this study and tell you that 20 year old coeds who have never filed a 1040 or paid property tax seem to derive pleasure from paying taxes when it's not their money.
You could respond "duh". Then you could say "no, the sample is not representative of the population as a whole, which has paid taxes with their own money.
(one can "rescue," more or less, a lot of weak science by narrowing the hypotheses)
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